Below I copy posts exchanged recently on the discussion maillist of the Bloomington/Normal Citizens for Peace and Justice (BNCPJ). It begins with a forwarding of a call put out by the Chicago Coalition Against War & Racism, and one of their proposed slogans for a Sept. 30 demonstration is "Bring the Troops Home NOW." No mention of the UN or of "cleaning up the mess" before "we" leave. I have suppressed the names of posters since I don't suppose they wrote with an international audience in mind.
None of the participants in the discussion is a marxist. One is a Green Party organizer, the other two young faculty never involved in politics before.
I realize no one on lbo-talk would agree with Kipling's argument as expressed a century ago. But whatever the intentions of those who hope that the u.s. government might do "something good" in Iraq, in practice that position is a repetition in new dress of Kipling's world view.
Carrol
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Subject: [BNCPJ-discussion] Fwd: [PEACE-L] Protest vs. George Bush in Chicago Sept. 30th! Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2003 16:47:21 -0500 From: ----- Reply-To: BNCPJ-discussion at yahoogroups.com
Is anyone in BNCPJ interested in this protest? Thought I would pass the notice along for those who aren't on the PEACE list.
----Original Message Follows---- From: CABNstopthehate at aol.com To: CCAWR at aol.com Subject: Protest vs. George Bush in Chicago Sept. 30th! Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 07:40:59 EDT
The Chicago Coalition Against War & Racism has recently learned that George Bush will be in Chicago at 12 noon, Tuesday, Sept. 30 to speak at a $2000-a-plate fundraiser at the Sheraton Hotel (Columbus Drive, just north of the Chicago River, just east of the NBC Building).
We appeal to all Chicago area groups and individuals to help create a united protest against George Bush.
Some suggested themes:
* Bring the troops home NOW!
* Money for jobs, housing, healthcare and education!
* Stop the attacks on our civil rights and liberties!
To make a united protest on Sept. 30th, we are asking groups and individuals who wish to co-sponsor it to participate in an organizing meeting at 6:30 pm, Tuesday, Sept. 9 at the Chicago Temple, 77 W. Washington (lower level).
A downloadable pdf flyer for the protest can be found at: <AHREF="http://chicago.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=30383&group=webcast" http://chicago.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=30383&group=webcast</A
To co-sponsor the protest, please contact the Chicago Coalition Against War & Racism by sending an e-mail to CCAWR at aol.com including your name, phone number(s), e-mail address(es). Thank you.
Chicago Coalition Against War & Racism 888.471.0874 chicagoantiwar.org
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[PEACE-L] Protest vs. George Bush in ChicagoSept. 30th! Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2003 20:12:18 -0500 From: Carrol Cox
"A" wrote:
> >* Bring the troops home NOW!
I would agree that BNCPJ should (if possible) become a cosponsor of the event, advertise it locally, and recruit people to attend.
Also, I want to point out that the demand to bring the troops home (with which I agree vigorously), if meant seriously, is in stark contradiction to arguments that say (in various ways) that the U.S. should "clean up the mess" it has created in Iraq. On a maillist to which I subscribe, one poster argued for this "clean the mess" position, concluding with:
****** Should we just leave Iraq and let it degenerate into a civil war? Won't many more innocent people be killed as a result?
We turned Iraq into a failed state, there are steps we can take to restore its functionality, but none of those include making it a democracy. That would take another 30 or 40 years, I would think. ****
After pondering that argument for some time, I decided that it was nothing but a 21st century version of a perspective expressed a few months over 104 years ago in McClure's Magazine (Feb. 1899). And I want to suggest that the horror of the poem below lies in the fact that Kipling was not a cruel man, that he deeply believed in the morality of the cause he favored. And the author of the post quoted above is wholly sincere in her desire to make a happier world for the Iraqi. The core reply to Kipling a century ago (not directly to him but responding to the same events that triggered the poem and dictated its publication in the u.s. rather than the u.k.) was "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" by Mark Twain (who was one of the founders of the American Anti-Imperialism Alliance).
A continued U.S. occupation of Iraq (with or without the figleaf of nominal U.N. presence) will produce the same continued butchery as did the U.S. occupation of the Philippines a century ago (that occupation was the focus of both Kipling's poem and Twain's essay). And the Philippine occupation led to one of the most brutal repressions of the 20th century.
Further. Vietnam is _not_, repeat NOT, a model for the coming carnage in Iraq, which will be of a quite different kind. The Vietnamese were able to defeat the U.S. militarily and politically, but only under quite different conditions, including the support of external allies. There will be no similar large-scale guerilla war in Iraq. The historical analogues we should look at are the Philippine horror just referred to and the internal history of Columbia over the last century. Guerilla warfare has been endemic in that nation, never ending for more than a few months and never coming close to actual victory. There will be a similar ebb and flow of small-scale attacks in Iraq -- endlessly.
The U.S. (or the U.S. disguised as the U.N.) cannot be defeated as in Vietnam. But it takes only a very small number (say 3% to 5% of the population) _determined_ to resist to maintain virtually forever the low-scale conflict now going on there. (The number of americans _wounded_ seriously enough to require immediate transportation home is extremely large and growing.)
And after the inevitable withdrawal of western forces from Iraq, following years of brutal repression and civil unrest, there will be civil war, and nothing the U.S. (or the U.N.) can do now can stave off that civil war. The longer the western forces remain there, the more brutal will be the civil wars following withdrawal. - Carrol
The White Man's Burden By Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed-- Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need; To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain, To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace-- Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought) Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No iron rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread, Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward-- The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard-- The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-- "Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less-- Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness. By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do, The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days-- The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise: Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years, Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers. @@@@
Wed, 03 Sep 2003 21:44:45 -0500 From: "B"
> > >* Bring the troops home NOW!
>
>I would agree that BNCPJ should (if possible) become a cosponsor of the
>event, advertise it locally, and recruit people to attend.
The message about this Chicago event has now, almost completely independently, worked its way to SJS, SPAN, BNCPJ, and the Greens. Clearly, this is something all of the groups should work together on.
It is not easy to get a lot of people up to Chicago at noon on a Tuesday. Are there any thoughts about what sorts of actions we might be able to take here?- ____ @@@@
Thu, 04 Sep 2003 09:26:10 -0500 From: "C"
Yes--let's try to organize this. This should not be on the discussion list but the larger listserv--["A"], could you please repost your original announcement to bncpj at yahoogroups.com? And let's make sure it's on the agenda for the meeting this weekend. _____ @@@@
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 09:49:08 -0500 From: "A"
Carrol, - That "bring the troops home" bit was not written by me in my own posting; it must have been in the email I forwarded. I am steering clear of slogans at the moment....none seem quite appropriate for the fiasco at hand, and I don't want to reduce the complexity of the issue!! Nathalie
you wrote: [clip] @@@@
Thu, 04 Sep 2003 10:11:14 -0500 From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
"A" wrote: That "bring the troops home" bit was not written [clip]
I didn't mean it to be ascribed to you. Sorry for the incompetent labelling. It is the Chicago Peace Movement that coined the slogan, and you merely fwd the post.
My post was intended to agree with the Chicago Peace Movement. If we do organize around the event, we should be clear what we are supporting.
Core theses in organizing are "simple" only in the sense that they concentrate the argument. On the list I referred to, there were a number of positions, but they could be reduced (for central direction) to two (short enough for bumper stickers):
U.S. Out of Iraq!
U.S. Out of Iraq! U.N. In!
My argument is that the second slogan (however you complicate it) is _in practice_ support for a continuing the U.S. occupation -- that the "U.N." under present conditions is nothing but an agent of u.s. aggression.
Also, I don't think you can organize, at the present time, around demands that require whole books of qualification and explanation. - Carrol @@@@
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 11:01:19 -0500 From: "A"
Yes, I have been amazed at the NyTimes and other sources discussing "whether" the US will "allow" other countries to "assist" in containing the Iraq debacle. What a mess. Not that it wasn't entirely predictable -- everyone is saying it's easy to say what would happen "in hindsight," having forgotten the antiwar demonstrators' foresight.
At 10:11 AM 9/4/2003 -0500, you wrote: I didn't mean it to be ascribed to you. Sorry for the incompetent [clip]
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