> At 05:07 PM 03/28/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> >It's time to get out our copies of The Quiet American again. jks
> > Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:Bradford DeLong wrote:
>
> Yeah, and then let's talk about it. What struck me about the Quiet
American
> last time I reread was that Greene was not so much concerned with the
evils
> of colonialism/imperialism as he was concerned to show the Americans would
> never possibly learn how to play the game. After all, if deep subtle folks
> like the English had failed, how could the Americans possibly succeed?
That
> was the sub-text. And I don't think this attitude is due to his
> catholicism either. The biggest American hater I ever met was an
Englishman
> who groused at me about the by-gone glory days of Britain and of how the
> Americans were totally unworthy of taking up the imperialist mantle.
> Ugh.
I think the Brits may have lost a bit of their edge in this regard. They haven't had to be the Raj in a while, except in, like, Diego Garcia I suppose. Here is how the latter-day Alec Guinnesses turned Andy Griffiths are managing in the occupied suburbs of Basra:
'The British troops apprehended some thieves when alerted by the villagers. On a drive down a gutted and muddy path, reporters saw British soldiers forcing several Iraqi men out of a truck. The men were made to stand with their hands against a wall while they were frisked.'
'Just after noon in Mushirij, British troops marched four other suspected thieves through the crowd to the Zulu Company headquarters, where the villagers outside jeered them and shouted, "Ali Baba! Ali Baba!" in a reference to the character from the "Thousand and One Nights". The suspects were young men with light beards whose heads were wrapped in red-and-yellow checked keffiyehs. Three minutes after they were brought in, they walked out the gates, free, smiling.'
'British commanders say there is little they can do. To punish the thieves, "We give them a ticking off, in a very robust British manner," said Maj. Duncan McSporran, who concedes that he has become something of a town sheriff. "I am the sheriff, aren't I?" he said. "That's one of my many functions."'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44665-2003Mar28.html