>Anything we say will be hogwash,
>nuts, or worse.
Well its ironic that Hakki should suggest we forget these arguments just when revisiting the exchanges that started on 1st November would be really instructive, and just when, to the embarrassment of the Brits, apparently the Northern Alliance does not want our soldiers who have just arrived at Bagram.
And on the same day that Schroeder almost had to resign in order to contribute German troops.
Hakki seems to come from the school that says all this is so awful and illegitimate that tactical considerations should not be considered. But however triumphalist the US government may be now, the pragmatic soft left won major victories in softening the crudity of the counterattack that was highly likely after Sept 11. Effectively it stopped a war against Iraq. Effectively it stopped a prolonged high altitude cynical bombing campaign.
Now the soft (revolutionarily impure) left needs to think hard. Blundering around Afghanistan may breed even more terrorists than there were in the first place, but with an anti-caking substance to ensure widespread dispersal.
>Greg,
>
>Forgive me but I tend to be rather short with "left" tactics and strategy
>that presuppose this to be some sort of legitimate self-defense action
>rather than an imperialist war.
Of course the war was not legitimate. Of course in a world in which there are such inequalities of wealth and power, a counterattack was illegitimate. But of course, unless your idealism requires you to ignore as a matter of faith the existence of power structures and material self interest, there was going to be some sort of retaliation by the USA.
The question was would the peace movement adopt an idealised pacificist or anarchist position or would it have impact by playing on the actual doubts and hesitancies within the ruling circles? The soft left, thank God, did that, and powerfully influenced the direction of world politics.
>However, even if this war did have some degree of legitimacy - but Pilger
>has already said it's not about ObL but about OiL - we still have no
>business discussing military tactics. First of all, we're not qualified
>(hence my crack about Sandhurst),
Engels took the trouble to study military affairs particularly closely, and he was not let into Sandhurst.
>and I doubt anyone is, seeing how the
>rapid NA advance took everyone by surprise. Hitchens is going to look even
>sillier than he does now when Kabul blows up again,
fine
>just like it did the
>last time the NA took it. All those cheering the "success" of US tactics
>will look glum indeed if the Afghans - not necessarily the Talibs - start
>filling up US body bags through the winter. We would really be assholes to
>root for a massive US troop commitment if that turned out to mean blowing up
>civilians from the ground rather than from the air, or a bunch of MyLai's
>and "free-fire zone"s rather than "kill boxes". And that brings me to the
>second reason: Endorsing a military move means endorsing
Whose endorsing? Focussing criticisms on particular aspects of the ruling class strategy does not mean you endorse the rest of it.
>- at the very
>least - its immediate consequences. Do we trust the Pentagon that much?
Do we indeed?
>Do
>we really want to put our John Hancock on all the future corpses and
>devastation?
>
>What military tactic would further the demise of the imperialists? Big
>batallions? Blitzkrieg? Tactical nukes?
It is actually a good question. Try asking it. It is still relevant. Unless the US commits itself to global justice it will never be at peace.
>Anything we say will be hogwash,
>nuts, or worse.
The reverse - but that assumes that leftists should actually discuss difficult questions of policy and tactics with the belief that they might have some impact on the material world, however indirectly.
Chris Burford
London