Hi Mary, Hopefully I'll respond to some of Kate's and Vince's points here, too.
> To which I reply: WHOA!!! Are you saying that >one has to be, or is likely to be, a Marxist to >criticize American foreign policy in the way > that the author of the article has? Not at all. I thought I'd written a few times here that we do need to take a look at our past foreign policy and see our mistakes and try to rectify them in the future. I don't know if I can get my point across but it is basically that I would prefer to read criticism by Americans who are not Marxist in their ideology, because to me, they are working more against us than for us ultimately. You may laugh but I also consider myself a liberal who can veer just as far left as right, depending on the issues. The problem that I run into with people sometimes is that I am also very anti-Marxist, anti-totalitarian and pro-American. I think some people think you cannot be a liberal and be anti-Marxist at the same time. I also can agree with many of the professor's points and I think that many Americans can. But then I can also read his points again and say to myself "but this isn't the whole story." Does he really think he can sum up 50 years of problems so easily? The fact that he has addressed his letter to Nigthline is also kind of telling. Does he think it is the media who have the sole duty to "educate" Americans? That's kind of scary. I also think he presumes too much that most Americans either know nothing of history or the issues he raised. We are not that stupid at all. The situation now, our current reality, is that we are suddenly at war and in a state of emergency. There really are more pressing concerns for Americans right now than to be ruminating every day about all the mistakes we made to get us to this point. I would rather Nightline be telling me about the latest Anthrax or other kinds of attacks, and how the war is affecting our world than being lectured about all the actions that have brought us to this point right now. Not that we should ignore our past policy or anything. But it IS very, very complicated and the actions taken were not the exclusivity of the U.S. Many other countries have just as much culpability in the problems in the middle east, including the countries involved. Let's talk about ALL of it so that we can get close to the truth, even if we offend OTHER countries in the process. > My favorite is probably, "Stay away from the ridiculous claims that we > are hated because we respect individual liberties. In the Muslim world, > over and over again, we consistently HAVE NOT respected individual liberties > but rather supported tin-pot dictators." I think that is really debatable. How can we explain the fact that tens of millions of people from South America, Central America, Iran, Palestine, Iraq, Pakistan, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China, Korea and Russia have fled to our country. If we were the "great imperialist Satan" who has help ruin their countries and interfered with their "democratic" elections, why the hell do so many of them want to come here? The facts belie a lot of the criticism against the U.S. > I agree completely. Let's be united, and let's protect our nation from > this horrifying threat in the best, most efficient way we can. But > while we're doing so, let's remember that it is NOT unpatriotic to admit > that our country has sometimes done wrong. I do not think it is unpatriotic at all to admit our country has done something wrong. We KNOW we have done some really stupid things. I wish people would come up with more constructive ideas as to our future foreign policy, however, rather than hit us just because it may make them feel superior. I'm not sure that it is patriotic for anyone to say we *deserve* what has happened to us since Sept. 11th and those are the sentiments that I will continue to take issue with. Kakki
