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Britain
Cameron: Britain caused many of the world's problems
2011-04-06
Britain is responsible for many of the world's historic problems, including the conflict in Kashmir between India and Pakistan, David Cameron has said.
Good gawd, man up you sniveling milquetoast.
The Prime Minister appeared to distance himself from the imperial past when he suggested that Britain was to blame for decades of tension and several wars over the disputed territory, as well as other global conflicts.
But they gave the Indian subcontinent railroads and pensioned off the Moghuls. Britain may be ahead on points.
His remarks came on a visit to Pakistan, when he was asked how Britain could help to end the row over Kashmir. He insisted that it was not his place to intervene in the dispute, saying: "I don't want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world's problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place."

His remarks about Kashmir were greeted warmly by the audience of Pakistani students and academics, but drew accusations from historians that the Prime Minister was wrongly apologising for Britain's past.

Daisy Cooper, the director of the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit, said: "This is typical of the UK's schizophrenic relationship with former colonies where it is both proud and embarrassed about its past. The Coalition has said that it has big ambitions for a modern Commonwealth and the UK should stop being embarrassed about its colonial past and they should work with other countries to help improve their human rights."

Tristram Hunt, the Labour MP, historian and former television presenter, said: "To say that Britain is a cause of many of the world's ills is naïve. To look back 50-odd years for the problems facing many post-colonial nations adds little to the understanding of the problems they face.

"David Cameron has a tendency to go to countries around the world and tell them what they want to hear, whether it is in Israel, Turkey, India and Pakistan."

Mr Cameron's apparent willingness to accept historic responsibility for the Kashmir dispute has echoes of public apologies issued by his Labour predecessors. In 1997, Tony Blair apologised to the Irish people for the famine the country suffered in the mid-19th century. And in 2006, he spoke of his "deep sorrow" at Britain's historic role in the African slave trade.

In 2009, Gordon Brown issued a formal Government apology to tens of thousands of British children shipped to Australia and other Commonwealth countries between the 1920s and 1960s.

In the same year, Mr Cameron said that Britain should do more to celebrate its history, writing: "We must never forget that Britain is a great country with a history we can be truly proud of. Our culture, language and inventiveness has shaped the modern world."

Sean Gabb, of the campaign group Libertarian Alliance, said Mr Cameron should not apologise for Britain's past. He said: "It's a valid historical point that some problems stem from British foreign policy in the 19th and 20th centuries, but should we feel guilty about that? I fail to see why we should.

"Some of these problems came about because these countries decided they did not want to be part of the British Empire. They wanted independence. They got it. They should sort out their problems instead of looking to us."
Sorta like the way the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand did.
Mr Cameron's remark is striking because he has previously spoken of his pride in Britain's past and named Viscount Palmerston as one of his historical inspirations. As foreign secretary and later prime minister in the mid-19th century, Palmerston was popular for his brazenly interventionist foreign policy, an approach that later became known as "gunboat diplomacy".

Mr Cameron was in Pakistan to make amends for any offence he caused last year by accusing the country of "exporting" terrorism.
Of course they're offended, because it's true.
Kashmir has been contested since 1947 when India was partitioned. The original borders were drawn up by Viscount Radcliffe, a law lord who became chairman of the two boundary committees set up with the passing of the Indian Independence Act. He submitted his partition in August 1947 and the two nations were created.
At which point some now-Pakistani tribals decided to take
Kashmir anyway, and Jinnah sent the army in after them. The current boundary is where the Indian army stopped them, the first Pakistani loss to India.
While some historians say that makes Britain responsible for the dispute, others point to Hari Singh, the Hindu ruler of Kashmir in 1947. Despite an expectation that Muslim areas of the subcontinent would become part of Pakistan, he decided that Muslim-majority Kashmir should be part of India.
Most of the residents on the Indian side agree, oddly enough.
Pakistan and India have fought three wars over Kashmir since partition, and the dispute continues to strain their relationship. On a visit to India last year, Mr Cameron was criticised when he said Britain should approach its former imperial possession "in a spirit of humility".

As well as Kashmir, some historians say Britain bears historic responsibility for other international disputes. Many trace the Israel-Palestine dispute back to Britain's decision in 1917 to establish a "national home for the Jewish people" in the territory then known as Palestine.
This wouldn't have been quite so much of a problem had Britain not also promised the same territory to the Arabs.
The borders of many Middle Eastern states were also drawn by Britain. The badly-defined and highly unstable border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan was also largely defined by Britain in the late 19th century.
The Durand Line, which Pakistan doesn't accept.
Posted by:Steve White

#15  "Winston Churchill, about Clement Atlee"

See, Frank, I told you it was somebody a lot smarter that me. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2011-04-06 22:26  

#14  Winston Churchill, about Clement Atlee
Posted by: Frank G   2011-04-06 22:14  

#13  Thanks, tw, but it's not original with me. Somebody a lot smarter than me said it - I just can't remember who and am too lazy to Google Bing it. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2011-04-06 21:56  

#12  David Cameron is a modest man, ZF.

With much to be modest about.

I read that aloud to my family, Barbara, and they just... stopped for a moment to ponder it. Trailing daughter #1 wrote it down against future need. That's a very sharp scalpel you wield, my dear.
Posted by: trailing wife   2011-04-06 21:42  

#11  "David Cameron is a bozo."

David Cameron is a modest man, ZF.

With much to be modest about.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2011-04-06 19:13  

#10  "Britain giving up and turning to self-hatred caused many of the world's problems"

FTFY
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2011-04-06 19:10  

#9  David Cameron is a bozo. Any empire that falls apart will have its share of territorial disputes. And empires existed when Britons were running around in animal skins. Heck, the famously cruel Romans, with Julius Caesar at the head of the legions, did a number on native British tribes, but I don't remember the Brits being particularly resentful about it. In fact, Caesar is one of the most celebrated Romans in Britain. The day that conquering British generals are celebrated in the ex-colonies is the day the latter have matured beyond self-pity, xenophobia and exaggerated self-regard.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2011-04-06 18:57  

#8  Modesty. That's adorable, David.
Posted by: Fi    2011-04-06 17:54  

#7  England, France and the US were in the lead of ending the pre-historic institution of slavery starting in the 18th and 19th Century. A lot of that colonialism they're apologizing for was to end practices like that bringing the world up a notch or two to the modern world. No nation is perfect, but there's no need to apologize to those who lagged in if not just refused to enter the 20th Century.

King James Bible -
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Posted by: Procopius2k   2011-04-06 17:31  

#6  What a stupid idiot. Brits gave India a parliamentary system, LAW, order, and a stable country, albeit unknowingly. Pakistan was and always will be a shithole - at least the Brits made a patrician there. I wonder if the EDF can bring sanity back to the great island.
Whatever he is doing, it's un-necessary and destructive.
Posted by: newc   2011-04-06 17:19  

#5  The £650m apology: Forget our ailing education system, that's what Britain's giving to Pakistani schools to make amends for our imperial past
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2011-04-06 14:58  

#4  The biggest problem with any area that is contested by Muslims is their insane belief that any territory once controlled by Islam should always be controlled by Islam. The rest of the world doesn't share that belief, nor do they share the belief that Islam should dominate the entire world. Frankly, I'm personally tired of hearing Muslim "grievances". They need to shut the h$$$ up, grow up, and learn to live in the world as it is. Unfortunately, Islam doesn't allow that.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2011-04-06 13:33  

#3  The English have been wallowing in their stupid self-guilt for too damn long. And I mean English, because for all their group pretensions, it was always the English that were running the show.

The English Empire began in the late 16th Century, and from the start to the finish, it was *better* than anything anyone else offered. Would it have been "better" under the French kings? The Russian Tzars? The Chinese or Japanese Emperor?

And today, virtually every one of the English colonies got a leg up over non-colonized nations, and are still more civil than those of the French, Belgians, Germans, whoever else. Unless they systematically purged what the English taught them, so they could degenerate into brutal tribalism and primitivism.

All told, the English Empire was a very, very good thing in the world, and the philosophy of failure, despair and self-hatred the English embraced was stupid then, and it is stupid now.

No nation can survive with so many of its people anti-patriotic to the point where they are embarrassed that England even still exists, and hasn't been divided and destroyed as an EU administrative district, as some have proposed.

Were a new Cromwell to emerge, he would do well to ask the people to divide themselves into those that still loved England as a nation, and those too humiliated by England's past to stand it. Then to take this latter group out into the ocean and sink them, so that England would forever be cleansed of its nagging guilt and self destructiveness.

And those immigrants that would prefer a Sharia law England should join the guilty on the boat.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2011-04-06 09:42  

#2  Many trace the Israel-Palestine dispute back to Britain's decision in 1917 to establish a "national home for the Jewish people" in the territory then known as Palestine.

Actually, it was League of Nations decision---and the British did their best to sabotage it. Including alienating the bulk of the territory assigned for the purpose by the League to establish the toy kingdom of Jordan, and importing more than a million Arabs into the rest---to create the "Palestinian Nation", while blocking Jewish emigration from Europe in a run up for Holocaust.
But I guess, this is not part of the narrative.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2011-04-06 02:37  

#1  Daisy Cooper, the director of the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit, said: "This is typical of the UK's schizophrenic relationship with former colonies where it is both proud and embarrassed about its past.

Daisy, please forward the "Proud Britain" folder on Zimbabwe and South Africa. I feel the need for a quiet toilet read.
Posted by: Besoeker   2011-04-06 01:42  

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