Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> I don't know
> any self-identified leftists who don't want the U.S. out of Iraq.
Doug, are you being deliberately ambiguous? Everyone, including Rice & Bush, wants the U.S. out of Iraq, just as Johnson and Nixon wanted the U.S. out of Vietnam. That is not the question. The question is what should be the demands around which opponents of the war organize themselves.
Do you believe that we should demand that the U.S. withdraw unilaterally from Iraq, now, with no conditions, no fakery with the U.N.?
If you have any qualifications on this point, then substantively you favor the U.S. remaining in Iraq.
I don't think you believe this, but if you don't, then on this topic you are an excessively bad writer.
Those of us opposed to U.S. policy in Iraq are not among the counsels of power. We are on the outside. We cannot afford to offer long, torturoous academic disquisitions on what would ideally be the best thing for the government to do. We have to rally people around a position that we can roar out.
And the only position that we can roar out, that we can rally public pressure behind, is U.S. out of Iraq, now!
The U.S., when casualties in Iraq and growing chaos at home make it necessary, will arrange some sort of shit-eating facesaving cover for its retreat. But that isn't our job. Our job is to raise the pressure to get out and leave the decoration to the fucking bureaucrats in Washington.
What _is_ your position?
Carrol