[Peace-discuss] Bygones

[C. G. Estabrook]

"...We [viz., Obamans] have been some of the most articulate and vociferous 
critics of the way the Bush administration handled things,” [the White House 
counsel, Gregory B. Craig] said. “There has been a dramatic change of 
direction.”  --NYT 2/17/09


"[The US regularly offers] the doctrine of 'change of course,' soberly invoked 
whenever the stance of noble intent becomes impossible to sustain. True, bad 
things have been done in the past for understandable reasons, but now all will 
be different. So our terrorist wars against the church and other deviants in 
Central America in the 1980s, leaving the region littered with hundreds of 
thousands of tortured and mutilated victims and ruining its countries perhaps 
beyond recovery, was really a war with the Russians. Now we will 'change course' 
and lead the way to a bright future. The same line of argument had been used to 
dismiss as irrelevant the enthusiastic support for 'that admirable Italian 
gentleman' Mussolini (FDR, 1933) and for the moderate Hitler, both barring the 
Bolshevik threat; the resurrection of fascist collaborators and destruction of 
the anti-fascist resistance worldwide after the World War; the overthrow of 
democracies and support for neo-Nazi monsters throughout the world in subsequent 
years; and on, and on...

--Chomksy, 15 years ago <http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199401--02.htm>; see 
also "After the War," 2003: <http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20031120.htm>.