From: MaxPlumm@aol.com
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 21:22:38 MDT
Damien Broderick had replied to me:
> Had I ever made the extraordinary claim that the hideous Saddam Hussein
> regime was bloodless, I'd expect to be pulled up short. Why is it so
> difficult to grasp this?
To which Harvey Newstrom illuminatingly contributed:
"It's binary thinking. (Saddam = Evil) = (Bush = Good). If you question
(Bush = Good) then you must mean that Bush is 100% Evil and
Saddam is an angel."
If you had taken a moment to step off the Condescension Express, Mr.
Newstrom, you might have noticed that I never once mentioned President Bush in my
original reply to Damien. It was Damien who chose to use the phrase "oily
omelette" in his harsh response to Spike. He thus turned what one might consider a
legitimate point (lack of depictions of war dead and casualities in the book)
into an unnecessary "cheap shot" at the American administration.
I have never read a post of Damien's in which he refers to a Vietnamese
Communist "re-education camp omelette", a Castro or Mengistu's "famine omelette",
or even a Saddam Hussein's "oily omelette". The crude criticism is reserved
solely for the Bush administration. This is even more appalling when one
considers that every civilian life lost in Iraq could've been saved had Saddam
Hussein simply relinquished power by the time of the U.S. imposed deadline.
Therefore I simply suggested, albeit with heavy sarcasm, that if Damien wishes to
opine on human tragedy he should also mention at least some of the countless other
examples of it that don't involve displays of American military might and
global primacy.
In fact, I myself mentioned three other examples of such tragedy in addition
to the Hussein regime in my original post to Damien. So clearly your analysis
that my thinking consists of Bush=good, arrogant extropians=evil is clearly
incorrect. If anyone is guilty of oversimplification in this instance, it is
clearly you.
"I also noted that the previous note somehow was connected with
anti-communism and several other binary us vs.
them worldviews."
"Strange. It's like some people see reality in black and white, while others
see whole continuums of grey and colors."
Since it is apparent you are more than willing to share your ever cogent and
not the slightest bit pretentious insights with us, Mr. Newstrom, I humbly
request that you tell me how my "position" as an anti-communist (indeed,
everyone's favorite at that) is so flawed. Let us, for the sake of this discussion,
proclaim the "us" to be myself and those like me who appreciate the finer things
in life such as representative government. And let us call the "them", oh,
the world's current and former Communist regimes who are responsible for the
deaths of over 100 million people worldwide since 1918.
In what sense am I mistaken in preferring a world of American military
hegemony to one dominated by the Soviets? On a smaller scale, how am I wrong to
prefer a world in which the South Koreans are governed by democracy and not the
whims of Kim Jong Il? How is it wrong to wish that the Soviets had not brutually
crushed the rebellions in East Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in the
1950s and 60s and allowed freedom to come to those beleaguered people? How is it
wrong to wish that the Soviet Union had never invaded Afghanistan, inflicting
a death toll of 1.5 million people on that land, 90 percent of which were
civilian casualties? How is it wrong to wish that South Vietnam had survived,
possibly evolving into a full and vibrant democracy, when the Communist
alternative offers no possibility of that outcome to this very day?
Ah well, what was I thinking? Such "binary" concerns of life, death,
opportunity and freedom are surely beneath such a learned and cultivated individual
such as yourself.
Forever wary of "Them" and Communists,
Max Plumm
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jun 05 2003 - 21:32:59 MDT