Donald R.Burgett betreurt in de slotopmerking van het artikel over zijn boeken door Desiree Withaar 23 oktober 2004 op het Stiwot-forum gepubliceerd, "dat de Fransen niet hebben deelgenomen aan het Amerikaans ingrijpen in Irak".
Alhoewel Irak de wereldvrede nooit heeft bedreigt zoals de Duitsers het bij tweemaal hebben gedaan in 1914-1918 en 1939-1945. Saddam Hussein was geen Wilhelm II of Adolf Hitler, hierna volgt een artikel uit de Franse économische krant "l'Echo" gedateerd 19 februari 2003 en dat door mij destijds van het Frans in het Engels is vertaald. Ik wil hiermede Donald R.Burgett, voor wie ik het grootste respect heb, en al onze Amerikaanse vrienden even antwoorden voor de kritiek die ze op de Franse regering en zijn president Jacques Chirac hebben gehad na de invasie van Amerikaanse en Engelse troepen in Irak.
"AN OPEN LETTER TO THE AMERICANS
"Certains American journalists, with the tact that characterizes them, have asked the french and the germans to remember that they owe their liberty to the United States of America.
May they be assured. We have not forgotten our duty of gratitude toward those fallen on the beaches of Normandy.....
But our memory is not selective and we will not forget that on the roads of France, the half-tracks and the heavy German trucks who pushed the population into exile like a herd of animals to the slaughterhouse, were manufactured by Ford and General Motors, or that the engines of the aircraft who gunned in diving down on this poor herd, were made by General Motors (or his German branch, Opel).
Finally, we cannot forget that the Third Reich could not have grown in power and prosperity without the enormous amount of capital invested by the most important american companies, falsely believing that they worked for peace, while in reality, as usual, they worked for their own benefits, their own "wallet".
"World Peace through World Trade", launched Thomas Watson, General-Manager of I.B.M., American, certainly, but Nazi in his heart, and decorated by Adolf Hitler himself with the German Eagle with a Star.
That gives you allready a little taste of mondialization because, today like yesterday, it is : "Business is business"
Do I need to quote Charles Lindberg, who was also decorated by Adolf Hitler, and was openly pro-nazi, or Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the late President John F.Kennedy, did not become poorer by his friendship with the leaders of the Third Reich, in spite of the enormous amounts of money contributed to help Nazi-Germany financially ?
No, be assured, we will never forget our Liberation. Those who among us who were forced to hide themselves in caves in Caen, St.Lô or in other towns of Normandy or elsewhere, will forever remember those aircraft who came to free us from the bounds of the nazis, and dropping their bombs from an attitude of 30,000 feet. Many of us have been freed very fast from all our illnesses and sorrows. Having stayed under the rubble of their destroyed homes.
They beg you for excuse that can remember nothing, because they are dead.
Of course, of two evils you have to choose among the least...nevertheless, in spite of all that, they thank you.
Born in a family who does not like the noise of those war-boots who are marching on and who does not like neither those who are wearing them, I had the chance not to be seduced by the charms of the "teutonic" music, and to do as few as possible my duty.
But this does not prevent me to measure the price of this liberation, which is added to the stupid and unqualifiable hitlerian adventure .
This old Europe has a long history, with every page stained with blood and tears.
Yours, my gentlemen the journalists, is much shorter, and without any doubt, in spite of your frequent allusions to the Bible and the Gospels, do you not have perfectly assimilated that the eternal and universal message and have not yet understood that love and solidarity are far more efficient than struggle and hate.
That, no doubt, will come with the time, when you will have suffered yourself a bit.
I wish to my American friends that this will not arrive too late, that they don't have to pay the price of their warlike unconsciousness and to know that "All those who take the sword,will perish by the sword". (Matthew 26-52)
But, once again, thank you for your intervention in 1944,what was a rightfull answer to the interventions of Lafayette, Rochambeau and of the French soldiers and volunteers in 1778, who came to help the "insurgents" who became, a bit thanks to us, the United States of America. There is however a small difference ! We have intervened at the beginning of the conflict and without doing anything to help your ennemies.
In 1917 and in 1942, you needed three years to come to the rescue of the victims of human oppression, and after having armed Hitler and humilated your friends.
Be convinced, that is not easy in the face of all your clumsiness and in spite of our friendship for more than two hundred years, we cannot follow blindly your flag, everywhere it pleases you to drip it in the blood of men."
Zo lang Duitsland nog niet de oorlog aan de Verenigde Staten van Amerika had verklaard, was het motto van de Amerikaanse regering "as usual business first". De Amerikaanse oliemaatschappijen verschaften aan Hitler de benodigde aardolie en voertuigen om zijn oorlog in West Europa en Rusland te kunnen voeren. Pas na de laaghartige Japanse aanval op Pearl Harbour, 7 december 1941, 'the day of infamy" volgens de Amerikaanse president Roosevelt, veranderde de V.S. van politiek ten opzichte van het Deutsche Reich.
Dit zal wel weer een storm van kritiek doen op laten waaien, maar daar is een forum toch voor ?
MVG