Concluding The Defense of Scott Simon & America: Neither Needs A Defense - The Accuser Does!
Concluding The Defense of Scott Simon & America: Neither Needs A Defense - The Accuser Does!
By
Ken Eliasberg
I have 2 thoughts in concluding this chapter in Academic Anti-Americanism: (1) The sadness I have in calling attention to the deterioration in our Academy in general and the “liberal” arts component, in particular; and (2) the anger I feel at what these guys are doing to our kids; indoctrinating them in far-left principles so fundamentally in opposition to those that our Founding Fathers had in mind when they created this magnificent country that it boggles the mind and hurts the heart. Moving right along, let’s take a look at the rest of the professor’s baker’s dozen of America’s global transgressions.
(2) Our efforts to destabilize the Suharto government of Indonesia. On the contrary, we propped him up for a time; he was a pawn in the Cold War, and, on the whole, a corrupt and unsavory character. Noam Chomsky, a despicable bleeding heart member of our intellectual “elite,” described the Suharto led invasion of East Timor as follows: “the worst instance of genocide relative to population since the holocaust.” In short, I have no idea of Shaffer’s reference point here (and I strongly suspect that he doesn’t either); we did nothing to make Suharto worse or better — merely worked with the head of another sovereign country in an effort to contain the spread of communism (perhaps that’s Shaffer’s problem; he didn’t want communism contained, let alone defeated).
(3) Refusal to cooperate with the Russians in the unification of Korea after
WWII. This is absurd. We had a Cold War on; why would we cooperate with the Russians and turn all of Korea into a gulag (which is exactly what North Korea is today). I’ll bet that the entire population of South Korea is grateful that we did not cooperate with the Russians by selling them out. Thanks to us, they are a thriving democracy; North Korea, under communist rule, is, as noted, a disaster and has been responsible for the death of a substantial number of its citizens and the virtual enslavement of the rest.
(4) Our support of Chiang [Kai Shek] in China against the Communist revolutionaries. This is a variation on the theme of no. 1 and no. 3 (Indo-China and Korea). What is it that this guy doesn’t understand; is there no geopolitical principle so obvious that it doesn’t register on his intellectual richter scale? First, Nationalist China was our ally in WWII; second, we are not in the habit of supporting revolutionaries who seek to overthrow the established government (unless we have some national security interest in doing so); third, as noted, the Cold War was on, and we were certainly not going to support a Communist government in the world’s largest and most populated country. I would think that a kindergarten student could grasp this fairly obvious fact.
(5) Our overthrow of the Iranian government in the 1950s in the interest of promoting Western access to oil. No, the error with respect to Iran was not giving the Shah sufficient assistance to ward off the Ayatollah Khomeini, whose ascension to power, followed almost immediately by the hostage crisis, was the final straw in Jimmy Carter’s pathetic presidency. It was also the beginning of the Islamic terrorist movement and today’s war on terror (which is every bit as real, and possibly more dangerous, than the Cold War). As far as access to oil, of course the West wanted access to oil — and Arabs wanted us to have it; they did, after all, depend almost exclusively on oil revenues to run their tin horn dictatorships.
(6) Guatemala in the early 1950s. What about Guatemala in the early 1950s?
Please tell us Professor, what should we have done about Guatemala — let it go communist?
(7) Our refusal to recognize Castro — yada, yada, yada. Pulleassee. We were not going to recognize this Commie thug, and, actually, he’s quite lucky to still be there; if Kennedy hadn’t screwed up the Bay of Pigs, he wouldn’t be
(8) American support for the establishment of Israel and the ouster of Palestinians from their homeland. This statement is so full of error that it merits a separate column (which I intend to give it after this Scott Simon nonsense). First, it was not just American support that granted statehood to Israel; it was world support. Second, Jews did not oust the Arabs from the land designated by first the Romans and then the British as Palestine; Arab leaders advised them to get out and then return after the 5 Arab armies, which immediately marched against Israel, defeated and eliminated the Jews, and then they could return and reclaim their lands Finally, if the Jews wanted to oust the Arabs, why are there over 1,000,000 Arab Israelis who are full citizens of Israel and enjoy more freedom and rights than any Arab in any country occupied by Arabs in the Middle East? Indeed, if Israel is to be done in (which, unfortunately, I strongly suspect will be the case) it will be as much due to their own Arab citizenry (and their suicidally idiotic left-wing, which almost makes ours look reasonable) as any external source. Why? Because I believe Israel’s Arabs, despite how good they have it, when push comes to shove (which it will, sooner or later) will hold their loyalty to Islam as much more important than their loyalty to the State of which they are citizens. I have trouble when an alleged historian distorts history to conform to his pre-existing biases; I have even more trouble when the historian seems to have such an incredibly poor grasp of that history.
(9) Close alliance with Arabian emirs, etc, etc. What should we do professor, overthrow them? Well we tried that — successfully, I might add — in Iraq, and the left went bananas,
(10 -13) Just more of the same nonsense, almost all of which can be summarily capsulized in the simple point that we were fighting a cold war, which, by the way, we won — no thanks to the left in this country. By the way, we went into Yugoslavia to prevent the Serb genocide of the Muslims in that region; while there are those who might question the reasonableness of that gesture, it was humanitarian in nature. As was our ill-advised entry into Somalia, after months of being bombarded with T.V. images of starving Somalian children.
Then the good professor criticizes us for not intervening in Rwanda and the Congo. Wait a minute, didn’t he just express his dissatisfaction with our humanitarian interventions in Yugoslavia and Somalia, and now he turns around and criticizes us for failing to intervene in Africa. By the way, where was the professor’s remedy of choice, the United Nations, when the slaughter in Africa was taking place — or any other slaughter for that matter? They were silent, even though an African — Kofi Annan - held a significant leadership role in the organization. The U.N. did what it always does — NOTHING!! And the professor blames us.
He concludes his anti-American tirade with this statement: “Is it any wonder that people all over the world have an antagonistic feeling toward the United States and its policies.” WRONG!!! Tony Blair had it right when asked about how to judge the U.S. He said something along the lines of I judge a country this way —how many people want to get in vs. how many want to get out (I’m paraphrasing here). And by that standard, they’re still coming to America and few if any other places. In short, there is absolutely little truth and almost no factual support for any of the complaints that the professor lodges against the U.S.
The bottom line here is the palpably despicable thinking (and proselytizing) of our Academic airheads, to wit: Communists meant us no harm; likewise the current crop of “terrorists” (oops, I meant to say innocent fellows who are merely expressing their displeasure with our policies) are really not bad guys and most assuredly not evil. These ideological chaps and religious zealots were all, in their time, provoked by America’s overreaching and that provocation sometimes led various of their acolytes to express themselves in a somewhat heated manner. But whatever they did, do, or will do, it is always our fault — America is the bad guy. And this is the thinking of a substantial number of members of our liberal arts Academy, and these are the guys that are propagandizing our children and grandchildren against their own country — it’s sort of a Hitler-youth movement in reverse. Whereas Hitler sought to instill a form of super patriotism in Germany’s youth, our Academy seeks to turn our children against their country. In this regard, as I noted Howard Zinn is one of the architects of this view of American History, and I strongly believe that his successor will be Barack Obama’s buddy Bill (I’m a small “c” communist) Ayers, who will substitute “social justice” for the old standbys of “reading, writing, and rithematic.”