Terror Inc.

[joanna bujes]

At 01:03 PM 05/04/2002 -0400, Dennis wrote:
>If anyone lives in a fantasy land, it's you Yoshie, dreaming about how your
>Leninist concept of politics will somehow take root among the poor and
>dispossessed of America. You are always banging on about organizing a "real"
>left; yet when a prime issue like this arises out of the smoke and ash of
>Ground Zero, where a "real" left committed to actual lives could make a
>difference, you raise your fist in the air and pretend it's 1969 all over
>again. The US was a growing empire in 1941, had invaded Nicaragua, had
>imperial/financial intentions in Asia and South America, allowed racial
>segregation at home among other sins. So what right did we have to attack
>the Germans or the Japanese? And why did the left of that period support
>imperial America? Were they living in a dream world?

When I think of Yoshie, the last thing that occurs to me is that she's 
living in a fantasy world. I have been on this list for about a 
year(?)...I've read every one of Yoshie's posts because they are reliably 
rational and clear. Her genuine devotion to a future for the working class 
is also striking.

As several people have observed, the source of terror is NOT Afghanistan. 
However, what the U.S. has truly excelled at in the last twenty years is in 
the destruction of small and completely helpless countries. You might call 
it the Israeli model of warfare. Afganistan was more about a media win than 
it was about actually protecting U.S. citizens from terror. It was also 
about establishing bases in the region.

Rather than going off on analogies to WWII, which don't make any sense to 
me, perhaps you could address the earlier question of the relationship of 
the U.S. to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which seem much closer to the mark.

JOanna