[Peace-discuss] Hawaii to Iraq

[John W.]

If what you two are saying is true - and I'm not disagreeing - then what 
difference does it make whether or not we somehow succeed in impeaching 
Bush?  What difference does it make how many Americans regard American 
foreign policy (or domestic policy) as "fundamentally wrong and 
immoral"?  The two of you (and Kinzer, if he was just a bit more aware of 
the implications of his own data) would seem to be suggesting that American 
policy has remained substantially the same (intentionally and fundamentally 
wrong and immoral) for 100 years, irrespective of administration in power 
and irrespective of public opinion.  So why should we bother with activism 
at a national level at all?  Aren't we just tilting at windmills?  Pissing 
in the wind?  Isn't the sole achievable purpose, really, to pull an 
isolated body out of the fire here and there?

John Wason



At 05:35 PM 4/22/2006, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

>Exactly right.  Kinzer's position seems similar to that of the
>left-liberal extreme of respectable opinion regarding Vietnam,
>e.g., Anthony Lewis in the NYT in 1969, that the war had begun
>with "blundering efforts to do good" but had become a
>"disaster" -- at a time when 70% of the public regarded it as
>"fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake." --CGE
>
>
>David Green wrote:
>
> > I think that Kinzer does a great service, but I would
> > have at least one concern. From the portions of the
> > interview yesterday on DN that I saw, he seems to be
> > saying that--for example--if only we hadn't overthrown
> > Mossadegh in 1953, we would have had a liberal
> > democracy in Iran all these years, and wouldn't the
> > whole Middle East look different, implying that our
> > leaders would be happy with that. Well, yes it would,
> > and no they wouldn't, and that's exactly why we
> > wouldn't allow that to happen. Kinzer still subscribes
> > (I think) to the "good intentions gone wrong" version
> > of history, rather than imperial intentions done well,
> > if messily, with too many dead bodies left behind. We
> > put a lot of effort into making sure that Arab
> > nationalism could not set a bad example for the Middle
> > East--in Iraq in 1958, in Egypt in 1967, etc. We put a
> > lot of effort into making sure that Saudi Arabia does
> > not become democratic, or Kuwait, for that matter.
> >
> > David Green