I'm confused and I also stand accused of my own form of smug satisfaction, moral superiority and perhaps hypocrisy, though I don't stand anywhere near a cornfield.
I find myself often agreeing with Marxism-Trotskyism-Coxism and in this case also with Lipow and the witty Henwood. I am obviously a centrist and believe that Cox, Henwood and Lipow can just get along and form an adequate (not so) popular front.
How to resolve this confusion? An argument among ourselves is not the same as trying to bring the basic facts of U.S. power to people who know next to nothing of the facts in Washington and Lebanon.
It is hard to explain to people that resistance to occupation is not the same thing as terrorism. It is even harder when we are told everyday that "they" (the "enemies" of democratic "Western" Israel and of the "American way of life") are all terrorists and supporters of terrorism and "we" (the guardians of "Western" values) only respond to terrorism. And yet we must try to explain that there is a difference between resistance and terrorism and that difference implicates our governments policies. We must try, as best we can, to change the focus from "them" to "us".
Basically, Cox, Henwood and Lipow are not separated by very much except by there own relative use of humor, irony and rhetoric. Cox is correct. raging against Hizbollah or Hamas will not change the focus to Washington and will not reveal much of the truth of the situation. Lipow is correct that unconditional praise of Hizbollah will not provide an open hearing to very many people in the U.S. and neither will it be correct. And Henwood is correct, slicing the sectarian position ever thinner and simply talking to ourselves will not do anything at all.
But I don't think anyone is offering unconditional praise of Hizbollah. Yet we must try to explain to all United Statesians who are willing to listen that resistance to military occupation is a basic human "right" and that at least 90% of the violence originates in Tel Aviv and Washington and not in the bunkers of Hizbollah. We must not feed into the propaganda storm by focusing on Hizbollah or preceding our comments with mea culpas such as "Hizbollah is a nasty organization but...."..... It is hard to do but I think it is essential to try to explain that in as much that Hamas and Hizbollah is resisting occupation and aggression those organizations are not doing anything wrong.
And though I think Carrol is sometimes guilty of slicing the sectarian position thinner than the rest I don't think that he is basically wrong beneath the rhetoric. He is after all talking to those of us on the list and a certain amount of posturing and over inflated rhetoric is just what we can expect to get things out in the open. I know that Doug on his radio show and in his newsletter speaks and write in a different style than he does for this list. I am pretty confident if Carrol button-holed somebody who knew nothing about the Middle East or U.S. imperialism, but was interested in talking, he would try to converse with the person in the same way he would talk to a person who knew nothing about Milton but was interested in poetry.
This is just a guess. I could be wrong about all of this.
JM