Read the responses from the locals to see how well--NOT--thought of this guy's opinions are in the area.
Compare his ideas with those of VDH:
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson062708.html
Security and Freedom
A third postmodern tenet that has curtailed free expression is what I would call moral equivalence, or the inability to discern Western and non-Western pathologies. As a strain of multiculturalism, moral equivalence seeks to do away with any notion of calibration and magnitude, and place impossible burdens of perfection upon Western societies.
Sometimes the Western misdemeanor is defined down as equivalent to another culture’s felony. Abu Ghraib, for example, where no Iraqi detainees perished, is the equivalent of either a Nazi Stalag or Soviet Gulag, where millions were starved to death or executed. After all, all three were penal camps and therefore roughly equivalent in ethical terms.
Context becomes irrelevant. The invasion of Iraq — approved by an elected Senate, argued over at the United Nations, intended to remove a genocidal dictator and leave a constitutional government in its wake — is no different from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the result of a communist dictatorship desire to crush an anti-Soviet neighbor, waged ruthlessly against a civilian population, and resulting in the installation of an authoritarian puppet government.
Standards of censure are never equally applied: We worry whether an errant bomb killed Iraqi civilians; silence ensues when Russians nearly obliterate Grozny and kill tens of thousands of civilians. The mishandling of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, one of the five worst natural disasters in the nation’s history, in which 1,836 Americans were killed, is singular evidence of American racism and incompetence; nearly 300,000 were lost in an Indonesian Tsunami, a Burmese Hurricane accounted for 100,000 dead, and a Chinese earthquake took 50,000 lives — and few remarked either on the incompetence of these governments in reacting to such a staggering loss of life, or the failure of such states to provide safe and adequate housing for their populations in the first place.
Richard's $.02
PS - I'm spending the 4th with a few friends. Menu of the Day - hot dogs Chicago style, coleslaw and potato salad from Spring Creek Barbecue, corn on the cob, salsa and chips, watermelon, and Shinerbock beer...and I'm not inviting the likes of Mr Satullo to enjoy it with me.
