[lit-ideas] Re: Mirembe and the need for Blackwater

  • From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:17:25 -0500


----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Paul" <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 3:25 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Mirembe and the need for Blackwater


By the way, is the US embassy spokeswoman, Miremebe Nantonga referred to in the AFP article, the same Mirembe who used to be on Lit Ideas and Phil-Lit and with whom I argued on more than one occasion?

Yes, she is the same person. Whether you 'argued' with her more than once
I cannot say. It's surely possible that you and she disagreed over something
a couple of times.

I can't recall what we argued about but could it have
been politics or the military?

No. Mirembe has never on these lists discussed politics in the sense
of taking sides, criticizing US policy, or attacking the sort of
ideology you exemplify. She has never here discussed US policy from
any political stance, and one could not have inferred from her posts
where her political sympathies lay. That should be enough to answer
what you say next:

Could [she] have been a typical Lit-Ideas/Phil-Lit member, i.e., a Leftist? so, what is she doing in the hated State Department, and Mike, what is she doing defending Blackwater? Did she succumb to filthy lucre? Or is she operating out of principle?

It's depressing to see you still assigning people ('the typical
Lit-Ideas member, e.g.) to categories, the features of which have been
pre-judged. I grant that this saves one the trouble of thinking: 'Oh,
Smith is a member of lit-ideas, so he obviously believes in arming the
jihadists, levitating the Pentagon, and promoting bimetallism.' One
needn't pay any attention to what was actually said, once one knows
who said it. 'The hated State Department'? Who among us has expressed
hatred toward the State Department--the entire State Department?
(Well, it certainly wasn't Mirembe, who throughout her membership on
Phil_lit and its various reincarnations has worked for the State
Department.)

Mirembe, acting as a spokeswoman for the US Embassy in Baghdad, has
not, in any of her remarks quoted in various newspapers, 'defended'
Blackwater. Nor has she criticized it.

You move, through a series of rhetorical questions, to a conclusion
about someone's political and professional views; but the conclusion
you seem to be trying to reach would only be supported if one accepted
your own implicit answers to your own questions. Since your answers
are false, the most you have done is to slander by innuendo, a person
who was for years an ornament among the contributors to these lists.

Robert Paul
Reed College




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