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.
The question is not really whether or not you care about the Palestinians or not. Christopher Hitchens is also "for" the Palestinians, although I must say that with his recent drift the prognosis is guarded. What I was alluding to was the tendency of liberals like yourself to stop short of calling for the bombing of Tel Aviv. If we are talking about a single measure of world justice, then Israel should have gotten its share of recycled-Uranium shells a long time ago.
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.
What makes you think the US was mostly right in WWII? I think you've been watching too many Stephen Spielberg/Tom Hanks movies. Archibald MacLeish, at that time an Assistant Secretary of State, predicted the outcome of an allied victory: "As things are now going, the peace we will make, the peace we seem to be making, will be a peace of oil, a peace of gold, a peace of shipping, a peace, in brief...without moral purpose or human interest."
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.
Oh, is that the kind of socialism you were referring to? I should have known better. These are the same socialists whose governments brought Yugoslavia to the brink to begin with. The spectacle of Germany invoking the crusade against Hitler is singularly obscene in light of the light of the behavior of the KLA:
"The KLA splits down a bizarre ideological divide, with hints of fascism on one side and whiffs of communism on the other. The former faction is led by the sons and grandsons of rightist Albanian fighters -- either the heirs of those who fought in the World War II fascist militias and the Skanderbeg volunteer SS division raised by the Nazis, or the descendants of the rightist Albanian rebels who rose up against the Serbs 80 years ago.
"Although never much of a fighting force, the Skanderbeg division took part in the shameful roundup and deportation of the province's few hundred Jews during the Holocaust. The division's remnants fought Tito's Partisans at the end of the war, leaving thousands of ethnic Albanians dead.
"The decision by KLA commanders to dress their police in black fatigues and order their fighters to salute with a clenched fist to the forehead led many to worry about these fascist antecedents. Following such criticism, the salute has been changed to the traditional open-palm salute common in the U.S. Army."
(Chris Hedges, March 28, 1999, NY Times)
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.
Right. Like the need to stop the bloody Hun from impaling Belgian babies on their bayonets.
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 laboir 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.
Oh please, Bogdan Denitch is about as much of a Marxist internationalist as the parliamentarians who voted for WWI, your forefathers.
Ian Williams Ian Williams 343 E 30th St #11K New York, NY 10016 Tel: +1 212.686.8884 Fax + 1 212 686 8885 email <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED] website <http://www.ianwilliams.info>www.ianwilliams.info
Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
