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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (2423)	7/19/2001 12:59:41 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

I find myself now, in middle age, with complicated and sometimes self-contradictory feelings about the Jews. Those early impressions — culture, wit, intelligence, kindness, and hospitality — are still dominant, and I have read enough to know what a stupendous debt our civilization owes to the Jews. At the same time, there are aspects of distinctly Jewish ways of thinking that I dislike very much. The world-perfecting idealism, for example, that is rooted in the most fundamental premisses of Judaism, has, it seems to me, done great harm in the modern age. That dreadful speech Charlie Chaplin gives at the end of The Great Dictator made me gag instinctively, even before I understood why. I also find the theories of Kevin Macdonald (The Culture of Critique) about the partly malign influence of Jews on modern American culture very persuasive — though this is not an endorsement of Macdonald's theory of "group evolutionary strategies," which I do not understand. And like (I suppose) every other Gentile, I have often been irritated by Jewish sensibilities, and occasionally angered by them nationalreview.com

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (2423)	7/19/2001 2:10:34 PM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

consciouschoice.com Iraq and the "Principles" of a Superpower Some reviewer once called Chomsky an "exploder of received truths." Chomsky builds his case from logic and documented facts as solid as stainless steel. Yet if his writing can at times seem almost too unvarnished or to lack flourish, the dynamite in this intellectual arsenal is also lit by a deep passion for justice. You certainly feel that passion in his critique of the Gulf War, in his condemnation of the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by presidents Bush and Clinton, sanctions that medical groups estimate over the last ten years have directly contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. In fact, Chomsky's writings on the 1991 Gulf War illustrate how truly interwoven the news media is with conservative corporate interests. In World Orders Old and New, Chomksy describes a big-business media almost utterly compliant with Washington's decision to go to war in the wake of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. President George Bush, of course, had declared that such aggression could never go unanswered, and answer it he did, with a massive show of military force that left a trail of devastation and death in its wake. Accordingly, the media took its cue from the outset of the budding conflict. In the weeks building up to the war, the American public was saturated with flurries of outraged editorials and news coverage on the evil that was Saddam Hussein. "As the bombs fell," Chomsky writes, citing remarks of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, "the American population was called upon to admire 'the stark and vivid definition of principle...[baked into] George Bush during his years at Andover and Yale, that honor and duty compels you to punch the bully in the face.'" Stirring words. Yet Chomsky reminds us that Hussein had always been a bully and a tyrant. It's just that before invading Kuwait he was "our" bully and tyrant, one blessed with a steady supply of arms shipments and support from none other than the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. In fact, when Hussein gassed a Kurdish village in March 1988, Reagan and Bush -- these two self-declared "men of principle" -- chose to politely look the other way. But this should come as no surprise, notes Chomsky. President Bush was in some ways actually a man after Hussein's heart, having earned the dubious distinction of being the only world leader then in office officially condemned by the World Court for "unlawful use of force," in this case against Nicaragua. According to Chomsky, the Bush administration was also determined to go to war at all cost, rejecting from the outset any "diplomatic track" to a peaceful settlement. This despite Iraqi withdrawal offers (barely mentioned in the press) that were considered "serious" and "negotiable" at the time by at least one administration Middle East specialist. Consequently, whether Hussein was considered good or evil came down to a matter of not how democratic he was but how compliant he was with Western interests. In Chomsky's estimation, supporters of the war who later criticized the administration for not going all the way to oust Hussein from office misinterpret the war's objectives. Hussein's survival (to this day) was not so much a failure of American policy as its consummation (or at least it was not inconsistent with U.S. objectives). Because the goal of the war was never to help the people of Iraq rid their country of the iron fist of tyranny, only to tame and rein in that fist. That's why when rebellious Iraqis in the south rose up against Hussein in the wake of his defeat, a story dramatically captured in the Hollywood movie, Three Kings, "Stormin'" Norman Schwartzkopf and all the other "heroes" of the war stood passively to the sidelines -- and the Iraqi dictator was once again allowed to terrorize his own people. Chomksy's critique of Operation Desert Storm will challenge anyone who thought the Gulf War was motivated by high-minded principles of democracy or respect for the sovereignty of nations. One of Brazil's leading newspapers editorialized at the time of the war that in the events then unfolding the world now stood witness to "pure barbarism," condemning the actions of both George Bush and Saddam Hussein as evidence of "an absolute scorn for human life." It was not an opinion you were likely to find in a newspaper in the United States. But Chomsky would not disagree. The U.S. war against Iraq, he concludes, was driven not by principles of honor or democracy or real concern for the people of Kuwait as much as the American (and British) desire to control the oil resources of the region, to protect the enormous profits associated with that control. Even if it cost many thousands of Iraqi people their lives.