> At 12:40 13-1-02 -0500, Gautam Mukunda wrote: > > >It's clear to any person with eyes > >to see it that there are lots of people in Europe and the rest > of the world > >who have no interest whatsoever in the justice or injustice of > anything the > >US or Israel does - they seek only to criticize to satisfy some internal > >compulsions that we cannot, and should not, take seriously or allow to > >constrain our actions. > > Jeroen: > Do you realise how insulting that statement is? You imply that much of the > rest of the world criticises the US and Israel only for the sake of > criticising.
Jeroen's criticism was off the mark, but the statement does deserve criticism, I think. It portrays others' criticism as disconnected from reality, based solely on an internal problem. I'm not sure if Guatam means internal to nations or internal to individuals, but either way, this says that the criticism has no basis in external facts. How can discussion be fruitful when one of the parties labels the others' arguments as disconnected from reality? It is an ad hominem argument, to be sure. Nick
