From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Mar 16 2003 - 22:58:59 MST
matus writes
> > "Screw Vietnam."
>
> Well that certainly seems to be the general attitude of most
> Americans, then and now. Who cares? They aren't people, right?
Why exaggerate the attitudes of those you disagree
with? After all, you have *plenty* of good points
in the following.
> Never mind that millions of Indochinese people were
> slaughtered and enslaved. They weren't Americans, we
> didnt know any of them, right?
That's not the reason that so many liberals can't get
excited about them, and prefer never to think about
what happened there.
The real reason is that to bring all that up does nothing
to criticize the great Imperialist power, the U.S. How
would exposing real crimes of Saddam's regime, or China's
or the other Communist regimes help deflate the U.S.?
As some (a few, granted) on this list have actually
described it, the "most genocidal nation in history", the
one currently ruled by "inhuman paranoid and future war
criminals", what matters is only whether or not the
influence of the United States is curtailed or not.
Suppose, for example, that (for some unknown reason) the
Bush administration concluded that a frightful slaughter
of many thousands of people was underway in, say, Ruwanda,
and that the U.S. should take over that country for a
period of years. Would there be worldwide protests?
Would there be people on this list savagely denouncing
the U.S.? Of course not. We know this; because: are
they criticizing (or even conscious of) France doing the
same thing in the Ivory Coast? No, of course not.
Well, why not? Well, I will tell you why not. Because taking
over Ruwanda to suppress genocide would not in any way advance
the interests of the U.S. in the world situation. Therefore,
it would be unobjectionable!
I was recessed from this list when Clinton invaded Bosnia.
Were the same usual suspects making a fuss then? (I really
would like to know, thanks.)
Your list of "rights" is quite telling:
> I'm sure such a list of lost rights just after the fall of
> Saigon might have
> read:
>
> - the right not to have your skull bashed in by the
butt of rifle
> - the right to not have to dig your own grave before
being executed as an 'enemy of the people'
> - the right to propery, speech
> - the right to not be enslaved and forced into peasant
farming
> - the right to life of nearly 1 million people
>
> A similiar list in Cambodia might have added
>
> - The right to more than a quarter cup of rotten corn every day
> - the right to express feelings of an emotional nature to
loved ones (The Khmer Rouge would often execute anyone for
public displays of affection, as it demonstrated that they
valued something more than the state)
Were the liberals in the streets protesting that? Of course not.
Again, the only reason I can think of (why not) is that it wouldn't
be against U.S. foreign policy to do such a thing. So why do it?
> - the right to express sorrow at the news of the loss of a
child without being executed, a child who had been carted
off to a distant slave labor farm and surprisingly died
despite his healthy quarter cup of rotten corn every day
(again, expressing grief at the loss of a child demonstrated
that someone loved themselves or their children more than
the state)
> - the right to life for 2 - 3 million Cambodians
Nah, who cares about them? Despite certain distortions perpetrated
by some, their deaths had nothing to do with the wickedness of U.S.
foreign policy---so why make a stink about it?
Lee
(The last paragraph was heavily sarcastic.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Mar 16 2003 - 22:59:55 MST