Dominic Fox wrote:
>
> > Do *we* then act more in my name, in yours, in visiting death upon the
> > 'niggers'...than by _not_ acting?
>
> We have never been not acting; not going to war now would not have been not
> acting. It would have been acting differently; acting better, a lot of people
> seem to think, but I cannot be as sure of this as they seem to be. In my
> estimation we are doing the right thing in the wrong way, at the wrong time
> and for the wrong reasons (both the stated reasons and what one supposes to
> be the "real" reasons are wrong). The right way, the right time and the right
> reasons would have been through a multilateral invasion of Iraq to establish
> a UN protectorate, twelve years ago and because it was our duty.
>
> I gather that some of the people who went of to Iraq to be volunteer "human
> shields" (I thought all the "human shields" last time around were coerced;
> that the phrase was a disgusting euphemism for kidnapping civilians and
> putting them in harm's way to undermine the morale and domestic support of an
> attacking army; it's odd to see the term repurposed as a badge of courage)
> said they were doing so in the spirit of the International Brigades who
> volunteered to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. I would have
> thought that a logical thing for someone wanting to go and fight alongside
> the inhabitants of another country to defeat a brutal fascist would be to go
> and enlist with the army of Kurdish rebels up in the North of Iraq; but as
> *they've* just placed themselves under the command of the US, I suppose that
> would have been a bit much to swallow.
>
> Incidentally, I think Spivak's an even more rotten theorist than she is a
> translator: one of the foremost examples of the kind of toxic high-mindedness
> that bedevils literary studies whenever it finds itself in the region of real
> political struggles. Here's something from Hobbes instead: "Covenants,
> without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all".
> But I suppose that's inadmissable; after all, Hobbes equals whitey, too.
>
> Dominic
Applause for Dominic's remarks.
"Toxic high-mindedness" excellent.
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