24/07/2013 00:00
TW
0

Dear Sir, READING Mr Marks' letter to the editor in Tuesday's Bulletin (17th July), I realized that while Mr Marks and all Americans have a perfectly legitimate right to feel upset and offended by what they perceive to be unrelenting criticism of their nation and its foreign policy, I am quite tired of the old song one tends to get in reply of “The American people have bailed Europe out of two World Wars.” It was a great American, Abraham Lincoln, who said that “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.” If from this I may extrapolate a similar logic, then it might be said that the heroism of the past is no excuse for the folly of the present, and claiming so is no substitute for real discussion on the woes of the age.

If that logic were to be applied universally, then (say) what is the USA doing as trading partner and ally to Japan?
Mr Marks' maxim of “But it is what it is” applies more readily to the past which he seems to cart out as the end-all argument, rather than the stormy present which he seems so ready to accept.

I, for one, seriously hope that this attitude of “so it goes” isn't indicative of a wider readiness to accept the repercussions of the less popular American moves of recent years.

Alexis Forss, Bendinat