Re: [sixties-l] Kapo's guilt by association works both ways

From: Frank Smith (fsmith@kanokla.net)
Date: Sun Nov 10 2002 - 15:40:00 EST

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    Rowdy H. wrote: "Frankie, my assumption is that you were against all of those wars in the 1990s committed in the name of the last CinC? I mean you must have been against attacking Serbia,"

    Yes, I was. I was in fact in the room when "CinC" B.J. announced he was giving the NATO commander the "go ahead" to deal with the situation, or something like that. He preceeded his remarks by giving to a small labor audience what I wrote on the back of an envelope to my wife, sitting beside me, "Balkan History 101." I asked her why? "This audience will clap at anything he says," she responded on the other side of the envelope, "...and the cameras are rolling in the back of the room." Back then, in the interests of time, I had been deliberately avoiding steeping myself in the particulars of the conflict. I knew though that it was clearly one between equally loathesome, Orthodox and Islamic fundamentalist combatants, and figured it would greatly escalate the hostilities and make it likely that the religious and political animosities might never be repaired. I was unfortunately right of course. fs

    ...invading and occupying Haiti rh

    I was not well informed on the particulars, though I was distressed to see the coupists unseating the democratically elected Aristide. fs

    and bombing Sudan rh

    Most definitely, and immediately so. Clinton send all those cruise missiles entirely without provocation and caused the population immense distress as they no longer had the capacity to produce inexpensive medicines to treat and prevent fatal diseases, most assuredly resulting in the deaths of thousands. The administration never did apologize or make reparations for that collosal bit of stupidity. fs

    and Iraq rh

    Firstly, April Glaspie essentially gave the okay for Saddam to invade Kuwait. I expect that State thought he was just going to nip off the disputed oilfields in the north, and were chagrined when the brutal Saddam rolled over the brutal slaveowners who fled to London and Paris at the initiation of hostilities. So Bush 41 went to rescue his U.S. armed-Saudi clients, over his U.S.-armed Iraqi clients. You'll recall, I hope, that rather than see the holy places desecrated by the presence of "infidels," bin Laden offered to mobilize 100,000 CIA trained and supplied mujahadeen to battle Saddam. I think the U.N. should have truly been used to deal with that conflict, instead of us running the show. As far as the continuous, post-Kuwait war conflict, no I don't think we should have engaged in that bombing. I don't think Billy Jeff should have continued Bush 41's outrageous provocations, and particularly think that "Desert Fox" was treacherous, given that he used "WMD inspectors" to provide covert information to facilitate the bombing.

    and Afghanistan? rh

    Same as above. The Carter administratiion helped provoke the Afghan-Soviet war, stoked the flames when the Soviets bumbled through attempting to retain control over their client state, and our Pakistani clients, with our support, originated and sustained the Taliban when the feudal warloads jeopardized the prospect of a Texas oil-financed, Cheney-built pipeline to carry oil to the subcontinent and beyond. Speaking of Cheney, of course, he made his hundreds of millions supplying both the Saudis and the Iraqis even long AFTER the Kuwait conflict. Should we have bombed Afganistan after 9/11? Like Clinton, Bush 43-Cheney bombed without bothering to assemble proof such as might be required in an international court. ("No, No," said the Queen. "Sentence first, verdict afterwards.") Should we have killed more Afghan civilians than were killed in the hijackings? Is our "collateral damage" any more justified than bin Laden's? fs

     Were Sandy and Madeline wearing that same Yalmulke under their SS hats? rh

    One expects they were. It was Madeline, after all, who said that the sanctions-caused deaths of perhaps 500,000 children were "...worth the price," if you'll recall. No better than Jean Kilpatrick who said that the nuns and lay women in El Salvador must have done something to deserve their rapes, tortures and murders at our surrogate government's roadblock at Ilopango airport. No better than Wolfowitz and the felonious, Bush 41-pardoned Iran-Contra crew.

    I expect you'd hoped I'd be inconsistent. Sorry to disappoint you.

    Frank Smith
    Kansas



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