Posted on 07/25/2006 6:27:42 PM PDT by wjersey
In a move harking back to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Greek leftists pulled down a statue of former U.S. President Harry S. Truman as part of an anti-war demonstration on Tuesday against the Israeli bombing of Lebanon.
"About 25 demonstrators tied ropes to the Truman statue and pulled it down," a police spokesman told Reuters.
The group was part of a larger demonstration of several hundred Greeks marching on the U.S. and Israeli embassies.
The statue, located in central Athens not far from the U.S. embassy, has been the subject of numerous attacks over the years. It has been seriously damaged at least twice before, once by a bomb attack in the 1980s.
As president, Truman supported the right-wing Greek government against Greek Communists in the country's 1946-48 civil war.
Makes as much sense as burning a McDonalds - like either McDonalds or Truman wanted war.
All their Hermes of Praxiteles are belong to us!
They've been hard core leftists for a LOOOOONG time. It's been a while since Thermopylae...
If Truman hadn't helped them out, they'd be about as wealthy as the Romanians now.
I've had a few nights like this myself.
Ah, civilized Europe.
Pro Turkish Greeks acting up again?
Surprised it didn't happen before. In my limited experience with the USAREUR G-2 kingdom in the 1960s I was always told to treat Greece like the "seventh member of the Warsaw Pact."
bloody ingrates!
Poor Harry - and he was a lib, too.
The Truman Doctrine was a United States foreign policy announced by President Harry S. Truman on the 12 March 1947 that the U.S. government would support Greece and Turkey with military and economic aid to prevent their falling into the Soviet orbit. The Doctrine shifted American foreign policy towards the Soviet Union from détente to, as George F. Kennan phrased it, a policy of containment.
Some folks say that the Soviet Union never fell, but instead went undercover, intending to re-emerge and promote communism at a future date. I don't usually accept that. But I think it's interesting that Containment is being symbolically toppled where it began.
Thank you John Stewart Mill...what would you think of life today? What commentary would you offer to us now?
I don't know.
I don't think most Greeks are very fond of Muslims.
Remember Hagia Sophia and Mehmet the "Great" (I spit on his grave and his mother's grave)
are we sure it wasn't a bunch of guys from the national right to work committee?
Don't forget that Praxiteles sculpted a nude of the goddess Aphrodite that was so perfect that Athenians joked how the goddess herself was distraught, asking:
"But when did Praxiteles ever see me naked!!?"
Anyway, the anti-American leftie Greeks are at it again. Hasn't changed since the 1960's when the supreme moralist Melina Mercouri ("Never on Sunday") was their Minister of Culture.
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