>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.
Yes, exactly. Almost no one could take Carrol's position seriously - i.e., the nothing we say could matter, therefore we should say nothing. What political organization could be taken seriously if it took a "no comment" position on some of the most important political issues of our time? Ditto any political intellectual, in conversation with acquaintances, workmates, or curious onlookers? You'd be dismissed as a crank or a joke.
Doug