Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >Carrol Cox wrote:
> >
> > >Doug Henwood wrote:
> >>>Independent (London) - November 15, 2004
> >>>A city lies in ruins, along with the lives of the wretched survivors
> >>>By Michael Georgy in Fallujah and Kim Sengupta
> > >
> > >Wow! That will sure get the water running.
> >>
> >>Carrol
> >>
> >>Iraqi public opinion Thu, 28 Aug 2003 18:33:28
> >>
> >>Christian Parenti, freshly back from a visit to Baghdad, just said on my
> >>radio show that Iraqis aren't happy with the occupation, but most not to
> >>the point of taking up arms against it. He also said that he was
> >>frequently told: "Take our oil. You want it, take it. Just give us
> >>electricity, water, and basic security." Later, off air, he said that a
> >>(Coxian) U.S. pullout at this stage would result in total chaos. The
> >>position of the Iraqi Communist Workers Party, one of the rare secular
> >>leftist outfits left in the country, is for the UN to take over from the
> >>U.S. - with no U.S. involvement at all. - Doug
> >
> >I suppose your point in dredging up a 15-month-old quote is to prove
> >how wrong CP & I were, but, unlike you, I don't aspire to being a
> >stopped clock. When I interviewed CP last week, he said that there
> >was considerable good will towards the U.S. in the early months
> >after the invasion - a lot of Iraqis really hated Saddam Hussein,
> >you know - but that has since turned into the opposite, thanks to
> >brutal treatment and failed reconstruction. Check out CP's excellent
> >new book, The Freedom, for more.
Nice dull metaphor, "stopped clock." Brilliant analysis.
But what was the clock stopped on? A metaphor, even as dull a one as stopped clock, ought to have some remote indication of the tenor the vehicle carries.
My arguments at the time (and the arguments of 10s of millions around the world, was (1) that a U.S. occupation would turn out to be a disaster (prediction confirmed) and (2) that as a matter of practical politics the anti-war movement _had_ to make one core demand: U.S. Out Now! The seminar-room wankery of acadmics and journalists lusting for nuance was one major barrier to such a development of the anti-war movement.
When a prediction based on the intransigence of u.s. imperialism turns out to be as disastrously wrong as your and Parenti's prediction proved to be, then you can babble about stopped clocks and I won't have a rejoinder except to admit I was wrong.
You and Parenti were wrong, horribly wrong. That kind of false dependence on passive opinion (as opposed to action) in Iraq and of the ability of left-liberals to influence the u.s. government to do good things seriously fucks up left thought and action. It has in the past, it will in the future. You are the stopped clock it appears. You are stopped on the number which says "Trust the U.S. Government." (Numbers don't say anything; clocks point to numbers, not seminar papers. Which is why I objected to your metaphor on both aesthetic and political grounds.)
Carrol
> >
> >Doug
>
> Didn't you and Christian know that Washington would be of necessity
> destroying Iraq more than reconstructing it?
> --
> Yoshie
>
> * Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/>
> * Calendars of Events in Columbus:
> <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
> <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
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