>We should have _clearly_ opposed "peace-keepers" and argued against
>the ETAN, Australian unionists, etc. that called for an imperial
>military intervention. An unpopular position among liberals &
>leftists at that time, yes, but we should have.
So that tens of thousands more East Timorese could have been killed? Ah, yes. At least you have your principles. Too bad they don't deflect bullets and machetes.
People familiar with ET's history and who cared about what happened to the Timorese (as opposed to those who, at a comfortable distance, use the situation to bludgeon other leftists) had an extremely difficult decision to make: support the intervention, and stop the killing but risk ET becoming a UN fiefdom; or oppose the intervention and, well, see-what-happens. In other words, a decision with a tremendous amount of moral consequence. Your self-assured and unsubtle (and, I might add, late in arriving) should-haves don't factor in any of it. As Emily Dickinson might say (if I coached her a bit): "She sweeps with single-colored Brooms--/ And leaves the Shreds behind--"
>It appears to me that, with each recent imperial military
>intervention, the ranks of the anti-imperialist left have been
>thinning fast [...] This trend is likely to continue, if we don't
>learn anything from Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, etc.
The trouble with this analysis, at least in regard to Haiti, Somalia, and East Timor, is that it's predicated on a dyslexic reading of history. Haiti's problems didn't begin in 1994, when the US reinstalled Aristide; their troubles were institutionalized by the US-backed Duvaliers, and after that by the US-backed (albeit only tacitly) military junta, which was in power just long enough to destroy the organizations and institutions built during Aristide's first, few months in power. The concentration on the moment of intervention erases from memory the far more serious and damaging decades of imperial plunder that preceded it. Instead of viewing these "humanitarian interventions" as a part of the continuum of imperialism, you see it as a betrayal by those who are supposed to be on your side--just as your automatic and absolute conflation of intervention and imperialism ensures that you will never have to make a complicated decision.
>BTW, I saw a few people who were carrying "Free Tibet" placards in
>the Ellipse on A16. It's good that there weren't many more, but it's
>disturbing that there were some.
BTW, can you read these sentences and still not understand why someone might call you a Stalinist?
Eric