[lbo-talk] Bush admin pressed Brits to arrest suspects

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Mon Aug 14 09:56:27 PDT 2006



>From: "Wojtek Sokolowski" <sokol at jhu.edu>
>
>... Another thing is internal politics, in which attacking foreign straw
>men is
>either a diversion or a way of attacking internal interest groups. The
>Argentine invasion of the Falklands may be a good example. ...

Ah yes, the Guerra de las Malvinas -- or war of the straw men, in which Leopoldo Galtieri strove to deflect domestic attention from Argentina's internal problems by retaking the Malvinas, while Margaret Thatcher strove to deflect domestic attention from the UK's internal problems by holding on to the Malvinas. Since the Royal Navy demonstrated it was capable of torpedoing and sinking a 47-year-old Argentinean light cruiser, the General Belgrano -- a feat memorialized by the famous Sun headline GOTCHA -- Thatcher proved (to UK voters at least) that the UK was still a formidable world power and won the 1983 general election.

Carl



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