Hitchens: kill 'em before they start

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Sep 6 08:52:50 PDT 2002


Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
> On Friday, September 6, 2002, at 10:30 AM, Nathan Newman wrote:
> <snip>
>
> [snip] But there are worse social structures than capitalism, a
> > point
> > Marx often made and too few of his latter day disciples recognize.
> >
> > -- Nathan Newman
> >
>
> this sounds an awful lot like calling opponents of US military action
> in afghanistan "taliban-lovers", or perhaps "al qaida lovers".
>
> didn't we get past that a long time ago? maybe not . . .

Marx did not go around labelling social structures "good" and "bad." And by any sensible approach to international relations, the fact that X is bad and Y is [not bad or something] does _not_ create any assumption that it is legitimate for Y to attack X.

It makes no difference whatever whether the U.S. is a "better" social structure than [Country X]. That does not constitute a sufficient reason, or any reason of any kind, for the U.S. to attack Country X. So far, everytime the U.S. has intervened _anyplace_ in the last 50+ years the results have been monstrous human suffering -- and not just in the long run but _immediately_.

Nathan simply imposes his abstract ideology on an empirical actuality which he dare not confront.

Carrol


> j



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