[lbo-talk] More on Wikipedia: Now the US army is whitewashing myarticles

Jim Devine jdevine03 at gmail.com
Mon Jul 18 10:27:26 PDT 2005


On 7/18/05, Gar Lipow wrote:
> And his [Chomsky's] secondary point is the U.S. responsbility - though the emphasis in his analysis is of brutality breeding brutality, whereas I think that the brutality came as much from a highly ideological group [the so-called Khmer Rouge] coming to power without having their brutality tempered by reality.<

In addition, a small group that is able to take power (out of the power vacuum created by US bombing and the collapse of the Lon Nol government) can find itself desperate to keep that power when there's hardly any majority support, hardly any popular legitimacy. Having little or no "soft power," it resorts to using "hard power" (brutality).

After all, the Bushwhackers are "a highly ideological group that came to power without having their brutality tempered by reality" but they do have a political base in the U.S. (many evangelical Christians, hard-core Zionists, ideological businesspeople, etc.), and thus some soft power or legitimacy. Their brutality is directed outward, toward Iraqis, Afghanis, etc. -- Jim Devine "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" -- Richard Feynman



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