I simply argued that to engage in a thank the troops dont thank troops debate was rather besides the point. Please my original post http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20051121/025722.html
It was an argument that moralizing about whether or not grunts could be singalled out for special accountability was not only wrong--in terms of thinking about collective responsibility in liberal democracies--but also a poor POV and voice to speak from when talking to would be enlistees or re-enlistees.
Indeed it was a reaction in part to the tone of some posters who seemed to be suggesting that responsibility for the continuation of the war in Iraq could some how be dumped at the feet of the average US soldier. As you say in your post below:
"If we want working class support, we better show respect and sympathy."
How is this statement of yours different from my original argument, made I might add before you dimed in, that:
"Would not this question be posed better as one of strategy? It seems to me that one does not need to be 'thankful' for the soldiering provided by troops in Iraq but can at the same time be sympathetic." http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20051121/025722.html
Or when in a response to another poster I wrote:
"The point is ..., you can either take the approach that the average soldier is no more and no less responsible then the average AMerican for the war and use this as the basis of trying to convince them not to en-list or re-enlist or you can get on a moral high horse, act holier than though and try to convince them not to enlist /re-enlist by making them more responsible for the war than say yourself. Which strategy do you think would be better?" http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20051121/025741.html
Notice that it is not a moral argument so much as a strategic one, but I do concurr with the general moral sentiment, apping my posts on the subject, that you express when you write in your post below:
"ANd the answer is, not moralistic superiority on the part of same-at-hime liberals and leftists about people who for the most part had to join the service because they were poor and then had to follow orders in dangerous places."
How it is that you can, no matter what I wrote at the time and have since clarified several times, insist that I have somehow been moralizing on the issue. Please take some time read the posts and provide the appropriate apology for your simple misreading and thereby misrepresentation of my arguments and posts on this matter.
Travis Fast
--------- JKS wrote
OK, I will, started this last night and lost the message.
First a picky point, ther Fugitive Slave Acts were not enforced by the military but by local law enforcement, bounty hunters, and the slaveowners themselves.
But the real question is, what attutude to take towards grunts who fight imperialist wars and may commit atrocities? The Boo-Hiss crowd here, liked you, Joanna, and Travis, seem to miss the basic Marxist point, that moralizing misses the point. The questionm si,w hat promotes goals of popular opposition to the wars and self-organizationm in opposing the wars? ANd the answer is, not moralistic superiority on the part of same-at-hime liberals and leftists about people who for the most part had to join the service because they were poor and then had to follow orders in dangerous places. If we want working class support, we better show respect and sympathy. Thanks wouldn't be out of place either, as long as it comes with anti-imperialist analysis, which probbaly is not too hard to see to most of the troops.
Maybe the grunts stand morally condemned in the eyes of God for being Bad. Leave that to God. Our problem is different. Why does it take a libveral democratic like me to point out this basic and obvious Marxist precept?
jks