[lit-ideas] How can we invade them if we don't know where they are?
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 07:31:34 -0700
The US has not learned anything from 55 years of foreign-policy debacles.
You'd think the US would at least have learned where those debacles
happened... But oh, no!
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WASHINGTON - Despite the wall-to-wall coverage of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, nearly
one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn't locate Louisiana on a map and nearly
half were unable to identify Mississippi.
Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 fared even worse with foreign locations: six in 10
couldn't find Iraq, according to a Roper poll conducted for National Geographic.
Among the findings:
• One-third of respondents couldn't pinpoint Louisiana on a map and 48 percent were unable
to locate Mississippi.
• Six in 10 could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East.
• While the outsourcing of jobs to India has been a major U.S. business story, 47 percent
could not find the Indian subcontinent on a map of Asia.
• While Israeli-Palestinian strife has been in the news for the entire lives of the
respondents, 75 percent were unable to locate Israel on a map of the Middle East.
• Nearly three-quarters incorrectly named English as the most widely spoken
native language.
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This is bad news for those who want to invade other countries. If the US population doesn't
care at all about the rest of the planet, how are you going to motivate them to support an
invasion? 60% can't find Iraq on a map. Support for Israel? 75% can't even find it.
Offshoring? To where? 50% don't know where India is. Foreign languages? 75% think everyone
speaks English.
And we're not talking about Montenegro or some little backwater country. The USA has
dominated for better or worse the globe for the last 50-60 years, yet Americans frankly
don't care about the rest of the planet.
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