Pol Pot is a good reminder.
Even the worst that the Iranian government has ever done never quite measures up to not only what Washington has done but also the worst crimes committed in the name of socialism. Perhaps Muslims in Iran have a point when they prefer Islam to both capitalism and socialism, considering that neither Moscow nor Beijing nor Washington -- the latter two of which in fact supported Pol Pot* -- can claim to be better than Tehran.
The only hope for socialism in the Middle East is the chance that people there may take notice of what Hugo Chavez, a Christian socialist, and his comrades are doing in Venezuela and what Cuba has accomplished, overlooking silly things that liberals and leftists in the West say about Islam and Muslims.
Both the leaders of Cuba and Venezuela, unlike liberals and leftists in the West, have been friendly to Iran. Probably they noticed a not insignificant fact that Tehran never sought to overthrow their governments -- Tehran being especially friendly to them in fact under the Ahmadinejad administration -- but Washington has and that Iran's loss will be Washington's victory, and triumphant Washington will be more dangerous to their own countries than Washington that fails to defeat Iran. Their survival depends on their collective ability to check US hegemony.
* if American leftists really felt sorry for the victims of Pol Pot, some of whom were members of Khmer Rouge themselves, they might make efforts to have their government pay reparations to their surviving family members, but we know it's only rhetoric.
On 4/21/07, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> P.S. Almost all leftists in a position to make such alliances, i.e.
> those working in local groups for this or that purpose, DO make just the
> alliances which assholes on this list claim ought to be made but that
> "The Left" won't make.
I disagree. Some leftists do, but many others don't. While I was a steering committee member of a national peace coalition, I observed a discussion about Hizballah: one member (not me) of the steering committee attended a conference in Lebanon sponsored by Hizballah among other political parties and NGOs and brought back a joint statement of the conference participants from it, some objected to Hizballah being a sponsor of the conference (though it was one of many sponsors), some countered the objection, and the rest didn't know what to think. Some liberals and leftists are just now beginning to rethink the nature of Hizballah and movements and governments that have politics like Hizballah's, but there are many others who have not, and this fact inhibits communication, especially with activists in the Middle East.
On 4/21/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Apr 21, 2007, at 9:09 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > Every thinking person in the world knows that, notwithstanding
> > selective outrage against this or that crime outside the West that
> > they display on cue, most people of the West not only do not despise
> > but tolerate, even vote for, a filthy primitive social system that has
> > its soldiers invade many countries, supports brutal client states,
> > employs death squads, etc., raping, mutilating, and killing untold
> > numbers of men, women, and children, not just when they don't know but
> > even when they do know at least a little of that's what's happening,
> > as in the case of the Iraq War. (The same system also locks up
> > millions and executes many at home, in the case of the USA.)
>
> There's hardly a person on this list who'd disagree with this.
Their minds may say, "Yes, that's true," but their hearts are not really in it. They never hate US imperialism as much as they hate (on cue) its ever-changing official enemy of the day. -- Yoshie