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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: aladin who wrote (105900)	7/16/2003 11:05:47 PM
From: marcos	Respond to of 281500

There's some posts not far upthread where somebody already removed us 'from civil discourse on history', with an attempt to paint anyone resisting occupation by US nationals as [amusingly] 'anti-US' or something ... says he/she 'believes in America's virtue' or something in support of this, and in addition to using incorrectly the adjective denoting these two entire continents, has lost something in logic there, or never had it perhaps, who knows, but anyway i was sort of responding to that .... most typing is reactive, not proactive, that's a fact ... and, may be a good thing too, you never know what might happen if we went completely free-form on this But you are right of course, 'thugs' does seem to have picked up somewhere a loaded connotation .... and it's a fact that in that long and brutal civil war there were multiple atrocities on both sides and by common banditry at the same time .... there was one man called Tarleton [sp?], don't know his rank but he was in charge of forces, and ignored a white flag of surrender, had his men continue to shoot the enemy until they were all dead, as vengeance for enemy atrocity of some sort ... this was seen as greatly dishonourable, just as we see it now ..... he happened to be a british officer The atrocities of that war did start with the rebels however, in first forming of factions in the very early 1770s, and even before .... you were not allowed to dissent from the politically correct rebel line du jour, outside quite narrow accepted ways, if you did you were persecuted .... and it's fairly clear that the rebels committed the greater number and more effective atrocities, because from a population whose great majority were either loyal or indifferent, the rebels ended up holding the ground, with the loyalists all completely robbed, and either dead or escaped Many changed sides during those long years, some multiple times at their immediate convenience of course, but many from conviction of principle, and according to what they had seen their own side, and the other, do ... this worked both ways, tories becoming persuaded of the rebel cause, and people starting out as rebels and being repelled by rebel acts, ending up seeing loyalty to the crown as the lesser evil ...... the latter fled north, and became part of what forms to this day our distinctions Here's a page which, while written from the rebel point of view, seems an attempt at factuality, mentions atrocities from a number of parties - ls.net There were more civilised and effective ways to democracy than was the one chosen by those rebels .... that is an opinion, yes, but one held perhaps more widely than you might at first imagine No nation comprised of human beings could ever be perfect, and the more powerful is a nation, the more impact caused by its imperfections .... it is not beneficial to the species for the young of the dominant nation to be indoctrinated to believe in its immaculate conception, or its perfection, or its mythical infallibility .... again, that is an opinion, but again, held rather widely