[Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric???

[C. G. Estabrook]

"...this lack of 'balance' is what I found objectionable..."

Mort--

The balance you call for would apparently mean equal time devoted to exposing
what McCain's actual position on the war was, and what policies he would follow
in office.

Was there any doubt about that? But there was a great deal of doubt about those
questions in regard to Obama.

Was anyone in AWARE or reading this list (with the exception of the FBI agent)
thinking of voting for McCain?  But many were supporting Obama.

Shouldn't an anti-war group attempt to discover what the war policy of the
presumptive president is, and what he's likely to do in office, in order to
figure out what an anti-war strategy might be?  Asking Mr. Obama to be nice
strikes me as puerile, to borrow a phrase: it didn't work with Kennedy, Johnson,
Carter, or Clinton (or any Republicans, it goes without saying).

Chomsky says that he differs with his Quaker friends who recommend telling truth
to power.  Power already knows the truth, he says, and tries to cover it up.  We
should be telling truth to our fellow citizens -- but that depends on our
breaking through power's obfuscation, and finding out what the truth is.  What
the truth is -- that's what the arguments on this list are about.  We know (and
agreed on) the truth about McCain, but not about Obama -- the front-runner -- so
there was little sense in devoting equal time to both.  --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> I also am not sure that Neil's sentence is an example of an /ad hominem/*
> attack. But I know that it is deceitful.
> 
> There has never been an effort to deny criticism of Obama at recent AWARE
> meetings, certainly not from this quarter. I believed (most of) Obama's
> campaign foreign policy statements were detestable, although noting that on
> the domestic front we could expect some improvement over what we could expect
> from McCain/Palin.  That McCain would likely be even a worse choice, was
> being ignored or grossly underplayed in the barrage against Obama, and this
> lack of "balance" is what I found objectionable.
> 
> In the election, people were given a restricted choice, and it was for the
> general welfare that they choose the best of the lousy choices. I believe
> they did.
> 
> Willful distortion here is the main fault.
> 
> *ad hominem |ˈad ˈhämənəm| adverb & adjective *1 *(of an argument or
> reaction) arising from or appealing to the emotions and not reason or logic. 
> • attacking an opponent’s motives or character rather than the policy or 
> position they maintain : /vicious ad hominem attacks./ *2 *relating to or
> associated with a particular person : [as adv. ] /the office was created ad
> hominem for Fenton. /| [as adj. ] /an ad hominem response./ ORIGIN late 16th
> cent.: Latin, literally ‘to the person.’
> 
> 
> --mkb