> Yes. Absolutely. It takes years - decades - for an American to really
> feel the fundamental ill-intentions of the u.s. government and the u.s.
> ruling class. And with all my disagreements with Chomsky, I still
> believe him one of the most important persons now living simply because
> of his relentless driving of the point that the same standards should
> apply to u.s. actions as to the actions of any other state, with no
> allowance for alleged good intentions.
>
> The genocidal aspects of the Vietnam War were intentional, part of the
> core strategy, not just lack of care. And Carter _knew_ that Bishop
> Romano would die if Carter ignored his letter. Carter, far more than
> the
> person who pulled the trigger, is guilty of that murder. The
> assumption
> _always_, even on the part of many who consider themselves leftists, is
> that the u.s. government is innocent until proven guilty. Any knowledge
> of the 20th century (beginning with the Spanish War and the Boxer
> Rebellion, and continuing with an absolutely unbroken chain of horrors,
> ought to convince anyone with an open mind that in foreign affairs the
> u.s. is guilty until proven innocent beyond any reasonable doubt. It's
> all there in Twain's "To the Person Sitting in Darkness." It's all
> there
> in the clear expectation on the part of McClure's editors that its
> readers would appreciate Kipling's poem. It's all there in the argument
> of some on this list last summer that we should depend on the u.s.
> government to get the electricity turned back on.
I think all this is quite true. However, we have a choice: either we sit around in little groups like this, gravely reciting these truths to each other like a religious rite, or we go out and change the minds of a large part of the American public, which (realistically speaking) is the only way this terrible history is going to be stopped.
The difficulty is in driving a rhetorical wedge between the people and their government. If the government is totally evil, cannot be given any allowance for good intentions, etc., fine. But as long as people think of themselves as responsible for the government, and indeed identify themselves to a large extent with it, in the realm of foreign affairs, they will understand these condemnations as being applied to them. So you are really saying to Americans, "You are totally evil, cannot be given any allowance for good intentions, etc." An Old-Testament prophet could get away with that kind of line, but I don't think it is a very practical approach to take these days (and if I remember my OT at all, they didn't get very far with reforming their society, either).
The line Bush is taking now is precisely the way all of the horrors you speak of were justified in the past: "We, the government and the military, are protecting you from all of your evil enemies roaming around out there in the world; that's the job you elected us to do. Unfortunately, we have to get our hands a little dirty sometimes doing so, but we try to be as moral as we can." So what we have to do is convince people either (a) those "enemies" are fictions; (b) the government is not doing its job right -- they should be fighting those enemies another way (e.g., more nicely, without all the atrocities, "smarter" bombs, no cluster bombs, etc.); or (c) it shouldn't be fighting them at all -- it should just surrender. All of the arguments liberal and radical leftists have come up with so far are various combinations of these, but none of them has been very persuasive to much of the public.
I guess Jeremiahs are never very appealing to the common person.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax