With the dismal track record the US has in prosecuting crimes committed by it's troops in various war zones around the world, there isn't any prospect that those responsible for these atrocities, namely the US Republician administration, will ever be held accountable.

[ 18 June 2008: Message edited by: Slumberjack ]

Tom Hayden has recently written that Pilger is "plain crazy" on this topic. He says there is an alternative to "sitting on the sidelines" waiting for the Revolution to Come.

quote:

---

Now to Obama. It's plain crazy to argue that Obama and John McCain are "almost united" on Iraq. It is a truism of politics that rival candidates tend toward the center to win uncommitted votes. That doesn't obscure the obvious, that their differences on the Iraq war are wide and deep. Further, Pilger sees no differences between the two on domestic issues either. Why? Because Obama takes Wall Street money, apparently eclipsing the unprecedented sums his campaign has raised online.

For Pilger, tens of millions of Americans who either love or hate Obama are victims of mass manipulation, since Obama is neither their savior or enemy, but only another politician "exploiting the electoral power of delusion"...and so on.

---

In this, Pilger is like most supporters of dictatorships; he cannot fathom that ordinary people have something to teach HIM. He'd rather be on the outside, all pure-like in his certainty.

quote:

---

To believe [Pilger's] narrative is to deny the living examples of Ted Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, junior, and the leaders of black and latino communities who apparently continue the delusion of living out this pattern of "politricks" decade after decade.

---

He actually thinks that when twenty or thirty million poor and working people support a cause, they might actually have a point!

quote:

---

On the other hand, a November Obama victory, like the Obama primary victory, will energize a spirit that will lead to a new progressive cycle of organizing and movement building and trigger expectations that will surprise the new president.

---

Well, if an Obama victory in November leads to as big a "progressive cycle of organizing and movement building" as his Obama primary victory, then the U.S. will be irrevocably changed for the better to the very same extent that it was by his primary victory.

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff house:
He actually thinks that when twenty or thirty million poor and working people support a cause, they might actually have a point!

---

quote:

---

He actually thinks that when twenty or thirty million poor and working people support a cause, they might actually have a point!

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff house:
Then, when they get into power, they screw everything up, and blame the Great Satan, USA.

---

Did the doctor and madman not murder millions of Vietnamese and Combodians with more bombs than were dropped on any country in WWII?

Well did they or didn't they prop up the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, the biggest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler?

Come to think of it, what were Ford Werkes, GM, Studebaker, INCO, IBM, Standard Oil of NJ, Prescott Bush and Murder Inc. up to in those days leading up to 1938 Spain and "shock an awe" over Stalingrad? Some things never change eh Jeff?

How many dead Iraqis, Afghans, and Slavs since 1991, Jeff? Have you read Nietzsche by any chance? Listening to Wagner or Strauss on iPod right now?

[ 18 June 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

Will a November election of Barack Obama bring an end to the one-note monotony of the national security debate? I fervently hope so. Obama to his credit favors combat troop withdrawals and diplomacy with Iran rather than obliteration. Obama and John McCain would seem to have totally opposing views of Iraq. But at a deeper level, Obama seems to be heading towards the counterinsurgency trap — planning to leave a “lighter, smaller, more nimble residual force” behind in a wasteland of preventive detention, secret gulags, and advisers like David Kilcullen. For the media and public to fail to recognize, evaluate and debate this likely future during the presidential campaign will mean something beyond tragedy or farce.

---

Seems Hayden is not 100% sure that O-bomb-a isn't going to carry on with business as usual in Iraq if he's elected; he thinks we should be having a debate about this "likely future".

quote:

---

These public policy ambiguities are not simply Obama's problem; they are caused by a mainstream media that stubbornly refuses to ask any questions about those "residual forces." For example, how will "residual forces," tied to the regime the Americans put in power, be more successful on the battlefield than the departing 170,000 combat troops?

But Obama's proposals for Afghanistan and Pakistan are far more problematic. They can be described in everyday language as either out of the frying pan and into the fire or attacking needles by burning down haystacks….

Afghanistan is an unstable police state. By 2005, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission cited 800 cases of detainee abuse at some thirty US firebases. "The CIA operates its own secret detention centers, which were off limits to the US military." Ghost prisoners, known as Persons Under Control are held permanently without any public records of their existence. Warlords operate their own prisons with "unprecedented abuse, torture, and death of Taliban prisoners." And as the US lowered the number of prisoners at Guantánamo, it increased the numbers held at Bagram, near Kabul. As of January, 2008, there were 630 incarcerated at Bagram, "including some who had been there for five years and whom the ICRC had still not been given access to."…

Transferring 10,000 American troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, which Obama proposes, is symbolic, a potential down payment on the treadmill of further escalation. (In his statement, Obama supports "at least" two additional brigades for Afghanistan.)…Obama may be proposing an escalation simply in order not to lose, a pattern well-documented in Daniel Ellsberg's history of the Vietnam War….

To borrow a popular phrase of the season, ending one war Iraq to start two more in Afghanistan and Pakistan seems to be a dumb idea.

---

At the same time, Hayden doesn't denigrate democratic elections, and he doesn't make racist comments to the effect that Obama is an "Uncle Tom", like Pilger did.

There is no such thing as a Leninist Party, they have no interest in recruiting on babble, there is no such thing as a party line, there is no such thing as a Communist front.

quote:

---

if the Leninist party is indeed trying to recruit on Babble they are doing a pretty sucky job at it.

---

quote:

---

babble becomes a site for cranks

---

[ 16 July 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff house:

But in the meantime, babble becomes a site for cranks. Mugabe anyone?

---

We end up debating the stupidities of the party line as if they had intrinsic merit, and as if the deepest need of Canadians is to protect Cuba/Mugabe/Milosevic.

quote:

---

independent people stay away

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff house:
Unfortunately, that isn't how the world works.

We end up debating the stupidities of the party line as if they had intrinsic merit, and as if the deepest need of Canadians is to protect Cuba/Mugabe/Milosevic.

So the site suffers, and independent people stay away, because really, why bother?

---

Doesn't everybody debate as if there views or opinions have some sort of intrinsic merit? Including you? If one didn't believe that they were debating from a place of intrinsic merit whether from some organized 'party line' or place of independence then why would they bother to debate in the first place. Regardless of where people come from it's still individuals debating.

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff house:
We end up debating the stupidities of the party line as if they had intrinsic merit,

---

Moreover, one persons perception of stupidities, is another persons deepest held beliefs, are you in favour of thought police, that makes other peoples adhere, to others non-stupidities, or indeed ther stupidities?

quote:

---

and as if the deepest need of Canadians is to protect Cuba/Mugabe/Milosevic.

---

quote:

---

So the site suffers, and independent people stay away, because really, why bother?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff house:
Hayden is absolutely right that we should continue to support Obama as the progressive choice in the elections, while applying critical pressure to make sure that he does not drift too far to the centre...

---

Who should apply this "critical pressure", and how should they do it?

See, this is not a plan unless you've actually got a plan. It's more like a slogan, And, if you let it stay only a slogan until Obama is sitting in the Whitehouse it'll be reduced to only wishful thinking, another pipedream, the stuff they whine about at Democraticunderground.org forum in between giggling at forwarded Republican emails.

Personally, I think your hostile posts where you see a commie everywhere you look is probably turning a lot more people off than any "far left" posters are. I can't think of any thread you've participated in any time recently where you didn't turn the thread into a commie hunt.