The Atlantic - Latest Comments in No carbon shall escape my sight

Re: No carbon shall escape my sight

jay — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:08:50 -0000

what a perfect historical-political moment for this to come out!

Re: No carbon shall escape my sight

Michael O'Neill — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:46:51 -0000

@G.D. Cold-blooded murder has practical advantages, depending on your perspective.

I felt pointing to the practical disadvantages was a dilution of the point of US Army hypocrisy that you were making.

Re: No carbon shall escape my sight

G.D. — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:25:15 -0000

Michael: Which practical advantages? The only one I can think of is the cheap labor from slavery (a HUGE economic leg-up for the U.S.), but slavery was inherently unstable.

Re: No carbon shall escape my sight

Stephen Bank — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:22:45 -0000

Does anyone know how to get comedy central videos to work in Canada?

Re: No carbon shall escape my sight

Michael O'Neill — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:17:46 -0000

@G.D. You do encourage me to want to read the book. Do we really care how many "practical disadvantages" there are? Doesn't that just open up the door to weiging them against the practical advantages?

Re: No carbon shall escape my sight

G.D. — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:25:23 -0000

One of the things that struck me about Koerner's book was how schizophrenic the U.S. Army was in regard to its own policy of segregation. They made a point to instruct black G.I.'s not to discuss the Army's racial stratification with the people in Burma and India, lest Axis spies learn of it and use it to sow weakness. But they were still doggedly committed to enforcing segregation.

Yet another example of the practical disadvantages of institutional racism.