POP QUIZ: bad cure (+)

MULTIPLE CHOICE - FILL IN THE BLANKS

We have swept away (1)_____,
but a great many (2)_____ feel that
the cure has been worse than the disease.

Blank (1) should be
a) Saddamism
b) Hitlerism
c) Terrorism

Blank (2) should be
a) Iraqis
b) Europeans
c) Americans

ANSWER:

We have swept away Hitlerism,
but a great many Europeans feel that
the cure has been worse than the disease.

As Yogi said "Its deja vu all over again"

The pop quiz is from LIFE magazine, six months after World War II ended. The January 7, 1946 issue had the story titled

The Americans Are Losing The Victory In Europe
Destitute Nations Feel The US Has Failed Them
by John Dos Passo

It sure reads like today's naysayers. Here are some quotes from the story:

The troops returning home are worried. "We’ve lost the peace," men tell you. "We can’t make it stick."

Never has American prestige in Europe been lower. People never tire of telling you of the ignorance and rowdy-ism of American troops, of out misunderstanding of European conditions.

Yet whenever we show a trace of positive leadership I found Europeans quite willing to follow our lead.

The taste of victory had gone sour in the mouth of every thoughtful American I met.

The time has come, for our own future security, to give the best we have to the world instead of the worst. So far as Europe is concerned, American leadership up to now has been obsessed with a fear of our own virtues. Winston Churchill expressed this state of mind brilliantly in a speech to his own people which applies even more accurately to the people of the U.S. "You must be prepared," he warned them, "for further efforts of mind and body and further sacrifices to great causes, if you are not to fall back into the rut if inertia, the confusion of aim and the craven fear of being great."