> This sounds to me like contempt for vast numbers of your fellow citizens. > Once you engage in polemics, you show (apparent) contempt for large numbers of people. One thing that is seldom achieved here (and in many of the links posted here) is any semblence of an objective overview. So there ends up a tendency to defend polar arguments without a clear exploration of the issues being discussed. I've often seen people being dismissive of alternate views. This is where much of the (apparent) comtempt for others originates.
xponent Smokey The Bear Maru rob There were specific things that happened during that period for which I _do_ feel contempt, Rob. And I should, and I worry about people who don't. I've talked to soldiers who were jeered and cursed when they returned home from Vietnam. Carl Vuono once told me that the worst experience of his life was walking through JFK Airport wearing an Army uniform in the early 1970s. I feel _great_ contempt for the people who did that to them. I've talked to people who watched their fellow Americans - people who don't deserve that appellation - burn American flags. I feel contempt for the people who did that, and I'm not in the least ashamed to admit it. Why should I be? During the 1970s the American government was involved in Cambodia, and it was involved in supporting the side that was _fighting_ the Khmer Rouge. We were forced out - not because we lost, but because our own population made it untenable for the American government to continue that support. I understand and sympathize with the belief that we should not have been involved - I don't agree, but I can understand why someone would feel that way. Again, a difference in perspective. But I don't, at all, have sympathy for the attitude, expressed 25 years later, that the people who advocated supporting those fighting the Khmer Rouge were immoral because they chose to do that, or because the people with whom they were working were insufficiently good. You can argue about the wisdom of that or not - but saying that it was immoral is largely, to my mind, a way of making yourself feel better - most often it's a way of avoiding the guilt associated with forcing us out fo Cambodia. Guilt that is, well, earned, in my opinion. Gautam
