Cornel, my friend, it is you who has the selective amnesia, and are sadly out of context as well. I can only conclude that you were having a bad day.
Isn't it ironic that you choose to make a point about what is going on in Iraq in 2005, based on what happened in the newly discovered USA centuries ago? Not to mention being incredibly selective. Aren't we aware that all the European explorers and colonists wherever they came from and wherever they went, were bent on acquisition of assets by force if necessary? How did you make the leap from liberating Afghanistan and Iraq to the "genocide" of the early Europeans who discovered and settled this continent? Are you next going to judge issues of today based on the actions of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, when it suits you to do so? As an intellectual, before you spewed your accusation of the imposition of an "Americanized version of freedom and democracy", I would have thought you would have at least read President Bush's inaugural speech and his State of the Union speech, where he enunciated and amplified his new US policy of proactively standing with those who wanted to live in freedom and democracy, based on his expectation that spreading democracy will lead to growing world peace. There is no mention of imposing anything other than the opportunity to live in freedom and democracy. The policy expressly says that the precise details would be up to the local citizenry. How can you of all people, an intellectual who makes a living on freedom of speech, thought and action, who lives in a democracy, be so callous and cavalier to the fate of the 50 million Afghanis and Iraqis who have been liberated from brutal dictatorships, where no freedom of speech was allowed, principally because of the leadership of President Bush? Do you think the newly freed Afghanis and Iraqis consider him a "joke"? I don't think so. In fact, I know for a fact that the Iraqis I have met would disagree vehemently with you. Finally, I would like to draw to your attention that most of the innocent Iraqis being killed in Iraq have been the targets, not of the coalition forces, who are trying to stop the blood-letting, but of the minority of Sunni Baathists, whose aim is to terrorize the majority of Iraqis as they did when they were in power, but now to deny them the freedom and democracy that the majority of Iraqis want. --- cornel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > When President Bush spouts "freedom and democracy" every time he gets a chance to do so, he surely and entirely ignores the fact that the USA was built on the genocide of the indigenous people of North America.
