[lbo-talk] the Iraqi resistance at work

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 11/20/06, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> At around 20/11/06 12:25 pm, Doug Henwood wrote:
> > On Nov 20, 2006, at 10:44 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> >> It looks to me that it's a case of avoiding _only_ our
> >> own responsibility
> >
> > This is so ludicrous I have a hard time believing you're serious.
> > Someone suggested to me offlist yesterday that you don't write to
> > convince people anymore, just to shock. He may be right. At least Ann
> > Coulter attacks her ideological enemies, though.
>
> While I have nothing to say about your (DH) internal mental states, I
> think Yoshie is spot on about responsibility and the collective _us_
> avoiding, ignoring, denying or downplaying it. Strangely enough, I made
> the very same point to Yoshie and CB in response to Yoshie's "Bring them
> home" slogan, in a thread from a while ago.
>
> Yoshie's basic point (as I see it) is so simple that it seems to require
> no convincing. We as fairly free people have a large set of options to
> exercise in order to control the activities of our governments and the
> people who run it. It should be needless to say that this is a general
> claim which admits to outliers (there may be US liberals or non-liberals
> who are incapable of acts of protest, or who may already have done all
> they can, etc).

It seems to me that, whether you turn to the left, right, or center in
America, too many Americans are united on one point: it's not _our_
fault.  The only difference is that leftists like Doug blame Iraqis,
Democrats, and Republicans, centrists blame Iraqis and Republicans,
and rightists blame Iraqis.  Notice that the Iraqis are faulted by all
wings of American politics.  Very convenient for the purpose of
shirking American responsibility for the catastrophe, so this meme
will probably stick.  Exonerated by the meme "it's their fault, not
our fault," many Americans will learn the wrong lesson about regime
change.  Hey, it didn't succeed because we went into the wrong place,
using wrong tactics.  Let's do it again in a more promising place,
using a more sophisticated, more multilateral approach, where culture
of democracy is already emerging: how about Venezuela, Bolivia,
Lebanon, Iran?
-- 
Yoshie
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