Carrol
Howard Dean: "Now That We're There We Can't Leave" Thu, 03 Jul 2003 12:39:16 -0500
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
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See my follow-up post at
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-July/016939.html
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I would add at this time that there is no way in which a coherent and far-reaching anti-war movement can be built except on the simplified demand: U.S. Out Now.
All other demands will come across, no matter how intended, as claiming that the left can make the U.S. do good things in Iraq. And the U.S. neither can nor will do good things in Iraq.
Carrol