>Cheney Confers With Saudi Leaders
>
>
>By Tom Raum
>Associated Press Writer
>Saturday, March 16, 2002; 1:25 PM
>
>
>JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Vice President Dick Cheney collected more
>rebuffs on Iraq Saturday even as he conveyed growing U.S. interest
>in a Saudi-sponsored Middle East peace initiative.
>
>Cheney met with Saudi leaders who have expressed sharp
>reservations about any U.S. plan to move militarily against Iraq.
Well if I can still so easily be labelled a "global reformist" without any evidence of how a more revolutionary correspondent would achieve global revolution faster without some mediating campaign for radical reforms, I would rather, as a Brit, be thought to be a useful idiot of Mugabe than a useful idiot of Empire.
The point I was making was a wider one than who is an idiot apologist for which reactionary state. Part of the answer must be that on a list of this size and scope we make allowances for the fact that people are writing from different places and contexts. Patrick Bond, whom I do not regard as "revolutionary socialite" writes as an activist in southern Africa and has a far greater right and duty to consider how the struggle should be advanced against local forces that on a local level are reactionary. Thus progressive people in South Africa may well have urged the ANC government not to send any representative to Mugabe's inauguration. But for Brits or Americans to support their own governments in pressing South Africa and Nigeria to stay away from Mugabe's inauguration IMHO is to be analysed in a wholly different manner.
The article that Ian forwarded also makes the wider point concretely: that there are some very funny line-ups now, and they must be analysed concretely. There is no doubt that Saudi Arabia is highly deficient in formal democracy. There is no doubt that it contributed a large proportion of the personnel and the money for a series of highly reactionary islamic terrorist actions against US imperialism, that have in fact strengthened US imperialism, and undermined a fast developing global anti-capitalism movement. Nevetheless at this concrete point in time, Saudi Arabia under the Crown Prince is playing to some extent a progressive role in pressing for a just settlement in Palestine, and opposing war against Iraq.
(That does not mean I expect genuine progressive people in Saudi Arabia from adancing the struggle for greater democratic rights within that country.)
Chris Burford
London