Doug Henwood wrote:
>Hmm, well, these particular victims seem to be from the educated
>middle class, and espouse a doctrine - or at least the milieu they're
>said to emerge from espouses a doctrine - that's pretty hideous.
>These aren't Uncle Sam's enemies from the good old days, like Fidel
>or the Sandinistas. So I'd say framing these folks as revolutionaries
>isn't a very promising strategy.
>
>Doug
>
OK, Let me be clear about something from the outset: neither I, nor has anyone else that I am aware of -- on this list or elsewhere-- ever expressed a word of support or admiration for these Islamic fascists, represented them as revolutionaries striking a blow for freedom, or shown the slightest sympathy for their bizarre, bigoted, chauvanistc and totalitarian worldview! I am sort of at a loss to see how you could claim "I was framing these folks as revolutionaries". Pointing out that these thugs struck back at the US after 50 yrs of American terror is pointing to a fact -- it neither expresses admiration for what they did nor for the people who were doing it. Indeed its a testament to the complete and utter efficacy of American terror in liquidating much of the secular, nationalist or left institutions -- ( trade-unions, peasant movements, political parties etc. etc.) throughout the middle or near east -- that repulsive ideologies like that of the taliban's have gained such a widespread following and capacity for mobilization. After the US helped wipe out the communist and trade union movements in Egypt and IRaq(including giving a list of names of 'communists' to Saddam Hussain for elimination), overthrowing a conservative parliamentary democracy under Mossadeq in Iran and instituting between 20 and 30 yrs of terrror under the Shah, underwriting and supporting the wiping out of between half a million to a million(!) communists, trade-unionists and peasant organizers in Indonesia after the Suharto coup . . . (have I even scratched the surface?!) -- is it any surprise that reactionary movements that offer some hope and sense of community(even if a highly exploitive one) are able to attract support when the issues most people face are no longer those of building a better world but of simple survival? All of this, I might add, with near complete silence from the western/American left. When the Palestenians began a massive non-violent/passive resistance campaign against the occupation in the early eighties it was recieved with utter indifference, getting *no* support from the American lib-left/peace movement (including all those flaky pacifist grps that usually adore thirld-worlders turning the other cheeks). Is it surprising then, that refugee camps from Gaza to the North West Frontier Province have been the most fertile ground for the recruitment of angry, dispossesed young men to the various madrassas and training camps? What other worlview or collective sense of struggle would they have been permitted to develop under such circumstances so efficiently imposed by America and her various propped-up puppet-regimes?
No, all that my post pointed to was the fact that Newman is essentially telling the left that it has one of two choices: either line up and help legitimate the US state as a moral agent with the right and moral standing to sit in judgement(sort of like Nazis sitting in judgement over the crimes of Ukranian collaborators), and thus making us-- the left-- complicit in providing an ideological cover for the US state's past and ongoing terror ; or the left has to accept the US state's justifiable right to intensify the terror and war *already* being bloodily waged against the poor, in order to seek retribution or "justice" for what they dared do to us regardless of what we did to them -- "no justice, no peace" as he reminded us. Either way Nathan, whether he realise it or not, is informing the left that it has no choice but to accomadate itself to, and become complicit with a war (barely touched upon above) that the US state has been waging against most of the world's population now for over 50 years.
Like I said, he is of to a good start in covering for Leo's absence.
love 'n rage, Pradeep
PS By the way, there is nothing personal in any of this. Joking aside, I take and respect Nathan far more seriousily than Leo, regardless of my serious differences with him