To: JohnM who wrote (8066 ) 9/15/2003 11:30:05 AM From: carranza2 Read Replies (2) | Respond to It's when we get these wild leaps to "the left", that we should know we are in the presence of some other kind of argument. Not necessarily wrong but requiring a rather different kind of evidence structure. Certainly Vidal hardly equals "the left." There are, to be sure, perfectly valid reasons to be critical of US foreign policy, especially the neo-conservative revolutionary mission. I was not persuaded that going to war in Iraq was right, because the official arguments were fuzzy, shifty, and changed from day to day. Once democratic governments cannot trust their people to respond to honest persuasion, but resort instead to half-truths and propaganda, democracy suffers. But this does not answer the question of what to do, as citizens of the richest and most powerful nations on earth, about dictators who commit mass murder or happily starve millions to death. Why are our left-liberal intellectuals so hopeless at answering this vital question?
