Letters to the Editor
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Why the Wry Tone?
I find the faintly mocking tone of your article tiresome. It is of course standard neocon operating proceedure to mention truths as if they are preposterous lies, since it obviates the need to be corrected-- you haven't actually said they're lies. While it's understandable that anyone living in America today would be forced to ignore his nation's greater crimes or else go mad with grief, I see no reason why such a person would feel obliged to pluck out his own eyes in order to see which way the world goes. As Harold Pinter said in his Nobel acceptance speech, the crimes of Soviet Russia have been acknowleged and can be discussed, historically, politically and morally. The same is true for the crimes of Maoist China. The crimes of America, however, are not acknowledged and cannot be discussed.
It is not as if these crimes are debatable. Anyone who visits Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, Panama, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, Liberia, and of course the Middle East in toto can ascertain what happened and get a rough death toll from anyone on the street. Why is it we all know the story of Manuel Noriega's capture and regime change in Panama, but we know it without the three thousand dead civilians?
I'm afraid Mr Blum's thesis is all too correct, as is Professor Chomsky's. They are based on verifiable facts, events upon which no good spin can be put. Why is it so hard for US journalists these days
to face this truth? I don't see the neocon loudmouths debating Chomsky, although they snipe from the sidelines and cast spurious aspersions. They are too smart to go one on one, because he'd wipe the floor with their ridiculous assertions and bald lies. No doubt Blum makes an easier target.
Have you any idea how foolish you seem in the eyes of the world when, rather than deal with his arguments, you call Chomsky's sanity or motives into question. Everyone knows what his day job is. To take offence at the truth is a pathology, the act of a bad drunk or a paranoid gangster. One simple truth that needs to be faced is that what happened in New York on September 11 has been enacted thousands of times over, often with even more horrific consequences, by the US government in far-flung places on the planet, and this is why 9/11 occured. A healthier society than yours would look into the 'why' a little more carefully, asking some hard questions, and accepting the answers, whatever they are. Instead, you have developed a persecution complex much like the one Israel continually uses to its advantage. No matter what you have been brought up to believe, you are not the good guys of this world. You are the bad guys.
It really seems absurd that a nation led by an unlettered, bullying buffoon has the gall to mock anyone, let alone a man who is merely pointing out what's true and what is not.