Finkelstein's background

C. G. Estabrook galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Tue Aug 29 11:53:39 PDT 2000


On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Seth Ackerman wrote:


> 80% of Americans thought it was unfair when Lieutenant William Calley
> was convicted for war crimes in the My Lai massacre -- after
> *photographs* were published in Life magazine. Other countries are
> supposed to express contrition for their governments' crimes. Go ask a
> random American if he's ready to say he's sorry for what his country
> did to Indochina. Most likely he'll say it's the *Vietnamese* who
> should be apologizing to *us*. Seth

But, as Chomsky pointed out, "... that the U.S. wars in Indochina were "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake," [was] the opinion of 70% of the U.S. population right through the Reagan-Bush years. The numbers are remarkable, not only because that is a high figure for any open question on a poll, but also because respondents must have arrived at that conclusion on their own, not from an intellectual culture that scrupulously keeps its distance from such heresy."

C. G. Estabrook



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