The Democrats and Iraq/ Stan Goff This is a MUST READ FOR ALL!

[anarchy1999]

April 19, 2004

The New Line
The Democrats and Iraq
By STAN GOFF

"Failure to internationalize the conflict in Iraq has made America less safe and destroyed our credibility in the world."

I think I have that about right. This is a paraphrase of the official Democratic Party line on the war--the same war to which they assented when they were stampeded by their own craven opportunism into giving Dick Cheney and his ugly pet unlimited authority to attack Iraq.

So now both parties find themselves trapped in their own oh-so-special cul-de-sacs. The Republicans are stuck with an untenable military occupation and the Democrats are stuck with an idiotic critique. The Republicans can't speak about oil, and the Democrats can't speak about Zionism. So everyone is stuck with the same shitty end of the stick--reduced to talking in tongues to justify the bloody occupation of Iraq to an every more skeptical American polity.

snip:
.........American Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles bristle around Fallujah and Najaf--the latter established as a no-cross line by Ayatollah al-Sistani--and reconstruction crews are bailing like rats off a sinking ship. The Spaniards are leaving, Japan is on the brink of a political crisis, and there are hostages held from the United States, Denmark, Italy, Israel, France, the Czech Republic, and Japan.

The Sunnis and the Shias are forming tactical alliances, meaning GWB has accomplished something after all--he has re-awakened pan-Arab nationalism, and with that re-awakened the brooding peshmerga to the north and further north the Turkish army.

snip:
Everywhere any Democrat candidate shows up in public, we need to be dogging his or her footsteps and confronting them in front of the cameras with the very questions they least want to hear, as a way to go after sections of the Democratic Party base with a public-education effort.

http://www.counterpunch.org/

[arcane1]

1. Stan Goff is always a must-read

no exception here :toast:

[BlueEyedSon]

2. " it is politically impossible to leave and militarily impossible to win."

"This is the secret of much advertising and all sound-byte politics, the ability to mobilize and manipulate this struggle not to understand but to care...."

Whoa.

[bemildred]

3. Bravo!!! Mr Goff. nt

[IrateCitizen]

4. Goff's analysis of Kerry's effectiveness on this issue is accurate

I wish it weren't true, but it coincides with what I've come to believe.

The patrician fellow-Bonesman who is aiming for George W. Bush's job--who in 1971 offered up a damning indictment of US war crimes in Vietnam--is now silent as a tomb on the context of this ambush against mercenaries. The Siren of Career has rendered him deaf to the cries of Fallujah.

This explains those who ask what happened to the John Kerry who famously asked during his 1971 testimony before the Senate, "How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?"

Granted, Kerry will be an improvement over Bush in many areas. But we also must realize that the struggle is only beginning in the event that he is elected this fall.

[bemildred]

5. Mr. Kerry must decide which master he is to serve.

The people or the ruling class. In 1971 he knew the answer.
Let's hope he finds it again.

[IrateCitizen]

6. Such decisions are muddied by the siren of ambition

I don't blame Kerry for his positioning on these issues -- he's simply displaying the same behavior that 99.99% of all other human beings would display if placed in the same kind of situation.

The John Kerry of 1971 was a young man who had not yet become a prisoner in the iron cage of his own ambition. The Senator Kerry of 2004, after three decades in the United States Senate, is not the same man as John Kerry of 1971.

Just as I am not the same person at 30 as I was at 20. As I am certain that, in varying degrees, all DUers would describe themselves.

This does not mean that the John Kerry of 1971 is completely gone -- there is certainly a part of that person still inhabiting the John Kerry of 2004. But to expect him to become that person again is just plain foolhardy. That person is the resident of a bygone era.

[bemildred]

7. The best that one can expect of Mr. Kerry is that he will

attempt to rule well. To expect him to work to empower the
people or to weaken the ruling class is - as you say - unrealistic.
If the people want power they will have to figure out how to
take it and keep it. Probably the first step on that journey
would be to demolish the existing Democratic and Republican
party machines. Party machines are inherently anti-democratic,
it's all about control, isn't it?

[IrateCitizen]

8. Careful, bemildred -- you're venturing into forbidden territory

Questioning the legitimacy of the Democratic Party as a democratic structure is forbidden by many on these boards. Yet, it is a question that needs to be asked by more of us.

Have you ever heard of Gene Sharp? I would highly suggest you check out his book Social Power and Political Freedom. In it, he discusses in great detail the concepts of nonviolent (but confrontational) non-cooperation and diffusion of power throughout a society that are essential to moving forward the concepts you mentioned above.

[bemildred]

9. Walter Karp is good too.

I'll check out Mr. Sharp.

Regarding the Democratic Party, I'm not questioning it's
legitimacy -parties are fine, we need more of them - I'm
questioning the good intentions of the people that run it,
they are not out to serve the people or the nation, they are
out to serve themselves and retain power, and they will fuck
the public all day long to do that.