-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: underestimates? Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 13:04:11 -0500 From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Max Sawicky wrote:
>
> >But in the main I think Mark underestimates
> >the power of the Admin and its allies to
> >cope with OBL et al.
>
> I'm coming around to thinking you may be right. Fisk et al are
> confident that the war will backfire on the U.S. - that the
> Arab/Muslim masses, unable to take it anymore, will explode and take
> down the Pakistani and Saudi regimes. Maybe. But haven't we heard
> similar things in the past? There were a lot of arguments like that
> in the Gulf War too. Very often, violent repression works. The U.S.
> sustains its imperial power in part by its willingness to commit
> extravagant excesses of violence. Someday it won't work, but it has
> plenty of times in the past.
>
> Doug
I tend to agree with Max & Doug on this -- to the extent that I care to monkey around with crystal balls.
But the political point is that we (leftists) can't do anything about it if this happens. If it happens it happens.
But what we should prepare for _now_ is the othe alternative, which I have labelled the tarbaby model. And we should predict that (as Fisk is doing) in order to mobilize people around that possibility. Nothing will be lost if we prepare and are wrong. A good deal will be lost if we don't prepare for that future.
That, incidentally, is why polls and such like have no political importance whatever. They tell us nothing about what (say) 25% of the population will be thinking 12 months from now, and that is the important public opinion.
Carrol