主题：【文摘】北美独立战争: 美国人编出来的神话 -- 李根

battles you lost. What matters is whether you won the final battle that determines the history.

BTW, do not follow the ignorant post above--Americans do know that they won independence with French help and they do acknowledge that. Any Chinese who read some English books in States should know that.

BTW, the fact that the support to American Independence War bankrupted French treasury shows how stupid Frenchmen are. Simple/period.

Americans respect G.W. not because of his final victory in Charlestown or Saratoga, but because

1. He was the top military leader who prevented the coup orchestrated by his unpaid officers against the continental congress in Philadelphia.

2. He was the military leader who VOLUNTARILY gave up top military position and bowed down to a nervous civilian congress. He transferred the power peacefully back to the American people.

3. He was the man who brokered many compromises during the Constitutional Conference and ensured the smooth birth of first democratic constitution, and thus a young non-monarch republic in American continent.

4. He was the president who defeated the temptation of power and left White House after two terms. He became an precedent against any future power-greedy president.

America almost became another Haiti/France/Roman Julian Empire, but Washington, at this historical crossroad, chose not to be another Dessalines/Napoleon/Julius Caesar.

As you wrote in your own post: sometimes, one or two leaders determine the fate of his nation. It applied to France/Germany, as well as US and China.

In comparison, Chairman Mao won tons of battles and killed millions of adversary soldiers. As I recalled, he never lost one battle. He was a great statesman, strategist, military commander, poet...

But HIS LAST BATTLE AGAINST THE EVIL SIDE OF POWER WAS A TOTAL DEFEAT AND YOU STILL LIVE IN HIS LEGACY.

The fact that the 常败将军华地主之歌 still existed in literature and got widely spread, or even translated into Chinese shows that Washington actually wins: he left a nation in which people ARE NOT AFRAID OF SPEAKING THEIR MIND.

In China, you could not find any song against Mao, except for tons of songs praising him. That just shows abnormality of the chinese society due to the lack of freedom of speech.

Period.