What's the Real Topic -- was Re:

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Doug, as I thought I had made clear in my earlier posts, I regarded
Mark's attack on you personally as totally beyond bounds, a serious
disruption of political discussion, and a disservice to the anti-war
cause. Stripped of irony (which was not very cleaver irony but which I
thought offered no great difficulty of construal) what I in effect said
was that _objectively_ Mark's post constituted a provocation, making
him, _objectively_, a supporter of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan.

Now the way to handle provocations (whether they are intentional or only
objectively so) is to (a) expose them for what they are and (b) then
ignore them and go back to the substance being debated, in this case the
nature of the U.S. assault on Afghanistan. I think the first goal has
been achieved; actually I think my posts did a pretty good job of that.
But the second goal requires your cooperation; that means stop reacting
to Mark's personal attack on you, stop reacting to every disagreement
with you as though it were a personal attack, and get back to the
substance in your own posts.

You fail to do that in the post below.

Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Mark Jones wrote:
>
> > [clip]
>
> Kind of curious, Mark - how'd you feel about the Soviet invasion of
> Afg?

This is merely a personal attack on Mark. O.K. He asked for it.
Nevertheless by making it you too are contributing richly to the
"atmosphere" you complain about on Pen-L. Michael, Steve Philion, and I
have all tried to get us back to the topic. Why don't you go along with
that effort?

Carrol

 They bombed entire cities into rubble, killing 20,000 at a time.
> Was that excusable because it served the cause of proletarian
> revolution?
>
> Doug