I've just caught up with the news that Ted Grant, founder and guru of Militant Tendency, died in July. This doesn't seem to have been much blogged about, but it surely marks the end of an era for the left. Grant was virtually the last living link with the pioneering days of Trotskyism, a man who committed himself to the cause when Trotsky himself still had a decade to live. And although I don't look back on my own Militant phase with much affection or pride, I can still readily acknowledge that in his way Grant was a remarkable man.
The papers have obits, and his followers have created a memorial website.
It was obvious to anyone who heard him speak that he was South African. I didn't know (perhaps I should have guessed) that he was Jewish, or that Ted Grant was an assumed name. The official hagiography and most of the obits give his real name as 'Isaac Blank'. It only seems to have occurred to the Independent to question whether 'Blank' was his real name either. The multiple layers of concealment seem entirely appropriate for the future leader of an organization which vehemently denied its own existence.
One can accept that he was motivated by the desire to avoid getting his family into trouble, but that in itself does not explain why he adopted such a very un-Jewish name. This stealthy self-Aryanization is something he had in common with his one-time comrade and subsequent leader of the SWP, Tony Cliff, né Ygael Glickstein (and of course Trotsky famously borrowed the name of his jailer). It doesn't exactly speak for a boundless confidence in the ability of the revolutionary proletariat to transcend the prejudices of bourgeois nationalism. And might the phenomenon not be entirely without relevance to an understanding of the far left's attitudes towards Israel?
Grant was utterly single-minded, not just in his commitment to socialist revolution but in his conviction that 'entrism' was the means for achieving it. He took what for Trotsky was a tactic to be applied for a few months, and turned it into an immutable law of history: the working class will always turn to its traditional mass organizations. Not even the apotheosis of Tony Blair could weaken his certainty that the Labour Party was the only place for Marxists to be.
He was a man with no time to waste on ironing his notoriously loud shirts, let alone on anything as distracting as sex (so in that respect very much like his estwhile disciple Tommy Sheridan, whose preferred form of relaxation, we now know, is a quiet game of Scrabble). Away from the conference platform, where he trained himself to be an effective orator, he was, for a political leader, quite remarkably introverted. Already in 1945 we see him keeping his nose buried in his newspaper when he has his picture taken. And during my stint in Militant he seemed to spend most of his time closeted in his office, where he would read all the day's papers from front page to back page.
Ironically for a militant materialist, the introversion went with a rather touching air of otherworldliness. I remember hearing him speak during the glory days of the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism. 'How do the gentlemen of the SWP propose to fight fascism? With dance bands!' Then he corrected the answer to his rhetorical question to 'with jazz bands', and at the third attempt he finally dragged himself into the Seventies: 'with rock bands'.
Militant held together for an extraordinarily long time by far left standards, but when the split came it was inevitable that the far more politically savvy Peter Taaffe would walk off with 90% plus of the membership. And Grant's reaction was entirely characteristic. Left with a few dozen true believers, like Sisyphus he set his shoulder to the stone which had rolled to the bottom of the hill and started building the revolutionary party from scratch.
There's a further irony in the timing of his death, coming as it did while a court in Edinburgh was hearing Tommy Sheridan's libel case against the News of the World. For Sheridan's charismatic leadership of the anti-Poll Tax campaign was plainly crucial in giving Taaffe and the majority of Militant members the confidence that they could turn their backs on the increasingly hostile environment of the Labour Party and 'come out' as an independent party. And it was his charisma which put the new party on the map, in Scotland if nowhere else. But charisma, as the comrades might have remembered from the case of Derek Hatton, is a two-edged sword. If Ted Grant's political project ended in failure, it's not clear that those who turned their backs on him will ultimately fare any better.
Showing posts with label lefties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lefties. Show all posts
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Greenham grannies
From the Indie: two grandmothers arrested for trying to break into a military base. Predictable outcry from the civil libertarians.
Who seem to me to be overlooking a fairly elementary distinction between protest, which is a basic democratic right, and sabotage, which isn’t. Either we need these bases for our defence or we don’t. If we don’t, let’s close them down and spend the money on schools and hospitals. If we do, they need to be secure, and it is perfectly reasonable for their security to have legal backup. There are, after all, threats which didn’t exist in their present form when Mrs John and Mrs Boyes were camping at Greenham 25 years ago. Of course these women are not ‘the new face of terrorism’, but the law is the law. Or would the Indie rather have laws specifically targetting young men with brown faces?
And who is to decide whether we need the bases? Mrs John makes it quite clear that she wants to physically close them down, given half a chance. I’d prefer it to be our elected representatives who do the deciding rather than a bunch of activists, however many grandchildren they have. When she becomes Prime Minister Mrs John can scrap the lot. But not before.
Who seem to me to be overlooking a fairly elementary distinction between protest, which is a basic democratic right, and sabotage, which isn’t. Either we need these bases for our defence or we don’t. If we don’t, let’s close them down and spend the money on schools and hospitals. If we do, they need to be secure, and it is perfectly reasonable for their security to have legal backup. There are, after all, threats which didn’t exist in their present form when Mrs John and Mrs Boyes were camping at Greenham 25 years ago. Of course these women are not ‘the new face of terrorism’, but the law is the law. Or would the Indie rather have laws specifically targetting young men with brown faces?
And who is to decide whether we need the bases? Mrs John makes it quite clear that she wants to physically close them down, given half a chance. I’d prefer it to be our elected representatives who do the deciding rather than a bunch of activists, however many grandchildren they have. When she becomes Prime Minister Mrs John can scrap the lot. But not before.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Arrêtez le monde, la France veut descendre
Imagine you are a boss considering giving a graduate her first job. Are you more or less likely to take the risk if you know that, however lazy and incompetent she turns out to be, the only way you can sack her is via a time-consuming, costly and stressful legal process in which you have no guarantee of winning?
A no-brainer, you think? For the students who took to the streets of France on Saturday, merely posing the question evdiently betrays a hopelessly Anglo-Saxon cast of mind.
I saw a man with a greying ponytail interviewed on TV; he said he was proud that his children were showing their generation was not apolitical after all. And which old lefty could resist a pang of nostalgia, seeing the streets of Paris packed with marching students and trade unionists? Sadly, appearances are deceptive.
Le mouvement de mai was a central political reference point for me for a long time. However many illusions I may now think I had, its exuberance, creativity and utopian idealism still hold a certain fascination.
The fear-driven conservatism of Saturday’s demonstrators could hardly be more different. And if the government caves in, as seems highly likely, France will have taken one more step towards the alternative to global capitalism tried and tested in North Korea. It is a sad spectacle for admirers of French culture and, as Will Hutton of the Observer points out, a big worry for Europe as a whole:-
'British Eurosceptics will delight, but a stagnant, angry, drifting Europe is not in Britain's interests. France and the French have lost the plot. This is not just a crisis for them, but for us. If France goes absent, the EU will lose its drive and purpose. And that is exactly what is happening.'
A no-brainer, you think? For the students who took to the streets of France on Saturday, merely posing the question evdiently betrays a hopelessly Anglo-Saxon cast of mind.
I saw a man with a greying ponytail interviewed on TV; he said he was proud that his children were showing their generation was not apolitical after all. And which old lefty could resist a pang of nostalgia, seeing the streets of Paris packed with marching students and trade unionists? Sadly, appearances are deceptive.
Le mouvement de mai was a central political reference point for me for a long time. However many illusions I may now think I had, its exuberance, creativity and utopian idealism still hold a certain fascination.
The fear-driven conservatism of Saturday’s demonstrators could hardly be more different. And if the government caves in, as seems highly likely, France will have taken one more step towards the alternative to global capitalism tried and tested in North Korea. It is a sad spectacle for admirers of French culture and, as Will Hutton of the Observer points out, a big worry for Europe as a whole:-
'British Eurosceptics will delight, but a stagnant, angry, drifting Europe is not in Britain's interests. France and the French have lost the plot. This is not just a crisis for them, but for us. If France goes absent, the EU will lose its drive and purpose. And that is exactly what is happening.'
Friday, December 02, 2005
Happy Anniversary
30 years of communism in Laos. No doubt the people will be celebrating - and so, surely, will all the '68ers. What's that? They can't haven't forgotten! Well, if the Grauniad is anything to go by, it looks as if they have.
Maybe there are a few reasons for amnesia here.
'Few glimpse the subsurface realities, of a Utah-sized country whose every neighborhood is under surveillance for dissidents, where most people live on less than $2 a day and which hasn't a single decent hospital to show for its billions in foreign aid.'
Still, just think how much worse things would be if the US imperialists hadn't been driven out. You only have to look at South Korea and Taiwan, don't you?
Maybe there are a few reasons for amnesia here.
'Few glimpse the subsurface realities, of a Utah-sized country whose every neighborhood is under surveillance for dissidents, where most people live on less than $2 a day and which hasn't a single decent hospital to show for its billions in foreign aid.'
Still, just think how much worse things would be if the US imperialists hadn't been driven out. You only have to look at South Korea and Taiwan, don't you?
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Chomsky and friend - slippery customers
In the spat over Emma Brockes’ Guardian interview with Noam Chomsky, the latest development is a contribution from Diana Johnstone, whose book about the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia Chomsky was so keen to see published.
Another slippery customer.
She doesn’t quite manage to deny that she minimized the severity of the Srebrenica massacre, nor does she quite manage to admit that is really does stand out as the worst atrocity of the whole conflict. What she does do is claim that there was a campaign to drum up support for a NATO intervention in which a key premise was that the situation was like the Holocaust.
To which I say, cobblers. I don’t recall anyone worth taking notice of saying anything of the kind, and from the fact that she is totally unspecific as to who is supposed to have made this claim, I deduce that she doesn’t either.
What certainly was said was that the Bosnian Muslims were the victims of an unprovoked and brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing - a term first used in this context, I believe. And Ms Johnstone’s take on that? She insinuates that it is a ‘Manichaean’ view of the conflict, but delicately avoids asserting that it was actually wrong. Plenty of Muslims read the Guardian these days, don't they?
A very slippery customer indeed.
On Chomsky himself, and the Guardian’s apology and suppression of the 'offending' interview, see (of course) Oliver Kamm.
Another slippery customer.
She doesn’t quite manage to deny that she minimized the severity of the Srebrenica massacre, nor does she quite manage to admit that is really does stand out as the worst atrocity of the whole conflict. What she does do is claim that there was a campaign to drum up support for a NATO intervention in which a key premise was that the situation was like the Holocaust.
To which I say, cobblers. I don’t recall anyone worth taking notice of saying anything of the kind, and from the fact that she is totally unspecific as to who is supposed to have made this claim, I deduce that she doesn’t either.
What certainly was said was that the Bosnian Muslims were the victims of an unprovoked and brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing - a term first used in this context, I believe. And Ms Johnstone’s take on that? She insinuates that it is a ‘Manichaean’ view of the conflict, but delicately avoids asserting that it was actually wrong. Plenty of Muslims read the Guardian these days, don't they?
A very slippery customer indeed.
On Chomsky himself, and the Guardian’s apology and suppression of the 'offending' interview, see (of course) Oliver Kamm.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Garyniad
The wisdom of Gary Younge on the French riots:-
‘And the reality is that none of this would have happened without riots. There was no petition these young people could have signed, no peaceful march they could have held, no letter they could have written to their MPs that would have produced these results.’
‘These results’ including ‘10 boarding schools for those who want to leave their estates to study’ – good progressive stuff, eh, Gary?
How many petitions, peaceful marches and letter-writing campaigns did la yoof organize before turning to rioting? I take it the answer is 'not many'. So in fact we don't know what they would or wouldn't have achieved, do we?
‘When all non-violent, democratic means of achieving a just end are unavailable, redundant or exhausted, rioting is justifiable.’
And if rioting turns out not to have done the trick after all, what else will be justifiable? A bomb or two on the Métro, maybe?
‘And the reality is that none of this would have happened without riots. There was no petition these young people could have signed, no peaceful march they could have held, no letter they could have written to their MPs that would have produced these results.’
‘These results’ including ‘10 boarding schools for those who want to leave their estates to study’ – good progressive stuff, eh, Gary?
How many petitions, peaceful marches and letter-writing campaigns did la yoof organize before turning to rioting? I take it the answer is 'not many'. So in fact we don't know what they would or wouldn't have achieved, do we?
‘When all non-violent, democratic means of achieving a just end are unavailable, redundant or exhausted, rioting is justifiable.’
And if rioting turns out not to have done the trick after all, what else will be justifiable? A bomb or two on the Métro, maybe?
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
That French riots story in full
Deep waters here, but the general drift appears to be as follows:-
Some oppressed youths began rioting in really quite a small sort of way, but then along came a very unpleasant government minister called Monsieur Sarky and told them they were scum. They were naturally dreadfully upset about this and set about proving him wrong. Score to date: one burnt-out synagogue, two burnt-out churches and one 61-year-old man beaten into a coma whilst trying to put out a fire in a rubbish bin. Whether Monsieur Sarky has got the message yet is not clear.
If anyone wants to call their blog Monsieur Sarky, pardon mon vieux, but I have asserted my moral right.
Some oppressed youths began rioting in really quite a small sort of way, but then along came a very unpleasant government minister called Monsieur Sarky and told them they were scum. They were naturally dreadfully upset about this and set about proving him wrong. Score to date: one burnt-out synagogue, two burnt-out churches and one 61-year-old man beaten into a coma whilst trying to put out a fire in a rubbish bin. Whether Monsieur Sarky has got the message yet is not clear.
If anyone wants to call their blog Monsieur Sarky, pardon mon vieux, but I have asserted my moral right.
Chomsky, you @#*%
Great minds think alike, even if they use slightly different terminology. What would the vicar say if Mr Grumpy were to call Chomsky what the Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for WAR call him? So I'm afraid this site has to stick with 'twat'.
That Oliver Kamm's a smart lad. You can't expect quite the incisive analysis you get from self and the Popinjays, of course, but he tries hard. Required reading for all Chomskyites.
That Oliver Kamm's a smart lad. You can't expect quite the incisive analysis you get from self and the Popinjays, of course, but he tries hard. Required reading for all Chomskyites.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
A slippery, sanctimonious twat (no, not me)
Being the world’s top public intellectual means never having to say ‘sorry, I was wrong’, because even your wrongness is more right than lesser mortals’ rightness…
Given the immense global success of the Chomsky brand, I can only rejoice at seeing the man so adroitly kebabed by the Guardian’s Emma Brockes, who makes so much sense that I assume she is operating in a province of the Grauniad empire where Seumas’s writ doesn’t run.
The pity is that he undoubtedly will not allow himself the faintest inkling as to what a slippery, sanctimonious twat he comes across as. Hard words from a Christian, but the good thing about Christianity is that you can be a slippery, sanctimonious twat and it’s OK because God loves you anyway. He even loves an irascible old curmudgeon like Mr Grumpy. Chomsky is determined to trust in his own righteousness, and the strain shows.
Given the immense global success of the Chomsky brand, I can only rejoice at seeing the man so adroitly kebabed by the Guardian’s Emma Brockes, who makes so much sense that I assume she is operating in a province of the Grauniad empire where Seumas’s writ doesn’t run.
The pity is that he undoubtedly will not allow himself the faintest inkling as to what a slippery, sanctimonious twat he comes across as. Hard words from a Christian, but the good thing about Christianity is that you can be a slippery, sanctimonious twat and it’s OK because God loves you anyway. He even loves an irascible old curmudgeon like Mr Grumpy. Chomsky is determined to trust in his own righteousness, and the strain shows.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Men of Steel
Good old Jon Steelin, he never disappoints. Today he’s on about the elections in Poland. Well, yes, precisely: it’s the elections, stupid. Country’s gone to pot since it started on this bourgeois ‘democracy’ nonsense. Some of us remember the days when it was run by people sensitive and caring enough to know what the toiling masses wanted without having to ask them, eh Jon? But fortunately not all is lost. If Condi Rice describes Belorus as the last dictatorship in Europe, you won’t need Jon or me to tell you that it’s really an earthly paradise, ‘strong state’ and all. If the trains don’t quite run on time yet they jolly soon will do. And Poland could be next, if Jon's hopes that the new President will turn out to be a bit of a fascist are fulfilled.
A soul brother for the Man of Steel is Frank Griswold, Presiding Bishop of the American Episcopal Church. Some might think there could be no clearer illustration of what was at stake in the Cold War than the two Koreas. But not the P.B., who excels himself by warning us against ‘demonization’ of the Democratic People’s Republic of Hell – sorry, I mean Korea…
Have a nice weekend, all you reactionary scumbags out there.
A soul brother for the Man of Steel is Frank Griswold, Presiding Bishop of the American Episcopal Church. Some might think there could be no clearer illustration of what was at stake in the Cold War than the two Koreas. But not the P.B., who excels himself by warning us against ‘demonization’ of the Democratic People’s Republic of Hell – sorry, I mean Korea…
Have a nice weekend, all you reactionary scumbags out there.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Name and Seumas
Well, I'm disappointed. OK, full marks to Seumas for signing up one of his Respect chums to comment on Lozells. And well done, Salma Yaqoob, for making it clear that it if young blacks riot against Asians it can only be the fault of rich whites. But come on, comrades, what about the Iraq connection? Why are you letting Blair off the hook? Is Respect going soft?
Monday, October 24, 2005
Name and Shame
Can't wait for tomorrow's Guardian. Who will be the first to explain that the race riot in Birmingham would never have happened if Blair hadn't invaded Iraq?
Friday, October 21, 2005
SteeleWatch: that al-Qaida letter
As a pendant to his rubbishing of the Iraqi referendum, al-Grauniad's Jonathan Steele turns to the letter supposedly sent by al-Qaida's 'moderate' second-in-command to the boys in Iraq.
Says Jonathan: 'Whether the letter is fake or not, the targeting issue certainly resonates in Iraq.'
Let's have that once again: 'the targeting issue certainly resonates in Iraq.' There's a phrase for you to savour over the weekend.
Says Jonathan: 'Whether the letter is fake or not, the targeting issue certainly resonates in Iraq.'
Let's have that once again: 'the targeting issue certainly resonates in Iraq.' There's a phrase for you to savour over the weekend.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Al-Grauniad latest
Today's haul is a mixture of the predictable and the bizarre.
There is naturally deep concern over whether poor Saddam will get a fair trial. People who should know better have been going around calling him a murderer.
And if found guilty he faces a death penalty. Well, I'm an abolitionist myself. Did you know that China executes around 2,000 people every year? Just thought I'd mention it.
Now for the bizarre. Reading Craig Murray's piece, I conclude that the long march through the institutions has not spared the diplomatic service. But are we not rather scraping the barrel here, Seumas? The government thinks it's banning a dangerous terrorist organization, Craig and Seumas think it's banning an organization that doesn't exist. So everybody's happy, right? Or is the point that if the Islamic Jihad Union did exist, we would want to make sure it was legal so we could commission an occasional column from it?
There is naturally deep concern over whether poor Saddam will get a fair trial. People who should know better have been going around calling him a murderer.
And if found guilty he faces a death penalty. Well, I'm an abolitionist myself. Did you know that China executes around 2,000 people every year? Just thought I'd mention it.
Now for the bizarre. Reading Craig Murray's piece, I conclude that the long march through the institutions has not spared the diplomatic service. But are we not rather scraping the barrel here, Seumas? The government thinks it's banning a dangerous terrorist organization, Craig and Seumas think it's banning an organization that doesn't exist. So everybody's happy, right? Or is the point that if the Islamic Jihad Union did exist, we would want to make sure it was legal so we could commission an occasional column from it?
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Germany calling
Back grumping after sundry distractions (work, holiday, expiring computer, work...).
There's been an election in Germany, you know. Read all about it in the Grauniad! First, predictably enough, Jonathan Steele's eulogy to the glorious victory of the post-Stalinist Left Party (errh, they got 8.7% of the vote; and currently the folk who look after the archives of the Stasi secret police are trawling through the files to see how many of the new intake of MPs were collaborators - could be 7, could be 'only' 3 or 4).
'While former communist parties in most of eastern Europe have bought into the neoliberal agenda, the PDS, which grew out of East Germany's former ruling party, consistently refused.' says Comrade Steele. Well, bully for them. Actually, the fact that the east has been able to live off subsidies from the west has relieved them of the necessity to work out a coherent economic policy of any kind. And the pay-off for all those subsidies? Eastern Germany has higher unemployment than neo-liberal Poland.
And now this. Interesting approach to international affairs coverage: ring up your leftie mate who happens to hold a university chair in the country concerned, and invite him to pontificate on the economic situation. Never mind if it has sod all to do with his discipline.
I can only assume that 'crisis, what crisis?' sounds a lot more convincing in cosy Tübingen than it does in Berlin where unemployment is running at something like 20%. If Prof. Harvie switched on the news last night he will know that VW are considering whether to build their new model at their original Wolfsburg plant or in Portugal. As production costs in Portugal are a cool €1000 per car lower than in Germany, it's something of a no-brainer as matters stand. Of course, labour costs at Wolfsburg could be reduced - and it might even happen if the works council and the mighty IG Metall union will agree. But then what happens to the domestic demand on which the Observer's veteran Keynesian William Keegan sets so much store?
Nobody disputes that German manufacturing industry still has tremendous strengths. But it's clear to the overwhelming majority of commentators here that they are a rapidly dwindling asset so long as the country remains stuck in a 1970s corporatist time-warp.
I really like Prof. Harvie's reference to 'Saxony's success'. HELLO - this is the state where the neo-Nazi NPD got nearly 10% of the vote last year.
But at least the Guardian preserves a vestige of sanity thanks to the magisterial Timothy Garton Ash.
There's been an election in Germany, you know. Read all about it in the Grauniad! First, predictably enough, Jonathan Steele's eulogy to the glorious victory of the post-Stalinist Left Party (errh, they got 8.7% of the vote; and currently the folk who look after the archives of the Stasi secret police are trawling through the files to see how many of the new intake of MPs were collaborators - could be 7, could be 'only' 3 or 4).
'While former communist parties in most of eastern Europe have bought into the neoliberal agenda, the PDS, which grew out of East Germany's former ruling party, consistently refused.' says Comrade Steele. Well, bully for them. Actually, the fact that the east has been able to live off subsidies from the west has relieved them of the necessity to work out a coherent economic policy of any kind. And the pay-off for all those subsidies? Eastern Germany has higher unemployment than neo-liberal Poland.
And now this. Interesting approach to international affairs coverage: ring up your leftie mate who happens to hold a university chair in the country concerned, and invite him to pontificate on the economic situation. Never mind if it has sod all to do with his discipline.
I can only assume that 'crisis, what crisis?' sounds a lot more convincing in cosy Tübingen than it does in Berlin where unemployment is running at something like 20%. If Prof. Harvie switched on the news last night he will know that VW are considering whether to build their new model at their original Wolfsburg plant or in Portugal. As production costs in Portugal are a cool €1000 per car lower than in Germany, it's something of a no-brainer as matters stand. Of course, labour costs at Wolfsburg could be reduced - and it might even happen if the works council and the mighty IG Metall union will agree. But then what happens to the domestic demand on which the Observer's veteran Keynesian William Keegan sets so much store?
Nobody disputes that German manufacturing industry still has tremendous strengths. But it's clear to the overwhelming majority of commentators here that they are a rapidly dwindling asset so long as the country remains stuck in a 1970s corporatist time-warp.
I really like Prof. Harvie's reference to 'Saxony's success'. HELLO - this is the state where the neo-Nazi NPD got nearly 10% of the vote last year.
But at least the Guardian preserves a vestige of sanity thanks to the magisterial Timothy Garton Ash.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Ken: We Asked For It
Can the newt change his spots? It's back to mayoral business as usual in Londonistan, and smooth operator Ken is not going to throw away all those years spent cultivating the Muslim vote in order to tell them some home truths.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Dummies and Galloway
How could we have got Saddam out without going to war with him? The following appeared in a letter in yesterday's Independent:-
"In 2000 the Muslim Peace Fellowship suggested a five-point plan involving support for Iraqi civil society, a general Middle Eastern arms embargo, and wider reforms. In the US, Sojourner magazine outlined at least two blueprints for largely nonviolent strategic campaigns. None of these strategies could have guaranteed perfection, but their outcomes could hardly have been worse than the catastrophe which actually transpired."
Er, what civil society? The free press? The opposition political parties? The independent judiciary? The basic precondition for the existence of a civil society was fulfilled when Saddam was overthrown. As in the case of Hitler's Germany.
A general arms embargo against Saddam would have been a fine idea, and perhaps the Muslim Peace Fellowship has some ideas as to how Russia and China could have been persuaded to take part.
And perhaps we could have campaigned for Saddam's secret police to show greater courtesy towards the public.
Sorry, but absolute moral positions such as pacifism can only be held honestly by those prepared to admit that they will stick to them regardless of the consequences. Invading Iraq has had good and bad consequences. Not invading would have had good and bad consequences, chief among the latter being that Saddam would probably have remained in power for the rest of his life, and that if the majority of Iraqis had ever risen up against him the resulting civil war would have made the present situation look like a picnic. If we want to take sides we have to take responsibility for the bad with the good.
PS A good one, too, from Jonathan Steele in yesterday's Guardian. Basically the American troops should pull out of Iraq because they're doing such a terrible job, and the British troops should pull out because they're doing such a good job that they're not needed. "Pulling foreign troops out would almost certainly improve Iraq's security, since much of the violence is directed against the occupation" says Jonathan. So let's not worry too much about the hundreds of Iraqis who have lost their lives in the last few weeks because they supported the wrong party, worshipped at the wrong kind of mosque, attended the wrong person's funeral, or wanted to serve the country's first ever elected government as police officers. Just get those Yanks out, and the insurgents will show us what warm and wonderful human beings they were all along.
"In 2000 the Muslim Peace Fellowship suggested a five-point plan involving support for Iraqi civil society, a general Middle Eastern arms embargo, and wider reforms. In the US, Sojourner magazine outlined at least two blueprints for largely nonviolent strategic campaigns. None of these strategies could have guaranteed perfection, but their outcomes could hardly have been worse than the catastrophe which actually transpired."
Er, what civil society? The free press? The opposition political parties? The independent judiciary? The basic precondition for the existence of a civil society was fulfilled when Saddam was overthrown. As in the case of Hitler's Germany.
A general arms embargo against Saddam would have been a fine idea, and perhaps the Muslim Peace Fellowship has some ideas as to how Russia and China could have been persuaded to take part.
And perhaps we could have campaigned for Saddam's secret police to show greater courtesy towards the public.
Sorry, but absolute moral positions such as pacifism can only be held honestly by those prepared to admit that they will stick to them regardless of the consequences. Invading Iraq has had good and bad consequences. Not invading would have had good and bad consequences, chief among the latter being that Saddam would probably have remained in power for the rest of his life, and that if the majority of Iraqis had ever risen up against him the resulting civil war would have made the present situation look like a picnic. If we want to take sides we have to take responsibility for the bad with the good.
PS A good one, too, from Jonathan Steele in yesterday's Guardian. Basically the American troops should pull out of Iraq because they're doing such a terrible job, and the British troops should pull out because they're doing such a good job that they're not needed. "Pulling foreign troops out would almost certainly improve Iraq's security, since much of the violence is directed against the occupation" says Jonathan. So let's not worry too much about the hundreds of Iraqis who have lost their lives in the last few weeks because they supported the wrong party, worshipped at the wrong kind of mosque, attended the wrong person's funeral, or wanted to serve the country's first ever elected government as police officers. Just get those Yanks out, and the insurgents will show us what warm and wonderful human beings they were all along.
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