Tuesday 3 August 2010

Cultural Relativism in Action

And somewhere, people are presumably venerating icons of George Bush. This poster is in Kosova.

3 comments:

Benjamin Judge said...

Not so much cultural relativism as an example of a just war.

If Blair hadn't tainted his reputation with Iraq then Kosovo, along with devolution, the minimum wage, etc, would have been one of the reasons we would think he was a good leader. The decision to go to war is never an easy one and war is, obviously, a terrible thing but are you really suggesting that poster should not be there in some way?

You are a funny one sometimes you know. It is not amusing that photo exists, it is tragic that over fifty years after the second world war we are still living in a Europe that can descend into such awful bloodshed.

It can be easily argued that the relatively easy operation in Kosovo led to us over-reaching in Iraq and Afghanistan but that does not make the operation in Kosovo wrong does it?

Shock horror: Blair wasn't always wrong!

The Plashing Vole said...

Well: if you think that Blair's action in Kosova was anything more than his instinctive desire to use the army to distance himself from accusations that Britain's militarily finished and that Labour are congenitally peacenik. I'm a little more cynical - I'm not convinced that Blair's motives were entirely humanitarian.

As to the shocking idea that Europe can still be violent: Spain and Portugal were violent dictatorships until the late 1970s, Italy was so torn apart that the 70s were the 'Anni di Plombo' or years of lead, Germany had many guerilla groups, Greece was wrecked by conflict between the (UK and US-supported) military junta and the left the Allies betrayed, even before we get to Northern Ireland…

Benjamin Judge said...

OK now re-read what I said. The word shock is a full two paragraphs after I mention war in Europe. I describe war as tragic not shocking.

I genuinely cannot believe that the people in Kosovo give two shits about Blair's motives if the resulting action stopped some of them dying. I do think you are becoming incredibly cynical about almost everything though. All this bile is not good for you you know.