From: "Ian Williams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Fw: A reply to Ian Williams Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 16:20:14 -0500
To: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Louis Proyect
Cc: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2003 4:17 PM
Subject: Re: A reply to Ian Williams
Dear Mr Proyect
before you go to ad hominem attacks, you should check which homo you are attacking.
I am not and never have been a liberal. I am a socialist. The "many people who wonder" about why I did not mention the Palestinians can rest assured. I joined the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Britain in the 60's when I was indeed vociferously against the War in Vietnam. I can produce reams of newsprint written by me about the Palestinians beginning well before most of the Left thought it was fashionable, or before some of them had been sanctioned by Moscow to support the PLO.
I have never, ever as you allege "advocated a new role for America in the world, which came down to American power on behalf of American ideals," not least suspect that in terms of the last few decades "American Ideals" is an oxymoron. Because the US was mostly right in WWII does not make it perfect for every occasion, any more than being wrong in Vietnam means that it is always wrong - although as we noted it is a good rule of thumb.
I did indeed support the European Socialist Parties who collectively pulled an unwilling US into NATO's efforts to stop the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo - and had for many years before argued strongly that the UN's members should vigorously enforce the existing UN resolutions. I have written extensively about the failure of to enforce UN decisions on Israel, and indeed on Indonesia and Morocco over East Timor and Western Sahara. because of the US.
Socialists do not have frame their policy as the dialectic opposite of whatever the US is doing at any time. There are over-riding principles including humanitarianism, and human rights on which to base a policy.
I may add that that there is nothing wretched about Bogdan Denitch whose actual record in fighting Nazis - with bayonets not slogans - involvement in the labor movement, and civil rights makes me proud to have co-authored articles with him. As a Croatian Serb, his ability to remain a Marxist internationalist puts to shame the national-communism that so many Leninists sects and parties have succumbed to.
Ian Williams
From: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Louis Proyect
To: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2003 3:22 PM
Subject: A reply to Ian Williams
Dear Mr. Williams,
I was rather taken aback to see your article on the Counterpunch website that warned about the dangers to world peace posed by Bush administration figure John Bolton, who shares the same agenda as--in your own words--Likudnik fundamentalists.
The last time I saw you in person was at the Socialist Scholars Conference where you were lambasting the left for not supporting NATO's war against the dastardly Serbs. As George Packer put it in a recent NY Times Magazine puff piece on behalf of the "get Iraq" left (Hitchens, Walzer, etc.):
"Many of them had cut their teeth in the antiwar movement of the 1960's, but by the early 90's, when some of them made trips to besieged Sarajevo, they had resolved their own private Vietnam syndromes. Together -- hardly vast in their numbers, but influential -- they advocated a new role for America in the world, which came down to American power on behalf of American ideals."
That kind of describes you, doesn't it? I mean where does all this nonsense about "regime change" come from. When liberals like you were beating the drums for war against Milosevic on behalf of the Kosovars, many people wondered why you didn't seem as bothered by Israeli brutality toward its own Muslim subjects. You and the wretched Bogdan Denitch co-authored an article that posed the question in this manner:
"Real internationalists can hardly use the dubious rights of 'national
sovereignty' to oppose action
to stop massacres. Opposition to US military intervention is an
understandable rule of thumb, but
it shouldn't become obsessive dogma. After all, most Europeans were happy
with US
intervention in World War II." (<http://www.soc.qc.edu/ssc/williams.html>http://www.soc.qc.edu/ssc/williams.html)
Don't you see the problem with putting national sovereignty in quotes? If you decide that the USA and its imperialist allies in Western Europe can take sides in a civil war (and that's what we are talking about), what's to prevent a Donald Rumsfeld or a Paul Wolfowitz to use the same kinds of appeals to expediency themselves? It is really a slippery slope once you decide to adopt the point of view of the US State Department as you did.
Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: <http://www.marxmail.org>http://www.marxmail.org
