Michael Pugliese wrote:
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> Subject: [ASDnet] Should Peace Movements Criticize Terrorism??
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The question is not really interesting. It's like asking if we should
criticize the weather. The premises of the question (I am treating it as
a question raised in the u.s. for activists in the u.s.) are simply all
wrong.
Such a question would have made sense within the anti-war movement in the 1960s as a way of introducing a critique of two of the more destructive currents in the movement: (1) Principled (as opposed to tactical) non-violence and (2) Principled (as opposed to tactical) violence, represented by the weatherman current. Principled Non-Violence is always the twin of terrorism. You can't get rid of one without getting rid of the other.
But note that the question (or a variant of it) made sense as a question _within_ a (somewhat) organized movement about that movement's own strategy, tactics, and principles. There was a context in which it could be argued out in a way that might make an actual difference in practice, and it was not a stupidly and offensively moralistic question about what other people in other circumstances should be doing.
Next note that the question contains an outright lie by omission. It pretends to be a question about "Terrorism" -- one would presume from that that it must be referring to the polcies of the primary agents of Terror in the world today: The U.S., Israel, Germany, France, Turkey, etc. These are the _only_ organized terrorist agents. But actually, of course, Art Waskow, David McReynolds & Co. are not raising a question about terrorism, they are raising a question about the utterly disorganized response of miscellaneous 'forces' in Palestine to the burgeoning final solution being imposed on them by the Zionist terrorists. There is not and there cannot be in Palestine a center of decision making on such topics as the use of violence or of the appropriate and inappropriate use of violence. There is no such center because the core of U.S. and Israeli policy for 50 years has been to make sure that there cannot be such a center.
So the question is utterly meaningless as applied to Palestine. It can have no honest meaning. So given that its apparent or claimed meaning is incoherent, what material content should we give to it.
My suggestion:
"Should we beautiful people in the 'peace movement' in the United States keep ourselves pure and above the struggle in Palestine?"
Carrol