Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> At one point, I spent quite a bit of time, both online and in the real
> world, trying to win US leftists and liberals to an immediate
> withdrawal of US and other foreign troops from Iraq and to get ANSWER
> and UFPJ to work with each other. Now I regard that sort of effort as
> a waste of time. ANSWER and UFPJ are too sectarian to ever make even
> a tactical alliance for a short term productively, and each is limited
> in its own way, now probably more an obstacle than a necessary evil
> that both once were. As for the cause of withdrawal, reality of
> escalating violence, not what anyone said, has changed the minds of US
> leftists and a large segment of liberals, but now it is too late: Iraq
> is FUBAR, and if Washington withdraws its troops any time soon, it
> will only do so to start another war, this time against Iran.
I've been searching my memory for several years for a bit of verse that could apply to the efforts of activists "between times" (and since there have been only two or three 'times' in the 20th century, this covers the lives of most activists). I've never come up with anything, but the following is sorta' close:
XXXVII - EPITAPH ON AN ARMY OF MERCENARIES.
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when Earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay; What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
----
Except, of course, that we don't get paid.
Carrol