Monday, July 6, 2009

Saddam Was Hanged For Less



But then, American war criminals have always been a slippery breed -- those surrounding JFK most especially. Few have skewered the Kennedy liberals as accurately as has Noam. His reaction to Robert McNamara's "second thoughts" about Vietnam still rings true:

"What were the misgivings? The misgivings were that it might not succeed. Suppose that some Nazi general came around after Stalingrad and said, 'I realized after Stalingrad it was a mistake to fight a two-front war, but I did it anyway.' That's not the Nuremberg defense. That's not even recognizing that a crime was committed. You've got to recognize that a crime was committed before you give a defense. McNamara can't perceive that. Furthermore, I don't say that as a criticism of McNamara. He is a dull, narrow technocrat who questioned nothing. He simply accepted the framework of beliefs of the people around him. And that's their framework. That's the Kennedy liberals. We cannot commit a crime. It's contradiction in terms. Anything we do is by necessity not only right, but noble. Therefore, there can't be a crime.

"If you look at his mea culpa, he's apologizing to the American people. He sent American soldiers to fight an unwinnable war, which he thought early on was unwinnable. The cost was to the U.S. It tore the country apart. It left people disillusioned and skeptical of the government. That's the cost. Yes, there were those three million or more Vietnamese who got killed. The Cambodians and Laotians are totally missing from his story. There were a million or so of them. There's no apology to them."

Before you read the mainstream obits, read the rest of this.