Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gopher]

There has been much talk about candidate Ron Paul's foreign-policy views, which are squarely informed by Chalmers Johnson's "blowback" charges and allegations. Johnson cites former State employee William Blum extensively (indeed, writers on this track often cite each other again and again).

Let us take a moment and appreciate that these people are complicit and help fuel the antiAmerican fires that burn in bin Laden and others' hearts. Thus they enable and contribute to antiAmerican terrorism. And enthusiastically in many cases, as they share the hatred.

Cheerleaders, so to speak, for America's bitterest opponents, from Hanoi and the Vietcong to Hugo Chavez...

[mindmetoo]

Osama read an author. That's not quite a connection. Osama uses google. Google's connection to Osama?

[Gopher]

Sound a little defensive, Mindmetoo, as if you were public-relations counsel for Blum. Why are you apologizing for someone who is unapologetic about his complicity?

I can simplify and restate it if you want: behind any America-hater like bin Laden or Chavez, one will likely find an America-hating leftist like Blum or Chomsky informing them about American foreign policy or, as you say, "how America acts abroad." I have presented direct evidence that these people are primarily reading the radical-left's writings and that said writings clearly, and at the very least, resonanate with and confirm their worldviews on America. Sounds an awful lot like complicity to me.

Blum and his colleagues at Counterspy are, of course, more directly complicit in specific American deaths. Just ask Richard Welch.

By the way, how do "guys sitting in caves" have access to Google...?

[EFLtrainer]

The diarrhea of "ideas" continues...

I have never seen a less able "analyst" in my life... outside the Bush administration. Seriously, how much do they pay you to post on a message board for an industry you don't engage in in a nation you don't live in?

1. You make the false assertion that an accurate (let us assume for the sake of clarity) argument critical of American policy and actions establishes a "connection" between the "far left" and bin Ladin. This presumes a very dangerous precept: any critique of American policy and actions = support for terrorism. This is absurd on it's face and the person suggesting it should be embarrassed. Such an argument is a disgrace to rational discourse and to any and all attempts at ethical and moral academic work.

2. Regardless of the accuracy of the book, without proof the book was c0-authored by, ghost written by, paid for by, requested by or encouraged by bin Ladin during it's research and writing, you are quite simply lying about the connections of between the book and bin Ladin.

3. You have no idea whether Ron Paul has read Chalmer's Johnson, do you. Another lie. Shame on you. Even if he has, for you to attempt to link Paul to bin Ladin through this bizarre twisting of reality from one person agreeing with another's conclusion (regardless of their reasons) to that making two unconnected people who both agree co-conspirators is sick. It is utterly dishonest.

Let me 'splain you something: The only antiAmerican here is you. Spouting this caustic sputum in support of policies that are un-American, illegal, unconstitutional is as antiAmerican as it is possible to get. You and your ilk are the greatest force for the destruction of the US in the world today. You undermine the very idea of free speech by casting honest scholarship as "antiAmerican." (It's anti-American ) Your obvious implication that it is immoral and even traitorous (if the author is American) is nothing more than book burning and hanging in effigy via rhetoric.

You do all of the above with the full knowledge that the "far right" actually helped bring bin Ladin to power and funded him.


Empires first rot from within before being conquered from without.

[freethought]

have you read 'rogue state'? It's an awful book. It was written in 2000. Before 9/11, before the iraq war etc. On this fact alone your comparison loses a bit of credibility. (book isn't very good, btw, and the copy I read in 2004 was riddled with spelling errors).

And I understand the title of the thread, but you've essentially made a correlation between this book and fueling the anger/hatred of the terrorists. This is a pretty poor connection you're making. yes, they agree with some of the interpretations, as well they should, since the book (though bad) is a work of non-fiction. The US history of intervention all over the world, often against popular sentiment of the local people, is a major issue. They have supported some pretty awful people/regimes (regardless of domestic support).

I would argue that those arguing for a long-standing presense in Iraq, for bombing Iran for taking on muslims all over the world for (fill in the blank) are not only a far greater source, but the only 'real' source that matters, as compared to a dumb book, with typos throughout.

The idea you're proposing is about as dumb as Bill-O's latest craze of attacking anyone who actually reports the news from Iraq and Afghanistan as liberal hate mongers who want america to die... I say that as a direct parallel, to the book, since I don't remember any glaring or flagrant factual errors in the book, but you're suggesting that by pointing them out he's somehow enabling terrorists. Few if any terrorists are picking up anything other than the Koran.

The connection you're trying to make is very dubious at best, non-existent at worse.

(note, this is not a personal attack, just an attack on the idea you propose... don't want this to degenerate into an attack fest)

[Gopher]

Ron Paul's Reading List for the Farsighted [Excerpted]

[Gopher]

[freethought]

With regards to 'blowback', both the work and the idea, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than 'they hate us for our freedoms.' I'm not justifying either position here, or defending them, but of the two one makes no sense whatsoever, while the other makes a lot more sense, and also shows how crazy the terrorists are.

in a post above you use the word complicity: the state of being involved with others in an illegal activity or wrongdoing

Writing a book doesn't meet that definition, but I'll tell ya what does; invading Iraq illegally that leads to several thousand american deaths and thousands more wounded. If you want to blame someone for these american deaths, blame Bush Co., not books written post/pre 9/11 and post iraq, when the decisions were already made.

You used the word complicity, I'll use the word accountability, and there's only one man/group of people who are accountable for these deaths, and it's not these authors.

[ddeubel]

Gopher,

Stay in your hole for this one. Are you calling Chalmers a "lefty"? If so, you haven't read the same book I've just finished reading, Nemesis. Excellent and thorough and about time someone stated the obvious about the role and power and ties of the military to the U.S. legislative body and foreign policy decision making process.....

Not leftist to do this -- just plain American.

Like I tell McGarette, wipe that L and R off the back of your hands. You'll walk around much more freely. Your arguement is just plain drivel. It is like saying that because a doctor diagnoses a patient, he is complicit in the forthcoming death.....

DD

[huffdaddy]

[Gopher]

[Gopher]

[huffdaddy]

[Gopher]

I read Chalmers Johnson's Sorrows of Empire and not Nemesis, by the way. Sorrows is clearly a muckraking account. Johnson was melodramatic and lame in Sorrows as well. Clearly despises America, although it really pains him to say it, blah, blah, blah. Said if he overstated his fears then future generations would forgive him because the threat that is upon the world is so scary and it is his duty to save us from ourselves before the end comes, etc. In any case, I just read what Publishers Weekly has to say about Nemesis. Here is the critique:

Publishers Weekly calls Nemesis "a bleak jeremiad...Johnson's is a biting, often effective indictment of some ugly and troubling features of America's foreign policy and domestic politics. But his doom-laden trope of empire ("the capacity for things to get worse is limitless...the American Republic may be coming to its end") seems overstated. With [W.] Bush a lame-duck, not a Caesar, and his military adventures repudiated by the electorate, the Republic seems more robust than Johnson allows."

Not surprised to hear you approve, though, Ddeubel. Tell me one thing, however: where are the Caesars in this Empire? Why did Truman fire MacArthur instead of MacArthur firing Truman? And why do the Senate and Supreme Court still function?

[freethought]