MJ: "The truth"about Doug 'I'm no pacifist' Henwood is that he, too, is in favour of US policy, that is, Henwood favours the policy of bombing Afghan towns and cities, he favours the random and/or mass slaughter of Afghanis, he favours the destruction of whatever remains of the social infrastructure in Afghanistan, in short he favours the kind of war of exterminism which
mbs: There is no evidence that 'bombing towns and cities', random and/or mass slaughter, or 'destruction of whatever . . . ' are policies of the USG, nor that they have been carried out. This is simple hysteria for the consumption of one-note anti-imperialists. One could imagine cogent critiques of the U.S. campaign, but not any beginning as above. One could even connect the Russian campaign to U.S. machinations, thanks to Zbig's zbig mouth. Why engage in this sort of b.s.? MJ: for example the Russian state has carried out in Chechya in recent years. The collapse of Afghan society as a result of the combined efforts of US bombing and the insertion of Russian ground forces, troops, tanks etc, under the Northern Alliance flag, is creating not just a humanitarian catastrophe but prime-time genocide in Afghanistan. Henwood does support mbs: there were more indications (false, as it turned out) of impending genocide in Kosova than thus far in Afgh. MB: this ongoing genocide. He is a 'voter for war credits', a person who has surely lost any shred of credibility as a spokesman of the left. You cannot be of the left while supporting US genocide in Afghanistan. Now, weasel words about supporting this or that "bit of" a policy can not help him slide out his moral complicity in the US genocidal assault on Afghanistan, and no self-serving caveats about being against bombing but in favour of oher kinds of administering death should blind us to the truth of his politics: it is a cowardice and an instinct for personal survival, nothing more, that motivates it. mbs: how DH's article advances his 'personal survival' is beyond me. The way to do that would be to follow Hitchens. Unless one reasons that supporting a campaign against terrorism might mitigate against further attacks on NYC that threaten DH directly. I guess this is what Huey Newton meant by revolutionary suicide. MJ: When assessing 'the truth' of Henwood's politics, let us begin with this obvious fact -- the man is simply a craven apologist for exterminism, for US imperialism in its newest and most lethal guise. Mark Jones mbs: one might be tempted to invoke the WWII analogy if one hadn't spent some time here on PEN-L and learned that the justice of WWII is a controversial matter. So let us invoke the October revolution and ask whether it is possible that innocents were not harmed, and whether in light of that, the revolution was rendered invalid. If not, then we have a kind of selective pacifism at work here (not a new thing, BTW). No violence by the U.S. state can be justified, and any violence by anything, and I do mean 'thing,' against the U.S. state is properly met, for all practical purposes, with indifference.
