From: lbaum@bcsaic.boeing.com (Larry Baum)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Media Bias
Date: 15 Oct 92 13:57:28 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle

In article <71249@hydra.gatech.EDU> gt6367c@prism.gatech.EDU (DEAL, DOUGLAS WAYNE) writes:
: 
: Protesting against your country, outside your country is a horrible thing
: to do.  When one protests, it is to enact change in your gov't, community,
: or whatever.  When you protest in an area where only foreigners can see,
: how can that be thought of as an attempt to change something.  
: The only effect that those protests could accomplish would be show Bills
: fellow students that he was one of them.....he hated america too.  Personally,
: I think that protests are a good thing, and that civil disobedience is
: right, when laws are unjust, but Bill Clinton was not trying to convince
: Americans that America was wrong to be in Vietnam, he was trying to convince
: English citizens that America was something to be hated.  Maybe he thought
: that the Brits would contact their congressmen and tell them to stop the war.
: (that last statement was sarcasm.  I mention this for anyone who might
: flame me because I said that the Brits had congressmen.)  

This is a twisted interpretation.  Demonstrating against the
war expressed hatred of the war and perhaps Nixon and his
cohorts, not the USA itself.  He was likely demonstrating for
the very same reasons that the British citizens protested, and
the French, Germans, etc. People all over the world were
outraged at the US policy in Vietnam and wanted to express
that outrage.  Would you honestly think it wrong for Americans
or anyone else to have marched in protest of Saddam Hussein's
invasion of Kuwait?  Would it have been wrong for Iraqi
students in the US to have demonstrated their opposition to
Hussein in front of the Iraqi embassy?  Was it wrong for
resients of the Panama Canal Zone to demonstate about
Carter's agreement with Panama?

People do not necessarily demonstrate in order to directly
effect change; it is NOT like writing one's Congressman.
People often demonstrate because they feel that their outrage
must be expressed.  I see no reason why students at Oxford
would not have been any more outraged over the Vietnam war
than any other American, and reasonably felt that their
outrage needed to be heard.


: If he really
: wanted us to stop the vietnam war, he would have stayed in the U.S. and
: protested in the streets of America, burning his draft card and risking
: arrest.  

That's nonsense.  Millions of people actively opposed the war
without burning their draft cards.  Why do think that there
was exactly one correct way to oppose the war?  It's real easy
to look back 23 years later with perfect hindsight and say
what people should have done.  Those of us who lived thru it,
unfortunately did not know how things would turn out, we had
to make it up as we went along.  Choices were hard.  Some
people burned their draft cards and spent their whole time
working against the war; millions of others tried to maintain
as normal lives as possible while still doing what they could
to oppose the war.  


-- 
Larry Baum
Computer Science Organization
Boeing Computer Services     uucp:       uw-beaver!bcsaic!lbaum
(206) 865-3365               internet:   lbaum@atc.boeing.com