Town Hall Meeting

25 Jun 2012

Condemning the U.S.

Filed under: — Al @ 12:42 pm

I wanted to share this quote by Noam Chomsky about condemning the actions of the United States:

My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.

This is cited in Glenn Greenwald’s latest post and I wanted to highlight it here – it takes real courage to face up to people right in front of you.

This goes to all the loyal Democrats who think that because Obama is President that atrocities and war crimes are now okay. We need to confront crimes when we see them. Spying without warrants is still bad, kill lists are bad, bombing civilians is still bad, indefinite detention without criminal charge is still a crime, prosecuting whistle blowers remains bad, invading or occupying countries that never attacked you is still really, really bad.

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