[lbo-talk] The very worst custodians of empire

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Mon Jun 26 08:31:49 PDT 2006


On 6/26/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> On Jun 26, 2006, at 10:15 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > On 6/26/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >> On Jun 26, 2006, at 2:01 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >>
> >> > 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.
> >>
> >> How should we live then?
> >
> > First of all, begin with admitting to the basic truth of our lives:
> > the Iraq War is a disaster for Iraqis, but it's not yet (and may never
> > become) a disaster for us (if it were already a disaster for us, we
> > would be acting like we were being hit by a disaster).
>
> Who knows what the long-term consequences will be? In any case, what
> would you have us do? Don hair shirts and wail in the streets?

When there is virtually no motion in the streets, we ought to step back and aim to improve our grasp of reality first of all. That the Iraq War is not yet a disaster for us (us being mere proletarians and petty bourgeoisie in the USA and the other great powers) means that it's not yet a disaster for the ruling class of America either. We can't pretend as if it were for either. What are political implications of the fact that it isn't a disaster for us or them?


> > Were the changes in circumstances inevitable in your opinion? If so,
> > you can say that the Iraq War "was going to be a disaster from before
> > it started." If they weren't, you can't, in truth.
>
> I can't tell what's inevitable in advance - maybe you can. I had a
> strong suspicion that the invasion would result in massive chaos and
> death; the question all along has been how to minimize the damage
> once the furies were unleashed.

If you can't tell, neither can Bush nor the rest of the US power elite (Republicans and a critical mass of Democrats who vote with them). Is it any wonder that they thought that the Iraq War was doable and still think that it is manageable, since they don't care about death and they care about chaos less than defeat? Looking at Bush polls makes us forget that the US power elite haven't paid any significant price for this adventure (which profited an influential part of them), since we haven't been able to raise costs for them at all.


> >> >> What am I going to do about it? Same thing that you are, no?
> >> >
> >> > You mean nothing?
> >>
> >> I'll follow your lead then.
> >
> > I said, more than a month ago, that Iraq was a goner, that there's
> > nothing we could do about it in the near future, and that we should
> > focus on Iran and Palestine instead, as a near- to medium-term project
> > (for the next ten years or so) for education.
>
> They're not unrelated, you know.

Yes, but how are Iraq, Iran, and Palestine exactly related? That's worth clarifying.

-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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