Iraqis are having a hard time dealing with American soldiers’ ethnic diversity.
…Corpsman Benedict Bito, 19, of Alameda, Calif., may have gotten the strangest question while at his post in Numaniyah.
“One kid asked me was I related to (martial artists movie star) Jackie Chan,” said Bito, who is Filipino. “I was standing guard in the square and the people started to stare at me. At first they told me I was Chinese, then they said Korean and finally one guy thought I was Vietnamese.
Iraqis are having a hard time dealing with American soldiers’ ethnic diversity.
…Corpsman Benedict Bito, 19, of Alameda, Calif., may have gotten the strangest question while at his post in Numaniyah.
“One kid asked me was I related to (martial artists movie star) Jackie Chan,” said Bito, who is Filipino. “I was standing guard in the square and the people started to stare at me. At first they told me I was Chinese, then they said Korean and finally one guy thought I was Vietnamese.
Iraqis are having a hard time dealing with American soldiers’ ethnic diversity.
…Corpsman Benedict Bito, 19, of Alameda, Calif., may have gotten the strangest question while at his post in Numaniyah.
“One kid asked me was I related to (martial artists movie star) Jackie Chan,” said Bito, who is Filipino. “I was standing guard in the square and the people started to stare at me. At first they told me I was Chinese, then they said Korean and finally one guy thought I was Vietnamese.
Part of the current conventional wisdom is that the UK (along with the rest of Europe) is becoming increasingly secular, which is one of the reasons that they are appalled by an American president who appears to be a sincere believer in God.
David Carr has an interesting post on how Brits, having been abandoned by their churches, have taken up paganism.
Some of his allies – the Prime Minister of Britain – have overcome their squeamishness to regime change. Some of his opponents – the Prime Minister of Canada – were still objecting to regime change even after the regime had changed. But it was Bush’s position that counted: one of his strengths is that he won’t sacrifice the objective to the process. By contrast, it wasn’t always apparent that his predecessor had objectives: what exactly was the desired end when Mr Clinton bombed that aspirin factory in the Sudan? In foreign policy, Clinton had tactics, not strategy: his inability to reach what the special prosecutor Ken Starr called “completion” extended far beyond Monica’s gullet. On his tax cuts, on missile defence, on Saddam, Bush is completion- focused.
That’s certainly how the UK could interpret the apparent fact that Russia was spying on them and giving the intelligence to Saddam. There’s little doubt, of course, that they were doing the same thing to us. Or that the French were involved as well. What’s truly amazingly stupid about it is that it did him no good whatsoever–Russia (and perhaps France) has sundered its relationship with the Anglosphere for no apparent benefit.
Now that they’re sure that he’s out of power, and not coming back, a brave stand has been taken by this group of people–they are denouncing Saddam Hussein to be “tyrannical” and “treacherous.” Problem is, it’s the same group of people who a few weeks ago wasted the taxpayers’ time and money passing a resolution against going to war with him. Yup, it’s the Los Angeles City Council.