mbs
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of C. G. Estabrook
> Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 1:26 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Alterman on Chomsky
>
>
> And it's not, ah, stupid to assume that US interest in the former
> Yugoslavia was innocent of geostrategic considerations?
>
> And we should insist that it is "malevolent" in 1979 to analyze and debate
> what happened in Cambodia? That is of course just what the toadies to the
> US regime were doing then, too, as Chomsky mentions in the continuation of
> the paragraph you cite:
>
> "Such a study [i.e., of the impact of Western imperialism on Cambodian
> peasant life], however, has yet to be undertaken. The West is much more
> concerned to excise from history the imperial role and to pretend that the
> history of contemporary Cambodia begins in April 1975 in a manner that is
> disconnected from the imperial legacy and must be explained by the lunacy
> of 'nine men at the center' who were systematically massacring and
> starving the population in a form of 'autogenocide' that surpasses the
> horrors of Nazism."
>
>
> On Mon, 17 Jun 2002, Brad DeLong wrote:
>
> > Chomsky's statement that the U.S. government in the 1990s chose the
> > Bosnian Muslims as its proxy force for geostrategic reasons was really
> > stupid.
> >
> > And I ran across a quote from page 291 of _After the Cataclysm_: "If a
> > serious studyŠis someday undertaken, it may well be discoveredŠthat
> > the Khmer Rouge programs elicited a positive responseŠbecause they
> > dealt with fundamental problems rooted in the feudal past and
> > exacerbated by the imperial system.Š Such a study, however, has yet to
> > be undertaken..." To claim in 1979 that the character of the Khmer
> > Rouge regime is still open to debate seems to me to be beyond the
> > stupid, and into the malevolent.
>