Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > What does this mean? Saddam's government was a horror,
I think leftists do have to move to the position that we refuse to mouth off judgments of states over which or in regard to which we have no power at all to contribute to change. The left is small enough now so that such mouthing off does no damage (though neither does it do any good), but if we were large enough to be heard but still not large enough to control policy that mouthing off would lend reinforcement to u.s. aggression.
> > but the US
> > invasion has made things far far worse. I'm trying to understand why
> > someone would trap a bunch of desperate workers and blow them up.
Why? The only purpose for such curiosity, as far as I can see, is personal amusement.
> > Obviously you don't know the answer, but you couldn't just say that,
> > could you?
Why should she? It's a silly question, mere gossip, that cannot possibly have either immediate practical results or theoretical importance. It is mere (and somewhat offensive) personal indulgence on your part. Using the death of 22 people for such intellectual point scoring is perhaps worse than offensive.
There _is_ no solution in Iraq other than the withdrawal of u.s. troops, which will make room for Iraqis (almost certainly in violent and unpleasant ways) to reach eventually an internal stability unreachable while subject to foreign intervention. To pretend otherwise (on the basis of opinion polls) in the summer of 2003 was not very bright. At this point it is merely disgusting.
> I do know that we, including you and I, are indirectly responsible for
> the deaths of the poor Shi'ite workers in the story, the
> responsibility that you refuse to acknowledge.
This tack, Yoshie, I think is incorrect. Responsibility implies power, and the power to make a difference has not been ours. The ravings of Henwood and Parenti on Iraq in the summer of 2003 were an intellectual disgrace, but they made no difference in policy. Similarly, ABBs in 2004 were simply silly about both the electoral difference their efforts could make _and_ the difference electoral results, if achieved, could make. But neither their action nor their inaction had any causal force.
We do need continuously to explore the grounds and nature of left weakness in the u.s., but I don't think assigning blame, particular or general, will help in that analysis.
And any mistakes you or any other organizers made were equally ineffectual; a losing cause is a losing cause, not assignable to the faults of those who fought in it. The anti-war movement, at its strongest, was unable to generate the stable base within which internal education could have been effective in building a stronger movement core, and hence there were never enough of us either for effective internal debate and discussion or for effective outreach to a larger constituency. In brief speeches at two of our more successful rallies in Bloomington I made the point, and so far as I could tell, got positive audience response, that we needed the brains of more of those at the rally as well as their bodies, since the small number to which monthly meetings had been reduced were inadequate for planning. But only events _external_ to left organizing could have given that need real resonance.
Moralism, as you and I have both argued sharply in the past, is almost always, I would say always, disruptive, and in the present case has in fact deflected discussion from central points. You are, for example, right and Marvin and Doug are wrong, in your observations on Sadaam. But casting the debate in moral terms, (and calls for "realism" also tend to have a moralistic rather than analytical reverberation) interferes with that discussion also.
Moral huffiness in respect to the nature of the Iranian regime has been at the root of the ganging up on you in that debate. Let's clear politics of moralism of all varieties.
Carrol
> --
> Yoshie
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