Tomb responded to Cox thus:
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.
As 'anti-imperialist' positions go this is only a slight improvement on Cox's appalling post, which is an outright appeal for stupefaction (one of the disadvantages of being subscribed via the digest is that I now have to scroll through all messages rather than just clicking on the ones that I might be enlightened by, but with the departure of the wearying YF I thought it was a good time to rejoin).
I don't know what the Iraqi "resistance" refers to, whether it includes death squads who kill other Iraqis because they have the wrong ID or whatever, but I do know that that accounts for a very large part of the killing that's going on there, far more than the killing of US soldiers. I find no point of convergence with these people, never mind "limitations" in their politics. I also find the reference to "state violence" perplexing in this context. As far as I know some of the Shia militias involved are deeply implicated with the state. Are they not included here, even when they are fighting against the US invaders? These are such crude categories that they turn the situation into something incomprehensible.
I won't shed any crocodile tears for US forces that are hit (many of whom by the way are "non-white" - Tomb's term), but that doesn't turn any of the factions involved into progressive forces of any kind. What sort of progress could this carnage represent? And what sort of progressive political set-up could possibly emerge from this? There are doubtless some forces who are attempting the impossible, to unify Iraqis against the occupation. While this alone would not mean progress towards a better Iraqi society, it at least would have some semblance of sanity about it. But the idea that what we've got NOW is something to be supported, whether critically or not, is just the type of thing that people who are desperate for any kind of rhetoric that will distinguish themselves from liberals (and what desperation that is) indulge in. Never mind "moral purity"; this is what I call real indulgence. And the stupidity of it: In every conflict there must be one faction that is the progressive one. "Our" side is always represented somehow or other in any conflict. duh
Tahir
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