-----Original Message----- From: Max Sawicky <sawicky at bellatlantic.net> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Wednesday, October 10, 2001 12:05 AM Subject: RE: Doug's non-rhetorical WITBD?, as Re: Is ...
mbs:
>>Insofar as you excoriate the prevailing regime
>>to breathing people, rather than in front of a mirror,
>>it's hard to avoid the question of how a regime
>>that did not deserve excoriation would act. So
>>I don't think you can escape that obligation ...
lp:
>Well, since you put it that way, I suppose it would start with cutting off
>all aid to Israel, discontinuing the blockade of Iraq, and removing all
>troops from the land of the two holy places (i.e. Arabia). . . .
>mbs: Surrender is not a smart campaign
>platform, not least because it begs the
>question of retribution.
lp: You didn't ask what a smart campaign platform would be. You asked Carrol what a 'government that did not deserve excoriation' would do.
Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that a truthful campaign platform is a smart one in the long run. Ultimately (at least in my conception of the world), we have to get past this notion that Sept. 11 was a unique world-changing incident. It wasn't. It was a horrible and bloody episode in a very horrible, very bloody, and very long and widespread war between the U.S. government, and its allies, on the one hand, and the part of the world that happens to live above or near oil, from Morocco to Indonesia, on the other hand. We should not frame the question 'what should we do about 9/11?'. We should frame it as 'what should we do about 80+ years of war?' (Yes, I KNOW that's how Osama frames it too. But I was writing leaflets that way before I heard his tape. I don't have to crib anti-imperialism from him.)
lp