[Peace-discuss] sad display on DN

[Morton K.Brussel]

I (almost) totally agree with you Carl. Perle is a smooth and clever  
operator who took the offensive and overwhelmed Krugman's "off the  
point" objections. What needed to be said, of course, were that Perle's  
assumptions were wrong, that the USA is not the "good guy" ranged  
against the "bad guys", and that we shouldn't destroy the world in  
order to save it (for a corporate élite), that it is not our right to  
rule the world, to prop up some authoritarians and eliminate others.  
(On the last item, Perle would no doubt disagree.)

Krugman should have said that might doesn't make right.
Israel/Palestine was omitted from the discussion!

I would only mildly dispute that the U.S. ("conservatives") got all it  
wanted in its war on Vietnam. The U.S. was in fact driven out and,  
although decimated, Vietnam did become united. Vietnam showed that the  
U.S. could be resisted "successfully" under the right conditions.  And  
although, like China, Vietnam appears now to be drifting towards the  
capitalist camp, it is not totally under the dictates of the IMF, the  
World Bank, etc. . It's trying to emerge from its poverty and  
isolation. On the other hand, you are right that the U.S. succeeded in  
demonstrating, once again, how brutal we could be in suppressing  
national tendencies of independence.

Mort

On Jan 13, 2004, at 5:52 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> I've just listened to a disheartening debate on Democracy Now between
> Richard Perle, the chief neocon, and Paul Krugman, the fiery liberal
> spirit of the NYT's op-ed page.  Perle won in a walk.  He was calm,
> principled in the sense of speaking for US hegemony, and specific.
> Krugman was wooly, and his principal point was that the US *couldn't
> afford* to do the things Perle and Frum propose in their book, An End  
> to
> Evil (which K. hadn't read).
>
> P. also said he hadn't read Krugman's book, The Great Unraveling, a
> defense of Clinton-era policies -- which as Paul O'Neill said  
> accurately
> enough today, weren't that different from Bush's in regard to the US
> empire.
>
> I was depressingly reminded of debates between "liberals" and
> "conservatives" during the Vietnam War, when conservatives said that  
> the
> US had to use force to show that its writ would run in Asia as  
> elsewhere
> (the "domino theory"), and liberals replied that we didn't know what we
> were getting into (the "quagmire theory"), we couldn't succeed, and we
> couldn't afford it.  The liberals were wrong on all three points.  The
> conservatives succeeded, the "threat of a good example" was avoided and
> Vietnam -- begging for Nike factories -- is now thoroughly integrated  
> into
> the US-run world economy.
>
> Only those outside the limits of allowable debate in those days  
> (sometimes
> called "radicals") were saying what the vast majority of Americans  
> came to
> believe, that the US attack on Vietnam -- killing literally millions of
> people and wreaking vast ecological damage on a huge region -- was
> fundamentally wrong and immoral.  For a generation liberals and
> conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, and the ideological  
> institutions
> have been devoted to erasing that view from the mind of the majority.
> They have largely succeeded -- the "Vietnam Syndrome is over," said GB  
> I
> after Gulf War II -- and the revolting spectacle today confirms that  
> the
> the equally disgusting liberals and conservatives have resumed their
> accustomed roles.
>
> It got so bad that Amy Goodman had to step in and ask serious  
> questions,
> beyond Krugman's It'll-cost-too-much whine.
>
> Read the transcript (with some creative spelling) and judge for  
> yourself:
> <http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/13/ 
> 156244#transcript>.
>
> In dismay, CGE
>
>
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