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Clifford May's new article that's syndicated through the Townhall website brought up a few of the leftists who still back the idea of war in Iraq for the furtherance of human rights and long term peace.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/cliffordmay/cm20050715.shtml

One of these people is a professor at Bard college, Ian Buruma. He has a good quote:

"When Indians kill Muslims, or Africans kill Africans, or Arabs kill Arabs, Western pundits pretend not to notice or find historical explanations, or blame the scars of colonialism...But if white men, whether they are Americans, Europeans, South Africans, or Israelis, harm people of color hell is raised...One could claim this is only right, since we can only take responsibility for our own kind. But this would be a rather racist view of world affairs."

While the Left ostensibly wants to "speak to power" and stop non-white people from getting hurt, it's really from a position of holding their own to account, and not really doing anything that would help non-whites.

But anyways, I had a look to see what articles Buruma has written, and came across this 2-year old article from the Guardian.

For those of us, such as myself, who not well versed in the occupation of Japan post-WWII, and who were not around at the time to read the press on it, what do you make of these comments by Buruma?

He seems to believe that the only good in Japanese democracy were put there by the ideals of socialism. Doesn't history show that socialism tends towards one-party control, and the bureaucratic state that he attributes to Right-wingism? And wasn't the party that was in control of Japan for all those decades a Liberal one?

You can see part of the problem we have with the Left, today, if this is how they see the motivations of conservatives, and of themselves. Idealism from New Deal welfarists??

I'd hate to read what he attributes to the American Revolution. The founding Fathers were *not* socialists, pretty damn far from it.

Story is 2 years old!!!

Is it necessary to go that far back to find examples?

Sure, a few tens of thousands may die, but what is that compared to the glories of democratic revolution?

I think this (false) premise explains everything. The squeamish namby-pamby European wimp called Buruma creates a straw man, heroically struggles with him, achieves a glorious victory - and never comes even close to the real problem.

How very typical...