Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> On 11/28/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:[clip]
> [clip] I do think, though, that a state that may eventually arise in Iraq,
> whether or not led by Sadr, will be worse for women than Saddam
> Hussein's Ba'ath Party rule, for at least a decade after its
> establishment and perhaps much longer than that (and that's if the
> Iraqis get lucky and manage to build a state). But you didn't support
> the pre-war Iraqi government either, nor the Red Army in Afghanistan
> for that matter.
First, Michael Smith has made an important point. Michael J. Smith
wrote:
>
> On Monday 27 November 2006 09:41 pm, Marvin Gandall wrote:
> > [clip] it's
> > important that we see it as contradictory rather than one or the other and
> > that we support it where we think it is acting in the interests of progress
> > and oppose it where we think it is not.
>
> And no doubt "it" will be holding its breath until it hears from
> us.
There is only one kind of "support" or "opposition" from u.s. leftists to _any_ foreign state or movement. We can (in the first instance) oppose u.s. intervention; in the second case, support u.s. intervention. Other kinds of support or opposition tend to be mere self-indulgence.
But Marvin has also written a post with which I can whole-heartedly
agree: Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
> Botti: [clip]
> So perhaps you, Doug, and others can spare us the unnecessary lectures about
> the reactionary side of political Islam. If being aligned with the Islamists
> against US intervention makes you somehow anxious about having dirty hands,
> please don't try washing them at our expense by suggesting you are above
> those of us you taint as misguided or crazy.
I don't usually write one-liners adding nothing of my own. But this is very very good. The dirty-hands metaphor, usually quite banal, is here given new and invigorating life.
And now back to Yoshie's point. I want to expand it. I doubt that in the next decade or two there will be a single foreign state or movement opposing u.s. interests which those "anxious about having dirty hands" will be able to support without endless quiverings and qualifications: and those quiverings will, as in the present case, have no political meaning at all (one hopes) or under some conditions might have the effect of enabling u.s. imperial crime. All reasonably strong reactions to imperialism will be populist in nature, and populism, whether religious or secularist, without fail has very dark shadings.
Carrol