----- Original Message ----- From: "Luke Weiger" <lweiger at umich.edu>
I'm not using any "normative baseline" that would be controversial outside of an epistemology course. I'm simply claiming that Dawson et al. are attributing motives to their opponents that never existed.
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Living on planet earth just is an epistemology course :-> and you have a normative baseline for the discussion which you haven't expressed and, if you remain aloof, will bring even more unnecessary scorn from MD [even as I don't think such scorn is conducive to sorting events out in the e-lab of lbo]. That being written, the attribution of motives is always problematic, but given the evidence we have now as compared to what was available in 1972-1976 re US-Latin America policy, methinks MD, Chomsky and others are largely on target. The explanatory/narrative burden re attribution of motives is on you.
Michael Dawson wrote:
> We're not talking about the Cold War. We're talking about U.S. foreign
policy stretching over 228 years.
I don't care if Chomsky et al. think the pattern extends back to the beginning of time--we were discussing particular examples from the Cold War era.
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Right; the contingencies of US fp choices are sufficiently riddled w/ contingencies, unintended consequences etc. to rule out some grand imperial plan guided by the invisible malicious hand from 1789 on. Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies are a recurrent problem for lefties [and righties and centrists too.....]
> Meanwhile, why, in your addled mind, did the United States overthrow
Allende? Nixon and Kissinger knew he was not > a Soviet agent. They
worried that his model of development would work, and would be
"insidious."
I already gave the short version of the explanation:
"Because instituting socialism would've been disastrous in the short term for their cronies in the copper industry etc., and because they feared that Allende's government would aid Latin American revolutionaries."
I see no need to elaborate. Even a bad regime can help out other bad regimes--that should be something everyone across the political spectrum can agree on. But maybe you're exceptional.
> They worried that his model of development would work, and would be
"insidious."
Saying it over and over again doesn't make it so.
By the way, I was mighty tempted to return your insults, but thought better of it. I'd suggest you do likewise.
-- Luke
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Quite, but you're exploiting a counterfactual strategy to support your attempt at making a positive claim [which is?].......
What evidence do you have, ex post, that an Allende administration would have been *bad* for the Chilean people as compared to Pinochet? None, because there is not and cannot be, any..........
Have fun w/your time machine in an attempt to get to the ex ante realm you'd need to justify your claims........
Ian