RED AS A BABOON'S ASS AND PROUD OF IT

By STAN GOFF

Fayetteville, North Carolina

...I'm speaking for myself as an unabashed leftist -- that's someone who opposes capitalism, in case this term is confusing. -- and we argue openly for our position: that capitalism as a system, and not some moral or intellectual failure, causes these wars.

EPIC's website claims is "was" against the war, but now... here's the uniform mantra among these fronts... WE cannot "abandon" Iraq. The caps are intentional, and the claim is mendacious. Their opposition was not to invading and occupying Iraq, but to the way in which the neocons went about it...

The other speciality of this "tendency" is to red-bait. So I might as well take that away right here. I'm as red as a baboon's ass and proud of it.

I don't have to put on a red hat, though, to talk about this WE business... this WE must not "abandon Iraq." ... support of ANY continuation of ANY imperial military occupation is NOT antiwar. If you support a military occupation, then you are supporting a war. Two plus two. This is not complicated.

... the US military is not in Iraq to do a damned thing for the Iraqi people. What particular brand of cheap magical-mystery acid does someone take when he implies that Pizarro should be nominated to help the Incas with reconstruction? WE are the barbarians here!

This benevolent force you are arguing to leave in Iraq has

• been used to enforce attacks and sanctions that are slouching toward a body count of 2 million,

• microtoxified the entire environment with a radioactive condiment that produces babies born without brains,

• slaughtered children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children,

• trashed the social and economic infrastructure,

• imprisoned thousands of people in indiscriminate round-ups (including children, by the way),

• subjected detainees to sexual humiliation, beatings, rape, murder, and other methods of systematic torture,

• bombed whole neighborhoods, kicked in the doors of sleeping families and waved guns at their infants and grandmothers,

• surrounded a city (Fallujah, in case WE forgot), then blocked the exits against "military-aged males," who the US armed forces then exterminated, Warsaw-style, by the thousands.

...containment mission for the liberal bourgeoisie ... WE can't abandon the Iraqis, indeed!

There is no WE. There is a THEY. THEY are an imperial ruling class. THEY really do exist, and with about a month's dedicated research, it would be possible for a small staff to list them out with names and addresses...

THEY operate very like a mafia, and THEY rely very much on their US state to keep things running smoothly, including sending out hirelings to kill their enemies and victims. The difference is that the hirelings, who are vast numbers of working class kids, have been convinced all their lives by a zillion-dollar-a-year Orwellian brainwashing apparatus to believe that killing for bankers and currency speculators and politicians is some noble cause.

THEY want to establish permanent military bases there, and every day that they stay there puts them one day closer to that... or more likely to some humiliating denouement like Vietnam, ...

YOU and all the rest of the civil-societist gasbags in the alphabet soup of issue-policy NGO's are advising moderation in the face of a world that is already deeply in the grip of the very barbarism ... because what YOU are endorsing is nothing more nor less than the continuation of Wolfowitz's lethal Caligulan fantasy in Iraq to save capitalism from its own dirty, dangerous, and expensive messes.

So I am not going to be diplomatic with (those who) misrepresent the (anti-war) action ... as somehow being directed against those bewildered, economically caged-in workers in uniform we call "the troops."

The left in this movement is not "against" the soldiers. Speaking for myself, I am on the soldier's side, not as a soldier, but as a human being. I encourage all soldiers to resist. I won't conceal the fact that my encouragement of that resistance is aimed at utterly gutting the capacity of that institution to continue operations in the charnel house they've made of Iraq.

People can see Luxemburg's prediction of barbarism right in front of them. It's here, and this WE finds it unacceptable for future generations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Goff