>Yours or mine? Next thing you'll be calling me a bleeding heart liberal,
>er, was that bleeding heart pacifist?
since i've recently discovered i'm a pacifist, then no. it simply would NOT be something i'd hurl as an insult, you see. this discovery is recent since i'd always opposed war for leftist, anti-imperialist reasons. that's all i've known in my lifetime. i wouldn't have named myself a pacifist four months ago because i believe that violence will be necessary in the transition from capitalism to socialism. nonetheless, 911 tested my position, mainly because my own personal experience of loss in recent events, and because my tentative (largely agnostic, really) theoretical position on the perpetrators of 9-11 would suggest that some sort of action needed to be taken for the reasons marx outlines in his Letter to Arnold Ruge, which I've posted here before if you care to know more. Nonetheless, i cannot bring myself to advance either war or legal mechanisms for apprehending the perps and achieving "justice". even the legal route, to me, will surely bring nearly as much death and destruction.
so, i could not hurl pacifist as an epithet at you now. nor could i have done so four months ago since i've work as an antiwar activist in two wars now--once with a stepson stationed in the Gulf and right now with a partner in the military. so, you see, these were very real and risky positions taken by me then and now. i had to face consequences for my choices, consequences that, in fact, led to the end of a marriage. i wouldn't have it any other way, however. making that level of commitment to an antiwar movement, i hope, demonstrates to you how serious i was and am here.
perhaps this helps explain why i tend to be able to see several sides to the issues in recent months.
that said, working with antiwar activists brings one into contact with some admirable pacifists. no matter what my position on war in the past, i could never have used pacificism as an insulting label. pacifists are people who do not take on that position lightly. not the ones i've known.
> If one of the most obvious and least interesting things I said in my post
>could sear itself in your memory for such fluent quoting, then I must be
>doing something right afterall.
>
>The way I see it, most people are really in the world for two reasons: to
>reproduce their genes in recombination with someone elses and to reproduce
>their ideas in and across social networks.
>LBO-Talk is a good case in point. And no doubt some of you are just dying
i will, however, call you a functionalist.
>toexchange chromosomes as you exchange ideas.Societies and individuals
>want to survive wars and conflicts so they can get on with life. Even the
>Taliban wanted that chance. The NA and the non-Taliban Pashtun might well
>if they don't try to change the tribal makeup too much. They will mourn
>for their dead when the killing stops and try to get on with life.
it would be best to go to afghanistan and tell them this, in case they're thinking that they might want "justice" in the future, as doug seems to think he wants. that would surely prevent any attempts at revenge, just as i'm sure it persuaded doug.
>The US experienced its share of disequilibrium after the Persian Gulf
>War--LA, McVeigh for example.
>
>Doug suggests pacifists invite Mullah Omar to coffee on the lower east
>side. I think that makes perfectly good sense. The Arabs he knew probably
>shared coffee, and he tea.
>
>Perhaps had something real been exchanged a long time ago, it would never
>have come to this.
lacks the incisive analysis required of leftist structural analyses of class.
no requirement that you address the issues in those terms, of course.
carry on.
kelley