[lbo-talk] Alex Cockburn going the Hitchens way?

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue Jun 20 18:42:43 PDT 2006


Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> I don't know how you can separate "knowledge of these crimes" from "their
> particular villains, real or imaginary", but, leaving that aside, it seems
> we have a very different appreciation of the significance of these issues,
> and how the left should have related to them at the time.

What particular individual (other than the Johnson administration as a whole) ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, which killed more people than all the My Lais combined. And the bombing of North Vietnam? And the endless slaughter in Korea. And the overthrow of Arbenz and, a few years later, the support of the murderous regime of Rios Montes. You can cite a random sampling of particulars that went into these great crimes, but that isn't evidence, it's illustration of what is proved by simply citing frontpage reports over the years -- No meticulous gathering of evidence which (a) isn't trustworthy in the first place and (b) can't be presented in an intelligible form except in a courtroom, and which (c) won't be believed by anyone who isn't already convinced that the invasion of Iraq (or Korea, or Vietnam) is a horror.

Carrol



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