Hitch loves you

[Chuck Munson]

Nathan Newman wrote:
> 
> On this point, I agree with Hitch.  I think the mindless sloganeering
> sustituting for concrete analysis of the present sitution after S11 was one
> of the most depressing things I have experienced in years.  We lost the
> debate on the war and even more on the peace, because the public analysis of
> the "peace movement" was so disconnected from the reality experienced by the
> general population that they tuned it out.   The media may have contributed
> with their press blackouts, but that was true in many past peace movements
> and the message got out on the streets.  On this movement, I personally know
> many LEFTISTS who were tuning out the peace movement because they found it
> so uncompelling in its lack of analysis.  Forget the liberals who were
> actively alienated by it.

The situation with the "peace movement" is not as dire as you paint it.
The anti-war cause has faced many hard challenges and it has done stupid
things. One of the main problems with the antiwar movement was that the
same tired and discredited patterns of the Left were repeated. I've
talked to activists who stopped going to "peace coalition" meetings
because they had become conducive to vanguardists and professional
"peace activists. I know that many people bailed on one of the local
coalitions in D.C. because they made a deliberate effort to remove
democractic decision-making from the organization.

I've also heard criticisms about how "peace" activists were talking like
this was going to be another Vietnam War. I thought we had gotten rid of
that nonsense after the Gulf War.

But we should recognize that the anti-war tendency is broader and more
diverse that it was during the U.S. War on Yugoslavia. It may not look
the same, but that's an important sign of maturity and forward-thinking.
There has also been a conscious move within the movement away from
rhetoric about "peace" and "violence." The language has moved towards
one of militancy that has characterized the anti-glob movement.

<< Chuck0 >>

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INTERNATIONALISM IN PRACTICE

An American soldier in a hospital explained how he was wounded: He said,
"I was told that the way to tell a hostile Vietnamese from a friendly
Vietnamese was to shout ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ If he shoots, he’s
unfriendly. So I saw this dude and yelled ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’
and he yelled back, ‘To hell with President Johnson!’ We were shaking
hands when a truck hit us." 

(from 1,001 Ways to Beat the Draft, by Tuli Kupferburg).