If I understand fellas, it’s the USA who invaded Afghanistan, not the other way around. The Taliban were the US allies. Get it? We armed them. See my point?

So, you can “fear” all you want, but Who’s in Iraq? Who as nearly 800 bases around the globe? Who bombed to hell Southeast Asia? Who slaughtered thousands in Bosnia? Who has tossed 1/2 meg bombs on civilian outposts in Somolia?

Get it? Taliban? NO…

WWII is , than viewed as an example of a “just war”. The argument is extrapolated to “but we could have “saved” more lives had we intervened earlier…” Of course this is a typical military and imperial ploy.

The only “legal war” is one which is waged by the defender when attacked. But again, the war is not morally just because someone waged it – was the aggressor and therefore there is criminality.

Then there is the case of the “humanitarian interventionism” which leads precipitacely to war and innocent lives lost or otherwise destroyed. Assuming a level of killing pre-dating the intervention, it has been our historical experience that interventionism (for any reason) heightens the war, ups the ante and changes the dynamics from “civil” to insurgency and guerrila warfare. Low intensity warfare is prescribed by US militarists. Deaths now reach all time highs.

As wars have been waged over the last century (and before) the numbers of civilians killed as a result have gone up to the point where, there are few “soldiers” killed and the majority are civilians at an ever increasing rate with larger and larger numberse of them children.

War is neither morally just nor ever legal. The cause of war has always been the same. The “system” which precipitates it (forms of imperial hegemony) must be replaced to align with the moral and legal constraints that make war a crime. Nothing short of that makes any sense.

Discussion around “leftist” are merely red herrings which have no real bearing on the graveness of the issue.

I was repelled by this article’s title at first, thinking the Good War meant the one my son’s age cohorts give so much credit to The Wise Men (who also gave us vietnam) for. But no, It’s Afghanistan. I remember reading Rory Stewart’s The Places In Between two years ago. God, what a place. Stewart trekked from one side of the country to the other, with a giant killer-dog given to him by a mountain villager, and they were both repeatedly attacked or challenged by village dwellers after village dewllers. I won’t reveal which one, if either, made it home.

You still have time for a couple of chapters. Katie C. doesn’t present until tonite, if I’m not mistaken.

Capitalism and fascism are hand in glove. Unless the blight of capitalism is completely exterminated, war and death will remain the primary source of profit for the fascist corporatocracy.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
–Benito Mussolini

http://coldwarproductions.blogspot.com/

You’ve said it beautifully,
“There’s never any serious antiwar movement from within an imperial society. They want imperial benefits but without the war part of it”
i.e. without getting killed in the process.

If the Iraq invasion had not spilled one drop of American blood there would not be a Cindy Sheehan around protesting…
There would be congratulations all round:
Aren’t we just too smart for them? We killed sand-niggers by the thousands and not a single casket with one of our boys in it as yet arrived home! Isn’t it GREAT !?

And Max rather than examining why the Left has betrayed their “principles” you’d rather swept the issue under the rug with ad-hominum fallacies rather than explanation.

It must be real difficult for you Max to explain why the anti-war movement has continuously obscured the influence of Zionism among the ranks of the Left and that the Left would have rather diffuse the movement in order to maintain that obscurity.

Also Max it must be difficult for you to explain why a certain faction of the “Left” is not holding Cynthia McKinney accountable for her vote for the invasion of Afghanistan. Interestingly the DEMOCRAT Barbara Lee voted against the resolution.

This has been my point that you’d rather attack than discuss. The point is that the Left has not only displayed inconsistencies but has BETRAYED their profess principles. That BETRAYAL of principles is WHY there is a Obama/Biden today and not a Nader with a firm institutional structure that can sustain itself AFTER the election.

Despite the anti-war movement weak sinews to the minority communities, ORDINARY people got involved and what did the Left do? Diffuse, obscure and betray. That monumental moment and opportunity was LOST.

Thus because the Left FAILED to construct solidarity with the anti-war movement and FAILED to EXTEND the anti-war movement into minority communities the movement was constricted. Think about what could have occurred had the anti-war movement branched into the Latino community for example in reaction to the Sensenbrenner bill to resist the racist anti-immigration wave.

Yet the Left today offers NOTHING. Especially folks like you Max prefer to make excuses for the Left and would rather not deal with the realities of the real core problems of the Left. The core problem of the Left; their lack of adherence to principles especially when it comes to challenging Zionism as constructed in the U.S. (and you yourself has written incessantly using strawmen and poison the well fallacies to obscure the issue) clearly indicated a RED flag that retards solidarity which is vital for any REAL change to occur.

Thus as a means of avoidance the result is to shift the issues towards the “Democrats”. Yeah we all know and understand what the Democrats stand for. But the REASON why the Democrats has strength is DUE TO THE LEFT!

The Obama phenomenon has attracted the very people the LEFT attracted in 2003/2004. However because the LEFT created this void opportunistically being filled by Obama the Left complaints falls extremely FLAT and IMO the Left has positioned itself for a severe backlash should Obama lose.

“Leftist” like you Max and to be fair and balanced Glen Ford are using critiques of Obama not as a way to inform and to educate but to avoid dealing with the contractions and betrayals committed by members of of the Left and IMO are phonies.

The critiques are sanctimonious and reactionary condemning the voters for even considering Obama as an electoral choice. They paint Obama as a “pied piper” offering “hope” to a mindless public. But when that narrative is contrasted with the betrayals and failure of the Left then the people are responding logically and practically. That is the perspective Max that you MUST attack in order to continue to obscure and camouflage the contradiction of the Left and why the Left is marginalized in the United States.

Clearly I’ve raised valid issues regarding McKinney and clearly it gnaws at you because you have to deal with your own inconsistencies and defend your inconsistencies.

“We are all Zionists now” — Joe Biden.

At the moment of the 2001 incidents in NYC, Arlington, VA, and Pennsylvania, the United States as a nation had an opportunity to reflect on its character, its very soul, and begin to change, for the first time, into a truthful and honorable leader.

We squandered that chance. As was the plan, I believe, the Left was emasculated and functionally silenced once and for all. Those of us who said, “Wait. Talk. Discover. Take the highest road” were called pariahs, traitors, and weaklings.

Our courage has failed. There were so few who demanded the truth that now that the truth is so evident, we are moribund.

I criticize the Right less than Left, because the Right’s actions were to be expected. The Right wages war because it believes in war. The Center used to wage war because it was afraid of being called “unpatriotic”. The Left is flaccidly impotent, period.

There is no more country to defend. The Left has not been betrayed, it has betrayed itself. We do not even have a “lesser of two evils”. The directional labels mean nothing – we are fully in a post-political era.

Now let’s see what does this ice melt mean. That Polar bears are going to find it hard to survive, yes and we can soon go up North and get oil and gas, yes. It also means this:

We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, “the end of living and the beginning of survival” for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction.

The collapse of the polar ice caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world’s coastal plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world’s most productive farmland. The world’s geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth’s carrying capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die. guardian.co.uk

How long has there been ice in the North about 16 million years. How long have human’s been on Earth about 250,000 years give or take a few years. What the man wrote from the Guardian is it true, yes and unfortunately to late to stop many of those effects of climate change. There is still time but not much as James Hansen said if we start now and go for it we will be cutting it close. It can be done but will take imagination, focus and hard work not clever that you see from many clever is not going to get it. All clever does is keep people in pretendland. Last night on the Discovery Channel they started there series on climate change and way’s to slow it down. There was this one scientist who won the Nobel prize a young scientist who was on a rope measuring the speed of the melt water on the Greenland ice sheet and the man with him asked him what do you think on the scale and all he said was eleven. It’s time to stop pretending and go for it. Think 450 ppm of CO 2 in the atmosphere after that playing the back nine probably not in the cards.

Head-on and beyond and soon.

So, while no one is disavowing McKinney’s vote, no one is using it, like you, as the basis for undermining one of two most powerful peace peace advocate voices during this election cycle.

The “anti-war movement” was undermined by a mix of a system which knows how to take hundreds of thousands of protesters and make them TOTALLY INVISIBLE and because there is no draft and the American youth generation (as opposed to the ’60s) think voting for a faux progressive “anti-war” candidate is about as much protest and democracy they can muster up.

Most of the “real” protesters are middle to late middle agers that have lost much of their verve and so are pretty much ignored by the power elite as a meaningful threat.

But Deadbeat you can keep beating the same old tired drum about “anti-war leftiests” and McKinney’s vote on Afghanistan. I’m sure you will over and over and over.

At bottom, in my opinion, “anti-war movements” have never really worked because they don’t get to the root cause. Instead it becomes about a particular war, and not the very engine that sets up the next one. A movement that takes on the system, head-on, and deep, is what is called for. War is a symptom of a persistent imperial world view that creates a win/lose grab for scarce resources.

Had the Left truly confronted Zionism, not acquiesced to the 911 hysteria, and abandoned the energized massed who got engaged in the anti-war movement well we may not have an Obama/Biden ticket to contend with.

“We are all Zionists now”
— Joseph Biden

A serious movement instead of being anti-war would be anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism, which are the things that inexorably lead to war.

There’s really no point in criticizing a non-serious movement.