Letter from a Leftie

One trouble with writing even a partly-political blog is that there's a strong tendency to only publish opinions you agree with. Bloggers link to other bloggers who they have a high opinion of - but this tends to mean they are of like mind. Given the arrant idiocy of many who spout political opinion - and neither left nor right have a patent on this - bloggers who link to one another tend to post alike, giving the same opinions and views. While good for the ego, this is sterile for finding out the truth.

Very fortunately for me, I know a number of people whose opinions are sometimes almost directly contrary to mine, and yet for whom I have the greatest personal respect. Here's a letter from Matt Quinn, a person who is of the highest ethical and intellectual integrity. I hope I meet his standard in this regard. But he's wrong. Or at least I think so, a priori. But will have to research - just occasionally a nasty fact comes in and slays a long-held and cherished belief of mine. Anyway, on to the e-mail:

Hi Alan,

There's a lot of stuff out there, but this is the best reasoned, referenced
and complete treatment I could find on the subject.

http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm#ch


My take is that Chomsky desperately wanted to believe that the revolution his
country helped precipitate in Cambodia would turn out to be a viable antithesis
of it, as he had learned to despise everything his country had come to represent
as a leading opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war.

I think he does not, now, deny the existence of the killing fields. But, he
does, however, concentrate on his own governments role in facilitating them.
Coming from 'the devils accountant' this is not really too surprising. i.e. the
self-evident fact that post-war U.S. is directly and indirectly responsible for
more premature human deaths than the Khmer Rouge.

Having said that, it is puzzling to me that he can't just 'fess up and admit
that at the very least he made a bad call.

Oh well,

bedtime. cya

"the self-evident fact that post-war U.S. is directly and indirectly responsible for
more premature human deaths than the Khmer Rouge." ??

That's something I'll have to examine. Let's see, you could reasonably assign a large proportion of the Chinese and North Korean casualties in Korea to the USA (though that war was started by a North Korean invasion, so I'd argue every death can be laid at Kim Il Sung's door). It's arguable that all the casualties in the Vietnam war were "directly and indirectly the responsibility of the USA", though I'd argue against that too - but certainly a proportion of them were. Similar but less convincing arguments for US responsibility are true for Granada, Lebanon, Panama, etc etc.

But all of these war deaths pale into insignificance compared to the casualties of famine. It could be quite reasonably argued that US post-war agricultural policy has been indirectly responsible for tens of millions of premature deaths (especially in Africa) that need not have occurred. The distortion of world trade due to US (oh, and European too) protectionism of agribusiness is self-evident. That this leads to starvation is arguable. But it's an argument that I very reluctantly think is true on the balance of probabilities. That the deaths were not caused intentionally doesn't change the consequences. Now I can attempt to put it in a different perspective, arguing about the destructive effects of the Cold War and the pernicious and discredited philosophy of Marxism etc etc etc but that doen't change the ugly fact that he's right, despite me not wanting him to be. Noam Chomsky's credibility or otherwise is irrelevant in comparison.

Which leads me to think about the long-term effects of some of Australia's policies in the past, and what we should be doing in the future.