ravi wrote:
>
>
> Rakesh: I thought I said more than once that I have no criticism of
> Dabashi (I think I said that in my post congratulating Julio also,
> for which I presume I have earned the 'lackey' denotation ;-)). Where
> I agree with Yoshie, Michael and Julio is that there is no value in
> (us, Western leftists) getting all liberal and "on the one hand... on
> the other hand..." about a "regime" elected by a people whose
> greatest threat at this point is our government (which we can
> criticise much more authoritatively).
There are two distinct questions here. First, as a general principle I agree wholly with Michael Smith, "I hate this moral-equivalence stuff -- it's so liberal, so above-it-all" -- in particular the "so above-it-all" always sets my teeth on edge. That sort of thing is designed to hobble mass organizing of any kind. But there are contexts and contexts, and I take it that the real context in this case is internal to Columbia University, and in that context the on this hand, on that hand makes perfect sense. But if one were to use Dabashi in a broader political context, by all means one should quote selectively, focusing only on his ravaging of Bollinger, and focusing that within the larger question of the illegitimacy of any u.s. attack on Iran.
Michael says he's not an organizer, but he does often think like one. The U.S. is demonizing Iran (and it is really, in practical terms, a flat lie to distinguish between people and "regime"; it is the people who die). The only task of leftists is to demonize the demonizers.
Carrol