From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue 30 Sep 2003 - 00:29:23 GMT
>From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Subject: 'Kidnapping' of Terminology
>Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 08:36:03 -0400
>
>Greetings, Scott,
>
>Yes, there are those who would like to limit the meaning of the term
>'anti-Semitism' to Jews, disregarding the fact that the majority of Semites
>are not Jews at all. Perhaps I should modify my characterization of Joe
>Dees
>to something like "tribal anti-Semitic" in that he does blindly side with
>Israel while displaying his bigotry to all the other Semitic 'tribes' and
>to
>others beyond.
>
>A similar appropriation of meaning attaches sometimes to the Holocaust. The
>Holocaust museum in Washington DC focuses on the horrid plight of Jews in
>Europe prior to and during WWII, who accounted for about half of the deaths
>caused by Hitler's racial insanities, and makes only passing reference to
>the other half: Slavs, Gypsies and homosexuals, IIRC. So the terms
>'anti-Semitic' and 'Holocaust' are sometimes and mistakenly used to refer
>to
>'Jews' and 'Jewish WWII victims of Germany', but in fact they refer to much
>larger experiences. This mistake, in my experience, is more prevalent in
>the
>US than in Europe and elsewhere.
>
>This is a very interesting phenomenon, and I imagine we could identify
>other
>examples of kidnapped terminology.
>
>I am intrigued with your questions re. Indochina, and would like to hear
>more, whether on this list or in private email, whatever you deem
>appropriate. By long-running, do you mean deleterious influence that still
>obtains, today?
>
>We can add Saddam Hussein to the list of people the US elevated and then
>found itself fighting. In reaction and narrow-band focus on the Iranian
>deposition of Muhammad-Reza Pahlavi in Iran, his welcome by Carter to the
>US
>(a humanitarian act in US eyes, but a political one in Iranian ones), and
>seizure of the US Embassy and its personnel by Iranian students, the US
>encouraged Saddam to invade Iran, a war which was to last 8 years and cost
>hundreds of thousands of lives, and be marked by the use of chemical
>weapons
>by Saddam. Some assert (I do not know whether truthfully or not) that the
>US
>provided Saddam with these chemical weapons, which, is true, must be one of
>the great and shameful ironies of our modern times.
>
Another historic parallel that might be interesting to draw is that of WMD
attributed to Husayn's regime being a precipitating factor in our recent war
in Iraq and the alleged events of the Gulf of Tonkin which precipitated
escalation of American involvement in Vietnam. Aside from the shakiness of
the *casus belli* in each the Gulf War III (not a typo since Iran-Iraq was
Gulf War I) and Vietnam War, there aren't all that many other parallels to
be drawn between Vietnam and Iraq. With Vietnam, China and possibly the
Soviet Union were secondary players whom we didn't want to tick off, lest
the mushroom clouds star rolling in. There isn't a large and powerful
secondary player in Iraq that can support the guerilla insurgents (though al
Qaeda could be a secondary player now especially if fatwas are declared).
There are armed innsurrectionists, not unlike the Vietcong, but at least the
US is playing from a far more powerful position after the rapid conquest of
Iraq than it was in Vietnam where we had a tenuous hold on regions of South
Vietnam (below the 17th parallel) at best at any time during our involvement
there.
Yet, guerilla insurgents can take a toll on occupation forces, so American
soldiers in Iraq do face similar perils to what were faced in Vietnam.
I suppose that our support of Ho Chi Minh during WWII might have an ironic
parallel with our support of Husayn, but I kinda think Uncle Ho was probably
not as bad as Husayn, we just saw him that way in the light of Cold War
strategizing (falling dominos after China went Red and all that). I fail to
see him as much worse than the people that were in power in the South such
as Bao Dai or Ngo Dinh Diem. He seems to have had a reasonable sense of
nationalism and a legitimate beef with France or any other outside force
that wanted to control Vietnam (including the US).
If we had left Vietnam to Uncle Ho after the French vacated the premises,
would the Cold War have played out much differently?
BTW, though I had some foggy notions about our role in Vietnam before, my
present reading of Robert Schulzinger's _A Time for War_ has been generating
most of my thought patterns as of late. Typos aside (I'm being ironic here),
great even handed book. I wouldn't mind reading both _The Quiet American_
and _The Ugly American_ one of these days to follow up on one of
Schulzinger's asides relating to US policy in Southeast Asia.
>
>Cheers
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> > Of Scott Chase
> > Sent: Sat, September 27, 2003 2:28 AM
> > To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > Subject: RE: Roger Scruton Weighs In
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
> > >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > >To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> > >Subject: RE: Roger Scruton Weighs In
> > >Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 19:05:45 -0400
> > >
> > >Is Joe up to his old anti-semitic attacks and bigotries again? I
>thought
> > >the moderators had warned him, and acted on their warnings....
> > >
> > Although Arabic is a Semitic language (as is Hebrew), you are
> > distortng the
> > meaning of the word anti-Semitic as coined. Joe hasn't expressed
> > a hatred of
> > Jews that I can recall. It's questionable that he's expressed an actual
> > hatred of Arabs, just a dislike of militant or extremist forms of
> > Islam. I
> > agree that he has gotten unidimensional.
> >
> > Joe's anti-Islamist diatribes are passe'. Given my present interests I'd
> > rather focus on long running and deleterious colonial French influence
>in
> > Indochina and also how the US wound up seeing Uncle Ho as an
>intelligence
> > and strategic asset in WWII (via the OSS) and an enemy after the
> > Communist
> > takeover of China and the French defeat at Dienbienphu and how this
> > "blowback" (read Vietnam War) with Ho Chi Minh *slightly*
> > parallels that we
> > (via CIA intrigue) suffered from a proxy war in Afghanistan against the
> > Commies (read the Islamic militant mujahideen, rise of Taliban and bin
> > Laden), but this is a memetics list.
> > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk
> > [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> > > > Of joedees@bellsouth.net
> > > > Sent: Fri, September 26, 2003 3:37 PM
> > > > To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > > > Subject: RE: Roger Scruton Weighs In
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > From: Vincent Campbell <VCampbell@dmu.ac.uk>
> > > > To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'"
> > > > <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> > > > Subject: RE: Roger Scruton Weighs In
> > > > Date sent: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 15:33:28 +0100
> > > > Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > > >
> > > > > Just a bit of trivia (oh and an idea of the kinds of sources Joe
> > > > > thinks is viable),
> > > > >
> > > > > Roger Scruton once described my field as 'sub-Marxist
>gobbledegook'
> > > > > taught by 'talentless individuals who can't get jobs in the
>media.'
> > > > >
> > > > > More recently he got chucked off several newspapers after it
>turned
> > > > > out he'd been given money by tobacco companies to write puff
>pieces
> > > > > for them in his newspaper columns.
> > > > >
> > > > > As you can imagine I'm not too open to his views on these or other
> > > > > matters.
> > > > >
> > > > Scruton does seem to be something of a curmudgeon, but it is only
> > > > logically credible to discredit his ideas on their merits, not to ad
> > > > hominem attack their author. I could not fail to notice that
> > you did not
> > > > condescend to do so as far as the article is concerned.
> > > > BTW, apropos of some ad hominem thing, I guess, what are your
> > > > complaints concerning Bernard Lewis, Lee Harris, Robert Kagan,
> > > > Fouad Adjami, Ibn Warraq, Kenneth M. Pollack, Ronald D. Asmus,
> > > > Daniel Pipes, Graham E. Fuller, Barry Rubin, Robert S. Litwak,
>Jeffrey
> > > > Goldberg, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Wright, Richard W. Bulliet,
> > > > Samuel P. Huntington, Robert D. Kaplan, Mark Bowden, etc., etc.?
> > > > Published by such rags as FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE, FOREIGN
> > > > POLICY, POLICY REVIEW, THE WILSON QUARTERLY, THE NEW
> > > > YORKER, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, etc.?
> > > > > > ----------
> > > > > > From: joedees@bellsouth.net
> > > > > > Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > > > > > Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2003 2:01 AM
> > > > > > To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > > > > > Subject: Roger Scruton Weighs In
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Go to:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > http://www.morec.com/hyperion/scruton.htm
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > =============================================================== This
> > > > > > was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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> > > > > > information about the journal and the list (e.g.
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> > > > > > http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ===============================================================
> > > > > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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> > > >
> > > >
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> > > > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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> > >
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> > >This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> > >Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
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> > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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>
>===============================================================
>This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
>Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
>For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
>see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
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