[Peace-discuss] Hawaii to Iraq

[C. G. Estabrook]

I think Marx put it well when he said (at the beginning of the 
Eighteenth Brumaire), "People make their own history, but they do not 
make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected 
circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and 
transmitted from the past..."  --CGE


John W. wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
>