Her point: UN = imperialist.
Get the US out, keep the UN from getting in.
Yesterday you asked whose UN should govern Iraq. A better question in the context of this list is whose anti-imperialism are we being asked to follow?
There's Justin Raimondo, for whom anti-imperialism isn't anti-capitalist, and should be wrested from the "Anti-American" left. There's the Worker's World Party, where official enemies are the most valued source of resistance. Max Sawicky thinks there should be a US exit ASAP, lest Iraq become the US's West Bank (if it hasn't already). For radio conspiracist Alex Jones, "globalism" is the sinister end of the Illuminati/Satanists/Nazis/Zionists, depending on his mood that day. There's the Iraqi Communist Worker's Party, where a UN occupation is favored, and takes over from the US. Others seem to think the only accurate spelling of anti-imperialism is L - e - n - i - n - i - s - m.
Personally, I appreciate Max's point, think Raimondo can be pretty sharp, but favor the position of the Iraqi Communist Worker's Party. But there is something ruthless competing for the mantle of anti-imperialism. It's the fuck shit up school of resistance. The worse things are for the imperialists, the better. Any other consequences be damned.
Carrol's rejoinder that what an anti-war movement says or does is irrelevant because it won't change policy comes to mind here. But that's a cop-out. Whether or not an anti-war movement gets any traction with US public opinion is *inseparable* from what it says and does. He and Yoshie are in fact calling to abandon Iraqis to social disintegration, and will rightly received as doing so. Such a position from the anti-war movement would further marginalize it, even discredit it fully. There's no point where you're so weak that you can't act self-destructively. This insistence on the impotence of the anti-war movement only clouds its culpability for what it says and does.
More appreciable is the objection that the anti-war movement can't support some kind of occupation without being hypocrites. The problem with this is that Iraq is in a profoundly different situation than it was before the war. The entire state has been uprooted, and much of society has ceased to function. Again, an illegitimate government is better than none at all. Iraqis are overwhelmed by chaos, and they are not in a position to resolve it alone. That is not because of a failing in their character as a people, but because of the circumstances. From what Christian Parenti says, Iraqis seem to appreciate this. If we're serious about solidarity, we should do the same.
-- Shane
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