-- Nathan
----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 2:42 PM Subject: Anti-Imperialism 101 Re: Hitchens quits Nation
> At 1:23 PM -0400 9/27/02, Nathan Newman wrote:
> >I still think Barney Frank had the most succinct statement of the biggest
> >difference between the Vietnam War and more recent conflicts. Ho Chi
Minh
> >was on the right side back then. Today's tyrants aren't, so the issue of
> >war is more ambiguous, much more balancing the costs of wars against the
> >gains of displacing the thugs. But that is a pragmatic empirical
> >calculation, not the moral high-ground the Left had with the Vietnam War
and
> >many other colonialism struggles.
>
> The main reason for opposing US imperialism is that _it is against
> the interest of workers in the USA_; the character of this or that
> leader, party, movement, etc. that the US empire considers its
> foremost enemy at any given moment is at most one of the secondary
> considerations.
>
> Marx wrote:
>
> ***** I have become more and more convinced-and it is only a
> question of driving this conviction home to the English working class
> - that it can never do anything decisive here in England until it
> separates its policy with regard to Ireland most definitely from the
> policy of the ruling classes, until it not only makes common cause
> with the Irish but even takes the initiative in dissolving the Union
> established in 1801 and replacing it by a free federal relationship.
> And this must be done, not as a matter of sympathy with Ireland but
> as a demand made in the interests of the English proletariat. If not,
> the English people will remain tied to the leading-strings of the
> ruling classes, because it will have to join with them in a common
> front against Ireland....
>
> <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_11_29.htm>
*****
>
> As Marx said about the English people, the American people, too, will
> politically amount to nothing as long as they "remain tied to the
> leading-strings of the ruling class," always joining the American
> power elite in a common front against Iraq and other nations and
> movements.
> --
> Yoshie
>
> * Calendar of Events in Columbus:
> <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
> * Anti-War Activist Resources:
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html>
> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>
>
>