From ce137z1@prism.gatech.edu Tue Feb  5 01:59:53 1991
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 91 14:38:29 -0500
From: ce137z1@prism.gatech.edu (gaia)
To: harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu

Date: Thu, 31 Jan 91 01:21:52 -0500
From: harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu (Harel Barzilai)
To: ce137z1@prism.gatech.edu, harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu
In-Reply-To: gaia's message of Thu, 31 Jan 91 01:00:02 -0500 <9101310600.AA21621@prism.gatech.edu>


>>         Alexander Cockburn's opinions and articles are always deliberate,
>>   anti-American tracts.  This is no different.   He would argue, vehemently,
>>   that the death of 6 priests in El Salvador serves as a reason to deny any
>>   foreign aid to that country

So would anyone without ideological blinders who is aware of the
human-rights and power-structure (and "justice"-system, etc) situation
in El Salvador, as documented at length by Amensty, Oxfam, and many
others.

>    This is laughable.  If you're going to speak of ideological blinders
>    then both you and Cockburn get the prize for the most astigmatic lenses.
>    Cockburn has said in PUBLIC that he is in favor of the Cuban-backed
>    rebel forces in El Salvador.  He has made a choice on who he wants to
>    win in the conflict.  He has also said that he is a dedicated anti-
>    capitalist both in The_Nation and on television.  These two facts show
>    up consistently in his reportage and his slant is obvious to anyone
>    but someone of his own political ilk (i.e., that's YOU!), so let's shitcan
>    this pretense of ideological purity - it doesn't exist.

>>                      while excusing the most heinous and despicable
>>   acts committed by countries or revolutionary groups which represent anti-
>>   capitalist, anti-democratic values.  

This is the usual slander, to which Chomsky and others have been
subjected to. No doubt someone will post a reply commenting on
Cockburn's "double standard" wrt Saddam's crime, even as the excerpts
quoted explicitly named them several times. 

>   So he fooled you too?  If you spend 95% of your time spewing bile and
>   and venom at Bush and the United States but then 5% saying that, oh, 
>   by the way, Saddam ain't such a great guy either, then do you seriously
>   expect anyone to come away with the impression that Cockburn is as 
>   upset with Saddam as he is with Bush?  Of course not.  A person is
>   concerned with things that he spends the majority of his time talking
>   about.  Cockburn vents his wrath mostly on the US and if he turns his
>   cockeyed gaze elsewhere, it is usually an afterthought to cover his well
>   exposed ass.  He threw in Saddam as an aside, so Cockburn apologists like
>   you would say he gave balanced treatment.   What a total joke!

Similarly for his regular
columns; you can look up Cockburn's "apologetics" for China, for
example, following the massacre for one counter-example.

>   I've been reading The_Nation and In These Times since the early 80s.
>   I know the Cockburn method quite well.  I have heard Cockburn speak
>   a number of times on television as well.  He is the ARF (Jack Schmidling)
>   of the left - the world is a dangerous place, but despicable acts are
>   only worth commenting on when Israel commits them.  Cockburn is a
>   transplanted brit whose father was a Stalinist apologist even as 
>   Malcolm Muggerige was trying to get the true story about Stalin out
>   in the 1930s.  His son is the apologist for the revolutionary communist
>   movements of his generation.  He is a virulent anti-capitalist (something
>   he admits openly) and hates everything the US stands for even while
>   making a comfortable living in his adopted country.  He is one of
>   what former ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick called the "blame America
>   first" crowd.  Cockburn is so far to the radical left that EVERYONE 
>   looks right wing to him.  He is the David Duke of the left.  The only
>   difference is that there are too few people in this country who think
>   like Cockburn for him to be elected to office anywhere but in a district
>   such as that occupied by David Dellums.

As far as their "one sided focus" I agree; that the responsibility of
each citizen is the actions of his or her government is so simple and
obvious that it is entirely skipped over when "america-hating"
rhetoric is in the air. As Americans, we don't have much say about
China's policy; however, we do have say (or rather, in a properly
functioning democracy, we would) in our government's policy, and hence
our responsibility meant fighting against Bush's cozying up to the
Chinese killers.

>   No, ideally the duty of an American citizen is to stick up for governments
>   which are democratic in nature.  If that choice is not available, the we
>   should support those governments which do not attempt to export their
>   totalitarian regimes into the territory of their neighbors.  In the case
>   of El Salvador it is our duty to try and get the government to increasingly
>   consider human rights as part of their normal concern, but it is NOT our
>   duty, failing that, to make it possible for a totalitarian revolutionary
>   communist-backed rebel movement to take its place.  Such a government
>   would expand beyond its borders (under Castro's tutelage).  That is not
>   in our national interest.  Luckily, with the crumbling of the Soviet
>   Empire, the USSR has cut back on its support of Castro, which has lead 
>   him to cut back the flow of arms to his buddies in Central America.  This
>   more than any other single event, is why the Sandinistas had to allow the
>   elections which lead to Daniel Ortega's ouster.  He knew his long term
>   military support could not be continued so he had to cut a deal.

Similarly, Cockburn, myself, and other `radicals' exercised our
responsibility in criticizing U.S. [administration] support for
Saddam because of Saddam's attrocities, for example, while we are
exercising our responsibility not to allow the betrayers of this
country who now "lead" it to use Saddam's record (working within the
"free press" which allows for mass-amnesia about the history of U.S.
support for Saddam, and other butchers still today such as El
Salvador) to justify their policies --which have nothing to do with
human righs or "democracy" but have plenty to do with perpetuating the
so-called Military Industrial Complex, and astronomical military
spending far beyond the requisites of "defense"-- to try to use
Saddam's atrocities to "punish him" which means to perpetuate
mass-slaughter against tens of thousands of Iraqi -as well as other
arab- civilians and draftees, while diverting attention form domestic
scandals, not the least of which is the overall state of the country,
left in ruins precisely due to decades of military-Keynesianism.

>   You don't give matters a whole lot of deep though, I've noticed.  You
>   do have the leftist line down pat, however.  Are you really so stupid
>   that you think that our contributions to Saddam's war effort against
>   Iran constituted support for Saddam himself?  No one is that stupid.
>   Let me explain something to you.  Iraq is a country with population, x.
>   Iran is a country with population, 10x.  With Khomeini in charge of
>   the political will of Iran, whipping up shiite hatred towards Iraq, it
>   would have been at least theoretically possible for him to battle Saddam
>   and win.   This would have created a huge level of islamic instability
>   in the middle east, making it more than likely that the US might be
>   drawn into a major war between Israel and a united arab force under
>   the moral force of Khomeini.  Our military support for Saddam was on the
>   order of 5% of his total support (USSR was about 50% - Germany and France
>   were the next two largest contributors, followed by NATO countries and
>   even Brazil [missile technology]).  The object was to insure that there
>   was no clear military victor in the Iran/Iraq war.  This does NOT mean
>   that we could not, in principle, then turn around and condemn Saddam
>   or even attack him as we have since he invaded Kuwait.  Ideological
>   socialists like you would have the US make the kinds of decisions which
>   would lead to a world populated by governments lead by such worthies
>   as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Daniel Ortega, etc., because you would
>   not allow the US to support any government which opposed them!  The charge
>   against Chomsky sticks for that reason.

   -- Steve Fischer (ce137z1@prism.gatech.edu)