Posted August 21, 2002

Created and Inflated

[Regarding Kevin W.'s letter of August 16:]

Darko Trifunovic wrote a Master's thesis for the Robert Kennedy University in Zurich Switzerland. The Pat II (Practical work) is titled "Ethnic Conflicts in Civil War in Bosnia -- Political manipulation with term of Genocide Case Study: Srebrenica." I found this study a very useful source of information. In particular he explains how the number of supposed victims was created and inflated.

I was in Srebrenica myself two years ago. Some of the Serbian veterans maintain a small office. They are incensed that Serb soldiers are accused of atrocities. They maintain that there were two divisions of the Bosnian Muslim army. One wanted to retreat, the other did not and fired on any retreating solder.

~ William H.

Barnes Barb

[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column, "Blowback: Read This Book!":]

...Justin speaks of Harry Elmer Barnes as "the seditiously acerbic mulatto intellectual, historian Harry Elmer Barnes." ...

I had never heard of Barnes before reading this article. Because of the curious insertion of the racial barb, I Googled for several hours and learned even more than I had learned in this excellent article, but I never did find the slightest clue as to why he should be described as "mulatto."

He may in fact have had a black ancestor, as might we all, but from the picture I found of him, it would never have crossed anyone's mind just from looking at him. I did not find any hint that he was particularly concerned with racial issues from an African-American point of view. No opponents that I found brought this up. ...

The comment is something you might expect to find in a newspaper from the first half of the 20th century, but not today from the pen of the person who might turn out to be the current fountain of trustworthyness and truth. ...

~ Charles F., Michigan, USA

The Unmentionable

You are the first group yet to mention the unmentionable: the loudest voices for killing other peoples' children are the draft-evading deskbound warriors Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Ashcroft, et al, led by the AWOL warrior who cost us a million dollars to train him to avoid service in Vietnam. It's always the ones farthest behind the lines who are the most warlike. And all of this to maintain President Cheney in power for another four years!

~ Sol C.

Korea / Hungary

Justin Raimondo's article on Chalmers Johnson's book Blowback asserts, among other things that: "the US coordinated the bloody crushing of the Kwangju rebellion just as surely as the Kremlin planted its jackboot on the neck of Imre Nagy and the Hungarian revolutionaries." This extreme overstatement is unsupported neither in the link provided by Raimondo's column nor in Johnson's book.

Raimondo links to Timothy Sharrock's article "The U.S. Role in Korea in 1979 and 1980." That article merely establishes that the US consented to release the 20th division ROK OPCON forces for riot control duty in Kwangju. As the same article quoted a Department of State official. "Under the rules of the Combined Forces Command, he said, South Korea must give prior notice before using troops under joint command but has 'sovereign control' over those troops once they are released. 'The US can only review their readiness to face the North Korean threat...'" ...

The article elsewhere goes on to note repeated efforts on the U.S.'s part to urge the Korean government to use an absolute minimum force in resolving the situation in Kwangju.

The US decision not to assert colonial control over the ROK government by refusing to allow it to use its own troops to quell an internal (and some extent armed) uprising can hardly be compared to the Soviet Union's use of its own troops to quell the Hungarian uprising. The mere fact that the US does not oppose an action by one of its allies does not mean it coordinates it. And the US can hardly be held responsible when its allies rejected its repeated advice to resolve a situation with a minimum use of force by going on a killing spree.

I had hoped that libertarian opponents of US intervention abroad would avoid the consistent overstatement, exaggeration and distortion of the historical record that has led the American public to close its ears to leftist critics of our foreign policy. That's why I find Raimondo's intentional misrepresentation of US complicity in the Kwangju massacre particularly disappointing.

~ Michael E. Piston, Washington

Greased Skid

It's too bad that the 'other side' of this Bushwar for Oil isn't getting out. It seems as if the US is moving along some kind of greased skid toward a conflict that will result, at best, a hundred year occupation of the Middle East, or a situation where the US will go broke and go the way of the old USSR. With no real super power in the world small wars all over the world will be the result. Not good!

~ Noah H.

UN Mom

If Palestinians claim that United Nations’ reports are credible when they criticize Israel, they cannot then claim that the reports suddenly lose legitimacy when they appear to "exonerate" Israel.

Perhaps the Palestinians and the Israelis have a common enemy in the United Nations. Neither side seems enthused with the United Nations’ attempts to promote and encourage respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion. That’s a pretty big responsibility.

At least an attempt is being made.

It may be that neither side appreciates the United Nations efforts. Simplistically, if the United Nations were the Mom and Israel and the Palestinians were the children, I’m sure our ears would reverberate with the cries of, “Mom that’s not fair! You always take his side!” Mom can never win. She can only keep trying. She is not supposed to settle her children’s battles but teach her children to resolve them on their own. May God bless her and her family.

~ Mary C.

Let the President Know

I am terrified that the Bush administration is unilaterally going to attack Iraq, and the Democrats in Congress might as well be permanently out of session for all the attention they are paying.

I have called my Senators and Representative to express my strong opposition to such an attack but want to do more. Is any demonstration being planned in Washington? We need to let the President know that great numbers of Americans do not and will not support a unilateral, unprovoked attack on Iraq.

~ Lynn S.

The Backtalk editor replies:

Demonstration information can be found by clicking on the Peace Actions button on Antiwar.com's homepage.

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