Word: moynihan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...behind Moynihan's fears of the "idea of the all-encompassing State" lies his desire to convince Americans that the aims of our foreign policy are not the defense of a world-wide system of U.S. military and economic domination. In the recent past, the U.S. has attempted to bomb Indochinese anticolonialists into submission and has continuously supported and invested in overtly totalitarian regimes like Chile, South Korea, and Iran, where torture, censorship and political repression are the everyday instruments of government. Now, as popular consciousness is increasingly sensitive to the gap between American rhetoric and reality, Moynihan's efforts...
EVEN WHEN Moynihan's attacks are directed against a clearly evil target, like Uganda's Idi Amin, they are couched in language calculated to offend third world sensibilities. It was a gross distortion to claim, as Moynihan did, that it was "no accident" that "racist murderer" Idi Amin, Ugandan head-of-state, was president of the Organization for African Unity. Most African leaders deplore Amin and his policies, although they accepted him as formal head of the OAU--owing to the organization's yearly rotation system--to avoid a public rift...
Again, when Moynihan attacked the reprehensible U.N. resolution terming Zionism a form of racism, his polemic was not directed at the consequences of the resolution for the continued existence of Israel, but the threat the resolution posed for the survival of "Western democratic principles." To read the actual text of his general assembly speech, one might think that Ben-Gurion, Rabin and Meir were less under attack by the resolution than Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau...
...Moynihan has claimed that "the United Nations is a place where lies are told." But in his charge that the real issue in Angola is the threat of Soviet domination in Southern Africa, Moynihan himself is party to a bold enough lie. Not only is the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola avowedly opposed to Soviet bases on their territory, but massive Soviet involvement there came only in response to prior American intervention to prevent leftist victory...
...Moynihan has proposed that the United States withhold foreign aid, including humanitarian and development assistance, from those third world countries who do not support the American position on the Zionism resolution and Angola. Not only is the use of U.S. foreign aid as a political weapon certain to hurt independent leftist third world regimes but such usage would be irrational even on its own terms, because it could only be used against those countries too weak to protect themselves, whether or not they are the chief opponents of American policy. It may be assumed that wealthy or strategically important Arab...