[Peace-discuss] WSWS: Trots Attack Other Trots on Drone Strikes

Fri Feb 15 16:41:47 UTC 2013

Yes yes yes.

Especially *today*, on the tenth anniversary of the great anti-war 
demonstrations around the world, including here.   And now we're reduced 
to watching arguments about who's sufficiently anti-imperialist?

On 2/15/13 9:59 AM, David Johnson wrote:
> Here Here Carl,
>
> We need a United Front against corporate power, not take delight in 
> divisions that the ruling classes love.
>
> David J.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carl G. Estabrook" 
> <galliher at illinois.edu>
> To: "Robert Naiman" <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>
> Cc: "Peace-discuss List" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 9:20 AM
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] WSWS: Trots Attack Other Trots on Drone 
> Strikes
>
>
> Your Schadenfreude is misplaced. Disarray among those who should be 
> opposing the child-killer is nothing to celebrate.
>
> Even those of us who do not follow any species of vanguardism can see 
> that Walsh is correct.
>
> --CGE
>
>
> On Feb 15, 2013, at 2:54 AM, Robert Naiman 
> <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> I *love* it when Trots attack other Trots! Where's the popcorn? Why 
>> don't the Trots do this more often? I would pay for it. Think of all 
>> the young people who would be spared wasting their lives in the 
>> various Trot cults. When Trots attack other Trots, that's when Trots 
>> most show that the people who wrote Monty Python's Life of Brian had 
>> experience with Trots.
>> [....]
>>
>> The pseudo-left International Socialist Organization (ISO), as is the 
>> group’s custom when it comes to taking a position on principled 
>> questions, held off writing on the assassination memo as long as 
>> politically feasible. In his February 12 piece, “Execution by Drone,” 
>> the ISO’s Eric Ruder remarks, “The need for a probing assessment of 
>> the use of drones couldn’t be more urgent.” So urgent that 
>> Socialistworker.org couldn’t get to it for more than a week.
>>
>> The ISO essentially follows the Nation ’s lead, acting as an adjunct 
>> of the Democrats. Like Mitchell, Ruder refers favorably to both the 
>> New York Times’ editorial comments on the Justice Department memo 
>> (which include an endorsement of Brennan for CIA director) and Sen. 
>> Wyden’s intervention.
>>
>> Socialistworker.org concludes that “we need real debate, not 
>> infomercials, about the use of drones—and why we need to challenge 
>> the Obama administration’s aggressive assertion of practically 
>> unlimited executive powers to assassinate anyone, anywhere in the 
>> world.”
>> Nothing about the danger of dictatorship, no call for an end to the 
>> program, no exposure of the role of the Democrats at the Senate 
>> whitewash of Brennan. Instead, this left appendage of American 
>> liberalism—and American imperialism—contents itself with references 
>> to the “administration’s contorted legal justifications,” the need 
>> for a “real debate,” and a “challenge” to the White House.
>>
>> From the Nation and the ISO, complacent to the core and corrupted by 
>> the selfish class interests of a privileged, well-off social layer, 
>> Obama, Brennan and the rest of the conspirators against democratic 
>> rights have nothing to fear.
>>
>> http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/02/13/nati-f13.html
>>
>> The Nation magazine and Obama’s assassination program
>>
>> By David Walsh
>> 13 February 2013
>>
>> A secret US Justice Department memo came to light February 4 that 
>> asserted the right of the president to order the assassination of 
>> perceived enemies, including American citizens, anywhere on the 
>> globe, without due process or the need to provide any evidence 
>> against the intended victims.
>>
>> On top of that, Barack Obama’s nominee for Central Intelligence 
>> Agency director, John Brennan, refused at a Senate confirmation 
>> hearing last week to rule out such extra-judicial killings on 
>> American soil.
>>
>> These developments represent an ominous warning to the American 
>> people that elementary democratic rights are in grave danger.
>>
>> The overwhelming response of the liberal establishment and its 
>> left-liberal and pseudo-socialist flank has been to downplay the 
>> significance of the memo, lull the population to sleep in regard to 
>> its dangers and, above all, express continued confidence in the Obama 
>> administration and the Democratic Party.
>>
>> In general, the American media, liberal and otherwise, responded 
>> indifferently or even sympathetically to the content of the Justice 
>> Department memo. Illegal invasion, torture, assassination by drone 
>> missile—this is now business as usual for these well-heeled defenders 
>> of the existing order.
>>
>> The left-liberal Nation magazine has followed in the wake of the New 
>> York Times and various Democratic Party figures, who have called for 
>> greater “transparency” along with the creation of a secret court to 
>> rubber-stamp the executions. The only perceptible difference between 
>> these circles and the Nation is a sight increase in the nervousness 
>> of the latter’s tone.
>>
>> On February 6, the Nation’s Greg Mitchell (“Outrage Mounts in Media 
>> Over Obama Drone ‘Kill Rules’”) informed his readers that since the 
>> leaking of the memo, “the chorus of criticism—mainly from 
>> progressives and media outlets long accused by conservatives of being 
>> ‘in the tank’ for Obama—has grown to a deafening level.”
>>
>> Mitchell must have highly sensitive hearing. Given the nature of the 
>> revelation, that the president of the United States has arrogated to 
>> himself powers historically associated with fascist or military 
>> dictators, the response has been remarkably muted.
>>
>> The approach of Mitchell and the Nation ’s other commentators is to 
>> offer limited criticism of the Justice Department memo’s contents, 
>> and then express satisfaction that a “debate” has now opened up as to 
>> whether the US government has the right to murder American citizens 
>> and anyone else without charging them of any crime.
>>
>> Thus Mitchell writes: “And although the memo only covered the 
>> assassination/murder of Americans… it has sparked a long-overdue 
>> reappraisal of the entire drone war, which has taken the lives of 
>> thousands, including many non-combatants and children.”
>>
>> To gloss over the glaring internal contradiction of his 
>> position—criticism of the assassination program, on the one hand, and 
>> support for the administration that is carrying out that program, on 
>> the other—the Nation columnist proceeds dishonestly, and 
>> demagogically. Mitchell assures us that an “appraisal” of this 
>> illegal policy is coming—by whom, and with what potential consequences?
>>
>> He continues, “This [the debate over the program] promises to get 
>> even hotter tomorrow with the start of the congressional confirmation 
>> hearings for drone champion (and keeper of the kill list) John 
>> Brennan as the new CIA director.”
>>
>> There will, of course, be no official appraisal. Nor did things get 
>> “hotter” during the Brennan hearing. Mitchell simply counts on his 
>> readers not remembering from one day to the next what he has written.
>>
>> So, on February 8, Mitchell was compelled to admit (“As Brennan 
>> ‘Escapes,’ Criticism of Media ‘Self-Censorship’ on Drone Program 
>> Grows”) that Brennan had “escaped” the Senate hearing unscathed and 
>> that the aforementioned “outraged” media, with the New York Times and 
>> Washington Post in the forefront, had been guilty of 
>> “self-censorship,” having suppressed for months “the existence of a 
>> US drone base in Saudi Arabia.”
>>
>> In his live blogging at the Brennan hearing, the Nation’s chief 
>> foreign correspondent, Robert Dreyfuss, already on record as 
>> supporting the would-be CIA director, made his position clear. After 
>> dismissing anti-Brennan protests as “foolish and counterproductive,” 
>> Dreyfuss observed that Obama’s nominee for the intelligence post 
>> “unlike General [David] Petraeus, is a civilian, and that in itself 
>> is a step forward, because the militarization of the CIA over several 
>> decades has unsettled many analysts and intelligence professionals.”
>>
>> Dreyfuss unashamedly presents himself as an advisor to the White 
>> House on what’s best for the CIA and a spokesman for disgruntled 
>> “analysts and intelligence professionals,” and probably no one could 
>> improve on that self-portrait.
>>
>> He concludes his blog by noting appreciatively, “Brennan says that 
>> he’d always bring the truth to the White House, not tell the White 
>> House what it wants to hear. (Unlike George W. Bush’s CIA directors, 
>> who shaped intelligence according to the desires of the White House. 
>> Thus, Iraq.)”
>>
>> As usual, the most obtuse and brazen apologetics for Obama and the 
>> Democrats in the Nation have been provided by leading columnist John 
>> Nichols, who didn’t write about the issue until February 10, almost a 
>> week after the memo became public (“Democrats Have a Unique 
>> Constitutional Duty to Check, Balance the President”).
>>
>> Nichols is no opponent of drone warfare and assassination. In his 
>> article, he identifies himself with Congressman John Conyers and (at 
>> the time) Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who wrote a letter to the 
>> White House last year opposing the expansion of the drone program, 
>> but who “were not suggesting that the United States ought not defend 
>> itself.” They were merely “demanding transparency, accountability and 
>> respect for the rule of law.”
>>
>> This is the Nation’ s advice to Obama, the Pentagon and the CIA: kill 
>> whomever you like, but put in place some legal fig leaf that will 
>> legitimize the program and our own support for it.
>> Nichols gives “high marks” to Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon 
>> “for making the same demands for transparency from Democrat Barack 
>> Obama that he would make of a Republican president. ‘Every American 
>> has the right to know when their government believes it’s allowed to 
>> kill them.’” This, as the WSWS has written, is a rather “truncated 
>> vision” of constitutional rights.
>>
>> Like Mitchell, only more crudely, Nichols attempts to construct the 
>> case for opposition to unlimited assassinations and ongoing support 
>> for Obama. He writes, “There needs to be much broader recognition 
>> within the president’s party that it is possible to respect Obama 
>> while at the same time respecting the demands of a system where 
>> powers are appropriately separated.” To underscore the point, he 
>> declares that congressional critics of Obama “are not disrespecting 
>> the president. They are respecting the Constitution.”
>>
>> There are two possible conclusions to draw. Either Nichols thinks it 
>> is not especially noteworthy that the US president claims the power 
>> to order the execution of anyone he pleases, and therefore the Nation 
>> columnist doesn’t find it difficult to carry on backing him. Or 
>> Nichols recognizes how grave an attack this is and is consciously 
>> lining up with the systematic destruction of constitutional rights. 
>> Either scenario makes him a scoundrel.
>>
>> Nowhere in any of the Nation’s commentary on the administration’s 
>> drone and assassination program is there a call for a halt to the 
>> murderous and illegal operation, or for the bringing of charges 
>> against Brennan and other CIA and Pentagon officials. Nor is there 
>> any suggestion that Barack Obama should be impeached for crimes that 
>> far surpass any committed by Richard Nixon.
>>
>> In other words, talk here is terribly cheap, and the Nation, for all 
>> its protestations, is glued to the Democratic Party and on board with 
>> US imperialist policy. The magazine’s editors and columnists are not 
>> happy, however, about the public exposure of the administration’s 
>> global operations, as they energetically backed Obama’s reelection on 
>> the grounds that it was the only possible choice for “progressives.”
>>
>> The pseudo-left International Socialist Organization (ISO), as is the 
>> group’s custom when it comes to taking a position on principled 
>> questions, held off writing on the assassination memo as long as 
>> politically feasible. In his February 12 piece, “Execution by Drone,” 
>> the ISO’s Eric Ruder remarks, “The need for a probing assessment of 
>> the use of drones couldn’t be more urgent.” So urgent that 
>> Socialistworker.org couldn’t get to it for more than a week.
>>
>> The ISO essentially follows the Nation ’s lead, acting as an adjunct 
>> of the Democrats. Like Mitchell, Ruder refers favorably to both the 
>> New York Times’ editorial comments on the Justice Department memo 
>> (which include an endorsement of Brennan for CIA director) and Sen. 
>> Wyden’s intervention.
>>
>> Socialistworker.org concludes that “we need real debate, not 
>> infomercials, about the use of drones—and why we need to challenge 
>> the Obama administration’s aggressive assertion of practically 
>> unlimited executive powers to assassinate anyone, anywhere in the 
>> world.”
>> Nothing about the danger of dictatorship, no call for an end to the 
>> program, no exposure of the role of the Democrats at the Senate 
>> whitewash of Brennan. Instead, this left appendage of American 
>> liberalism—and American imperialism—contents itself with references 
>> to the “administration’s contorted legal justifications,” the need 
>> for a “real debate,” and a “challenge” to the White House.
>>
>> From the Nation and the ISO, complacent to the core and corrupted by 
>> the selfish class interests of a privileged, well-off social layer, 
>> Obama, Brennan and the rest of the conspirators against democratic 
>> rights have nothing to fear.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Robert Naiman
>> Policy Director
>> Just Foreign Policy
>> www.justforeignpolicy.org
>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
>>
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>
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