What you don't seems to recognize here is that the critique I made of this notion of "revolutionary defeatism" is aimed at the very frame you offer for these particular observations -- about as polarized a dualism as one can imagine, with one side being the monolithic imperial American identity ("the evil empire"), the embodiment of pure evil in the world, and the other side being, at least for Americans, "revolutionary defeatism," which opposes, by definition, every international action by the US and supports, by definition, with its opponents, no matter how scurrilous they may be.
In fact, of course, there has always been an anti-imperialist strain in American politics, and not just among African-Americans (remember Mark Twain and William Jennings Bryan?). But insofar as anti-imperialism has ever been a significant presence in American politics, it has entirely eschewed the nihilistic and suicidal Weatherunderground type politics of "revolutionary defeatism," and grounded itself in the best and most progressive of American historical narratives and American identity. Certainly, this was clearly the approach of Martin Luther King, whom you quote at length. His contention was always that we must have a clear standard of what constitutes moral and immoral action in international affairs, and that we must hold our own government to that standard, which includes many principles which it professes to follow, but does not. Can anyone in their wildest dreams ever imagine a King providing apologies for serial ethnic cleansers and war criminals, for the likes of a Milosevic or a Hussein, on the grounds that they had come into conflict with the US?
The notion that because you stick the word "imperialist" after the word "humanitarian," you have denied your opponents on the democratic left any claim on the anti-imperialist tradition is a figment of idealist logic. The inheritors of the American anti-imperialist tradition are those who, in the tradition of King, hold to one consistent moral standard in international affairs, and apply it to all nations.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --