>On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Chuck0 wrote:
>
>
>
>>Brian Siano wrote:
>>
>>
>>>This was one of the better points Christopher Hitchens raised against
>>>the antiwar movement. Its concern for the Kurds seemed to stop with
>>>Saddam's having used poison gas against them, and the U.S. rewarded the
>>>guy with more weapons. _I have no doubt that there were Kurdish-relief
>>>and Kurdish defense efforts within the movement, but for the most part,
>>>the antiwar movement didn't mobilize around this particular cause_.
>>>(Hitchens got a lot of mileage out of a "true internationalist" stance;
>>>it wasn't hard to poke at the antiwar movement's platitudes, and as long
>>>as he stuck to internationalism, human rights, and opposition to
>>>theocratic fascism, he raised some good points. But his praise of the
>>>Bush Administration was pretty revolting; if I wanted to see a man
>>>pimping for state power, I'd read _Commentary_.)
>>>
>>>
>
>This being a thread whose subject is Chomsky...in the film "Manufacturing
>Consent", David Frum (who would later go on to coin the phrase "axis of
>evil") accuses Chomsky of not caring about the Kurds. Chomsky cuts him
>off and says
>
I ought to remind everyone that I didn't say that the entire antiwar
movement didn't care about the Kurds-- notice the sentence I underlined
above. I'm aware of Chomsky's involvement on the issue as well. But I'm
afraid that my own experiences with the antiwar crowd on this particular
war tally with Dennis Perrin's and Michael Puliese's. The voices raised
for the Kurds were present, but far and few in between, and the bulk of
the protestors didn't seem to know very much about them beyond Saddam's
having gassed them.