"Gordon Fitch" <gcf at panix.com>
> -But unto what end? One can't oppose the war -- a particular
> -war or the everlasting war of class -- by pretending to support
> -it, regardless of how repugnant one's position is to the
> -vengeful, the fearful, the aggressive and the greedy -- the
> -overwhelming majority, in short. See Matthew 5:13.
Nathan Newman:
> But I don't oppose "war" or any other particular means-- I take positions on
> various ends and determine whether those means are the effective and morally
> justified ones to attain those ends. The problem is that ends are often
> mixed as are means, so the argument that needs to be made is not binary --
> yes or no -- but one of broader strategic viewpoints to change peoples minds.
Well, that's part of your problem, from my point of view. Once one decides that war is generally a morally passable strategy for dealing with the world, one is on the well- known slippery slope. However, absent a common religious or metaphysical ground, I don't know if I can make an satisfactory argument against it. There's probably no really strong _rational_ reason not to kill as many people as one likes if one can get away with it, and one is conveniently free from excessive sympathy for one's fellow beings. But if some people think there's something wrong with killing (or maiming or terrorizing or impoverishing) people, including non-combatants, yet support (some) war as policy anyway, they've got a serious contradiction going, which will tempt us less confused anti- imperialist anti-warriors to appeal to their soft, squishy, leftie side. Perhaps successfully sometimes.
Unfortunately, by the same token, their hard right side is available to the fans of war and imperialism.
> >I think you're right about the failure of the anti-war
> >movement of the '60s and '70s, but my diagnosis is that it
> >was too compromised, too anti-intellectual, too popular to
> >have any center or message. Hence many of its youthful
> >participants are now, in middle age, enthusiasts for war
> >and imperialism, and many of them were so well in advance of
> >September 11th.
> Well we differ on whether Vietnam is equivalent to Afghanistan;
I didn't say it was. Vietnam was presented by the government-and-media as having actually attacked a warship of the United States, and of being part of some sort of evil world-wide conspiracy. No one has made such claims about wretched Afghanistan, now twice the object of superpower furies its people had nothing to do with provoking.
> I think it is
> quite possible to be intellectually and morally consistent and to have
> opposed Vietnam and support war in Afghanistan. I don't agree with it, but I
> recognize the different ends and means used in each, so a different
> calculation than mine could advance it. Barney Frank was asked about his
> position change and without blinking an eye, he noted that the US was morally
> wrong in Vietnam and deserved to lose the war, but is the morally right actor
> compared to Bin Laden and the Taliban.
Right. But accepting the idea of war, which invariably involves doing grave harm to non-combatants, makes morals into mere decor. Now, people like Barney Frank are starting to complain about the decor in Afghanistan, but it's after all what they signed up for in the first place, and is rather unfair to the people they sent to do the work they desired done.
> As for imperialism-- why is that bad? Some people have historically
> supported imperialism done for moral purposes, so merely repeating the word
> like a swear word is not going to convince anyone. What is happening in the
> world because of US military actions that would be better without its
> actions? If you cannot convince people that the world would be better
> without US action, then why should they listen? And in a world where the
> alternative seems to be Saddam Hussein, Milosevic and Bin Laden, the US
> begins to look like the better alternative.
>
> Now, that's the simple dichotomy, but the anti-war movement has fed into
> under the umbrella of IAC-style politics in defending such folks as THE
> opponents of US "imperialism." The antiglobalization movement was
> articulating an alternative approach to critiquing US economic and political
> power, but that seems to have disappeared into the maw of old-style antiwar
> rhetoric that makes heros of mass murderers.
Imperialism is bad in that war is necessary to impose it, and its result is necessarily coercive, that is, it leads to a situation in which freedom, equality and peace are impossible. Again, though, if one believes that war is a passable political strategy, it is hard to argue against its full exercise in fulfillment of imperial ambitions, or for any other reason which may seem attractive, like national glory, commercial success, personal fame, or the fun of the thing itself.
I certainly haven't made heroes out of mass murderers. The fact is, I'm 'way behind almost everyone else in figuring out what use to put them to -- but eventually I'm sure I'll think of something.
-- Gordon