drieux wrote:
On Wednesday, November 14, 2001, at 10:24 , Jeffrey Blankfort wrote:
>
> Marty, I appreciate that old friendships die hard, but Todd read himself
> out of the movement, by any reasonable criteria that one can use, not
> the least of which being that he has supported every US war for the past
> decade: the Gulf War, the war against Serbia and now the war of
> conquest in Central Asia.
I guess the problem that I have here is understanding how any of this
fits with or against the alledged anti-war movement of the vietnam
genertion - especially given the somewhat comical farce of the 1978
blitzkrieg into cambodia, that lead to the Hanoi Regime becoming
bogged down in a guerrilla war in kampuchea. Granted, after years
of being mired in that war the Hanoi Regime would finally find a
political solution to save face and bug out - but was there some
alternative that could have saved the kampuchean civilians who had
suffered first under the Pol Pot regime, and then under the Iron
boot of the Soviet Hegomonist Puppet State. { not like as if the
valiant People's Liberation Army of the People's Republic of China
didn't try to rectify the matter... }
But then again, as most folks will recall, the anti-war movement
suffered that 'significant blow' when Nixon ended the draft, and
with it allowed so many of the formerly concerned that they might
have to actually make a choice one way or the other about the war
to simply slide off to other more pressing personal issues. So I
have never taken to the simplistic assumption that there was any
one singular 'anti-war movement' - since the 'young americans for
freedom' and the 'young republicans' who were alledgedly rightwingers
were as clearly anti-draft/anti-do_not_mess_up_my_life as were all
of the really committed anti-war types.
In the intervening years since the first cease fire was signed between
the coalition forces and saddam hussein, it seems reasonably clear that
'sanctions alone' would not have worked at ending the Iraqi occupation
of Kuwait. So there are still open structural problems in which
anti-persian gulf war movement thesis makes any sense. That everyone
went to sleep as soon as the CNN 24x7 coverage bailed is not at all
surprising - since most americans didn't even notice when the US
Military Aid and Assistance Group (MAAG) became Military Assistance
Command Vietnam (MACV).... and it
really was not a big deal until the draft really kicked in, and
well it really was not a big deal once nixon signed the peace accord
and everything just fell off the radar, even though the media did
come back briefly to cover the fall of saigon.
This with an anti-war movement against the War with Serbia? Hello?
that way is so filled with chaotic silliness that it is almost a
total convolution of massed irony. Are we suppose to suddenly lump
together such noted anti-war groupings as Pat Robertson's 700 Club
and Jerry Fallwells' Moral Majority, and their support of the
Specialist New's Case - wherein a specialist in the US Army opposed
the issuance of the U.N. Blue Beret to their unit, since it was being
posted to Macedonia, and was, well, so like really gross? Or is there
some other specifically anti-war movement that we should be thinking
about that felt that it was so clearly wrong to prevent Ethnic Cleansing
in Bosnia and Kosovo? Or are we talking about the members of the
military
community who noted the complete failure of the 'bombing alone' strategy
to dislodge federal troops from Kosovo until after they had achieved
their goal of cleansing Kosovo and complied with the mandate that they
retire north of the river.....
I feel for the young 'combat journalists' who now are obliged to do the
rounds to the Peace Keeping Missions in places like Bosnia, where they
suddenly notice that the process of doing Garrison Duty is only slightly
less boring than being Stuck at Fort Hood, Texas. WOW, I hope that news
flash in the Atlantic Monthly doesn't scare everyone. But please, sell
me
the real alternative? We should not have become 'constructively engaged'
in the process? Or is this suppose to be more of the proof that the
Liberal Media is still covering up the Massive Ethnic Cleansing that
clearly has to be going on, since, well, there are american ground
troops there, and its not being covered? Or could it be that while its
not the best solution - even the great Military Hero, President Bush
the younger, in spite of his campaign speachifying, and campaign
promising, has opted to drop his core anti-war stance, and remains
unwilling to withdraw american ground troops? Since their presence
may just be able to help the transition back to the pluralist society
that Bosnia had been, where they frivilously wasted their days doing
literature, and art, rather than learning how to do sniper/anti-sniper
work and
entrenching, so that people could get to fresh water supplies during
a siege....
Maybe it is not the simpler matter of home ownership that complicates
the process of doing the analysis of how the world really works that
leads some to understand that it is not going to be a simple job to
disarm the world and end the wars.
As some will recall about the Rwandan Massacres - too many of those
murders were not even done without legitimate weapons of war, but the
old fashion way with machette like knives, and even rocks.
We still have all sorts of messes brewing in sub-saharan africa, some
of them traditional 'christian v. muslim' or the trilogy of 'christian
v. muslim v. animist', few of them the more traditional post-colonialist
struggle of the Progressivist Forces getting their weapons from the
soviet union to fight against the forces getting their weapons from the
USA - but have become the less clear power struggles of this group
against
that group, finding war the simpler path to power.
But I guess it would be impolite to remember that while the west sat,
the PLA trained forces from Tanzania ran their Op to oust Libyan Backed
Idi Amin out of Kenya. One of the myriad of little wars that folks tend
to not want to toss into the mix of which wars are good, which wars are
bad, and what standards we really want to raise for Real-Anti-War[tm]
that is the true heirs to the one correct implementation of the
Authentic
Sixties Anti-War Movement.
Given the threat that the USA may wind up with semi-permenant bases in
uzbekistan, and tajikistan, at least for the time being, clearly we
would
not wish to culturally destabilize those regions into believing that a
boring and stable government, without the corruption of 'drug money' as
the sole revenue stream, is a good goal to shoot for? And yes, getting
any Girg in Afghanistan to effectively work out an alternative path to
a compromise pluralistic government is OBVIOUSLY a bad goal.
So please, fill me in on what is the Correct Implementation of how to
deal with the Afghani Crisis?
ciao
drieux
-
Driuex wrote:
Driuex may not have agreed with the anti-war movement if
he was out of swaddling clothes at the time, but there
actually was such a movement, and while some of its
exploits were overblown, at least it concerned Richard
Nixon to the point where, according to his Oval Office
conversations, he hesitated to drop the A-Bomb on Vietnam
because he thought it was bring about a real war in the
streets of the US. He was probably right.
There was nothing comical about Vietnam's decision to
invade Cambodia. The Khymer Rouge were surrogates both
for China and, less openly, the US, and had been attacking
Vietnam repeatedly across the border. The Vietnamese, who
had been fighting since the 40s, had no choice but to go
in and depose Pol Pot and had not the latter kept his
support from both the Chinese and the US, the miring down
would, more than likely, never happened. That Drieux can
see that situation as a "comical farce" is less defensible
than the usual indifference that most Americans, whatever
their degree of "formal education," express towards the
victims of US policies around the globe.
While the end of the draft undercut a significant rallying
point for the movement, there was a critical difference
between those against the war who manifested some elements
of human decency to the point of getting their heads
beaten in by the cops or their lungs and faces seared by
tear gas, than the young button-downs who were more than
willing to "drop the bomb" as long as their plans to make
a quick fortune weren't messed up. And since most of them
had money and could go to college or have their dear old
dad call their local congressman for help, there wasn't
much chance of them having to put their life on the line.
Just look at the brave warriors of the post-war Republican
administrations. Most of them were draft-dodgers (and may
I get personal and inquire about your status at that
time?)
Saddam Hussein, understandably, saw himself as a US ally.
Not only had the CIA been instrumental in putting him in
power, the Bush administration, with Sweet Old Bob Dole as
his personal emissary, had provided Saddam with chemical
and conventional weapons in order to fight a debilitating
10-year war with Iran. So when Kuwait began slant-
drilling for oil into Iraq, in his provincial unworldly
ignorance, called in the US ambassador April Glaspie, and
complained to her and said that if Kuwait didn't stop it,
he was going to go to war. Glaspie offered no objection,
which Saddam read as a go-ahead. Saddam, Nixon-like, taped
the conversation.
There is nothing that makes it "reasonably clear that
'sanctions alone' would not have worked at ending the
Iraqi occupation of Kuwait." According to Kuwait
statistics, the number of dead Kuwaitis was only 240!
There was a lot of wiggle-room. Now, we are reminded,
after tens of thousands of Iraqi children have died ("the
price is worth it," said Albright) that Saddam is one of
the greatest threats on the planet. And as former Marine
Scott Ritter, who headed the inspection team, repeatedly
says (but the mainstream press doesn't listen), it's all a
lot of bunk.
The problem with such groups as the International Action
Center (IAC) with their retrograde Stalinist mind-set is
that they refuse to say a critical word about Saddam, who
like so many friends of this and past administrations has
much blood on his hands.
One does not have to pretend, like the IAC or some die-
hards who haven't come to grips with the collapse of the
USSR and the East Bloc, that Milosevich was a committed
socialist, to oppose the bombing of ANY country in which
either civilians or the infrastructure of civilian life is
targeted as it was in Serbia. At Rambouillet, Milosevic,
however, was told to sign an agreement by Frau Albrecht,
that would have surrendered Serbia's sovereignty, and not
even to the UN but to NATO! It was clear again that the
US wanted a war to dismantle Yugoslavia and bring the
region into the US-dictated Western umbrella.
I don't have time or inclination to respond to the rest of
Drieux's hodgepodge, but if the US thought it useful to
bring Milosevic to an international court, they could have
made an effort to do so in the case of Osama bin Laden.
But then, the US would not had been able to get away with
the bombing of Afghanistan and the destruction of the
Taliban, an organization which the US helped to bring to
power and supported.
It was more important for the US to legitimize its bases
that have been in Uzbekistan since 1996 and to extend our
military into Tajikistan. Is it any coincidence that
Unocal and Exxon/Mobil have the oil rights in Uzbekistan
and Chevron has the rights in Tajikistan (where old
Richard Armitage of Iran-Contra infamy is part of the
consortium) and that they need to have a pipeline though
Afghanistan to take the oil to Persian Gulf? Do you by
any chance have Bechtel's phone number?
Jeff Blankfort
ciao drieux
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Nov 20 2001 - 19:40:27 EST