From: David Robjant (David.Robjant@irismurdoch.plus.com)
Date: Thu Jun 03 2004 - 13:08:42 BST
Hi Platt, Mark, all
Just to say, Platt, that I agree with you completely about what you were
saying on european ingrates forgetting that America saved Europe from both
facism and communism in WWII, but: careful not to join in with everyone
else's hyperbole on Iraq.
When you were told by Mark M that:
>> By the way, Sadham Hussien was also described as a middle Eastern
>> 'moderate' when it suited the US in the 80's. (About the time he was being
>> armed with nerve gas by Donald Rumsfeld.)
And you replied
> Another unsubstantiated claim. Next you'll be telling me that Michael
> Moore is a reliable source.
This was *hasty*. My recollection is that Mark M is factually correct here
(shame about the inadvertent advert for MM), athough what this has to do
with the appropriate response to Saddam in 2003 I don't know. It's a shame
you had to contradict Mark here - the principle 'if it doesn't suit my
argument it must be false' seems to be getting dangerously popular on all
sides - though I'll grant it wasn't you who started with this heated and
unenlightened approach. This accidental hyperbole of yours is a bit of a
shame, because otherwise you were quite right that what MH says about US
foreign policy pre WWII is: a load of old balls. As a nation, one can't
symultaneously be pro-facist and isolationist. You made that point well
enough, Platt.
(Isolationism in America, pre both world wars, had much to do with the fact
that the mid west German farming minority was to early 20th century america
what the hispanic minority is to todays america - dressed up in some
escapist tosh about leaving old europe behind. America's foreign policy,
then as now, has been much tossed-about by the allegiances of electorally
important immigrant communities, far more than by 'big business', I'd say.
Just look at how policy on Cuba is formed by the electoral clout of Miami
Cubans, with 'big business' just longing to do deals with Castro.)
But Mark M is right that many 1930's anti-communists in America (OK, read
'Big business' if you must, but there were many more concerned groups
besides), as in England and in western europe as a whole, got side-tracked
by the falacious principle that mine enemy's enemy is my freind into
thinking that facism had it's merits. Likewise, many passionate
anti-facists (most undergraduates in england in the 1930's, for instance)
got sidetracked by the very same polarised way of thinking into thinking
that Communism was a good thing. Though a bit luckier than Spain, England
was no better than USA at avoiding this daft polarisation, and you can
intelligably argue that in the end we were only saved from the daft 'Facism
or communism - the only choice' way of thinking by one determined man. That
in 1940 Churchill managed to overcome the pro-peace facist-sympathisers [eg
Halifax] within the UK conservative party was a damned near run thing (It's
widely known that he had to fight with the appeasers throughought the 30's
and in 1939, but it is not widely known that England was still politically
devided in the early period of the war - this is an uncomfortable memory -
and that Churchill had to fight a very near run thing in cabinet to be able
to continue the war after Dunkirk).
You might say that WWII was the upshot of the muddled thinking, and the
muddled action in the 'league of nations', that the 'mine enemy's enemy is
my freind' principle lead to.
George Orwell's essays are good on the intellectual climate of the thirties
- it worryingly resembles 2004. There was a dangerous and falacious
bi-polarism abroad then as now. Compare 1930's: the whole world is to be
devided between Communists and anti-communists [Franco], Facists or
anti-facists [Stalin], terrorists or anti-terrorists [Bush], imperialists or
anti-imperialists [Chomsky].
Here propaganda on all sides is crowding out the truth. The truth being:
one can coherently be anti-communist and not facist, anti facist and not
communist, anti-terrorist and not pro-war, and anti-imperialist while
pro-war.
Let's all save ourself from the need of a Churchill by being more clear
thinking this time, and not get carried away by any of these idiotic
bi-polar simplifications. Yes, Chomsky, I mean YOU.
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