[lit-ideas] A Brief History of Willie Pete's Role Reversal

  • From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 18:42:45 -0500



Judy: Really I am concerned only with arguments (defences, yes)
that take the form "Yes I killed X, but B is a *mass murderer*"
-- I refer list members to my first posts on this point.


EY: It wasn't a defense, as I pointed out earlier.

We were discussing the bizarre glee with which some people greet
bad news from Iraq. Ursula wrote, "Can our hatred of George Bush
really be more important to us than the toll of suffering that's
accompanying his failure?"  Why, I asked, do people pounce on
wacked reports of Marine misbehavior and let the Darfur Genocide
pass in silence?

Andy then accused the US of genocide in Iraq(!) and claimed that
I had no sympathy for the dead civilian casualties, I wrote--to
say that if anyone had committed genocide in Iraq it was
Saddam--that I was still trying to comprehend the 300,000 Iraqis
that Saddam had buried under the Iraqi sands.

Remember that:


1. Andreas posted an absurdly alarmist story about white phosphorus, a napalm-like weapon, and poison gas (!) being used by Marines in Falujah.

2. John Wager, Robert Paul, and I criticized the story in various
ways, John and Robert asserting that even if a distorted version
of Marine activity in Falujah, the account probably did NOT
describe illegal activity.

3. Judy, who had unsuccessfully tried to assert that this
activity, if true, was criminal, wrote, "What happened to we're
better than the terrorists?"

4. "We are," I replied.

My claim unleashed all kind of nonsense. Andy lumped this modest
claim with everything under the sun, including the Crusades(!)
Mike Chase--certainly not one to be outlumped--lumped this
discredited story with larger issues of the war, citing
Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and outsourcing torture, and accusing me
of smugness.


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