>John wrote:
>
>Bill Thomson is a clinical psychologist in private practice and a
>faculty member at the University of Michigan/Dearborn, where he teaches
>a course in Nonviolence and Violence.
>
>Lucy replies:
>
>Dr. Thomson is stunningly naive and has extracted from his one-sided
>analysis any evidence of an understanding of sociopathology. The United
>States, like every other country on earth, has made and continues to
>make its mistakes. It is also the most generous nation on earth sending
>billions of dollars and thousands of volunteers and missionaries to
>every nook and cranny to help everyone with food shortages, earthquake
>relief, you name it. There is not one nation on this earth that comes
>close to the generous spirit of our government and its people. Osama
>bin Laden and his ilk do not in any way represent normal forms of
>behavioral resistance to those policies of ours that are disliked.
>They are sociopaths with very strong external orientations toward their
>personal problems. To in any way validate their actions is, in my
>opinion, shameful. Dr. Thomson and his ilk, in effect, work as enablers
>for these terrorists to continue their outward expressions of internal
>sickness.
I agree completely, except for one thing. This kind of garbage is not
the result of naivete. It is the result of mendacity and a
determination to interpret everything the US does in the worst
possible light. To take one example from his long list, people like
this regarded the invasion of Grenada, incredibly, as an act of
aggression. The simple fact is that a handful of thugs murdered most
of the government of Grenada. The US went in and removed them from
power, returned control of Grenada to its people, and then poured in
financial aid. The press tried its best to ignore the fact that the
people of Grenada almost uniformly welcomed the U.S. action. Those
who call themselves "liberals" maintained that we should have let
them "work it out on their own" and similar nonsense. If I am flat on
my back in my house facing an armed intruder, and you are my
neighbor, I hope you won't wait for an engraved invitation to come
over and help me.
One of my favorite historians remarked that the essence of
geopolitics is making distinctions between different degrees of evil.
International politics is a rough game, with some very bad actors
always included. There are times when military action, crude
instrument that it is, is the least of the available evils. To refuse
to acknowledge this, maintaining the moral equivalence of all the
players, or worse, to assert that the U.S., acting in our fumbling
way to defend democracy and legitimate liberty, is somehow the worst
because it is the most powerful, is not the road to the high moral
ground - it is the road to the lowest moral ground of all. The
European press is full of this kind of garbage, and I find it
sickening.
Preston G.
-- Preston Garrison, Ph.D. Instructor UTHSCSA Biochem. Dept. MSC 7760 Insert the usual disclaimers here. 7703 Floyd Curl Dr. San Antonio, TX 78229-3900 garrisonp@uthscsa.edu 210-567-3702 http://biochem.uthscsa.edu/~barnes
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