subject change (was Re:lbo-talk-digest V1 #7260

Dennis Perrin dperrin at comcast.net
Tue Jan 21 08:48:31 PST 2003



> By what logic can you justify the U.S.
> as the agent of Saddam's removal? Next to three million dead
> Indochinese, hundreds of thousands of Central Americans, and over a
> million Iraqis, SH is an amateur. Which isn't to say that the U.S. is
> the only source of repressive violence in the world, or that American
> culture is the spawn of the devil, or any of the usual caricatures
> that patriots throw back at leftists making the critique. But how do
> you exempt the U.S. government itself from your logic, much less make
> it into a potential liberating angel?
>
> Doug

I don't necessarily think that, and my doubts about the "noble" urges driving the war talk have been posted. But for all the state violence the USG can be accused of, it cannot be compared to a dictatorship like Saddam's. The American experience, for all the injustice, is still a progressive one, an observation that I know will cause those who view this country as a Nazi state to shake their heads in contempt. As I said regarding Afghanistan (when many here were appalled that the Taliban and al-Qaeda were met with force), you could've made the same case during WW2. I mean, Jim Crow was still in force, including the military. Native Americans and African slaves were no less dead. US troops had plundered Nicaragua. And many American businesses worked with and supported the German fascist state. So what right did the US have to fight and help overthrow the Nazis (and the imperial Japanese)?

You know, every once in a great while an imperfect society can do good against a worse society. I'm not saying that the Bush policy toward Iraq is righteous (and haven't said it), but a case could be made if indeed democracy and freedom were the issue. That's all I'm saying.

And by the way, Saddam may be a piker when compared to over two centuries of US violence, but he's killed more than the death squad masters in El Salvador and Guatemala did, and is easily a contemporary of Suharto and the various apartheid leaders of the old South Africa. The left never had a problem calling those fascists by their right name, and I doubt they would've mourned their violent overthrow.

DP



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