Thursday, May 15, 2003

The Anti-Americans, by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com is a very good site for numerous links to articles on the American 'war on terror', although it has a telling reliance on mainstream US media sources. But its real weaknesses derive from its origins in Right-Libertarian philosophy. American Right-Libertarianism is a reactionary (anti-socialist) coldwar doctrine, but in the course of its post-Soviet era development is suffering an interesting split, as is much of American conservative ideology, where the nakedness of US imperialism & aggression causes some of them to question and oppose the policies and tendencies of the US government, drawing upon conservative traditions of isolationism and anti-imperialistic republicanism. However strong they are here in opposition, they are still unable to appreciate the critique of the US and of 'capitalism' that comes from sources such as anarchism, Chomskyism, Marxism and geoism or geo-libertarianism. Hence this article by Raimondo swings into denunciations of the 'anti-american left'. It is a necessary phase that the varous positions be understood and sublated. Rahul Mahajan, the target here of Raimondo's wild spray, makes a reasonable case, based on the perception that the nations and populations of the world will inevitably combine to resist US hegemony. It is not so difficult to understand, however hangups about 'lefties', 'commies', 'anti-Americanism' etc will have to be left behind.

As an example of Raimondo's confusion and lack of understanding, we can consider his 'really telling' example, "Rahul's trope about how those dastardly Americans are also plotting "to force the Palestinians to acquiesce to the Israeli occupation through the latest 'peace plan.'"" If he had paid more attention to commonplace understandings of Chomsky, the left etc he would not be so astonished at this observation. It is quite obvious to such people that the 'Road Map', just like the Oslo accords, is a phony 'peace process' actually designed to allocate the Palestinian authority the role of 'Bantustan chief' or Uncle Tom, to put down Palestinian uprisings on behalf of the Occupying power. This is the reason why it is doomed to fail, and the 'Road Map' has been unravelling the day it was announced, and is already nearly dead. At least the Oslo accords lasted a few years, the Road map will struggle to last a few weeks. The commitment of both the Bush Administration and Sharon to the 'Road Map' and the 'Peace Process' is primarily for propaganda effect, as hollow as could possibly be. Let us hope Raimondo and antiwar.com is not the last to realise this.

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