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re: What your country did
McFly — (archived)

You seem to think that the United States single-handedly won the wars.

This drives a lot of non-Americans crazy, and I honestly think a great deal of the sentiment comes from the enormously powerful and pervasive American mass-media: movies and television. But remember that Saving Private Ryan wasn't a documentary.

When I was growing up in Canada, I saw a great deal of television about Canadian participation in the various 20th century wars. There is also a very healthy collection of Canadian literature about the same. But I've never heard an American moan that the CBC doesn't sufficiently tell the US side of the story.

Two points come to mind: first, I don't think most educated Americans suffer the illusion that they single-handedly fought any of the big wars of the last century; also, I for one would not want to imagine the possible paths of either the first or the second world wars had the Americans sat on the sidelines. If American historians sometimes suggest that their nation's participation was pivitol in the outcomes of those conflicts, I'd have to agree.

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