Nathan Newman <nathan at newman.org> writes:
>
> To start with the last question, I think Afghanistan would be better
> off if the Soviets had never invaded in the first place. Just as
> Vietnam and especially Cambodia would have been better off if the US
> never invaded.
As John Mage suggests, this response looks rather evasive. One can condemn the Soviets for having invaded, and then making a muddle of it but the question that I asked was whether or not you think that Afghanistan would have been off, if the Soviets had been successful in their invasion. That question you not answered.
>
> How are the WWP hypocrites? Because they don't say that they are
> for the US's defeat by anti-imperial forces, which would be honest,
> but instead create a front group that only speaks of opposing war in
> general. To quote one of the initial paragraphs of their original
> call:
>
> "Unless we stop President Bush and NATO from carrying out a new,
> wider war in the Middle East, the number of innocent victims will
> grow from the thousands to the tens of thousands and possibly more.
> A new, wider U.S. and NATO war in the Middle East can only lead to
> an escalating cycle of violence. War is not the answer."
I think that several points can be made here. First of all to oppose the US war in Afghanistan is at least by implication to support or at least countenance the defeat of the US by anti-imperial forces. The same was true thirty years ago, when people called for the US to withdraw from Vietnam. To support the withdrawl of US troops was to at least by implication to support a victory by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese, whether one was willing to admit to this or not. There was at the time very considerable debate within the antiwar movement over whether to openly back the Vietcong or not. The mainstream of the antiwar movement generally declined from openly calling for a Vietcong victory, even though as the logical implication of a withdrawl by the US from Vietnam under the circumstances then previaling was in fact to support a Vietcong victory. Not too surprisingly, the Johnson and Nixon administrations took it upon themselves to condemn the antiwar movement as "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." And indeed, there was a very considerable amount of truth to this. So what.
As I recall during the Vietnam War, lots of people from nearly all points of the political spectrum oppsed that war using antiwar rhetoric, not unlike the rhetoric that Nathan quotes from the WWP and IAC. And most of these people were by no means absolute pacifists either. Did that make them all hypocrites? Nathan's argument would suggest that since these folk used antiwar rhetoric without their being pacifists, then they must have been hypocrites. I would disagree. Does Nathan, who says that he opposed the US invasion of Vietnam, think the antiwar protestors of thirty years were hypocrites for their having used antiwar rhetoric?
>
> That is the sum total of analysis of the war in Afghanistan by the
> IAC/International ANSWER folks which they based the call to rallies
> upon. The hypocrisy is that they privately (outside their front
> group) justify the murder of "innocent victims" by the Soviets and
> think war was very much the answer when conducted by the Soviets.
> Too bad this same anlysis - of "escalating cycle of violence" - had
> not been applied by them to the Soviet invasion.
Well as I pointed out before, if we are not pacifists then we inevitably pick and choose which wars to support and which to oppose. Now I take it that you vehemently disagree with the WWP's choices, but does that make them hypocrites because these choices differ from yours (I take it that you are also not a pacifist either). It is certainly quite possible and common for people to oppose particular wars while recognizing that some wars may be justifiable. Does that mean that when they choose to oppose a particular war, they cannot avail themselves of antiwar rhetoric, in order to oppose that war?
>
> That so many folks justify these double-standards is at least one
> reason why the left gets pinned with the "hate America" label- yep,
> it's okay for the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, but even when 5000
> Americans are murdered, the US should be attacked.
>
> There are honest leftists who opposed both US and Soviet attacks on
> Afghanistan, but by associating with the IAC/WWP, they lose a lot of
> credibility.
You have me a bit confused here. On the one hand you say that you oppose the US attacks on Afghanistan, yet you condemn the WWP and IAC, on the grounds that they have "double standards." Yet by your own reasoning then the great majority of us (and yourself) are also guilty of having "double standards." Why? because while we may vehemently oppose certain wars and types of wars, we recognize that certain wars may be justifiable. You condemn the WWP for "hating America," but what does that really mean? That they are anti-imperialist? If that is what you mean, you perhaps do them more honor than they may deserve. In any case, I fail to see how "double standards" come into play here. Once it is granted that we may oppose wars, without being pacifists, then we are all (under your logic) guilty of having "double standards."
Jim F.
>
> -- Nathan Newman
>
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