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

[Dwayne Monroe]

Wojtek:


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.


=====================================


Sure, the US isn't "exceptionally evil".  

I wonder, did anyone write this?  I don't believe I
did.  In fact, what I wrote was the following: "...the
US isn't the "root of all evil. It's just very well
placed to do very bad things at the moment."


Even so, for the purposes of argument, I surrender.   

Perhaps future historians will look back on this
moment as the birth of the age of properly applied,
high performance American killingry.  Yes, it just
might happen.  


Cry havoc and let loose the precisely targeted air to
surface missiles of war.  This would most likely stop
the brutal mass slaughter you describe - at least, for
a while - and that's an unarguably good and urgently
vital thing.


But I wonder, what else will it do?  




.d.



--------- 
"For ten years Caesar ruled with an iron fist. Then with a wooden leg; and finally with a piece of string."


http://monroelab.net/blog/