Carl Remick wrote:
>
> >From: Kelley <the-squeeze at pulpculture.org>
> >
> >>Face it, the troops are screwed no matter what they do. If they join in
> >>the attack, they are participating in a criminal war, which would
> >>certainly seem to constitute a war crime. And if they don't attack,
> >>they'll do life as traitors.
> >>
> >>Carl
> >
> >they, of course, don't see it that way.
>
> How they perceive their situation is immaterial. This is strictly a matter
> of logical alternatives. US troops either (a) join in a war that explicitly
> has not been sanctioned by the UN and thus become war criminals, or (b)
> refuse to follow orders and thus get charged with desertion and treason.
> There is no alternative "c".
>
> Carl
If one defined the two perspectives here mechanically, one would have to say they represent the two strands in marxism which are often separated, the scientific and the revolutionary. Kelley, then, is selecting the revolutionary strand, with her emphasis on the subjective factor, while Carl & Yoshie are taking the scientific strand, with its emphasis on truth.
Carl and Yoshie are quite correct, but from a political perspective of building a movement against this criminal war, we also clearly need to proceed gingerly.
But of course the division of marxism into these two separate strands is bad Marxism, and even from the perspective of "practical politics" it is probably necessary to insert into our agitational work the perspective embodied in Yoshie's two posts. I still have a hard time believing that the U.S. capitalist class is actually allowing the Bush administration to proceed down this insane pathway, the looming Iraq war must be regarded as only the first in an unending series of wars against the world, and we will at some point find ourselves in the same position as German socialists, communists, and principled democrats found themselves in in the 1930s.
This is about as clumsy a post as I've ever written -- but I think the clumsiness stems from the issue, not my incompetence in this case.
At some point leftists must state the truth, regardless of how awkward that truth may be.
The invading army will turn into an army of occupation, and with rare exceptions, armies of occupation turn increasingly vicious. And the leaders of such armies increasingly soften their enforcement of ordinary military discipline (i.e., rape, pillage, casual brutality are increasingly ignored by the military command.
Carrol