I have to admit I think Berman makes a lot of people uncomfortable because it exposes them to the charge that as well meaning as they are, as much as they love human rights, it would appear only those who are victims of the US are deserving of them.

I don't think one can seriously watch world events in the last twenty years and conclude that terror attacks in places as far apart as the Phillipines, the US, India and Spain are a figment of our imagination. Watching Van Gogh murdered was a wake up call for a lot of Europeans. Bermans argument resonates with the truth; people do NOT want to believe that there are mass totalitarian movements whose existence cannot be explained rationally, any more than we could explain Hitler.

I've watched people making excuses for Palestinian terror for well over twenty years, and I've never been able to understand how the same people going berserk in the streets over the US invasions or Israels' occupation cannot find their voices when Hussein was butchering the Kurds, Milosevic was slaughtering the Bosnians, and now blacks are murdered in Sudan.

I don't find the notion of mass graves and nerve gas attacks particularly "preachy", but if one is suddenly confronted with the quandry of being a critic of US policy because of human rights violations but not really giving a shit about human rights violations otherwise, the proper response is not to shoot the messenger.
- anonymous 11-30-2004 10:35 am





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