He only said things that everyone should know -- we needn't reference him at all to debate the illegality of invasion and occupation with pro war folks...call this the 'I don't give a rat's ass about Galloway' maneuver. So if I'm going back and forth with a 'wingnut', I can easily perform an end run around his arguments about Galloway's supposed Baathist sympathies by cutting the now infamous MP out of the script altogether and going right for the jugular with universally damning, Galloway independent info.
I don't need to examine the man's record with an electron microscope to do a 'yes, but...er, um' dance.
And to get back to the topic of resistance...
Here's what you wrote:
I believe anti-war arguments would generally meet with a warmer reception if they weren't conjoined with defenses of the insurgents' "right" to blow up American troops and/or Iraqi civilians.
...........
Here's the situation: people who're pro war believe the US is doing good and lovely things. Or, they believe the US needs to kick ass. Some believe both. If every anti-war person stood up next Tuesday night and announced to the planet that they unequivocally do not support Iraqis' right to fight American troops or explode bombs near civilians it wouldn't make a bit of a dent in the opinions of these folks.
Meanwhile, back in Iraq, far away from debates of support or no support a shitstorm rages, powered by the harsh necessity of an eye for an eye.
Anyone who has even five minutes worth of understanding of human nature knows that under the circumstances, it's foolish to be surprised by the amount of violence that's exploded.
I know how wild I got when attacked during a robbery years back. I became a grimly murder eyed mother fucker; a viking on a berserker fury.
I remembered the words of my dad: 'you may not win, but make sure the bastard knows he was in a fight.'
I can imagine how I might respond if, like god knows how many Iraqis, I'd been treated to a bit of the American ultra violence on the street, in my home or in a 'detention facility' and had access to weapons and an organization to join. And now, we can add sectarian violence to the bloody mix.
But it seems you don't see this at all. For you, there's apparently no stimulus and response in play here, only an abstract tendency to violence that would have flowered **no matter how well the military-corporate occupiers treated the occupied.**
Weightless, just weightless.
This stuns me into silence so now I'm done.
.d.