I don't know, although there's a world of difference between being mistaken and lying, obviously. The fuss did help sell his book though.
The conversations I've had with people at Bletchley Park are significantly less nuanced than that article. They're adamant Churchill didn't know, but they're hardly reference material ...
War is largely about the balance of harm. It's horrible, but (particularly at the time) a large part of it is choosing between which sets of your own people die. I also think there's a difference between choosing to let one group of people take the hit and being fine with it.
All of which are the sort of arguments I'd use to defend a number of people, Castro included, that people might attack. Other people might well use these arguments to defend people I wouldn't, such as Stalin. At the end of the day, I agree with one of the points of your post: nobody is pure goodness, all the people we consider "great" have made questionable decisions. Most? Many? All of? the people we consider "evil" have done good. It's not as black and white as we'd like to believe.
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Date: 2016-12-01 09:54 am (UTC)The conversations I've had with people at Bletchley Park are significantly less nuanced than that article. They're adamant Churchill didn't know, but they're hardly reference material ...
War is largely about the balance of harm. It's horrible, but (particularly at the time) a large part of it is choosing between which sets of your own people die. I also think there's a difference between choosing to let one group of people take the hit and being fine with it.
All of which are the sort of arguments I'd use to defend a number of people, Castro included, that people might attack. Other people might well use these arguments to defend people I wouldn't, such as Stalin. At the end of the day, I agree with one of the points of your post: nobody is pure goodness, all the people we consider "great" have made questionable decisions. Most? Many? All of? the people we consider "evil" have done good. It's not as black and white as we'd like to believe.