A world without America...

Not long ago, 18 Doughty Street made the sensible decision to augment their live broadcasts with short campaign ads. Here's the latest one, imagining a world without America. It appeals to me, although I fear that telling viewers that  "A world without America, would be a world without Israel" isn't quite the political trump card that Tim Montgomerie and I wish it was.

Comments

[Tom]

I kept waiting for the punchline... but it never came. Why is it that the right just can't do satire?

[adam]

Good discussion on this at Iain Dales's blog:

http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2007/02/politics-for-adults-world-without.html

My personal feeling is that, as a supporter of America myself, I wish that people would divorce from their feelings about the country their feelings about the president. I appreciate that some people have deeper philosphical objections to America and those common threads that run through different administrations, but it seems to me that many don't.

I also think that a 'world without America' is impossible to assess and somewhat pointless to boot. But it has re-ignited an interesting debate.

Finally, I think that Americans are very unlike, on average, much (but not all!) of what is said about them by Europeans.

[IRJMilne]

I had the same thought as Mr Finkelstein when the Israel bit came up, though I myself am not particularly pro-Israel in theory (in practice, Israel is a reality and that's that).

I think the ad is poor, I don't like video campaigns, I would like to see party political TV banned, even on the internet. I think you have to be bloody stupid not to see the many positives the US has brought to the world, and you have to be almost as stupid not to recognise a variety of negatives, chiefly cultural.

I don't think this ad will do any good. Can you honestly imagine a genuinely anti-American person being swayed by it?

It also claims that the US was responsible for the liberation of the Falkland Islands. Huh?