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The 60s Project Responds
NOTPARS
Member Posts: 2,081 ✭✭✭✭✭
It all depends on your perspective.
The right thinks that anything to the left of Bill Clinton is the "far
left." The phrase has ceased to have any meaning at a moment when Tea
Partiers feel it's perfectly legitimate to accuse centrist Obama of
being simultaneously a communist, a fascist AND an Islamic
fundamentalist "terrorist". It makes conversation difficult, if not
impossible with conservatives when, from our perspective, Clinton
represents the center right.
For example, you want to call Guevara a "mass murderer" presumably
because he was a revolutionary who killed people in wars intended to
set Cuba and Latin America free from government by dictatorship. I
call Kissinger a "mass murderer" because he was responsible for the
"secret" bombings in Cambodia and Laos, and killed tens of thousands
of unarmed civilians. One person's murderer is another person's
"freedom fighter."
I doubt we'll agree on these issues, and I'm tired of firing one-
liners across the bow.
Peace,
Kali
And my response
I don't remember bringing up anything about Clinton, Obama, and so forth. Seems like a reflex action from those on the left. The only way one could see Obama as a centrist, is if one was on the far left especially considering his tutelage under Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, and other communists. But the argument is based on a false premise in the first place. The concept of right and left was invented by the left itself as far back as the 40s and the era of the Brown Smear to demonize conservatives. It was resurrected by the New Left in the 60s. But it is a red herring. Fascists and Communists are both authoritarian, socialistic and hence virtually the same. So Obama could indeed be a fascist and a communist because the distinction between the two is artificial. What is interesting is that communists don't want to be called or associated in any way with Hitler which is understandable. The irony is that they then must claim Leninism and its murderous rein as their parentage. Six of one, half a dozen of another so to speak.
Guevara a liberator? A man who shot and killed innocent people in cold blood and he enjoyed it? Your perspective of reality is certainly novel. I find it hard to understand how removing a typical Latin America strong man with a brutal blood thirsty communist boss like Castro, as well as his "echoes" Chavez in Venezuela and the mass murderers FARC in Colombia (a nation I visit frequently) could be defended in any way unless you endorse mass murder as a tool of political strategy. It would also mean you embrace communism, perhaps the most brutal form of tyranny ever birthed which is equally indefensible.
The bombings might have been secret but often much of what transpires in war is secret. It is to indulge in the element of surprise. As far as killing innocent people, this is truly a remarkable statement. The U.S. targeted the Communist North Vietnamese, Pathet Lao, Khmer Rouge and other mass murderers who supported the attempted and subsequent successful conquest of South Vietnam by mass murderers in the North led by NKVD stooge Ho Chi Minh.
As far as firing one liners, I simply asked a question about the perspective of your website in order to evaluate its potential use in a classroom. Instead of a straight answer, you fired the one liner and I responded. I don't blame you for growing weary of typing single sentence responses. In any event, historical scholarship has rendered the Marxist view irrelevant based on a lack of facts.
Strength
The right thinks that anything to the left of Bill Clinton is the "far
left." The phrase has ceased to have any meaning at a moment when Tea
Partiers feel it's perfectly legitimate to accuse centrist Obama of
being simultaneously a communist, a fascist AND an Islamic
fundamentalist "terrorist". It makes conversation difficult, if not
impossible with conservatives when, from our perspective, Clinton
represents the center right.
For example, you want to call Guevara a "mass murderer" presumably
because he was a revolutionary who killed people in wars intended to
set Cuba and Latin America free from government by dictatorship. I
call Kissinger a "mass murderer" because he was responsible for the
"secret" bombings in Cambodia and Laos, and killed tens of thousands
of unarmed civilians. One person's murderer is another person's
"freedom fighter."
I doubt we'll agree on these issues, and I'm tired of firing one-
liners across the bow.
Peace,
Kali
And my response
I don't remember bringing up anything about Clinton, Obama, and so forth. Seems like a reflex action from those on the left. The only way one could see Obama as a centrist, is if one was on the far left especially considering his tutelage under Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, and other communists. But the argument is based on a false premise in the first place. The concept of right and left was invented by the left itself as far back as the 40s and the era of the Brown Smear to demonize conservatives. It was resurrected by the New Left in the 60s. But it is a red herring. Fascists and Communists are both authoritarian, socialistic and hence virtually the same. So Obama could indeed be a fascist and a communist because the distinction between the two is artificial. What is interesting is that communists don't want to be called or associated in any way with Hitler which is understandable. The irony is that they then must claim Leninism and its murderous rein as their parentage. Six of one, half a dozen of another so to speak.
Guevara a liberator? A man who shot and killed innocent people in cold blood and he enjoyed it? Your perspective of reality is certainly novel. I find it hard to understand how removing a typical Latin America strong man with a brutal blood thirsty communist boss like Castro, as well as his "echoes" Chavez in Venezuela and the mass murderers FARC in Colombia (a nation I visit frequently) could be defended in any way unless you endorse mass murder as a tool of political strategy. It would also mean you embrace communism, perhaps the most brutal form of tyranny ever birthed which is equally indefensible.
The bombings might have been secret but often much of what transpires in war is secret. It is to indulge in the element of surprise. As far as killing innocent people, this is truly a remarkable statement. The U.S. targeted the Communist North Vietnamese, Pathet Lao, Khmer Rouge and other mass murderers who supported the attempted and subsequent successful conquest of South Vietnam by mass murderers in the North led by NKVD stooge Ho Chi Minh.
As far as firing one liners, I simply asked a question about the perspective of your website in order to evaluate its potential use in a classroom. Instead of a straight answer, you fired the one liner and I responded. I don't blame you for growing weary of typing single sentence responses. In any event, historical scholarship has rendered the Marxist view irrelevant based on a lack of facts.
Strength
Comments
I don't know what wingnut fake history sources you've been reading,
but it sure isn't written by real historians. Your narrative reads
like Alice down the rabbit hole. It's the problem with conservatives,
and one of the reasons they've had to work so hard to discredit
intellectuals, replacing them with Faux news shills who can do little
more than yell "shut up" and weep on cue. And that you can discount
Marxism at a moment when capitalism has totally discredited itself is
pretty funny. At any rate, I will be consigning your future messages
to the trash heap. I am very sorry, though, that you seem to be
involved with the K-12 system. Children suffer when exposed to
teachers promoting fantasy as fact. I return to my Che quote.
Tschuss,
Kali
And my rebuttal (and this is all folks)
It never takes long for those on the radical left to engage in name calling and ad hominen attack. Judging history sources as fake or not real simply because you don't agree with them is not scholarship let alone an argument. Rather, it represents a lack of scholarship and a commitment to ideology over truth. Why am I not surprised. How do you know if I am a conservative? It fits
your ideological template, the one you criticized in your previous email, to categorize and label people according to an ideological matrix. Doing this to me represents autobiographical projection on your part. It is how you on the far left think so naturally you assume everyone else follows the same slavish devotion to ideology that you do. What is an intellectual? The people I am reading have PhDs in history. Are they not intellectuals? Admittedly, I only have a masters degree in history (my published thesis was on Truman's cover-up of espionage by pro-Soviet Americans during FDR's and Truman's administration) but I have some knowledge of historical method and evaluating sources. What intellectual have I tried to discredit? Phony one's like yourself? I discredit the Left because it has traded in lies and fantasy history for far too long. Your fervid commitment to ideology hardly represents intellecutalism of any sort. Sadly it reminds of me of the wanna-be cool outcasts who seized upon Marxism as a way of striking back at society that had spurned them when I was growing up. Of course you are consigning me to trash. It is what you always do when you encounter someone who is not a compliant and naive sock pocket that you can brainwash. It is really a disgrace that any university would allow propagandists and anti-American radicals like you to set foot on any campus...unless to remind the rest of us how deluded some people can become.
Death to Che
Smert' Marxistam
Peace through strength
P.S. You have my real name. Unlike the myrmidons on the left, I don't hide behind fake names.
Right off the bat throw away altruism, human rights or most any one liners that are said to apply.
Most all conflicts are based on money, many resources and occasionally strategic goals. Sometimes individually, often congruent goals.
Example Kosovo, what is in Kosovo anybody would want? The mines, you have to get the resources out. Question is north or west? West would be cheaper and at the same time we could curry favor with the Saudis. Likely other congruent goals, two are enough for the discussion.
Vietnam was a bit more convoluted, Kissinger is a genius even if his motives are sometimes questionable. Master of the Gordian knot, the question has always been was he the solution or the problem.
The trick is to cut through the fog and find the few kernels that actually mean anything. Macro instead of micro, defocus and look at the big picture, focus to prove your hypothesis.
Vietnam, the North didn't invade and conquer most of Indo China, they were weakened enough to be, if not spent, their momentum diminished. A force was left over to be a a sufficient threat to China, to be credible. China check, North Vietnam check, strategic resources denied to China, to slow down their mobilization check. China's push into Siberia check. The big brains playing chess with my buddies lives.
Separate the tactical from the strategic, research the resources and always have China in your thoughts.
The idealist part of the conflict always confused me, Uncle Ho was canny, but during the conflict it was reported China and North Vietnam were exchanging artillery fire across their common border.
I never did picture Ho as an idealist, more a pragmatist than an egoist. I read some of his tactical pamphlets, ignored the propaganda aspects. I always figured he used dogma as a means to an end. I always doubted he believed his own bullchit.
Idealism and the cult of personality definitely played a part. But I've always been inclined to see idealism as a tool and the goals to be physical and/or control.
Just saying. Maybe I should have never read Sun Tzu [:D]