I don't think your being quite fair here. Anderson is not saying that the war shouldn't be opposed, but that opposition to it has to be based on broader principals that encompass inequalities in the system as a whole. I think he's right to point out the hypocrisy of those who supported "military humanitarism" in the Balkans and 10 years of sanctions against Iraq but balk at the fact that Bush is taking these wretched policies to their logical conclusion.
Also, so what if Anderson is from the landed gentry with a diplomat father? The same is true of his brother Benedict, but Imagined Communities is still a brilliant book. In fact, there is a relevant passage on this in Perry Anderson's Considerations on Western Marxism: "Lukacs was the son of a banker; Benjamin of an art-dealer; Adorno of a wine merchant; Horkheimer of a textile-manufacture; Della Volpe of a landowner; Satre of a Naval Officer; Korsch and Althusser of bank managers; Colletti of a bank clerk; Lefebvre of a bureacrat; Goldmann of a lawyer." Should we chuck all these people out? And don't get me started on the class origins of Marx and Egnels.... Jeet
> joanna bujes wrote:
>
> >At 02:07 PM 02/28/2003 -0500, Gregory wrote:
> >>Erudite, logical, dangerously wrong.
> >
> >I agree. Anderson's getting old and displaying the dangers of
> >tenured academic life. He argues like a man who believes that
> >nothing happening out there will trouble his life in the least.
>
> It's not just being an academic - Anderson is a landed aristocrat and
> the son of a diplomat.
>
> Doug