I have the advantage of more sceptical media in the UK, and a personal interest in the minutiae of tactics, and meaning, which IMO allows me to see behind the spin, rather than just criticise it. Usually the left has to have broad propagandist approaches to the enemy. While this is necessary, the internet now allows the possibility of seeing the conflicts and contradictions among the imperialist and other powers close up, with the potentiality for the new global movement to combine tactics and strategy. I appreciate that some people may feel "there is something bourgeois about everything I write" and if I have a contribution to make now, it is for the same reasons as many viewed my contributions at the time of the Kosova war with great suspicion although I think I always chose my words carefully. For me the emotional bedrock is a prejudice to solidarity with muslim and other third world peoples, as a guiding star for any change in the world.
To Hari's post (below):-
Blair's worried sick look is deliberate. We now have a situation in which London will systematically leak against the most flagrant hegemonistic camp in a war which is suddenly going to be long drawn out. The IMF has warned that the fundamentals have already turned adverse. It has become apparent that whatever violations of human rights in Iraq, and whatever commandist errors by the Baath party, it has enough roots in the population to maintain a war of national resistance for months, and years.
Even Rumsfeld blenches to accept the challenge of the Iraqi Defence Minister to go into the graveyard of Baghdad.
Yes yesterday evening the BBC correspondent did not repeat the Stalingrad word on camera, but had without doubt been briefed that the Pentagon had finally got part of the message - US troops on the ground to be doubled + probably a delay on attacking Baghdad unless personally agreed by Blair and Bush, I would guess.
The war is to be prolonged. But what we are going to see is the politics of the war in Vietnam telescoped into 9 months. That is electrifying.
The only major question I would have to say in response to Hari is to agree how to define defeat. Just because hegemonism is going to lose this war, does not mean that hegemonism is defeated across the world. But Blair is already beavering away about the technical details of how humanitarian aid is got into the cities, and that will undermine the pretensions of the Pentagon to run a civilian administration. So the net result may just be an adjustment of the balance of imperialist forces in the world.
But the people of the world are being politicised as never before, and the hegemons are going to lose this war, in a way no one will be able to forget.
IMHO
Chris Burford
London
At 2003-03-27 19:33 -0500, Hari Kumar wrote:
Dear Chris:
I really would hope that you are right. But, again I doubt it. The "worried sick" look on Blair's face in the interviews at the War Summit with his leader Bush - certainly indicate that Blair is worried and sick. but what about exactly?
Of course the longer the heroic struggle of the Iraqi peoples plays out, the worse is his likely political fate. But.. Stalingrad? I still doubt that - Guerilla warfare with significant casualties on the "Liberators"? YEs. But - no victory to the Iraq peoples in the short term. Again - what is the definition of "defeat"?
The USA will be defeated purely by teh monumental exposure of imperial arragant might that this war shows. The exposure of the events to the peoples of the world - including in North America & in the UK - is a HUGE victory - in the long term for us. But - in the sort term a different story I suspect. That is what I think anyway.
Cheers, Hari
