Re: RARA-AVIS: those dirty etc.

TERRILL LANKFORD (TOLANKFORD@webtv.net)
Sat, 11 Jul 1998 17:48:35 -0700 (PDT) There seems to be a thread of America bashing developing on this list
today. While America has certainly done its fair share of dirty deeds
throughout the years (as ALL countries have) I certainly hope that
hostility and revisionism will not cloud the fact that from 1941 to 1945
America contributed quite heavily in the quest to save the free world.

I don't know whether the shop keeper in Portland was a spy or not. I
don't have the facts. But then again, neither does John Lau. By the
intense tone of his post I suspect he has other axes to grind here.

I do know that many Japanese were placed in internment camps, not as
punishment, but for their own self-preservation because their neighbors
were not amused by the events that took place at Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941 (among other, later, atrocities).

It's very easy to sit back and condemn policies of wartime governments
from the comfort of our warm homes (50+ years later) using the ultimate
expression of free speech - the internet (something that would have been
verboten under German or Japanese rule) but could we drop the hysterical
automatic theorizing of the "planting of evidence" before we know the
facts? Are we really to believe there were NO spies within our shores
during the war? Please....

And Peter Walker, your anti-American tirade DID just play in America and
I don't hear anyone calling you a communist. I certainly wouldn't. You
are simply a man with an opinion (some of it even grounded in fact).
Here we fight a daily war to protect the rights of anyone to say
anything, no matter how much we disagree with it. We also protect the
rights of others to respond, which I'm doing right now. It's called
freedom of speech and we cherish it. Some of America's toughest critics
reside within her own borders.

I hope this doesn't sound too harsh. I don't mean it to be. I just
thought someone should speak up for the other side of the story. Or am I
being too "Hammerish"?

Good reading and good writing to all,

Terrill Lankford

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