Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>
> --- Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Gautam, you make my case for me. Instead of
> > sticking to the argument, you
> > make it personal, just like the people who's loyalty
> > is questioned when
> > they don't toe the Republican line in regards to
> > 9/11.
> >
> > --
> > Doug
>
> Because, of course, it is personal. I supported the
> invasion, and not for oil money either. Your
> insistence that only corruption or malice explains the
> actions of the Administration suggests that I'm
> stupid, ignorant, corrupt, or malign. I'm pretty sure
> I'm not any of those. Now, it's possible for honest
> people to disagree on whether the invasion was a good
> idea or not. But as long as you insist that it
> _isn't_, it _is_ personal. I volunteered to go to
> Baghdad. So did quite a few friends of mine. We
> didn't do it so that people like you could tell us we
> were stooges for the oil lobby. It seems to me that
> one of the statements you quoted was right - when
> people look at George Bush and Osama Bin Laden and
> think that _George Bush_ is their enemy, there's
> something wrong with them. Now, I don't think you're
> one of those people. But you do seem to be trying to
> prove me wrong.
At the risk of irritating an awful lot of people --
There were a number of young men in the South who fought for the
Confederacy not because they were trying to defend slavery, but because
they felt allegiance to their states before their country. While the
simplistic interpretation, and maybe the most correct one, of the Civil
War was that it was about the slavery issue, a lot of those who fought
for the Confederacy did not justify their participation for that
reason. "Slavery" doesn't get to what was really going on in the hearts
and minds of many of those who fought. (And those in the North weren't
primarily fighting to free the slaves, either, although there were those
who went to war willingly for that end.)
Some people might slap the "oil" interpretation over anything the US
does in the Middle East. Evidently that is not the motivation for a
large number of people supporting the current actions.
Poke at this parallel, scream at me if you like, but this is where *my*
mind went in the face of the oil/no, not oil argument. Substitute any
idea that might be self-serving for Bush himself but not supported by
supporters of the war for oil, if you like, and I'll throw the same
Civil War situation back again.
Julia
(and ask me about what I know about the aftermath of Gettysburg any time
you like)
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