Dissident Veteran For Peace: Imperialist Peaceniks

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Imperialist Peaceniks

Below is an excerpt from "Becoming Imperialist" by KEVIN PARSNEAU, ARJUN CHOWDHURY and MARK HOFFMAN in CounterPunch, May 24, 2007.

Consider these familiar assertions:
If Donald Rumsfeld had listened to the generals and invaded with more troops, Iraq would be stable today.
If the U.S. had provided security and basic services after the initial invasion, Iraqis would have embraced America's presence and agenda by now.
If Paul Bremer had neither de-Ba'athified nor disbanded the Iraqi army after the invasion, the insurgency would have been manageable or non-existent.
If you agree with any of these claims, you are an unwitting participant in American Imperialism. You criticize the "handling of the war" but you display faith in the capacity of the US to remake the world in its image through military force and administration. Such faith reinforces the logic of imperialist misadventures like Iraq, and paves the way for future ones.

Later, Michigan's own Carl Levin is exposed in all his sickening glory:

Senator Carl Levin (D--Michigan) expressed the "opposition's" view instructively: "America has given the Iraqi people the opportunity to build a new nation at the cost of nearly 3,000 American lives and over twenty thousand wounded. But the American people do not want our valiant troops to get caught in a crossfire between Iraqis if they insist on squandering that opportunity through civil war and sectarian strife"

Labels: anti-war movement, Empire, Iraq