[lbo-talk] Re: "Save Darfur" etc (and other responses)

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

--- Dwayne Monroe <idoru345 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> An intriguing list of actions.  I don't think US
> troops were deployed under the UN flag in many of
> these operations (if any).  

Two points.  First, the selection of troops for UN
missions is done usually from countries within the
region or that share same culture or stakes precisely
to avoid the impression of imperialist intervetion.  

Second, if memory I serves the US intervened on the
"good" side (Naser's) in the Suez Canal crisis (I am
not sure if they sent troops, though).  Without the US
veto, Europeans would have invaded.

As to the rest of your comments, I fully agree with
ravi that US is not exceptionally evil. Other
countries have more than a fair share of brutal thugs.
 The problem that you the US lefties face (I liked
that phrase, ravi, thank you), it that you tend to see
the world in manichaen terms - as a struggle between
good and evil.  Most yanks do, to be sure, but you
tend to reverse the signs of those polarities, and
what most yanks see as a "shining city on a hill" you
perceive as a snake pit of barbarism and sheer
aggression, and vice versa. As a result, you have an
idealized image of the so-called Third World countries
 just like most mainstream US-ers have an idealized
image of "America the Beautiful" that can do no wrong
- and you also have a demonized image of the US as
hell on earth, just like most mainstrem US-ers
perceive the Third World.

The reality, as ravi aptly observed is that the Third
World can be just as thuggish and imperialist as the
Us, it just does not have the same capacity as the US.
 But they can accomplish more than the US, even with
simple means, like machetes.

Killing a million people just with machetes is much
more personal than, say, releasing the payload from a
B-52 cruising at a high altitude.  The B-52 pilot can
at least delude himself that he is just attacking
military targets and minimising "collateral damage." 
The guys who chop off heads of four-year old children
with machetes, or chop of the legs of their victims so
they cannot escape and then return the next day to
finish the job,  have no such illusions.  I also
understand that despite the hell the US created in
Iraq during the last two or so years, it still falls
short of a million killed by the guys with machetes
just in four months.

So the right way to phrase the question is not how the
US intervention compares to some idealizaded peaceful
resoultion that never was, but how it compares to the
actions of other powers, major and minor.  And quite
honestly, I do not think that the US looks that bad in
this company.  Or phrasing it differently, the number
of war criminals (convicted or not) per capita is
lower in the US than in many, if not most, countries. 
The US may fall short of its ideal of being a shining
city on a hill, but it is not a murderous hellhole
either.  It is neither exceptionally good, nor
exceptionally bad.  In fact, it is not exceptional at
all. 

PS.  Joe Wanzala, you sound to me like a Holocaust
denier.  If you posted the same crap about the Nazi
Holocaust as you did about the Rwandan, you would be
booted out of this list and many other places. 

Wojtek


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