[Peace-discuss] honesty in arguments

[Michael Weissman]

Carl-

I shouldn't get involved in this, but like they say, Ich kann nicht anders.

As you can tell from a lot of the exchanges, some people are bothered by
the style of your arguments. Or is it just the content they disagree
strongly with?  Sometimes easier to sort out methods on issues where we
don't have strong passions. The Serbia/Kosovo campaign serves that purpose
for me, because it was a while ago, the people I knew who were from the
area had wildly divergent views, and I was uncertain at the time.

Looking over these arguments, it's pretty clear why people get fed up with
the style. It seems like you start with a dishonest cheap shot and proceed
to a statement that no one could possibly believe.

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 11:06 AM, C. G. Estabrook <cge at shout.net> wrote:

1)
>
> More than a dozen years ago, then-President Clinton attacked Yugoslavia
> for that purpose [to kill people for the profits of the American elite]-
> not to deter Serbian attacks against Kosovo, as he said. (As the bombing
> campaign began, U.S.-NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark informed the
> press that it was “entirely predictable” that Serb terror would intensify
> as a result.)
>

You know perfectly well that Clark was claiming that the Serb terror would
continue to horrendous extents if NATO didn't attack, and that a very brief
intensification was the cost of stopping it.
I can't even remember how accurate his claim turned out to be, but twisting
it to mean something almost opposite just insults all of us.


The real purpose of the bombing campaign, months in the planning, was to
> curb Serbia's economic independence.
>
>
Seriously? NATO conducted a major bombing campaign "to curb Serbia's
economic independence."

Maybe in retrospect lots of our "humanitarian" actions may ultimately be
seen as part of an overall pattern of self-aggrandizement, power, greed,
etc. But don't insult  our intelligence by telling us that NATO's strategy
is governed by fears of an economically independent Serbia.

The twists and ironies of surface vs. deep motivations cut both ways.
-- 
Michael Weissman
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