Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> On 7/11/07, Robert Wrubel <bobwrubel at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Yoshie: why not 9-11 conspiracy theorists? The
> > anti-war position or movement is multi-layered. The
> > deeper you go with it the more solid your opposition
> > should be. On the most superficial level the
> > Democrats say the war was "mismanaged". The next
> > level down would be popular demands to bring US troops
> > home. Neither of these levels touch the morality,
> > legality or causes of the war, nor the issue of
> > permanent bases in Iraq, nor the possibility of a new
> > war with Iran. The deepest level is opposition to the
> > entire political/economic complex that produces wars,
> > and many 9-11 conspiracists are on that level, though
> > not all.
To go "deeper" is to engage in more comprehensive analyis of the war's causes -- which is precisely the discussion which is wholly disrupted by the focus of the conspiracist narrative of individual criminality, a narrative that completely obscures (for example) the relationship between Bush's Iraq invasion and the 10 year war against Iraq waged by Bush I and by Clinton; that narrative also completely obscures the relationship between Bush's invasion of Afghanistan and the intervention in Afghanistan by the Carter administration, an intervention which led rather directly to the rise of the Taliban and Al Quaida; that narrative also completely obscures the relationship between the planned attack on Iran (in which Obama has expressed great interest) and century-long intervention in mideastern affairs first by England and then, beginning with the overthrow of Mossedegh, the U.S. That narrative makes it impossible, actually, to even glimpse the depth of u.s. policy expressed 60 years ago with the slogan "Politics stops at the water's edge."
And further, at a superficial but absolutely crucial level if you are actually into organizing, conspiracists can never shut their mouths long enough for an anti-war group to decently organize itself.
Carrol