I’m sure there is a name for that logical fallacy, but I can’t think of it just now. At any rate, it’s a specious argument. You need to show that such people exist today.
If you wanted to do that, you might start with the support of Saudi Arabia. That’s a pretty despicable regime, and it seems to be supported by both Democrats and Republicans. One might argue that the degree of support is different, but was there any change in our relationship with them when the Democrats held the presidency and both houses of Congress?
Oh, so then it becomes clear. Supporting bloodthirsty oppressive regimes is forgivable, perhaps even admirable, if it is the result of cold geopolitical calculation, realpolitik. It only becomes suspect if it results from ideological blindness. Yes, that certainly clarifies things.
As Calvin Coolidge famously noted, the business of America is business. So we gave them the business, good and hard. But at least it wasn’t ideological, our support for grave-creators. It was just business.
I am not here to defend Republican or right wing support of such regimes. Im not suggesting the Right are any better than the left as the OP and others are.
It’s no logical fallacy on my part. I simply suggested that the critical faculty of the Left has historically been found wanting; that roughly the same proportion of Leftists will still lack a critical faculty today - even egghead ones. The same proportion will exaggerate, lie, steal, cheat and rape as those on the intellectual and political Right. It’s all part of human nature. The Left will suffer from roughly the same foibles of human nature as any other group of human beings.
I don’t disagree, although the side topic got started when discussing the Nazis and left/right support for the USSR/Nazis.
I wasn’t expecting my words to be parsed like a passage in the Bible. Some elements of the left gave plenty of support to oppressive regimes, including Vietnam. Surely you remember Che shirts?
This side discussion got started to debate whether liberals support (and have supported) oppressive leaders to the same degree as conservatives. I believe they have and have given equivalent examples.
I have also seen a few T-shirts dedicated to Archbishop Romero as well. In my estimation, an altogether more admirable person than Che. What’s your point?
Alert elements on the left knew the Marines’ “Urban Warrior” exercises of 1999 in the S.F. Bay Area were not designed to test and improve fighting capability in cities (like Mogadishu). Oh, no. It was part of the “imperialist vision guiding the U.S. war machine” to suppress people’s movements here and abroad.
Which apparently was part of why local protesters occupied the Oakland mayor’s office.
But ignore that. It’s only crazy right-wing Texans who get all conspiratorial about U.S. military exercises in this country.
Har har. But to point to the most extreme leftists who have no standing in the Democratic Party to the most extreme right wingers who run a good portion of the Republican Party does not demonstrate equivalence to any degree.
They weren’t. But your words carried an insinuation, that somehow protesting the Viet Nam War was wrong, perhaps unpatriotic. You were offered an opportunity to erase that insinuation, all you had to say was “That wasn’t what I meant”.
You didn’t. Still can, of course, so here’s another opportunity.
Given that the underlying motivation of the prosecution of warfare is economic, it is not entirely unreasonable to connect it to contemporary “imperialism”. The term, though, is inciteful (which effectively becomes the opposite “insightful” simply by inflaming divisiveness), which marks a diatribe as suitable for preaching to the choir but not suitable for swaying the pliable. Because of this, sites like indymedia have a hard time gaining traction: if one runs a fine tooth comb over the internets to find examples, just about anything can be unearthed, but the right wing seems to get a great deal more visible coverage for their irrational rantings. In other words, the center leftwards for the most part seems quite adept at keeping the fringe contained, the right has shown an inability to rein in their own wackos.
Well, the good one, of course, the Viet Nam that basked in the benign glow of Madame Nhu, Diem, and then a succession of highly placed military men.
Many forget the stern devotion of the army of S. Vietnam, their professionalism, the crisply precise way they performed complex maneuvers like the strategic retreat. And the shrewd stratagem of abandoning their weapons, thus burdening the enemy with additional weight, and hampering their progress. These ploys were often misunderstood by American soldiers, who did not grasp the subtlety of Oriental thinking.
Such dedication and loyalty is inspired only by leadership that is wise, benign, and honest. The US only failed because we had every advantage in firepower, supplies, training and air supremacy, and the VC exploited that weakness with oriental cunning.
I think the main conclusion that can be drawn about Vietnam is that Democrats can also start pointless wars. That is, if we’re going to go back that far, which I think is not what the OP is trying to address. I think he is talking more recent times-- as in, the last 10 years or so.
This whole Vietnam thing is totally a red herring. Sure, there may have been some small minority of the vast numbers of young and idealistic baby boomers in the 60s who saw some anti-capitalist virtue in communist governments, but the serious opposition to the Vietnam war from the mainstream left was on the basis of it being a pointless war that was costing thousands of young American lives for absolutely no reason. The real reason for the war was that the US didn’t like the communists, and the rational response to that is that Vietnam had the right of self-determination. The US also feared a “domino effect” whereby communism would take over the whole region and, eventually, the world, or something. Which was, of course, complete nonsense.