"Saddam's apparatus of terror" will shatter"the whole world view of the left"

topp8564 at mail.usyd.edu.au topp8564 at mail.usyd.edu.au
Tue Mar 18 22:15:26 PST 2003


On 19/3/2003 4:29 PM, "lbo-talk-digest" <owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com> wrote:


>>> It's true that anti-war movements have sometimes made the mistake of
>>> failing to support troops exposed to danger. The treatment of US
> soldiers
>>> returning from duty in Vietnam - often ostracised as if personally
>>> responsible for that tragedy - is a shaming example.
>>
>> THis is a fucking lie that has been exposed over and over again and
>> still it keeps popping up. It was popularized by that slimeball Greene
>> who used to write for the Tribune until he got himself in some sexual
>> scandal or other and got bounced. People risked their lives in places
>> like El Paso Texas maintaining coffee shops for soldiers en route to
>> Vietnam -- and now shit like this Jonathan Freedland 40 years later
>> passes on this bullshit.
>>
>> Assholes. Don't people know a damn thing any more about what actually
>> went on in the '60s.
>>
>> Carrol
>
> ==================
>
> That's why his email address was on the end of his
> essay........................
>
> j.freedland at guardian.co.uk

On the other hand, so what if they were ostracised? Failing war crime prosecutions, that's a fairly mellow form of sanction. And some sanction is obviously needed unless you are prepared to have no disincentive to joining a slaughter. Are you supposed to walk away from having demolished a country without feeling crappy? Without having people angry at you? That's a completely unreal outlook. In fact, the only serious problem with ostracising vets is that given they are supported by the state, you are in fact ostracising yourself; so this moralistic nonsense from Freedland and others is not just schmaltzy apology for war criminals, it is plainly oportunistic. Blecht.

To put it another way: from my perspective, this support our troops line is a really a weird and cryptic way to defend penal abolitionism for precisely the worst sort of crimes, the ones for which I - a penal minimalist - would not be prepared to forgo some sort of serious punishment. I cannot see how joining a criminal army, then committing serious war crimes is *less* damning than joining a gang and killing one's rivals - it certainly isn't worthy of 'our support'. I fail utterly to see how pointing this out is unpatriotic - it is antinationalist, precisely at the moment where being antinationalist would be the only acceptable form of patriotism.

Thiago

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