>> The lesser evilism has to do with the baneful effect of Communist control overall, and the greater promise of regimes that are not totalitarian.
Exactly what does this statement mean? We have supported as many totalitarian regimes as the soviets have. How exactly did we benefit the cause of freedom and humanitarianism?
More to the point, you seem to be justifying US actions as being noble based on some undefined greater good. This a most dangerous philosophy that is always pushed upon the public by those who wish to play God. This "greater good" appeal is what Hitler used to justify the holocaust. It is what Stalin used for his gulags. It is what Khomeini used for his Islamist kingdom. And yes what US used to expand itsown empire. We see it clearly when it applies to others, but looking in the mirror is always hardest.
At each step along the way, there are people who point out that a greater good cannot be made possible by a series of wrongs. That a free society cannot be established without individual freedom. And that a just society cannot be based upon injustice. (in a clear example of this debate, Khomeini vs. Shariatmadari, Khomeini insisted that a virtuous society will raise/create virtuous men, and Shariatmadari argued that a virtuous society is made up of virtuous people. Which side do you think has it right?)
So ultimately, as you look back upon history and see which leaders and regimes we have defended time after time, you have to wonder about the validity of the myth of America as the champion of freedom around the world. There is an old saying, "tell me who your friends are and I'll tell who you are". We share in the guilt of all those whom we support(ed), no matter what the official noble explanation of our involvement. So yes, to support the Vietnam War you do have to defend Diem vs. Ho.
Sun (free your mind, and the rest will fallow) Tzu
In 1947, in a slim volume entitled “Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War,” Marshall took the military by surprise. Throughout the war, he declared, only about fifteen per cent of American riflemen in combat had fired at the enemy. One lieutenant colonel complained to Marshall that four days after the desperate struggle on Omaha Beach he couldn’t get one man in twenty-five to voluntarily fire his rifle. “I walked up and down the line yelling, ‘God damn it! Start shooting!’ But it did little good.” These men weren’t cowards. They would hold their positions and willingly perform such tasks as delivering ammunition to machine guns. They simply couldn’t bring themselves to aim a rifle at another human being—even an armed foe—and pull the trigger. “Fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure in the individual,” Marshall wrote. “At the vital point, he becomes a conscientious objector.”...It was no longer sufficient to teach a man to shoot a target; the Army must also condition him to kill, and the way to do it, paradoxically, was to play down the fact that shooting equals killing. “We need to free the rifleman’s mind with respect to the nature of targets,” Marshall wrote. A soldier who has learned to squeeze off careful rounds at a target will take the time, in combat, to consider the humanity of the man he is about to shoot.
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And so we are required not to consider we support people like Saddam and share in their atrocities, but we are to think we are supporting a greater good for the freedom of world that justifies anything but reflection upon our actions. After all, “We need to free the rifleman’s mind with respect to the nature of targets,” and I guess we similarly need to free the mind of the public from the consequences of the thugs their government supports. |
