Anti-Imperialism 101 Re: Hitchens quits Nation

[Nathan Newman]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> >But the point is that the cause of the Irish was itself just-- the cause
of
> >Milosevic and Saddam is not and even against the interests of their own
> >people.
> Whether the US military is a kinder master of the Iraqi people than
> Saddam Hussein is not the point.  Anti-imperialism is *not charity*,
> adopted or not adopted depending on whether denizens of the imperial
> center think it's good for Iraq or whatever.  US leftists should
> oppose US imperialism because it is against the interest of workers
> in the USA.

If the explicit goal of US intervention was to run Iraq from abroad
dictatorially, that might be an argument, but since the explicit goal is to
restore power to the Iraqi people through democratic institutions, the nice
symmetry fails.  You can argue that this will not happen or is not really
the goal, but you are back to arguing subtext, not stated intention.

Was US sanctions against the South African regime imperialist interference?
I don't buy it and I don't buy that if the SA government had started mass
slaughter of the population rather than give up Apartheid that world
military intervention would have been wrong.

The fact is that the US has rarely intervened in the world on behalf of
democracy but this past decade has changed that record slightly, with Haiti
to restore Aristide and in Kosovo, both imperfect but in my view better than
the alternatives.

Saddam is not Allende or Ho or Nasser or basically anyone who the
anti-imperial struggle once held up as worth defending.  There are reasons
to oppose the war against Iraq, especially how Bush wants to run it, but
"anti-imperialism" sure doesn't do it for me.  All it sounds like Buchanite
isolationism.

-- Nathan Newman