Letters to the Editor
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Some revolutionaries are like libertarians-never sure who is what
Or do communist parties, of which the Khmer Rouge was one?
Some will argue that Khmer Rouge were not communists. The Khmer Rouge, for instance:
The Khmer Rouge not communist? Yes, by their own statement:
"We are not communists ... we are revolutionaries" who do not 'belong to the commonly accepted grouping of communist Indochina."(Ieng Sary, 1977, quoted by Vickery, Cambodia: 1978-1983, p. 288).
http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/khmerrouge.html
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How convenient.
n/t
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@ ondelette
No, I'm not being sarcastic, and I quite share your confusion and horror, but yes, I do think that the to make an omelette, you must first break eggs, is a universal tenet of the managerial class in any society which is charged with -- or has charged itself with -- accomplishing grand things with only imperfect human vessels at its disposal. This doesn't need to occur on the scale of the Holocaust, or the liquidation of the Kulaks, for that matter. If someone told you how many people, on average, that building a certain dam or skyscraper would kill, would you proceed?
Being a middle-class white American, I've inherited the fruits of these institutional blindnesses without the attendant agonies, and consequently am free as few others in history have been to speculate on the consequences without having to endure them. I concede that point.
On the other hand, I've been both grunt and manager during my career, and I can say without any attempt at hiding my own moral qualms that to suppose even at my mundane level -- trying to get work done with a collection of the slow-witted and loony, the politically obstreperous, the morbidly time-serving, etc. -- that there is no moral minefield, is to lack such experience altogether.
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Timberman
I know that this has made you very angry, but it's the best I can do under the circumstances. I really have no interest in engaging you, and don't think doing so would advance Glenn's cause in the slightest.
-- William Timberman
You are way off as usual. You do not make me angry because you claim I am crazy since I think you are wrong. I see it as the normal reaction that one gets from an old collectivist. I asked for a country where governments have worked and lwm gave a list of colonial powers. Now that makes me smile. Oh well, compared to the USA they do look good, much like a girl in a bar at closing time when you are stinking drunk --- it is the closer inspection when you are sober that tells the real story.
However, I am behind schedule and must bid you farewell this evening.
Oh wait, before I go. Will you please tell me what all the ridiculous disruptions by lwm and puppets adds to "Glenn's cause" and would Glenn recognize this aid?
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Actually
I find that the labeling anyone you didn't like as a "communist" was the "convenient" thing to do back then. Much like it is convenient to label them as "terrorists" today.
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Bucky
You are all about the peace, love and understanding, man. You gotta walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
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Bucky
My antics drive Glenn out of his mind and make him bang his head on his desk.
I briefly considered whether you meant that sarcastically and then rejected it - not sure why. I hate when people overlook sarcasm/irony and hate even more when I do it. I'm going to go bang my head against the table for the next few minutes as punishment.
-- GlennGreenwald
But he's a member of Sarcastics Anonymous like the rest of us.
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Why avoid anti war rhetoric ?
More interesting than the slanted media is WHY is it so slanted ? And WHY is impeachment not a major topic ?
That sounds like a topic worthy of its own documentary. I don't think it is necessarily the same as the original reason for the war, which does not hold juice even with the slantheads. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the people who are in a position to impeach Bush and Cheney or to even air the anti war views would have to admit that Bush has done far more to harm America than Osama Bin Laden could dream of, and that they too, are just as guilty as Bush and Cheney. They would have to have to tell the public "your children died for nothing and its my fault"
It won't happen because if they did admit all that, there would never be any forgiveness. Not because people would accept what happened and stay mad about it, but because the public would never accept it, so they would never get to the point where forgiveness is even possible. Instead, they will just get mad at anyone who dares to say such thing and continue to try to make up yet another reason that this war and the next war are good and necessary, no matter how convoluted it is.
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But, LWM...
First, he has to learn to talk the talk. So far, I'm not seeing that, either.
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Jebbie
So glad you popped in....until you did, I thought we were having another outbreak of pseudonyms. Then I just realized that both you and qnirxngm had probably laid eyes on the same pony and, well, it's not pretty when women fight over lingerie at a sale, so one can only imagine what happens when guys go at it over the ponies in the parking lot.
Glad I missed out on the goggles since Prunes tells me they weren't really worth the wait.
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@WT
But the history of modern China eclipses the Holocaust in terms of raw people killed. I am not excusing managerial choices, I am aware of the omelet and the eggs. Not all brutality there has been Communist, but a bloody past since 1949 is not an indication of any wisdom. China had one before that, too. In seriousness, I would put it on someone else. I wouldn't tally all these things up as the necessary costs of modernization, though. Too many other factors weigh in.
For instance, Chiang Kai-Shek holds the record for civilians killed in a single man-made event, for instance. It turns out that also holds true for a single act of war, same event. 887,000 dead in 4 days (thus bigger than Hiroshima, bigger than Dresden). But how does that score for modernization? He, and his opponent Mao, at the time, were both taking queues out of a third century Chinese play book. He breached the dikes on the Huang He. When the third century military genius (Zhuge Liang) did it, there weren't so many people living there. Duh. How does that construe as modernization? Mao set his country against itself to teach people about dialectical materialism. Seriously, that's why he did it. Pure philosophy and poetry and the literacy movement (don't know what the baihua movement is called in English), dreams of Hegel in his thoughts. Pitched tank battles. 14 million dead. How is that modernization? How is it rational?
Maybe you do need to break eggs to make an omelet. But throwing eggs against the wall breaks them too, and no omelet to show for it.