International law is not domestic law-- unequal application is inherent in a system without global government with the exclusive monopoly on force. I'm all for it as a goal, but I don't buy applying the same standards of equal justice, when it is impossible, that we demand for domestic law.
I don't applaud the US for its unilaterialism-- but I won't defend butchers who deserve to be stopped when they end up in the US's crosshairs. I'd rather build multi-lateralist principles defending regimes that are righteous and condemn the US in those cases.
The basic reality is that left mobilization over the last decades against illegal acts by the US overseas has been effective in that US power feels far more need to justify itself by targetting those who are actually butchers or violators of international law. They are picking their targets carefully-- it's almost as if they know they can sucker the left into defending these unsavory regimes and thereby discredit the left.
The reason the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so befuddling the Bush regime is that it violates the simple white hat-black hat strategy of targetting enemies that they were planning. They would much prefer to have the US Left protesting attacks on Al Quaeda and Saddam, then let the focus be on the Palestinians who have a real demand for justice and whose leader is democratically supported by the Palestinians. With Arafat, they face the problem that he cannot be demonized as unrepresentative of his people-- if anything, he is more moderate than the grassroots --so the pure "good guy vs. bad guy" structure of the debate doesn't fly. They're trying but it is coming off as a muddle, as even Time magazine noted this past week in declaring Bush's policies a complete mess.
-- Nathan Newman
----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 12:08 PM Subject: Re: anti-zionism
>
>But because the US would not act against Sharon's is no reason not to
>support
>US action against Milosevic's regime. That is the pragmatic view to get
>half
>a loaf of justice. And support the principle against Israel to demand as
>much justice as we can pressure the US to push for.
>
>-- Nathan Newman
>
Actually, "justice," if that's what it is, unjustly administered, may but be justice at all. Even if, as I suspect, most of the people on death row are guilty of horrible crimes for which they might be thought to deserve to die, the fact that an overwhelming proportion of them are black is a reason not to kill any of them. Moreover, I, unlike you, have a strong gag reflex about the US(!) setting itself as judge, jury, and Lord High Executioner of the world's bad guys, or at least the ones itdoesn't like. Just because Al Capone wacked some bead scumbags, the fact that theyw ere scumbags didn't make it OK for Al Capone to do it. jks
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