[Peace-discuss] Limits of allowable debate

[C. G. Estabrook]

Important point.  On News from Neptune we discussed the Ft. Hood murders in the 
context of the history of fragging in the Vietnam War. (The article "fragging" 
on Wikipedia is pretty good, for those who came in late.  --CGE]


David Green wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22wright.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print 
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22wright.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print>
>  
> The NYT brings in Robert Wright, a liberal heavy thinker known among 
> other things for his contributions to the dubious field of evolutionary 
> psychology, to define the LOAD for Hasan/Ft. Hood:
>  
> 
> "Conservatives backed war in Iraq, and they’re now backing an escalation 
> of the war in Afghanistan. Liberals (at least, dovish liberals) have 
> warned in both cases that killing terrorists is counterproductive if in 
> the process you create even more terrorists; the object of the game 
> isn’t to wipe out every last Islamist radical but rather to contain the 
> virus of Islamist radicalism."
> 
>  
> 
> As long as we discuss various perspectives on "terrorism," we can't 
> consider that this was not terrorism as commonly defined as attacks 
> against civilians. Whatever the pathology of Hasan, we might compare him 
> to a black soldier from segregated American asked to kill Asians (and 
> perhaps return home to enforce martial law in Newark or Detroit) in the 
> 1960s. What the LOAD will not allow us to do is to think of this event 
> in terms of rebellion.
> 
>  
> 
> DG