On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 19:36:36 -0400 Brian Siano <siano at mail.med.upenn.edu>
writes:
> On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 19:08:17 -0400, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
> wrote:
>
> > Nathan Newman wrote:
> >
> >> We had no idea before either because Saddam Hussein was
> brutalizing
> >> them.
> >
> > So you think it's ok for the U.S. to invade countries to
> "liberate" them?
> >
> >> And the failure of the Left to have a program for bringing
> democracy and
> >> a
> >> voice to the people of Iraq (and Afghanistan and Kosovo and etc.)
>
> >> without
> >> use of those B-52s is why it lacks the moral authority to stop
> any of
> >> these
> >> wars.
> >
> > So, as the shrinks say, what's your idea about that? A new Abraham
>
> > Lincoln brigade? A better U.S. imperialism? Isn't the liberation
> of Iraq
> > the business of Iraqis, and not Americans?
>
> Good questions, and they raise something that's bothered me for a
> long
> time. Even before Pearl Harbor, there were Americans who wanted to
> participate in the fight against fascism. There's the Abraham
> Lincoln
> Brigade, of course, and I recall reports of men travelling to Canada
> to
> enlist with British forces. Of course, today, we respect those
> people for
> their early and forthright opposition to fascism, and for their
> bravery, of
> course.
>
> But I don't recall anything like this happening from the Left since
> then.
> Sure, I can think of examples of right-wing fuckheads who leapt for
> the
> chance to fight in Asia (like John Birch), and even a few who went
> beyond
> reading _Soldier of Fortune_ to make a life for themselves as
> mercenaries
> in the world's various hell-holes. But by and large, the idea of men
> (and
> women) of the American Left organizing to take up arms against
> fascist
> regimes seems to have pretty much evaporated. There are rare
> exceptions, of
> course (the lone individual who might've travelled to Hanoi to help
> out).
> But the idea of an Abraham Lincoln Brigade-like group organizing
> around the
> project of, say, deposing the Taliban or Saddam Hussein seems to
> have
> evaporated.
>
> I don't think it's a matter of simple isolationism; after all, the
> Left
> hasn't re-appraised the Abraham Lincoln Brigades as a bad thing, so
> I don't
> think that's the guiding principle here. But why is this? Is it due
> to a
> stronger pacifist stance following Vietnam? Has the U.S.
> government's
> record of intervention horrors given such things a bad name? Is it
> that
> warfare's gotten so horrific that a spontaneous, anarcho-syndicalist
>
> militia hasn't got a chance? Is it just a dislike of guns?
I would suspect that the decline of organizations like the CPUSA might have something to do with it. As Carrol Cox likes to say, to speak of a left (or at least of an organized left) in the US is a bit ludicrous. Such a thing hasn't existed here for quite some time.
Jim F.
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today!