Quote Originally Posted by rvg View Post
As far as I remember, we've had a good relationship ever since Queen Victoria's death.
I expect you mean as far as you have read, and if that really is the case then you must have pushed certain historical facts to the back of your mind.
I don't place the U.S' treatment of Britain and the other old European powers onto a pedestal of complete evil as some may, but simply as the acts of a great power attemptimng to give itself hegemony over them. Mass media and sentiment and denial have allowed some to construct the nice warm fantasy of the "special" relationship. But it is just that, fantasy, the ones to blame here are not the Americans, who act like any other hegemonic nation, but we the British who have become so stupid and slow that we actually imbue PR stunt (i.e the special relationship) with some kind of real value.

For a start, we love Churchill, the man who invented the "special" relationship, who also happened to be the man who was a military incompetent and who as prime minister lead us into an unecessary war which we were not ready for. Then, due to his inhereted fascination with America, we had to nod politely when Roosevelt stupidly took Stalin for good guy.

If the relationship was special, the U.S would have demanded that the great titans of German industry who had helped fuel the Nazi war machine, were torn apart and distributed amongst the Western Allies, they would have scrapped the debt we owed them and they would have suppoerted us in the Suez crisis. None of this happened, fair enough as I can understand the reality of the relationship.

It is time we stopped this nonsense.