A Little Complexity With Your Venom?
One of the most tiresome cliches of the left is that Bush and his supporters live in a simplistic black-and-white world, while those who hate him do so in defense of a world of shades, nuances, and pluralities.
Bullshit. Just listen to British MP George Galloway ranting about Iraq.
He preaches "solidarity with the Iraqi resistance." He defended Saddam, before the war. Yet despite being elected from a party that identifies itself with trade unions and the working class, he has joined the Stop the War Coalition and other British leftist groups in savagely attacking Iraqi trade unionists because they are more interested in building up their country than in attacking America.
The real dangerous, simplistic dualism in the world today, it seems to me, is that which sees anything originating from America as bad, and anything that kills Americans as good.
Abdullah Muhsin, foreign representative for the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions and no supporter of America or its policies in Iraq, takes Gallway and the others to task for this lack of complexity.
Bullshit. Just listen to British MP George Galloway ranting about Iraq.
Imperialism is getting a bloody good hiding in Iraq between the hammer of the Iraqi resistance and the anvil of the global anti-war movement.
He preaches "solidarity with the Iraqi resistance." He defended Saddam, before the war. Yet despite being elected from a party that identifies itself with trade unions and the working class, he has joined the Stop the War Coalition and other British leftist groups in savagely attacking Iraqi trade unionists because they are more interested in building up their country than in attacking America.
The real dangerous, simplistic dualism in the world today, it seems to me, is that which sees anything originating from America as bad, and anything that kills Americans as good.
Abdullah Muhsin, foreign representative for the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions and no supporter of America or its policies in Iraq, takes Gallway and the others to task for this lack of complexity.
Some in the west have argued wrongly that the chaos in Iraq represents a national liberation struggle. They risk perpetuating a historical myth about our country. There is always a risk of cultural imperialism when people speak for others in the name of national liberation.
... Today Iraq is on fire. Those in Britain who love human rights and freedoms have two options: to add petrol to the flames and fuel the violence, which will certainly lead to the end of Iraq's territorial integrity, to its dismemberment and Balkanisation; or to offer solidarity and support to Iraqi democrats, socialists and trade unionists.
The emerging signs of vibrant civil society, such as organisations of women, trade unionists and students, present a real political opportunity to end the occupation and isolate the forces promoting sectarian, communal and religious violence.
... Iraq is not another Vietnam; the so-called resistance are no maquis. The resistance offers at best another dictatorship modelled on Saddam's regime, at worst an al-Zarqawi-inspired mediaeval theocracy using Iraq, rather than Afghanistan, as a base for its war against the US and Arab regimes. These forces offer only hell to Iraqis and harbour some of the world's most dangerous ideas. They have no open social or political programme and no popular base, and are feared by most Iraqis.
