Doug's non-rhetorical WITBD?, as Re: Is ...

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Oct 10 07:08:13 PDT 2001


O.K. I found out who l.p. was. It really wouldn't cripple people's fingers if they typed out names and identfied posters by name rather than "you wrote." Anyhow, I pretty much agree with what Lou says below. I guess I'd somehow missed Max's earlier question The answer of course to that is the U.S. government hasn't done anything abroad in 55 years that didn't deserve excoriation, and it's not going to change now. So the real question is what are leftists going to do about the infamy of the u.S. government.

Lou: "Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that a truthful campaign platform is a smart one in the long run." Exactly. Probably even in the medium run. And in the short run "the smart thing" involves the 'technology' as it were of organizing, not big sweeping proposals for the u.s. government and other miscellaneous murderers.

Apropos of many things. If there are any Quakers in your local organizing effort, pump them on methods of organizing meetings. They (or at least five of them locally) are geniuses at that.

Carrol

Lou Paulsen wrote:
>
>
> 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



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