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From: gjk@talcott.UUCP (Greg Kuperberg)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Kampuchea and Responsibility
Message-ID: <267@talcott.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 2-Feb-85 12:27:05 EST
Article-I.D.: talcott.267
Posted: Sat Feb  2 12:27:05 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Feb-85 05:59:18 EST
References: <111@ihlpg.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Harvard
Lines: 49

> Can you honestly say that the interruption in food production in South
> East Asia, Vietnam, Laos, and Kampuchea was not due in large part to
> the massive bombing and herbicide-spraying for years on end? We know
> what Agent Orange has done to our own Vietnam Veterans. What the hell
> do you think it did to the people on the ground?  Indeed the difficult
> times that Southeast Asia has experienced since the end of US military
> internvention, the hunger, the dislocation, and indeed the ravages of the
> Pol Pot regime can be blamed in large part on the massive destruction wrought upon
> thoses nations by the Johnson and Nixon regimes.

And the current problems in Soviet farming are due to Ghengis Khan, right?
You are confusing different time periods and different countries.  We
bombed Cambodia in 1970.  We bombed Vietnam much more than we bombed
Cambodia.  Mass-famine happened in Cambodia AFTER the Vietnamese invaded
1978.  Vietnam has not had nearly as much starvation as Cambodia.

> If you seek to blame all the sins of the world on the Soviets, that's too
> damn convenient. They sin plenty; but they aren't responsible
> for the crimes that have been committed by our administrations against
> the peoples of Southeast Asia, El Salavador, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic,
> ad infinitim.

I agree with you that our foreign policy is far from perfect.  But believe
it or not, the two sentences "The U.S. made grave errors in Southeast Asia,"
and "The holocaust in Southeast Asia was essentially due to Soviet and Chinese
involvement" are not contradictory.  I believe both of them.

> Work to right the wrongs...that's patriotism.
...
>                                             Andy Berman

As far as I can tell, you wish interpret every political situation in such
a way as to blame the Reagan and Nixon Administrations.  By doing so you
not only misrepresent those governments, but also the U.S. in general.
Although I have serious objections to Reagan's way of running the country,
I do not wish to blame every political problem I can think of on him.  I
will the thought that his intentions but not his methods can be correct in
some cases, or his methods but not his intentions can be correct, or
perhaps that both his methods and his intentions can be correct.  In any
case, it is often more meaningful to judge political actions on a
comparitive basis.  It is better to ask, "How much better would Mondale
have been than Reagan?" rather than, "How bad is Reagan?", and it is better
to ask, "Would South Africa be better off if it had a revolution?" rather
than, "Is South Africa bad off?"
---
			Greg Kuperberg
		     harvard!talcott!gjk

"Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice." - Foghorn Leghorn