[Peace-discuss] Israeli massacre in Gaza [and J Street PAC's
call to end the violence and the blockade]
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at uiuc.edu
Tue Dec 30 23:15:43 CST 2008
Perhaps it betrays my essentially reformist rather than revolutionary
disposition to think that there is something wrong with what Eliot has Abp.
Becket say in "Murder in the Cathedral"--
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
However much that may be a guide for oneself, Christians at least (and Eliot
thought of himself as one) are cautioned against judging the motives of others.
We're reduced to trying to descry the good action and leaving alone the heart's
reasons that the reason does not know (in others at least).
But there can be as we might say operational differences in opposing the war (a)
because it's wrong, or (b) because it's done wrong. They're obvious as soon as
an appropriate remedy is proposed: the alternative is, "Stop doing it," or "Do
it better."
It may be that this distinction -- indeed antithesis -- has been exploited to
neutralize the anti-war movement in the five years since the largest anti-war
demonstrations in human history. In any case, that movement does seem to have
been successfully neutralized, and it wasn't an accident.
I'm frightened, for example, by the disappearance of the word "co-option." A
coinage of the 1960s (the word meant something else before that), the word in
the midst of the Vietnam war came to mean to absorb a political group or idea
into a larger (and probably inimical) one. Here are some examples:
1969 Atlantic Monthly: "A Republican Party based in the ‘Heartland’
(Midwest), West, and South can and should co-opt the Wallace vote."
1970 New Yorker: "All too often, mere approval of their social and political
concern has, in the jargon, co-opted their causes and deadened them."
1982 N.Y. Times: "The argument has been, co-opt the left before it's too late."
That seems to me to be what has happened to the contemporary anti-war movement
-- and we've even lost the language to describe what has happened.
Of course that's not an accident. The forces of ideological control in this
society are vigorous and powerful. They were profoundly frightened by "the
sixties," and they fought back with a generation-long campaign. The general
term for the counter-attack, from Thatcher and Reagan to Clinton and Blair, was
neoliberalism, but not just as an economic doctrine. Bush and Obama are both
heirs of it.
As far as the anti-war movement is concerned, the principal agent of co-option
in the US has been the Democratic party, culminating in the recent electoral
campaign. Given control of Congress to end the war in 2006, the Democrats
instead ended the sentiment that had given them control by adopting it in word
and undermining it in deed.
No one understood that task better than BHO (which is why he was the nominee).
Here's what he wrote in "The Audacity of Hope" about the Vietnam war:
"The disastrous consequences of that conflict – for our credibility and prestige
abroad, for our armed forces (which would take a generation to recover), and
most of all for those who fought – have been amply documented. But perhaps the
biggest casualty of that war was the bond of trust between the American people
and their government [SIC: NOT MILLIONS OF ASIANS] – and between American
themselves. As a consequence of a more aggressive press corps and the images of
body bags flooding into the living rooms, Americans began to realize that the
best and the brightest in Washington didn't always know what they were doing –
and didn't always tell the truth [NOTE THE NATURE OF THE OBJECTION TO THE WAR].
Increasingly, many on the left voiced opposition not only to the Vietnam War but
also to the broader aims of American foreign policy [CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT?!].
In their view, President Johnson, General Westmoreland, the CIA, the '˜military
industrial complex,' and international institutions like the World Bank were all
manifestations of American arrogance, jingoism, racism, capitalism and
imperialism [NOTE: 'THEIR' VIEW, NOT BHO'S]. Those on the right responded in
kind [SIC], laying responsibility for the loss of Vietnam ['LOSS'?] but also for
the decline America's standing in the world squarely on the '˜blame America
first' crowd – the protestors, the hippies, Jane Fonda, the Ivy League
intellectuals and liberal media."
That seems to me a pretty good summary of opposition to the US war in SE Asia
"not because it's wrong but because it's not done right." And there's no break
in BHO's opinion when it's extended to the war in SW Asia. The passage is from
a book published just two years ago. And the anti-war movement disappeared into
his campaign. --CGE
Ricky Baldwin wrote:
> Carl is right of course to criticize the people who oppose the war not
> because it's wrong but because it's not done right.
>
> Carl, I'm skeptical of your assertion of their undue influence, however.
> Certainly a lot of people involved in the antiwar movement have unfortunately
> gotten excited about proposals and programs that could be described as "soft
> on war." I suspect these people were oriented that way from the start,
> though I can't prove it. At any rate, I'm not convinced this orientation has
> taken over the antiwar movement or misdirected it to the extent you seem to
> imply. Maybe others need convincing, too?
>
> Ricky
>
> "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> *To:* Morton K. Brussel
> <brussel at illinois.edu> *Cc:* peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>;
> Stuart Levy <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu> *Sent:* Monday, December 29, 2008 12:55:51
> AM *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] Israeli massacre in Gaza [and J Street
> PAC's call to end the violence and the blockade]
>
> It was not Stuart, of course, who offered the observation about violence...
>
> Over the last couple of years we've observed a massive co-option of the
> antiwar movement by those who oppose the war not in principle but only
> tactically. ("US soldiers are doing it wrong -- but they're part of the
> 'unbroken line of heroism that has made our freedom and prosperity possible
> for over two centuries,' etc., etc.") And cf. the recent discussion here of
> Kinzer.
>
> My suspicion is that J Street is in the business of doing much the same thing
> in re Israel, and that's why this comment is important: it not only
> (certainly consciously) misrepresents the responsibility of the US for what
> is happening, it also suggests that Israel is after acceptable goals but just
> doing it wrong.
>
> Do I hear an echo? --CGE
>
>
> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>> I'm moved to comment on this, although I'm sure that Stuart is quite
> capable of doing defending himself.
>>
>> 1) Stuart did not say "that the violence may be "out of control" ";
> he said that it may get out of control. There's a difference, which Carl in
> his not unusual manner distorts. It is another issue whether it will get our
> of control. I have to agree with Carl that it could be stopped at any time if
> there was a will to do so by the U.S. administration---not to speak of the
> Israelis. But I take the sense of the statement to imply that the situation
> can even become worse if there is no outside intervention.
>>
>> 2) What Stuart is saying, if I interpret him right, is that one ought
> not get hung up, under the present circumstances, on the issue of who
> started firing first, as our mass media is prone to do, since NOW it's more
> important that the murderous bombing be stopped immediately. (In any case, as
> Cindy Sheehan remarks, a country being strangled and occupied, has good
> reasons to resist.) This is not to imply that the two sides are equally at
> fault and should be equally condemned. Clearly, there is no just equivalence
> between the Israeli and Palestinian actions.
>>
>> Finally, I found J Street's message mealy mouthed, too solicitous of
> Zionist prejudices. They turned me off.
>>
>>
>> On Dec 28, 2008, at 10:15 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>
>>> Stuart Levy wrote:
>>>> ...
> http://action.jstreet.org/t/3251/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=508&tag=gazaemail-txt
>
>
> <http://action.jstreet.org/t/3251/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=508&tag=gazaemail-txt>
>
>
>
>>>> Here's their call:
>>>>> ... And there is nothing to be gained from debating which injustice
>>>>> is greater or came first. What's needed now is immediate action to
> stop the
>>>>> violence before it spirals out of control...
>>>
>>> That's surely wrong. It's obvious to the world "which injustice is
> greater or came first." The attempt to equalize the crimes is disingenuous
> at best.
>>>
>>> So is the suggestion that the violence may be "out of control": it
> is entirely within the control of the US and Israel.
>>>
>>> And so is the suggestion in the next lines that the US is "wait[ing]
> ... before intervening ... as they did in the Israel-Lebanon crisis of 2006."
> In both cases the US was actively "intervening" and very much in control of
> the continuous Israeli crimes.
>>>
>>> J Street here tips its propaganda hand. --CGE
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