Fwd: Re: NATO bombs Chinese embassy

[Brad De Long]

>
>I don't know how smart Friedman is, but he is certainly an unfiltered
>mouthpiece for a certain clique of Clintonoids. The truly terrifying thing
>about this oped  (along with a few others) is that it illustrates the new
>liberal think on Yugoslavia, essentially it applies the Goldhagen model
>(Hitler's Willing Executioners) to the Serbs. Look out.
>
>jsc
>
>

Good God!

Whenever I've talked to or read anything by Danny Goldhagen, he has been
very clear to distinguish his position--that practically any ordinary
German would have enthusiastically carried out the genocide--from the
position that ordinary Germans were *guilty* of the genocide and deserved
to be killed.

Goldhagen has been quite clear that responsibility attaches only to those
who did the deeds--not to those who didn't do the deeds but only (probably)
would have had they been put in the perpetrators' position.

So why smear the guy? Goldhagen has a much stronger sense of how agency and
responsibility work than Tom Friedman.

Brad DeLong