> SergioL652 at aol.com wrote:
>
> This is a losing fight. People are perfectly fine with torturing
> Arabs because they are all terrorists.
Damn it! SOME people. And of course some people (probably a majority) are comfortable with X (=whatever policy their leaders propose). Our task is to generate an atmosphere, alter the terrain, in such a way that it will be less and less comfortable for such views, more and more comfortable with resistance. There needs to be a good deal of debate about just how (with the forces available) this can be done (or we can move towards doing it). But that debate is frustrated, not furthered, by whining about what "People" in general do or don't think.
It's as though Lewis and Clark, standing on the banks of the Missouri, had said, "Oh what's the use of crossing this river. It'll only get us to the Rockies, and we'll never get across them."
There are 10s of millions out there who hate torture, who despise this war. But the assumptions they operate by offer no response except 30 seconds in a voting booth every 4 years or so. And this focus on what "people" (as though that equalled _everyone_) thinks is a barrier to thinking out how we can change the premises on which the enemies of torture operate.
And when we change those premises, when we activate millions (after first activating thousands and 10s of thousands), then an atmosphere, a general public practice, will exist that will make those now comfortable with torture less and less comfortable, those opposed more and more comfortable.
This moaning about Reagan and Bush leaves leftists (and lbo posters) stuck spinning on one spot. It prevents even the beginning of a serious conversation about what to do.
Carrol