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1/21/2003 02:29:00 AM | Justin I was not at this protest, but I've been to past anti-war protests in DC, and feel compelled to respond to your posting, Tim. Reading your link to the site that accuses ANSWER of being Stalinist and Milosevic apologists , I was struck by how similar the propaganda at these sites was to the propaganda put out by the very radical leftist groups they criticize: Images of terrible suffering without the least bit of explanation or context; Fingers pointing vaguely at scapegoats without much explanation. This is also the picture of the Gulf War you'll get from certain other sources: US War Crimes It isn't too hard to come up with a few examples of US actions that can be painted every bit as horribly as these sites paint the actions of leftist governments: Images of hundreds of thousands of dissidents detained or killed in Guatamala, Chile, El Salvador, all at the hands of US backed death squads. Most of these terrible atrocities were justified by the need to hold back the tide of communism, even when that tide had democratic roots, as in the Congo, and Chile. If you follow the "if you went to this March, then you supported these atrocities" logic of the link Tim has posted, then we're all at least as guilty of our own government's crimes as these marchers are of the crimes ANSWER has allegedly supported. After all, why weren't we all breaking down our own government's walls when it was funding Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden in the 80's and early 90's? Not doing so, we stand indirectly responsible for the gassing of Kurds and Iranians, for the reign of terror perpetrated by Bin Laden's fundamentalist henchmen against the more humane Soviet-supported government of Afghanistan. Of course, some of us may have opposed our government's actions at the time, but how many of us actually advocated its forceful overthrow? Not very many, I'm guessing. (Rest assured, I didn't either, and don't suggest anyone else should.) This being the case, is it really fair to blame ANSWER protestors for opposing the overthrow of certain horrendous regimes in response to the crimes those regimes committed? I can assure you all, none of ANSWER's protestors think Saddam is a particularly good leader, or holds power legitimately (of course there's always the occasional nutbag exception). The most commonly held opinion among the anti-war crowd appears to be that US retribution could very well do more damage to the Iraqi people than Saddam himself could. Such claims are not without precedent, considering that the number of Kuwaiti's killed in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was in the hundreds, while the number of Iraqis killed in the US retaliatory invasion of Iraq was in the hundred of thousands.Ramsey Clarke quotes from Amnesty International on this What really torpedos the one-sided argument presented by the site that accuses ANSWER of war criminal apology though is its attribution of blame for Kurdish massacres to ANSWER. During the 80's, it was the US who armed Saddam Hussein, knowing full well that he was using chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iranians -- not the people of ANSWER, or anyone they supported. Can't it be argued much more convincingly that citizens who, tacitly or actively, supported the US government are indirectly responsible for the massacre of the Kurds? Instead, this website chooses to place the blame on ANSWER for opposing the 90's sanctions regime (a rather tenuous connection to the massacre of the Kurds over 5 years earlier) which has actually killed hundreds of times more than the Kurdish massacre cited. Those intrigued by Eric Alterman's contention that anti-Vietnam war protestors actually prolonged the Vietnam War would do well to ponder how Saddam Hussein's control over Iraq has only been solidified by U.S. sanctions. Unintended consequences aren't just a malady of the left. Maybe Tim is right that we should all be more aware of the past evils of the organizations of which we're apart of, at least so that we can prevent our organizations from following those paths again. But I don't see why the leftist should feel any more inclined to do this than, say, the Bush-wacker "patriot", whose defense of war descends from a heritage of equally awful atrocities. (Note that I put patriot in quotes, as I don't think the concept of patriotism really has anything to do with blindly accepting the miliary policies of one's government). Rather than branding each other with the moral burder of past misjudgements of organizations we're loosely allied with, it seems more appropriate and relevant to confine the debate to the failing of a group's current perspective. Otherwise we'll have conservatives accusing welfare advocates of socialism, liberals accusing conservatives of slavery. On second thought, maybe that's what we already have... Oh well. perma link |
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