Cheap Morality, was Re: anti-zionism

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Sat May 11 18:06:54 PDT 2002



>Nathan says:
> >And a moral analysis comparing those
> >situations is not "cheap" but a way to provoke people who opposed
>Milosevic
> >to justify why they can defend Sharon.


>-Is there anyone on LBO-talk who opposed Milosevic and yet defends
>-Sharon

Is there anyone on this list who defends Sharon? I doubt it. For that matter, is thee anyone on the list who defends Milo? I doubt that too.


>
>Since I specifically framed the comparison in discussing the failure of the
>left to appeal to liberals who had supported Kosovo intervention, but who
>were undecided on Palestine. I noted that the left was missing the chance
>to make the appeal because they were not engaging in the right moral
>comparisons.
>

Actually, it's the factual analogy that holds many of us up, I think; morally I agree at least that they're both brutes.


>God knows I would never bring up Kosovo to convice anyone here of anything,
>since there continues to be more sympathy here for the Serbs in Kosovo who
>participated in the cultural suppression and then murder of the Albanian
>Kosovars than for their victims.

Not everyone who opposed the Balkan war did so out of 'symapthy' for the 'murdering Serbs.' I did so on general anti-imperialist grounds. I think Milo's regime was the graveyard of the best hope socialism had in the last century, but I also don't trust the US as a moral arbiter, and I thought and think that the Balkan wars helped legitimate interventionism, rolling back the (very healthy) Vietnam Syndrome. Not by themselves of course; the Gulf war was the first post-V-syndrone war. There are Workers World types who defended Milo's regime--I'd rather call it that than smear 'the Serbs' as murderers tout court, don't you agree, Nathan?--but they were not the majority by a long shot. You aren't scoring points by misrepresenting your critics.

The point was to note the ineffectiveness
>of much of the left propaganda on Palestine.
>
>-- Nathan Newman

Well, outside the US and its lapdog pro-Israel press, left propaganda is pretty successful in undermining support for Sharon. This suggestrs to me that the problem is not that we haven't hit on the right analogy to sell to people. Even in the US there is more skepticism about Sharon than you might suspect. The problem is, what AMericansd think about foreign policy doesn't normally matter. We have to get millions in the streets before it matters. That is unlikely on this issue.

Btw, Nathan, what are your lovely Dems saying about the war on the West Bank? ANy of them calling for bombing Israel just yet?

jks

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