Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
> i'm still trying to get
> a handle on what we really ought to be doing in current circumstances,
> but i think the lesson to take even from an accurate appraisal of
> resistance to US troops is not that we wash our hands of having created
> a massive power vacuum. an immediate withdrawal of US troops (et al)
> hardly guarantees a healthy iraqi civil society, in either the short or
> the long run.
No it doesn't; but U.S. continuation there will only make it worse, both in the short and in the long run. Nothing ever guarantees anything good; but there are things, such as u.s. troops in Iraq, that do guarantee continued (and growing) evils, with no compensatory gain whatever.
In any case, the anti-war (anti-imperialist) movement for the foreseeable future is going to be a very loose coalition of people and groups, and all forces within it must allow for it. Two points:
1. No coherent left exists in this nation at the present time (under _any_ conceivable defintion of "a left")
2. We can't say at the present time what a "coherent left" might look like, so there can't be any very coherent strategy for its creation.
3. For myself, I want to work for the creation within the larger coalitions, of "a" left which (a) has no connection whatever with the Democratic Party and (b) has only one foreign-policy principle: U.S. troops out of everywhere - no strings. Such a position is not soon going to be a majority within even a narrowly conceived anti-imperialist coalition, but I think it essential to maintain it as a rallying point and a possibility.
Carrol