Let us make one thing clear. The U.S., in the case at hand, is an aggressor nation. If fact, it is _the_ aggressor nation in this situaltion. It has invaded and committed terrorist acts against Cuba for more than 45 years, and there is no indication that this aggression against Cuba will stop, after Castro's death. The indications are that immediately after Castro's death the aggression will increase.
In all of the examples and hypothetical presentations above, I have made clear, that we are talking about intellectuals in aggressor nations, on the one hand and, on the other hand, purported or actual human rights violations in the nation under attack. In most of the cases I am referring to the nation under attack is in the position of defending itself against overwhelming odds. The aggressor nation is monstrous in comparison to the people under attack. In the way you pose the question to me, I think that this crucial fact is not actually put in the forefront.
So first let me reform your question and then later I will deal with your specific historical examples, which provide different political and moral issues in each case: If I do harm to what you are saying, or if I misrepresent what I have previously argued please tell me. My way of stating your question is the following:
(1) "_Under what conditions do the citizens (mostly privileged intellectuals) of an aggressor nation gain moral warrant to criticize the nation or regime _their_ nation is committing war crimes and terrorist acts against?_ "
Note, that here, I am not even asking the larger question of political consequences. When factoring in the political consequences, you must take into account the acts of aggression, and tolerance of acts of aggression by the aggressor nation and its allies, that the aggressor nation is committing or condoning elsewhere, as well as against the specific nation under attack. You also have to consider how your statements and actions factor into the propaganda of the aggressor nation. The question then becomes
(2) "_What _kind_ of _political organizing_ can you do, and criticism can you make, as a citizen of an aggressor nation, that is most likely to have the effect of reducing human suffering?_"
I will not deal with this second question because I think that in the case of Cuba the answer is too easy.
So to question (1), before I deal with your specific historical examples.
If the person at hand has done everything that he or she can do, as far as organizing, speaking out, protesting, etc. to try to stop the aggression, atrocities, and terrorism of his/her own country, then that person _approaches_, but has not yet earned, the moral warrant to offer some caveat criticisms of the nation or regime his/her country is devastating. Few of us here, perhaps none of us, have even met this preliminary condition, which does not provide the social context of moral warrant but only approaches such a social context.
So under these further conditions, if not only the individual person has done all he/she can as far as organizing, etc. but others in a collectivity have also done so, _and_ their is an international movement that can offer real transnational _solidarity_ and aid to _our_ victims of aggression and terrorism, then in this context, criticism of the regime your nation is attacking, may be warranted. But you must also do everything you can to make it so that, the criticism you offer is not part of the propaganda campaign of the aggressor nation in its attempts to justify its aggression.
Of course, there are ways that you can short circuit this process. You can go to Nicaragua or the West Bank, (for example) and you can participate in the struggles of the oppressed, who your government is attacking and terrorizing. Then as part of your solidarity with the people your government is attacking, you can learn from the people who you are living with and hopefully they can also learn from you. I assume that part of the process of learning is a context for criticism of your nations "enemies", who are now your friends. But this is a rare situation and would not apply to the examples that mentioned above (Pol Pot, Nazism, etc.). It assumes that there is some semblance of "liberation" and justice in the form of a supportable social movement among the people we are attacking.
Just as an example of this short cut. I knew some engineers who went to Nicaragua to work in villages to help build infrastructure (mostly for irrigation and drinking water). If in the course of their time there they saw abuses of indigenous people, then I would say, that they should find the best way they could think of to help to stop those abuses.
Now to your specific examples, which I think you present to me in a way that shows a little misunderstanding of what I have said above.
How should United Statsians have spoken out against Pol Pot? Well they should have pointed out that their government the United States, through China gave back handed support to Pol Pot before he came to power. They should have made sure that the people they talked with knew that the U.S. was partially responsible for destroying the political and social infrastructure in Cambodia during its war against South East Asia. They should have protested their government's continued attempts to strangle Vietnam. They should have opposed and organized against their government's support of the simultaneous slaughters by U.S. ally Indonesia in East Timor. And perhaps we United Statesians should have supported Vietnam's intervention in Cambodia. We wold then have pointed out that the U.S. government opposed Vietnam's intervention in Cambodia, again giving U.S. government support to Pol Pot. It was the Vietnam invasion of Cambodia which effectively stopped the slaughter of Pol Pot. We would also point out that Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia well (only) relatively humane. compared to similar invasions in other parts of the world. (Note, technically, Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia was an act of aggression. But a U.S. government that was at all concerned with stopping the slaughter in Cambodia would have done everything they could have to get the U.N. to sanction the invasion. This, pie-in-the-sky thought just shows the hypocrisy of the whole thing. Not only did the U.S. oppose Vietnam's invasion of Pol Pot's Cambodia, but it also supported China's border attacks against Vietnam. The position of the U.S. intellectual here? What do you think it should have been?)
In the context of the Nazi Holocaust, the question is different. Though we were following our own imperial aims in World War II, we were not the aggressor nation in relation to Germany. So this makes the question much different than the question of we were asking about Cuba. I am surprise that the question can even come up in the same context as our relations to Cuba. It shows that something fundamental is not being understood, namely U.S. aggression against a small nation. Since neither Brian nor Justin, seem to understand this perhaps it is my fault.
The larger question, in the context of Nazi Germany, is what would have been the best way for U.S. intellectuals to stop suffering of oppressed people in Europe, and stop atrocities in Europe. Opening our borders to Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally and physically handicapped, and union leaders and socialists, before we entered the war, would have helped. (For more on how the U.S. didn't do any of this I would recommend _Paper walls;: America and the refugee crisis, 1938-1941_ by David S Wyman; and the follow up book _The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945_ by David S. Wyman.)
So the more general questions are still the same here, even though I don't think we were "the aggressor nation" in relation to Germany. How was it best for us to provide humanitarian relief and prevent slaughter in Germany? Besides opening our borders before the war and taking seriously the problem of human rights during the war ( in the way that Dwight Macdonald did in his essays "The Responsibility of Peoples"), another thing we could have done was to stop the terror bombing of European cities. Intellectuals here might have dared to protest against those terror bombings but I realize that this is aa radical statement.
(By the way, the questions of the terror bombings by the U.S. and Britain of European cities, and how best to oppose genocide against Jews, gypsies, etc. are related. Studies at the time and afterward showed that the best thing we could have done was simply to try (at least) to destroy the railroad turntables. Not all of these turntables were located in population centers. Analysis, at the time and since, has shown that the destruction of those turntables would have furthered the war effort and crippled parts of the genocide machine. But the U.S. concerns were more to make sure that European peoples were properly submissive after war, and thus we ignored how best to stop genocide and concentrated on how best to stop revolution. Some people pointed out the logic of this at the time, and I would say that this would have been one way for a U.S. intellectual to best oppose U.S. terror bombing _and_ Nazi genocide.)
As far as Stalin's Gulag the situation is more complicated. I still believe that everything I said above about campaigning against the gulag we were helping to set up through out Latin America after 1960, and campaigning against the balance of terror in the arms race was also important in this context. But let us say that if you were an Italian Communist or a member of the Communist Party U.S.. speaking up against Stalin's Gulag in that context is simply one of your moral responsibilities because you have in effect chosen to identify with the Soviet State. Refusing to identify with Stalin's regime, of course would have been a good first step. But again all of the considerations about when it is best to speak out, and who it is best to speak out against, and how to choose your audience in order to have the best effect (all of what in the deconstruction thread I called "an _ethics of rhetoric_") also applies in this case. If you, are a liberal cold war intellectual, and focus on Stalin's Gulag, and only take minor notice (or no notice at all) of what your nation is doing, then I would say that your hypocrisy should be evident.
So a French intellectual in 1956 focusing on Stalin's Gulag instead of opposing the French slaughter in Algeria, I wouldn't offer as exemplary. Further if that same intellectual focuses on the crimes of the Algerians and not the crimes of his own state, I would not think very much of him. (I do not wish to go through all of the debates between Sartre, de Beauvoir, Mauriac, Merleau-Ponty, Castoriadis, Camus, Raymond Aron, etc. over these precise matters, but they are instructive, if not always enlightening.) (If, Justin, I have avoided your question here, please stated in a more specific way.)
As for the Cultural Revolution my answer is even more complicated. There is a very strange thing that was happening in this context. Significant numbers of U.S. radicals were attracted to Mao and Maoism.
At the same time Mao himself, and as part of some of the international spin-off of the cultural revolution was giving some backhanded support to the U.S. in Vietnam. Stopping Soviet supplies to Vietnam, etc. This was part of Mao's China "national" ambitions in relation to the Soviets. The U.S.'s own relation to all of this was rather ambiguous; using Chinese internal atrocities (real and imagined) and Chinese "imperialism" in Vietnam (imagined) as justification for the U.S. invasion of South East Asia, and at various times through the period of the Cultural Revolution actually coming to terms with China.
This is all to say that critisizing the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution does not fit directly into the same kind of pattern that we are talking about. Still the question remains: "What is the effect of your doing so in any specific context?" Are you having a conversation with an Avakianite and wish to bring her out of the RCP mind-set? Do you intend to help refugees from China? Are you supporting U.S. attacks in South East Asia? Are you opposing U.S. attacks in South East Asia and wish to point out the hypocrisy of U.S. propaganda by showing that in some respects China and the U.S. are sometimes tacitly supporting each other?
In all cases you have to ask yourself, "What are the effects of what are I am saying? Who am I talking to, and for what reason? Is this best effort I can give to change people's mind?" Even though the situations differ in each of the historical examples you give, some of the questions do remain the same.
But, Justin, you can always ask more questions, and come up with more complicated questions from the past. There are both general questions that we can try to ask ourselves to answer those questions, and history that we can study, to put these questions into context.
But first, we have to admit that there is something very funny to say the least, for citizens of any aggressor nation to focus on the human rights violations of the nation they are attacking. Unless we can agree on this (and Brian won't agree here) then I doubt we can come to much of an understanding.
Jerry Monaco