I'd rather just say, Don't bomb Iran! US out of the Middle East! right here, to my own communities hoping to influence my own government. If asked, doesn't the Iranian government suck, I'll say, yea and so what?
And I think I agree with Tariq Ali, let's support the Bolivarians. There's real hope there. Tomb, I don't care if they aren't "real socialists." They are real enough for me. I don't know what's going on in Egypt, enlighten me. I actually don't know all that much about the Bolivarians. But I don't think it's a choice, support something good in Egypt, if that's happening, or the Bolivarians, but not both.
But Yoshie, if you want to support winners, actually existing anti-imperialists, I do not see what you are stuck on a bunch of misogynist antisemitic theocrats who'd have you in burqua and a gag in no time flat rather than on Chavez and Morales, who seem genuine admirable and are doing as good if not better as job of fighting imperialism as anyone in the Middle East.
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/16/07, Marvin Gandall
> <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> > Americans won't oppose a war as a result of
> greater public
> > understanding of the Islamic regime.
>
> It's not a major war against Iran that is on the US
> agenda today, for
> which the US power elite lack the means and the US
> public have little
> appetite. It is economic sanctions, covert actions,
> and "democracy
> assistance." Opposing mainly what's not on the
> agenda and doing
> nothing to oppose what's actually being done is a
> response that makes
> no political sense. Why do leftists insist on that?
> That has a lot
> to do with their own perception of the character of
> Iran's Islamic
> government, as well as explicit or implicit
> abandonment of the
> anti-imperialist framework of thinking that came
> from Marxist and
> other traditions on the Left and explicit or
> implicit adoption of
> liberal progressivism and internationalism.
>
> More generally, both the actual character and
> others' perceptions of
> governments, political parties, and social movements
> at odds with US
> hegemony have everything to do with the outcome of a
> politico-economic
> possibility that is on the horizon now due to many
> objective and
> subjective reasons (the subprime US economy, the
> economic rise of
> China, the politico-economic recovery of Russia, the
> consolidation of
> the euro, relatively high oil prices, the Bolivarian
> Revolution in
> Venezuela and its various allies in Latin America,
> the rising
> opposition to the US client state and its
> corporatist union
> bureaucrats in Egypt, the weakening of the Kemalist
> military hegemony
> in Turkey, multiple challenges to Musharraf in
> Pakistan, belated but
> not insignificant Indian Communist objection to
> India's consent to US
> hegemony, and so on): the possibility of checking US
> hegemony.
>
> If Iran were actually what both the US power elite
> and many leftists
> claim it is, i.e., a country that is run by a
> government that has
> already lost, or is soon to lose, legitimacy in the
> eye of its
> populace, its resistance to the empire would be
> doomed, no matter what
> anyone says. It would be a lost cause, and I would
> not bother trying
> to educate anyone about it, for _a country whose own
> people do not
> defend cannot be defended_. But that is not the
> case here.
> Therefore, we shouldn't help the US power elite talk
> themselves into
> believing their own dangerous propaganda.
>
> The actual character of Iran's government, unlike
> that of Saddam
> Hussein's Ba'ath Party dictatorship for instance,
> gives leftists a lot
> to work with. So does the character of Hamas and
> Hizballah, Iranian
> support of which is a major bone of contention.
> This matters less in
> the USA, the UK, and Canada (where leftists are
> weak) and Japan (where
> leftists, due to historical reasons, generally do
> not subscribe to
> liberal internationalism) than in continental
> Europe, where leftists
> are not without power and on whose governments
> Washington, together
> with Sarko the American and his Socialist Foreign
> Minister, is putting
> much pressures to economically isolate Iran.
> --
> Yoshie
> ___________________________________
>
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