I sent a copy of my Smedley Butler post to Michael Tomasky at New York Magazine. (www.newyorkmag.com) He is a left-liberal who backed the war in his latest column in the magazine devoted to questions about where to get the best banana split in NYC or how to meet your perfect significant other. I have had no success on either score. Tomasky's reply is followed by my nasty dig. ===== I know all about Smedley Butler. And I was an intern at the Nation (Cockburn's intern at that, during the contra war!!), so I know the whole scene. We probably agree on a lot of things, but you are making the Chomsky mistake of being so intent on ascribing evil to the U.S. that you fail to see evil anywhere else. The U.S. has blood on its hands, yes. So does the Soviet Union, so did Japan, so does Serbia, so do a lot of people. Your kind of thinking--that the U.S. by definition can do no good overseas--would have kept us out of WWII and given Hitler Europe. Grow up a little. ===== Congratulations, Michael, you've become the Max Shachtman of the 1990s! Maybe you've been watching too many Stephen Spielberg movies. This is the real reason we entered WWII, not to save Jews: "Whatever the outcome of the war, America has embarked upon a career of imperialism, both in world affairs and in every other aspect of her life...Even though, by our aid, England should emerge from this struggle without defeat, she will be so impoverished economically and crippled in prestige that it is improbable she will be able to resume or maintain the dominant position in world affairs which she has occupied so long. At best, England will become a junior partner in a new Anglo-Saxon imperialism, in which the economic resources and the military and naval strength of the United States will be the center of gravity. Southward in our hemisphere and westward in the Pacific the path of empire takes its way, and in modern terms of economic power as well as political prestige, the sceptre passes to the United States. All this is what lies beneath the phrase 'national defense'--some of it deeply hidden, some of it very near the surface and soon to emerge to challenge us." (From a speech by Virgil Jordan, president of the National Industrial Conference Board, to the Convention of the Investment Bankers Association, Dec. 10, 1940) Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
