[lbo-talk] 2004-8 (Out of Iraq)

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Oct 6 10:22:04 PDT 2004


Yoshie:
> Whether George W. Bush or John Kerry gets elected, the next POTUS
> will have to run in 2007-8 on the record of four more years of wars,
> occupations, and economic woes. Rather than expecting Bush and Kerry
> to spell out the deadline of US troop withdrawal from Iraq, which
> neither will, organizers, activists, and intellectuals on the left
> should be getting together on the local and national levels, hashing
> out our own timeline for rebuilding social movements ASAP and our own
> plan for independent political action on the electoral front in the
> next election cycle of 2006-8. That will get us better prepared than
> in this election cycle.

Yoshie, you sometimes surprise me. You seem to be otherwise intelligent and knowledgeable person, yet some our positions on political issue resemble that of a 5-year old child: I want it here and now and I will stomp my feet until I get it.

Things rarely happen at someone's will. History cannot be undone. Economists and sociologists call that path dependencies. Attacking Iraq was one of those truly rare situations when a small group of powerful people could act at will with little regard for such path dependencies. This was perhaps one of those rare historical coincidences - if your idol Nader controlled his ego and refrained from jumping to presidential politics like an idiot, if Florida elections were not rigged, if the Supreme Court did not overstepped its powers, if 9/11 did not happen, if Bush was a true leader and not a puppet to appease moronic crowds while his lieutenants were running the show - there would be no US troops in Iraq now.

But there are - and undoing it takes much more than it took to get them there. I would go as far as saying that US does not have any better choices but stay in Iraq for a really long time. There might be some marginal changes here and there, i.e. who gets the contracts, whose troops are doing what, what UN resolutions are passed or vetoed, by this is largely cosmetic. And the outcome of the November election will not change that very much, except perhaps for the attenuation of those marginal details.

In short, the Bush administration screwed it big time an din will take truly heroic efforts and a long tome to unscrew it. Saying that Kerry and Bush are alike in that respect is a bunch of bullshit that does not even deserve a serious response for very simple reason - Bush did it, and if someone else were in office it would not have happened.

So stomping your feet in protest marches, demanding that the US gets out Iraq now, and blaming Kerry and democrats for what they did not do is not a serious proposal. Come back when you have something more constructive to say.

Wojtek



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