: For my own part, of cvourse, I abhor the anti-communist philosophy that led to so much repression, tyranny and exploitation of man by man. Truly Nikhil, I do not excuse the excesses of any large administrative system. This nation has its share of ills and woes as does any other. I've read perhaps hundred of Sam's posts. Never have I heard him mention what was right, good, and proper with America - only what is wrong. This attitude has a polarizing effect on debate. When Sam challenged my depth by asking me to offer any salient counterpoints to a Noam Chomsky essay on the subject of American persecution of communism, I did so. I wish I could find the post but its long gone on the C&A board. Nevertheless, Sam has completely mischaracterized my opinion on the issue. I never suggested that there is anything good about killing anyone. If you are willing to accept his characterization of my opinions without question you lose any shred of repect I may have for you.
At question is the disruption of imperialism. We should start simply.
Can communism as practiced by the Soviet Union, for instance, be considered evil? Do you dispute the body count of communsist governments. For the sake of this argument I will concede that pure marxism was not practiced in the USSR. My point to Sam was that the "Black Book of Communism" has claimed some 85 to 100 million murdered directly by their communist governments. Perhaps, because there is no perfection in this world, we can qualify degees of evil by tallying body counts. There isn't much argument being offered to dispute what is in the book. It was prepared by a group of well respected french researchers.
My main point of contention is that Chomsky's essays and Sam's posts both characterize the U.S. military as gleeful in its rush to kill communists. Indeed, Sam alluded to this again in his recent offering by using the inflated rhetoric he did. My point is simple. Communist atrocities have occurred in far, far greater numbers than those American atrocities that occurred because of fringe elements of the anti-communist movement and faulty U.S. policy. I'll even say that it was morally correct position for the U.S. government to take in opposing the proliferation of communism by deadly force. Please don't come back at me and offer every example of U.S. failed policy. I know what has surfaced with regards to most of these conflicts. Certain instances have all the looks of a U.S. witch hunt, complete with burnings.
My question to you Nikhil;
Do you ever ascribe any degree of competence, altruism, or honor to those U.S. servicemen who are commissioned to stop the Hitlers and Stalins?
Do you allow that if the horrors of historical communist imperialism are true that there certainly would be people in positions within the U.S. intellegence agencies to know that atrocities were occurring in the mid 1960's?
Do you allow that there is good reason to use deadly force to stop an idealism that intends world domination but leaves death, destruction, and oppression in its path?
Get all the books you can on McCarthyism, Nikhil. While the icons of
this period of time are now popularly denigrated as being hyper-reactionaries, it is interesting to note that all the movie studios of that day were asking the government to monitor their businesses because of the fact that they had become a target of subversive communist activity. McCarthy was only a hyper-reactionary, anti-communist witch hunter if the "Black Book on Communism" isn't true or is true but McCarthy didn't know about the atrocities. On the other hand, McCarthy might have seemed subdued by comparison to what should have been the proper moral response to whatever the communist body count tallied in the late forties. Perhaps McCarthy knew more then than you think he did. Maybe not.
We need to ask ourselves what is right and true in this world, Nikhil. We cannot afford to pretend that men will not and have not practiced all manner evil in whatever system they live under. But I know men who live and will die by honor. They don't gleefully kill anything and I won't abide Sam or anyone else suggesting that this is what our military is about. That mocks those men in a way Sam will never understand and trivializes their duty.
Stuart Gort
