Cockburn and St. Claire are hardly pontificating.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Shane Mage
> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 11:47 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: The case against conspiracy
>
>
> Cockburn&St Claire pontificate:
>
> "The Bush regime hastened into war because America had sustained
the
> greatest massacre on its soil since Pearl Harbor..."
>
> They forget only that
>
> 1. Pearl Harbor, in a US colonial outpost, is thousands of
> kilometres from the nearest "American soil"
>
>
This is a red herring. It was a U.S. Naval Base.
>
> 2. An unsuccessful (the main target, the aircraft carriers,
> having been sent safely to sea beforehand) attack on a
> major military base can scarcely rank as any sort of "massacre"
>
Few military historians consider the attack a minor event, it seriously hurt the U.S. Navy, and it cost the lives of 2,300 people--a massacre by most reasonable standards.
>
> 3. The very name "Pearl Harbor," for all but the ignorant,
> is virtually synonymous with "a provoked and expected
> attack, permitted to happen for the purpose of shocking
> the American public into enthusiastic support for a war
> that it had previously refused to accept."
>
This is a novel and dubious definition for "Pearl Harbor," unless you spend your time reading right-wing conspiracy tracts. I have seen this type of rhetoric primarily in the tomes from the Liberty Lobby booklist and its newspaper The Spotlight. Often this thesis is a small step away from antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Roosevelt...hmmmm...wasn't it really Rosenfeld?
Sigh...
-Chip Berlet
> Shane Mage
>
> "Thunderbolt steers all things."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
>
>
>
>