As a small isolated group located in the spectrum of identity politics, the left is totally ineffectual and deserves to be preoccupied with its self-pity.
But as part of a whole spectrum of global civil society, the left has been successful beyond anything anyone could hope on September 12.
There has been no massive retaliation by the world hegemon. It is now locked into a network of world alliances and understandings in which it finds its own freedom of manouevre increasingly constrained. It is even having to drop information guiding the local population on how to distinguish between food packages and unexploded cluster bombs.
US imperialism has had to accelerate the process of peace making in Northern Ireland, where there has been a breakthrough. It has had to instruct the Israeli government to withdraw from the West Bank and has had to accelerate a peace solution in the Middle East. It has become dependent on the third way politics of politicians like Blair, now listening to the Syrians. It has had to speak to Pakistan and India. It has had to mute its arrogant isolationism on biological weapons, climate control, and NMD.
The article clipped by Chris Kromm below, is a devastatingly authoritative blow to US hegemonic use of gun boat diplomacy from the air.
2001 is the year that US imperialism has lost its unquestioned hegemonic role and sovereignty is slipping to a network of international structures much more vulnerable to the global public opinion.
The biggest left loss still is the loss of momentum in the global protest movement against capitalism, but with the discrediting of the US military counter-terrorism strategy and the need to regroup around global justice, economic and legal, this will revive.
The price the left has had to pay for these remarkable victories by global civil society since Sept 11, is to be careful not to act in a sectarian way. To bite its tongue when ordinary people mourn 5, 000 killed in the WTC, and not hurl insults on the grounds that 20,000 children die a day unecessarily in this cruel capitalist world.
The price of avoiding sectarianism has been small. The victories in winning hegemonic ascendancy in the emerging global civil society have been huge.
And in a humble way, lists such as this have contributed to them.
Chris Burford
London
>This is a devastating
>
>
>At 30/10/01 23:47 -0500, you wrote:
>Al-Qaida is winning war, allies warned
>
>Tania Branigan
>Wednesday October 31, 2001
>The Guardian (London)
>
>The eminent military historian Professor Sir Michael Howard launched a
>scathing attack yesterday on the continued bombardment of Afghanistan,
>comparing it to "trying to eradicate cancer cells with a blow torch".