> On 6/25/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
>> The Iranians, North Koreans, Cubans, and others know there is a
>> qualitative
>> difference between economic blockade and political subversion and the
>> large-scale blood and chaos of a US invasion and occupation, and the
>> Iraqis,
>> who were bombed and embargoed by the Clinton administration prior to the
>> Bush invasion, understand it best of all. So should we.
>
> Why do we pretend to care about what has, is, or will happen to
> Iraqis, Iranians, North Koreans, Cubans, and others? If we really
> did, we wouldn't live like this.
=====================================
You're being unfair and not understanding why people seem to have what you
characterize as an uncaring attitude bordering on hypocrisy.
The dismay and anger at US foreign policy felt by hundreds of millions of relatively better off people in the advanced capitalist countries is genuine enough. However, IMO, it is too much too expect them to sustain the demonstrations and other forms of militant action which you are demanding absent the following conditions: a) mass socialist parties which are able to educate and mobilize their working-class followers that it is their comrades abroad who are fighting and dying for the same movement and cause they support - as, for example, during the Civil War in Spain; b) a general culture of discontent and alienation from the ruling class at home which expresses itself in action on a wide variety of domestic fronts, accompanied often by a personal stake in the outcome - as, for example, during the Vietnam war.
Often, maybe typically, all these conditions are present at the same time. Certainly, this is the case today for Muslims in the umma who, as you might expect, regard the Islamist-led Iraqi and Palestinian resistance movements as their own. They see all Muslim societies under the thrall of Western imperialism, and in need of liberation from it. In Europe and North America, their propensity to act is reinforced by their experience as immigrant communities viewed with suspicion and subjected to discrimination.
The masses in the OECD countries mostly perceive the war in Iraq as unjust and immoral, but abstract morality is rarely enough to sustain action. First, there is no generalized discontent or mass movements at home to turn their attention to related struggles abroad. Second, they don't identify with contemporary nationalist and Islamist movements in the same way they did with national resistance and social struggles led by the internationalist left of previous generations, partly because they are for the most part secular - which, of course, the war propagandists try heavily to exploit. And, third, they don't perceive themselves to have a personal self-interest in the conflict. You've already noted the lack of economic impact the war has had in the US. More to the point, there is no universal draft as there was in Vietnam and the number of casualties is much lower. If there were a draft and a much higher level of US fatalities, we would be witnessing a much higher level of mass action, and there would be no basis for your complaint.
I think it's extremely important to understand that it is social conditions, not the personal character failings of individuals or whole peoples, which primarily explains low levels of mass mobilization. The difficulty of moving masses into motion in the relatively secure conditions of modern capitalist societies has been the foremost reason why so many tireless and dedicated left organizers over the generations have been overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness ("burnout") and have abandoned politics for more personal pursuits, or made peace with the political system and used their considerable political talents to become part of it.