[Peace-discuss] Wallerstein on the war

[Matt Reichel]

Suddenly Stormin' Norman is trying to give the Left a little kick in the 
rear?  This is the man who was one of the most vocal apologists for the 
Democrats and their War Party agenda throughout last year's election --- and 
hypocritically used smear tactics to keep people from voting for one of the 
anti-war presidential candidates.

The piece below is not saying anything that Wallerstein would deny (I 
haven't read the Rich piece because my online NYTimes subscription doesn't 
allow access to the editorial page).
Wallerstein is a fairly traditional Marxist thinker, who sees imperialist 
warfare by capitalist powers as a natural process. He understands, thus, 
that the goal of the American imperial machine is to create an Iraqi state 
that functions as a puppet of the American government: where elctions are 
merely a charade like they are at home, intended to mask the inherently 
un-democratic nature of capitalism. This will probably not be accomplished 
in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Sunni resistance will probably not be shut down by the 
American military, especially not in the face of increasing distaste for the 
war within the American public at large.

Doesn't mean that Bush and co won't try to save face, and that this saving 
of face won't be bloody and wholly immoral.

But I believe that the point is that making the argument that the "war is 
lost" can help win support over from centrists Americans, and eventually 
succeed in making the war end immediately.

Cindy Sheehan supports an immediate withdrawal, and Immanuel Wallerstein 
almost certainly does.
Norman Soloman, if one takes into consideration his love for the Dems last 
year, is not as moral as either of these two in this regard.

Cheers,
matt


>From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>To: Lisa Chason <chason at shout.net>, peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Wallerstein on the war
>Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 14:46:43 -0500
>
>[Frank Rich made essentially the same argument in a NYT piece
>a week ago Sunday, and he was criticized (I think, quite
>properly) by Norman Solomon, as follows.  --CGE]
>
>
>   Someone Tell Frank Rich the War Is Not Over
>   By Norman Solomon, AlterNet
>   Posted on August 16, 2005, Printed on August 22, 2005
>   http://www.alternet.org/story/24144/
>
>On Sunday, the New York Times published a piece by Frank Rich
>under the headline "Someone Tell the President the War Is
>Over." The article was a flurry of well-placed jabs about the
>Bush administration's lies and miscalculations for the Iraq
>war. But the essay was also a big straw in liberal wind now
>blowing toward dangerous conclusions.
>
>Comparing today's war-related poll numbers for George W. Bush
>with those for President Lyndon B. Johnson, the columnist
>writes: "On March 31, 1968, as LBJ's ratings plummeted
>further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing
>our long extrication from that quagmire." And Rich extends his
>Vietnam analogy: "What lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not
>victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but
>an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March
>1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam."
>
>But Rich does not linger over the actual meaning of the "plan
>for retreat" and the "long extrication" -- which meant five
>more years of massive U.S. military assaults in Vietnam,
>followed by two more years of military aid to the Saigon
>government while fighting continued. The death toll during
>that period in Vietnam? Tens of thousands of Americans,
>perhaps a million Vietnamese people. That "extrication" was
>more than merely "long."
>
>Rich's narrative does not just skitter past five years of
>horrific carnage inflicted by the U.S. government in Vietnam
>-- and elsewhere in Indochina -- after the spring of 1968. His
>storyline is also, in its own way, a complacent message that
>stands in sharp contrast to the real situation we now face: a
>U.S. war on Iraq that may persist for a terribly long time.
>For the Americans still in Iraq, and for the Iraqis still
>caught in the crossfire of the occupation, the experiences
>ahead will hardly be compatible with reassuring forecasts made
>by pundits in the summer of 2005.
>
>Mocking President Bush's assertion on Aug. 11 that "no
>decision has been made yet" about withdrawal of U.S. troops
>from Iraq, Rich concludes: "The country has already made the
>decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there."
>
>But of course Americans are not outta there. And President
>Bush reasserted last Thursday that withdrawal of U.S. troops
>is contingent on the U.S.-allied Iraqi forces achieving
>standards of performance and self-sufficiency that are little
>more than mirages.
>
>Yes, eventually, U.S. troops may leave Iraq. But, in the
>summer of 2005, for commentators to declare the withdrawal of
>U.S. troops from Washington's latest imperial war to be a
>virtual fait accompli makes about as much sense as it would
>have in the spring of 1968.
>
>Even after the commander in chief gives an order to begin
>systematic withdrawal of U.S. troops -- and we're very far
>from such a presidential order today -- there is likely to be
>continuation of massive U.S. military actions in Iraq. And
>even an actual sharp reduction of American troop levels on the
>ground hardly ensures a drop-off of Pentagon-inflicted
>violence. During the three years after July 1969, when
>President Nixon announced that the burden of fighting
>Communist forces would shift to Washington's South Vietnamese
>ally, the White House cut U.S. troop levels in Vietnam by more
>than 85 percent. During that same period, the tonnage rate of
>U.S. bombs falling on Vietnam actually increased.
>
>Today, while the U.S. warfare in Iraq continues unabated, the
>message that "we're outta there" is pernicious. It looks past
>the ongoing need to demand complete U.S. withdrawal (if "we're
>outta there," why bother to protest?) and stands aloof from
>the very real political battles that will be fought to
>determine just how long or short the bloody "extrication"
>process will last.
>
>We're not "outta there" -- until an antiwar movement in the
>United States can grow strong enough to make the demand stick.
>And we're not there yet. Not by a long shot.
>
>Norman Solomon is the author of the new book "War Made Easy:
>How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." For
>information, go to: WarMadeEasy.com.
>
>© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
>View this story online at:
>http://www.alternet.org/story/24144/
>
>---- Original message ----
> >Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 14:38:26 -0500
> >From: "Lisa Chason" <chason at shout.net>
> >Subject: [Peace-discuss] Wallerstein on the war
> >To: <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> >>
> >>Commentary No. 167, August 15, 2005
> >>
> >>  "The U.S. Has Lost the Iraq War"
> >>
> >>  by Immanuel Wallerstein
> >>                http://fbc.binghamton.edu/commentr.htm
> >> ...
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