[Peace-discuss] Limits of allowable debate

[Stuart Levy]

On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 12:31:58PM -0600, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> The same edition of the NYT (I really won't miss it when it goes) includes 
> a review by the awful Clintonoid pop-off Sean Wilentz, justifying 
> particularly speciously 19th c. US imperialism, with obvious present-day 
> implications...

Justifying as in US national interest?  White Man's Burden?
Societal Darwinism, as in, If we did it, it must have been
because we were Better?

>
> David Green wrote:
>> <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
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