> We don't have to pretend anything. We need to say nothing whatever about
> the Iraqi existence except that it is an Iraqi resistance, and that any
> resistance whatever to a foreign invasion is legitimate. The invasion,
> on the other hand, is criminal.
>
> This urge to expound on what we don't have to discuss at all seems to me
> merely self-indulgence, a sort of lust for personal moral purity.
This is quite an unpleasant insinuation, so let me retort with a bit of care. We *are* entitled to have an analysis, and we *are* entitled to test comparisons that other people make. If Cockburn invites a comparison with the FSLN and the NLF, then there's no problem with testing the limits of the comparison. In fact, if it's strategically significant - if someone says we may be destroying our own movement because of the failure of most liberals to support the resistance - then we have no right to avoid the question. As it happens, the limits of the comparison in this case are partially responsible for the confusion that causes a large number of leftists to avoid speaking of solidarity in this case: such was my point. I didn't suggest that they were right to avoid such solidarity. Further, we have dozens of books, articles, statistical reports etc illuminating us as to the nature of the various resistance groups, their tactics etc. We have a ceaseless propaganda battle, part of which revolves around the demonisation of the Iraqi resistance: we therefore do have an absolute obligation to expound on it, rigorously.
I think your prohibition is very strange: you seem to be saying that support for the resistance is incompatible with having a clear view of it. To even *discuss* it is somehow a quest for "moral purity". To even go beyond the obvious - namely that we share the same goal as the Iraqi resistance - is "mealy-mouthed criticism" (though I didn't raise it as a criticism, it seems odd that we aren't even entitled to point to the limitations of the resistance in a way that might *sound* like criticism, especially where such apparent criticism may be relevant). I can think of no other case where this would apply. Your view seems to be shaped by the point-blank refusal by most antiwar liberals to even acknowledge that non-white people have a right to defend themselves from state violence of one kind or another. However, it remains vacant moralising, and won't do any less harm than patiently analysing the situation.