-----Original Message----- From: Kelley <kwalker2 at gte.net>
>At 09:07 AM 10/20/01 -0500, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>>The terrorists are going to win. That is, the U.S. is going at some
>>point to begin a withdrawal from the arc that runs from Morocco to
>>Indonesia.
>so you do recognize that what pulling out of the ME means: the likelihood
>of the rise of proto-fascists to power. after all, once the US has conceded
>with egg on its face, they will be even more powerful than they are now.
>
>hmmmmmmm.
Hmmm? Yeah, well, that's the price we pay for not being more attentive while the US was murdering socialists, secular reformers, democrats, and so on, all those years. In the short run it would mean a victory for kings and Islamists and even some people like the Taliban, but in the long run, and maybe not so long, in the absence of the US money-and-arms machine, the left opposition will re-emerge.
In any case, what's the alternative? To 'take up the white man's burden' and colonize them all and 'teach them democracy'? That's an old and discredited program, although not dead.
In the meantime, by the way, I think we are 'counting our chickens before they're hatched' if we spend too much time planning for what happens after US imperialism is destroyed. Carrol says they will withdraw from the area of the world that they most need to control. It will be a long time before that happens.
lp