The article is interesting, even to 'leftists' (I wonder sometimes what
that term means anymore; in my province, anyone who is even slightly
'liberal' is a leftist) outside of 'America'. But I'm not sure he isn't
using almost the same black/white distinctions he argues against in his
painting of the American left. Is it really that monolithically
wrongheaded. all the same? I know a number of US citizens who are asking
the complex questions he wants asked...
I've been readig an article on how the taliban's treatment of women was
even worse than we had been told. But I had, in Canada, been reading about
how terrible the Taliban were for some time before the US was driven to war
against them. and, in response to this question:
>But how many leftists can even imagine a holy war against infidels?
Well, I sure can, & I am pretty damn sure a lot of leftists can too. What
is so frightening about a lot of what's going on, including, as Alison's
post pointed out, is the religious fervor on both sides. Perhaps noticing
that aspect of so much of the administration's arguments in favour of, for
example, using tactical nukes in future wars against terrorism is something
worthwhile for any leftist critique?
>This last point is especially important. The encounter with Islamic
>radicalism, and with other versions of politicized religion, should help
>us understand that high among our interests are our values: secular
>enlightenment, human rights, and democratic government. Left politics
>starts with the defense of these three.
Well, I have no argument with that. Surely it will mean, for American
leftists, resisting the movement within the administration and elsewhere to
destroy the originating separation of church and state built into the
American Constitution...?
>It would be a useful exercise to work through the lists and test our
>capacity to make distinctions--to recognize, say, that the US was wrong
>in Guatemala in 1956 and right in Kosovo in 1999. Why can’t we accept an
>ambivalent relation to American power, acknowledging that it has had good
>and bad effects in the world? But shouldn’t an internationalist left
>demand a more egalitarian distribution of power? Well, yes, in
>principle; but any actual redistribution will have to be judged by the
>quality of the states that would be empowered by it. Faced with states
>like, say, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, I don’t think we have to support a
>global redistribution of political power.
Personally, I've read a lot of arguments that do make such distinctions. I
agree they need to be made. But there are others too: including those that
clearly recognize the complex interactions between certain very powerful
international (multinational) corporations (at best amoral whatever the
morality of those who work for them) & powerful states...
I mean, it remains unbelievably complicated & difficult to suss out...
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Springtime's wide
water-
yield
but the field
will return
Lorine Niedecker
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