{"id":261,"date":"2003-04-16T08:21:09","date_gmt":"2003-04-16T15:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=261"},"modified":"2003-04-16T08:21:09","modified_gmt":"2003-04-16T15:21:09","slug":"i-know-you-are-but-what-am-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2003\/04\/i-know-you-are-but-what-am-i\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;I know you are, but what am I?&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I first heard  the French called &#8220;Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys&#8221; it made me laugh. I wonder if that little epithet is widely known in France though?<\/p>\n<p>Who knows? It&#8217;s hard for anyone to have perspective on themselves.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"The Elite's Feeling the Heat\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themoscowtimes.com\/stories\/2003\/04\/10\/009.html\">But this article is from the Moscow Times.<\/a> It gave me a little perspective on how others view America:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was believed that the Americans were afraid of close hand-to-hand encounters, they would not tolerate the inevitable casualties, and that in the final analysis they were cowards who relied on technical superiority&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Basically, the Russians were convinced that Americans were ultra-sanitized technowusses.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s interesting to see that the same article goes on to say that the Russians were wrong:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The worst possible outcome of the war in Iraq for the Russian military is a swift allied victory with relatively low casualties. Already many in Russia are beginning to ask why our forces are so ineffective compared to the Brits and Americans; and why the two battles to take Grozny in 1995 and 2000 each took more than a month to complete, with more that 5,000 Russian soldiers killed and tens of thousands wounded in both engagements, given that Grozny is one tenth the size of Baghdad.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Interesting. The Russians mocked America for not wanting to get it&#8217;s hands dirty.  I imagine some kind of mental equation, the Russians seeing a direct corellation to how dirty the hands are to the likelihood of winning the war.<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, the Hands-dirtying may have nothing whatsoever to do with winning a war. But Russia doesn&#8217;t want to admit that:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Russian media is generally avoiding the hard questions and serving up anti-American propaganda instead. It is alleged that the U.S. government is &#8220;concealing casualties&#8221; (like its Russian counterpart), and that hundreds if not thousands of U.S. soldiers have already been killed. Maybe this deceit will become the main semi-official excuse for disregarding the allied victory.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Very Interesting.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lifeofsmallbeer.co.uk\">Jamie<\/a> for bringing this article to my attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I first heard the French called &#8220;Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys&#8221; it made me laugh. I wonder if that little epithet is widely known in France though? Who knows? It&#8217;s hard for anyone to have perspective on themselves. But this article &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2003\/04\/i-know-you-are-but-what-am-i\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2003\/04\/i-know-you-are-but-what-am-i\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}