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| "Skulduggery and mass murder" ?? SCMP. WTF?? |
LETTER TO SCMP:
The chief news editor of the South China Morning Post, Yonden Lhatoo, says "I'm fine with forgoing my sense of decency and humanity over this one." ("George H.W. Bush: making another genocidal American great again", Dec 9)
I wonder: is there any time it's right to forego one's sense of decency and humanity?
Especially when it's based on so many specious allegations.
Example: Lhatoo quotes Freud as justification for his savaging of the dead. But Freud, the "father of psychoanalysis" says Lhatoo, is a now a thoroughly discredited figure. We speak well of the dead because it makes us feel better and more noble. That's my psychoanalysis. Lhatoo saying otherwise, on the basis of spurious Freudianism, is just "grinchery".
Lhatoo claims that Bush 41 "encouraged" Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990. Not true. The US ambassador to Iraq at the time, April Glaspie, passed on confusing messages to Saddam about American neutrality (neutrality, by the way, that Lhatoo would have applauded at the time!). Messages for which she was later upbraided. Saddam made a mistake in taking these as carte blanche to invade the sovereign Kuwait.
Bush said "this will not stand". He put together the "coalition of the willing" backed by a United Nations resolution and including Arab states. Saddam was driven out of Kuwait in 100 hours. Retreating soldiers were not killed. Coalition forces pulled back, as the UN resolution was only for forcing Iraq our of its illegal occupation of Kuwait.
Yes, there was dreadful bloodshed — by Saddam — when coalition troops withdrew. One can argue the rights and wrongs of the withdrawal although it's clear it honoured international resolutions.
To blame Bush for Saddam's bloody reprisals is a gross calumny. You might as well blame England and America for Hitler's killing of 6 million Jews. The logic is the same.
Yonden Lhatoo has form in his blind hatred of America. I'm shocked and offended that you have such hateful ad hominem in your otherwise fine paper.
He doesn't deserve the title of chief news editor.
Although I guess he achieves your click-bait goals.
Pf...
