[lbo-talk] Street-fighting Days

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Mon May 22 06:39:53 PDT 2006


On 5/22/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >On 5/21/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> > some people who are
> >really no friends of the
> >>values that have characterized the Western left.
> >
> >Give yourself several years, and see where you stand on Ahmadinejad
> >(supposing that he will survive the present and future conflicts in
> >those intervening years). You, like many other US leftists, didn't
> >immediately think highly of Chavez, argue for the US withdrawal from
> >Iraq, etc., but eventually you've come to argue for the positions that
> >I have held all along.
>
> Didn't think highly of Chavez? I had his planning minister on the
> radio in 2002 for a very sympathetic interview - is that early enough
> for you?

Yes, you did so in June 2002, after the anti-Chavez coup (four years after Chavez got elected). Let's not wait till a coup against Ahmadinejad or something like that happens.

By now, we have enough to go on to make a preliminary judgment about what the Ahmadinejad administration is up to, having seen what it was able to carry out, what it attempted but got blocked by what Tariq Ali calls the "mullah–bazaari nexus," what it is planning on doing, and so on.

Ali may be right that Ahmadinejad won't be able to do what he set out to do. Iran is a tough country to run: "Students are disaffected, labour rebellious, the Arab south-west, Kurdish and Azeri north, and Baluch south-east simmering. There is ample material in this maze for every kind of domestic and imperial intrigue to topple the unwelcome victor of a popular contest" (at <http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR27201.shtml>). Note that the Solidarity Center is already at work on Iranian labor. The Arab power elite, unlike the Arab streets, fear Ahmadinejad and is offering themselves to Washington for a regime change campaign against Iran. It's impossible to evaluate his chances from here. He may end up compromising himself, too. But I'm willing to give him a chance, given the alternatives, even while criticizing his errors.

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



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