Oliver Cromwell is undoubtedly one of the most infamous characters in the history of the British Isles. None will deny that the man was only just short of if the very definition of genocidal, having killed nearly 300,000 people in Scotland and Ireland, with nearly double that amount dying after the wars and massacres due to illness and starvation. And despite those figures, depending who you ask, the man could be a revered hero, a feared dictator or even a reviled traitor.
That makes this image a perfect illustration of the remarkably fine line between funny and clever. Context is key, right?
I looked at my watch around noon today… “Why is December 7th so familiar?”
I kept trying to figure it out… Then it hit me…
1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor. Speeches by Roosevelt and Churchill. Our Declaration of War.
Funny how it was okay to have a multi-front war then, based on an unprovoked attack by the Japanese, and declaring it against Germany, who really hadn’t done anything to us at that point.
How different is it, really, when they fly a couple of Jets into our buildings, unprovoked, and we declare war against both their nerve center and another genocidal maniac who was killing his people by the hundreds of thousands…?
And surely Paul Street and I are not the only people who remember that not only did Barack Obama support the war in Iraq, he wasn’t “ruling out the nuclear option” even though we have to “pull out now.” Pull out now, give up, and nuke the place, huh?
There’s some great foreign policy…
And right now, with the WORLD economy in upheaval, foreign policy is just a little more important than our current problems, because a bit of diplomacy and trade might be a damn good way to pull us out of recession and restore the American people’s faith in our dollar…
