So the level of discussion needs to be raised. Dont know how that should be done, but the Internet and these huge marches help.
This "No blood for war" slogan is problematic. And it appears to be the most widespread slogan. Even in Italy they are using this slogan (in English, no less) and I noticed on the pictures posted to Chuck's infoshop that this slogan is being raised round the world. Too bad. First of all, what if, as Chuck says, there is relatively little blood. Now there may well be a lot of blood spilled. I dont dismiss that possibility but the US leaders have learned quite well that they need to carry out their wars with as little bloodshed as possible.
If there is a war and the US wins, we will be barraged with pictures of "liberated" Iraq. The press will implicity or explicitly pose the question: Wasnt the loss of a few lives worth the happiness of the Iraqi people, worth the democracy we are bringing them, worth having eliminated a bastion of terrorism? This is how it will be posed, I think.
Now I am quite sure there are going to be quite a few Iraqis that are happy to be rid of Sadaam, though in the long run they wont like being occupied by a foreign country either. But, at first anyway, we may see smiling faces, truly smiling faces, broadcast from Iraq. What effect will that have?
Emails to this list, exaggerated or not, that indicate that this or that wrong in post-invasion iraq will have little effect and it's not the main question that needs to be brought out.
The role of the imperial police-state is what has to be discussed. And not only the United States' idea of a police state which is more bellicose perhaps than the others, but all the other partners of a police state who have under the benign banner of "human rights" decided to ignore borders in order to collectively police the world. The universal police-state is a "fait accompli". Very few of the UN speeches I have heard deny the body's right to intrusive search and seizure. It's the means that are being debated.
The need to discuss this is reflected in the other part of that slogan, the "oil" in No blood for oil. Well, Wallerstein, who should be at least taken seriously, suggests that it's not about oil. It's about expanding power. I dont really know. Perhaps it is about both oil and power...but in any case this discussion of "policing" needs to be discussed in mor depth than a slogan like "No blood for oil" which risks being a harmful cliche' in that when the bombs stop falling, the marchers could stop marching.
-Thomas
===== <<Be like me! The Primal Mother, eternally creative, eternally impelling into life,
eternally drawing satisfaction from the ceaseless flux of phenomena.>>
-Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy"
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