subject change (was Re:lbo-talk-digest V1 #7260

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Jan 21 11:31:59 PST 2003


Dennis Perrin wrote:


>Saddam's no threat to the entire world, true; and he's no real threat to the
>continental US, obviously.

And Al Qaeda is. I thought they were supposed to be enemy #1, but we've pretty much forgotten about them.


> But he is violent and will cross borders if he
>thinks he can get away with it -- a small scale imperialist, but one all the
>same.

Why is that our concern? Why is it that the countries closest to Iraq, and presumably the most at risk, aren't leading the war party (and instead are quite nervous about its consequences)? Instead, it's led by a fairly extreme right-wing faction within the U.S. ruling class.


> And if the WWP crowd had its way,

They don't count for anything. They're noxious, but aside from their objectionable style of organizing demonstrations, WWP is largely irrelevant, except as something to discredit the antiwar movement with.


> Saddam would be free to develop all
>manner of weaponry, no inspections, no check whatsoever.

Why is the U.S. free to develop all manner of weaponry but not Iraq? The U.S. bombs more people and places in an average year than Saddam could dream of in six lifetimes. By what rationale does Iraq get inspections and the U.S. get to call the shots? That's not a rhetorical question.


> That is why the
>leading organizing force behind the "antiwar" movement cannot be called
>antiwar at all (for this and other reasons). But that's another discussion.

They're not the leading force at all. Some of their hacks droned on at the speakers' platform, but they were upstaged by Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Cheri Honkala, and Jessica Lange. There's another set of demos next month which ANSWER has endorsed, but which they didn't organize.

Doug



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