In response to an FT article by Thomas Wright on 28th July 2014, entitled 'Europe should confront its enemies as one citizenry'
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8329c44c-1646-11e4-8210-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz46V2AzRHG
"The EU confronts an existential question. Is there a price to be paid for killing 210 of its citizens? Will the words Ich bin ein Europäer resonate in foreign lands as civis romanus sum did in a previous age? Or is it every nation for itself? Today the EU begins to give its answer. It must be full-throated."
"Full throated"? Try head bloated and gun toted…arrogant nonsense. There is so much pre-supposition and hubris in this article I don't know where to start. But here's two things before I lose the will to live:
1. Again - It hasn't been demonstrated who did this. I do not have confidence in the 'intelligence' service of the US and if you think that friendly fire ended in Iraq, and/or false flag incidents ended with the cold war, and/or if you believe that our politicians tell the truth, you are two sandwiches short of a picnic. A few days ago in this newspaper, such objective scribes (not) as Phillip Stephens and Gideon Rachman got a certain amount of flak for their assumptive language. Like Joe Biden, it seemed to take them all of 5 minutes to work it all out and dispense their judgements to us poor plebs, to save us the trouble of thinking for ourselves. Since then, little qualifiers like your 'widely believed' have crept in to soften the hubris. Here's what I get - You've made your mind up. Please hear this from me - I haven't.
2. "However, EU leaders must explain to voters why the attack on a civilian air route is an attack on all of Europe".
Must they now? Speaking as a voter, I don't need EU leaders to tell me what to think. I don't believe that these EU leaders are a font of wisdom and integrity, anymore than I trust the chess players in Moscow or the clowns in Washington. I'm sick to the back teeth with the hypocrisy and the manipulation that is constantly being dished up. The US and the West is not blameless here, who do you think you are kidding?
If our politicians want people to stand up in 'righteous anger' in defence of Western values, they might start by demonstrating them. I'm not going to help increase the noise until it becomes a clamour for war, in order to provide a backbone for this shower of fork-tongued pedants. How about we start to behave like people who get that the world is facing serious problems that are not going to be solved by chest pumping? How about we grow up, and start acting like it's our responsibility to sort this out before any more innocents are slaughtered? How about we start by finding out what happened, even if it doesn't fit the narrative you seem to be rooting for.