VIDEO: How the Left Killed the Anti War Movement
Once the home of the anti-war movement, under Barack Obama the Left advocated a continuation of war and mass murder by using the political expediency of humanitarian interventionism. In this episode of The Geopolitical report, we unpack how establishment Democrats have continued the wars begun by President George W. Bush
Now that Donald Trump is president and the wars continue, the antiwar movement will emerge from the shadows and reveal its hypocritical political coloration.
Links, sources and show notes here.
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Maybe this will help clear up some of the confusion. Read about these terms on Wikipedia and elsewhere:
political_spectrum
I tried to paste a graphic, if it doesn’t show up then go to this link, please:
https://prolecenter.wordpress.com/2016/11/22/the-difference-between-the-right-and-the-far-right/
The ‘left’, as shown here, has increasing difficulty in defining what it really is these days. What it means to be ‘left.’ How far on the left spectrum does one have to go to be considered proper or really, genuine… left? Who decides and who is right? I had a friend who I considered to be very conservative and liberal, who went to work for a big firm in Texas. In didn’t go too well, we were informed that they’ed appreciate it if next time we didn’t send a communist as his extreme leftwing views caused a bit of friciton!!! Granted the people he worked with were fundamentalist Christians and Republicans, but we thought we’d sent the least ‘leftwing’ person we had available and I never dreamed they’ed call him, of all people, a ‘communist’!
Perhaps this ‘right’ ‘left’ thing has overstaid its welcome? Maybe we’ver moved into a strange period where it’s about ‘up’ and ‘down’, more than left or right and these don’t overlap they way they used to? What makes things difficult today is the growth of the ‘progressive right’ who used to be ‘liberals’ and the lurch of the social democrats to the right politically, which has left a hole which the nationalist conservatives have stepped into scooping up huge swathes of working class voters. I know people who think the Front Nationale are a ‘leftwing’ party, for the most part, but racist too.
It’s because we’re in a fluid period in history subject to rapid change as the economy is transformed in western countries. Old allianaces and loyalties are crumbling and new ones are emerging that undermine the old ones and the old labels. The growth of the ‘social nationalists’ causes problems as has the collapse of social democracy, which seems to have lost its way completely and is increasingly irrelevant as times change and new challenges emerge.
Nothing has changed. We have seen this before. To the far right, anyone even slightly to the left of them is a communist. That extreme conformity and authoritarianism and intolerance is a large part of what defines them.
We have also seen in the history of the 20th century, right-wingers posing as left-wingers. Have you ever heard of National Socialism aka the Nazis? They used left-wing talking points in many cases to woo the working class, but it was, of course, a very reactionary right-wing movement that ending up serving the interests of the German capitalist class until it began to spin out of their control toward the end. There was even a very relatively speaking left-wing faction of the Nazis who wanted to overthrow the bourgeoisie and remnants of the aristocracy in Germany and put the working class in power, BUT they were only interested in helping Aryan Germans and were also raving anti-Jew, anti-Slav, anti-Gypsy and anybody who wasn’t German.
Real socialism’s slogan is “Workers of all countries, unite!”, but the slogan of the “left-wing” Nazi faction was “German workers unite and kill everybody else!”
Left is as Left does. A lot of what passes for “Left” in the US is nothing but bourgeois (middle class) liberals. From where I’m standing, as a Marxist-Leninist, a liberal is a moderate conservative. The Left in the US simply wants the ruling class to share a little more of the spoils of war with the middle class, but they couldn’t care less about the working class or the poor. They like to pat themselves on the back because they aren’t, at least openly and ostentatiously, racist.
Anyone who’d like to remember the spirit of the (occasionally Government-infiltrated, but often genuine) Radical Left can browse these copies of the The Great Speckled Bird, a college newspaper from 1968. Read these articles and compare it to the Vichy-lite, “support our troops” “Progressives” of today…
http://voices.revealdigital.com/cgi-bin/independentvoices?a=d&d=BHFBFGA19680315&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN—————1
Thanks for that link. I’ll have a look.
I viewed this a second time. I didn’t like it any more than I did the first time. I had the distinct impression that a deliberate effort was being made to discredit, in the name of a principled empathy for the victims of imperialist war, anything that can be characterized as, or proclaims itself to be, either ‘leftist’ or, and especially, ‘anti-capitalist.’
It was in the tone of the narrative and in the exemplars being reviled.
The message is in its essentials that nothing emanating from the ‘left’ can be trusted to be in any way either effective or even genuine in its opposition to the imperial domination of the ruling establishment.
After all, as the narrator implies, tens of millions on the so-called ‘left’ around the world openly protested in the streets against the invasion of Iraq. What was the result? Under Obama, those same millions on the ‘left’ were to all intents and purposes hypocritically absent. What was the result? In both instances, the result was the same: the slaughters simply went ahead as planned. (I also happen to think that protests are ineffective, but for reasons other than I believe are being implied in the video-critique.)
Indeed, not only were the millions on the ‘left’ absent from the streets when Obama launched or expanded his wars, as the video is at pains to emphasize, but the so-called ‘left’ became apologists for his imperial crimes, and most especially those ‘lefties’ organized under the banners of ‘Leninism’ or ‘Troskyism’ or ‘Marxism,’ indeed, these, the most fervid and impassioned advocates of military aggression that you can find anywhere, ‘left’ or ‘right,’ ‘right-side up’ or ‘up-side down’ — to paraphrase, n’est-ce pas?
So now I’m left wondering: what on earth might Sible Edmunds and company be up to?
But it could be she’s just a ‘leftie’ who’s a ‘rightie’ albeit in an anti-establishment establishment enamored manner. I mean, clearly, there is a lot of confusion among a lot of people, to which the video both attests and is a testament in its own right. To be fair, though, I’m down with the flu and everything is a bit weird in my head at the moment . . . well, not in the usual way, eh.
Yeah, this video emanates from the grand old tradition of controlled opposition and limited hangouts and that’s clear from the title; “civilians” may suffer, legitimately, from “Left”/ “Liberal” confusion but any supposedly dissident info-source indulging in such semantic mindgames can’t be trusted. Just as the Liberals/ Democrats are re-branded as “The Left” (have people forgotten that LBJ was a Democrat? What is he in the Latest Reality, a Radical Icon?), most of the actual Left, who figured out the essential shape-shifting criminality and dishonesty of Government after the dirty tricks and domestic assassination programs deployed in the 1960s and 1970s, were re-branded as Conspiracy Theorists (and, often, even worse: The Left was, in some cases, re-branded as The Right, the logic being that opposing BHO could only be a Rightist move! Which is where a lot of this “Alt Right” nonsense is coming from now). And this re-branding rendered The Left absolutely anathema or invisible for at least the first fifteen years after 9/11, during which their (Neo) Liberal Democrat impostors took over. If you so much as mentioned any of that “Conspiracy” stuff, in a comment thread, in 2005? People (including Chomskyites and Zizekians) would blank you. It was impossible to enter into a conversation (unless you were doing so in a Controlled Opposition holding pen, like ATC or GLP). That’s where the Left went: the memory hole. The Left was blocked out of the political conversation under Bush and Bush2 and BHO and now, of course, we get ridiculous videos like the one this thread is appended to, blaming the Left for the crypto-collaborations of the (neo) Liberal Democrats.
Re: Sibel Edmonds: I was suspicious of her very early on because of her (at the time, at least) LIHOPing… and after listening her “address” an event (perhaps it was Sandy Hook or the Boston Marathon thing) on the Corbett Report by using her entire time-slot to talk about anything but the topic. I know double-talk when I hear it and she was generating lots.
Listen: the Right are not stupid. They are very, very good at this shit (grudging hat tip to the genius of the “Flat Earth” cointelpro juggernaut, blackwashing authentic Parapolitical Theorists, by the thousands, at this very moment). People read Huxley and Orwell and still manage to miss the nature of the game. Lies work better than bullets.
But the fans of Obama who undoubtedly uphold fascist or rightist ideologies still consider themselves Leftists. The fact we don’t see them as “real” Leftists is irrelevant. They define themselves that way and they are the mainstream vision of what being Left means to many, if not most people. To that extent maybe it really isn’t helpful any more to speak of Left and Right? The terms have been corrupted, maybe intentionally. Fighting bull-headedly to maintain that this definition of Left is not real is maybe a waste of time.
After all the terms themselves arose spontaneously in 1789 from the accident of which side of the National Assembly the radicals happened to be sitting on. They don’t have any deeper meaning beyond that. Maybe their natural life has expired and we need new definitions?
Why do you see Sibel Edmonds as controlled opposition? That’s not a combative demand but a genuine request for more information.
Yes. I agree. It would be better to drop the labels of ‘left’ and ‘right’ altogether. They mean so many things to so many different people that they are now useless for the purposes of either discussion or even thinking.
I’m also curious about Sibel. I really don’t have an opinion one way or the other. The slant of the video seems to me to be ‘off’ in some way, but I realize my reaction is less objective than subjective for being a kind of Marxist, that is to say, a reader of Marx who happens to think that, yeah, much of ‘this’ is still very much relevant to the times and in my mind considerably more astute than most of everything else I read and have read.
1) Well, either the terms we’re using have actual definitions or they don’t… “Left” and “Right” are fine if they have stable definitions that don’t change on the whims of whoever’s in charge of the propaganda. “Democrat” and “Republican” are meaningless to the extent that they represent phony opposites in the minds of the electorate, whereas, in fact, they represent two varieties from the same brand. These are two very different pairs of terms.
2) Re. Sibel Edmonds: the last time I read her closely, she was blaming OBL for 9/11; she was part of the LIHOP crowd. Then (as I commented above) I listen to her mumble twenty or thirty minutes of misdirection about either Sandy Hook or the Boston Marathon… her performance struck me as very peculiar. These are just my impressions and not meant to represent strong feelings against her now. Here’s some text from her… this kind of LIHOP strikes me as serious misdirection… I’d like to know how Sibel thinks OBL planted the explosives in those three buildings? Or is is she claiming the planes accomplished the impossible?:
“More than four months prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, in April 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset who had been providing the bureau with information since 1990, provided two FBI agents and a translator with specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama bin Laden. This asset/informant was previously a high-level intelligence officer in Iran in charge of intelligence from Afghanistan. Through his contacts in Afghanistan, he received information that: 1) Osama bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting four or five major cities; 2) the attack was going to involve airplanes; 3) some of the individuals in charge of carrying out this attack were already in place in the United States; 4) the attack was going to be carried out soon, in a few months. The agents who received this information reported it to their superior, Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism Thomas Frields at the FBI Washington Field Office, by filing 302 forms, and the translator translated and documented this information. No action was taken by the special agent in charge, and after 9/11 the agents and the translators were told to “keep quiet” regarding this issue.”
(from this open letter:)
http://www.antiwar.com/edmonds/?articleid=3230
PS No time now but I’ll be back later… however, quickly: the terms “Left” and “Right” are extremely important distinctions insofar as they represent, for example, either people who are against an imperialist regime because they’re against Imperialism in principle or because they’d prefer the regime they’re ideologically closer to… HUGE distinction. Ie, Dave Duke was against BHO and so was I, but I’m not about to get in bed, politically, with David Fucking Duke.
More later…! (And thanks for engaging)
Words have meaning. We need words and labels to describe things. Left and Right may have started out arbitrarily, but they have developed distinct meanings. I hate that liberals will often also refer to themselves as leftists, but I can’t stop them from doing that. All I can do is encourage you to read and study about the development of left-wing politics and judge for yourself if the deeds of these nominal “leftists” matches up with the actual definition of leftism which I believe should be equated with Marxism.
Three leftists, having only just met at an anti-Trump rally, walked into a bar together, slapping each other’s butts, arm in arm, like comrades of old: an American, a Canadian, and a Brit.
An hour later, they emerged from the bar more or less at the same time, limping badly, obviously beat up, their clothes torn to shreds, their faces bruised and bleeding, but giving each other a wide berth, until all sullenly went their separate ways.
The Brit had realized that the American was a warmongering imperialist; the American finally had come around to understanding that the Canadian was a power hungry communist totalitarian; and both the American and Canadian, in pretty much the same instant, had realized that the Brit wasn’t only an effete snob, but one that was rabidly anarcho-fascist.
Say what you mean. Drop the labels. Recognize and avoid your ideological enemies — unless, of course, they really do want to buy you a beer and have a genuine clack. 😉
I like the joke for its revealing that beneath the presentations and appearance of alliance in common interest – – often in response to a perceived threat or rival – a deeper level of private agenda operates.
Private or masked agenda is that which is working the mask – as a strategy of survival or personal advantage – because open desire and direct communication is believed to be unacceptable – either in one’s own sense of self, or to others such that one would meat attack or obstruction.
The range of strategies available by which to evade, avoid and protect the mask is the society that is invested in it as defence against deeper fears of its own evil and thus of feared evil in others. This gives power to evil by investing in the pretence it is not in oneself (while fearing it is) or that it is in others made scapegoat or enemy – so as to identify against them and claim moral superiority or self ‘righteousness’.
The capacity to ‘see’ in the other the evil one does NOT want to discover in oneself (or be exposed to others in), is the direction and guidance OF the ‘shadow self’ as the strategy of hiding under emotional force of guilt. This teaches ‘should’ and ‘should not’ as coercive demands and taboos – in the nature of the angry and jealous god who must be appeased for ‘blessing’ or favour, or else suffered as a source of guilted wrath, rejection, pain and penalty. This model of conditional ‘love’ is the private agenda. “I want it thus!”.
The power to enforce our wish or desire on reality or on our narrative experience of reality, is curtailed by equal and opposite reactions. The ‘power struggle’ of a territorial or hierarchical pecking order is a constantly shifting complex of interactions whose common element is conflicted self in search of resolution amidst the symptoms of a largely unconscious self-evasion.
Fears take the forms associated with their being first experienced. We all have unique patterns of fears and yet we all have a personality structured to both mitigate them and integrate us to our human world – which is a complex mapping of both individual and collective reality agreements – from which the personal sense develops.
If we heard what the fears were that underlie any assertive identity behaviour – we would better understand the other – and they would have the shift of being heard and met with understanding – not rejection. Fear divides to rule over our mind and rule out the nature of love’s being when it is hidden in shame, privatised to outsource its pain, excluded from light over and over again. So the simple need of a fear-denied aspect of self to find acceptance becomes the basis of a (generally masked) rage against life that perpetuates its own terrorisation.
Joining in common hatred of the ‘other’ is a false joining – in which a social mask substitutes for the true. No one can truly meet another in hate dressed up as a special relationship – except to use and be used by each other for private gratifications of a blind sense of need for personal validation. Owning and knowing our true being is not an assertive identity so much as a recognition of worth – from which we see others in a different light.
Our core sense of worth sets the limits on our conscious participation in Life – and no substitution of self-specialness relative to the perceived lack in the other will more than mask the lack of true foundation it is made to conceal.
When is a strength a weakness? Whenever it loses its balanced relation to the whole.
When is a weakness a revealing of true strength? When its incapacity gives way to a fresh appreciation of wholeness – as a balanced perspective. According power to the ‘mind’ of private agenda can only lose awareness and sensitivity to the whole. Without true feedback, destruction does not even recognize its own act.
The framing of desire for peace through genuine communication – as a process of transparency and accountability – as ‘anti-war’ is itself war-minded. The framing of a culprit as the ‘killer’ of such a movement is war minded. The fundamental nature of the war-minded is to protect conflict from (true) communication. Guilt, fear, terror and rage are its leverage over the connected hearts and minds. The suppression of the feeling being needs expression within a genuine desire for communication. The ‘mind’ simply wont allow this – regardless the backlog of denied life and the insanity of over-control. But whose mind is it? “Who told you you were naked?”
People will make of the vignette what they will, of course.
The point I was trying to make is simply this: we need to invest ourselves less into the symbols of ‘identity’ — whether of race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, political party, and so on — and more into articulating a ‘common cause’ based on an understanding of the ‘reality’ in which we ‘all’ find ourselves
Some situations are more ‘general’ than others but that doesn’t mean they are any less ‘concrete.’
The notion of ‘class,’ for example, or rather, the situation of ‘class,’ is one such ‘concrete’ but more ‘general’ condition in which more people, rather than less, find themselves.
On the basis of an understanding of ‘class’ as a ‘common condition to the majority,’ because that is in fact what it is, an actual condition, you are (or should be) more likely to find common cause than not.
That’s what we need to focus on to bring people together.
The question you should always be asking yourself and trying to answer is, “in what way is my ‘situation’ identical to your ‘situation’ and that of pretty much everyone else, or in other words, in what sense is my exploitation or oppression also that of everyone else?
It is difficult for me to otherwise conceive what the basis of any effective mass political action might ever be.
Those who continue to make of symbolism their master will surely continue to find themselves in the situation of the three leftist stooges.
The framing of ‘political’ for action is the issue I see. If one accepts such framing by operating within its confines, then only that which has ‘political traction’ can find support. Likewise with false framed economies nothing real is ‘affordable’.
So yes you say in your own way much that I say – and yes it is at the level of accepting identity so framed that operates the system within which nothing works or only seems to work before the system absorbs and subverts it to serve a systemic and joyless agenda.
Not to take the bait of false framing thought, is to remain free to see and hear from a deeper or more inclusive perspective. The benefit is a life more abundant – and part of that is the disposition of radiance along with the capacity to recognize the worth in others where before a reactive mind would blank out.
Labelling is not seeing and the symbols or images of reality have ONLY the meanings we ascribe them – and walking around in such a dream of a life is open to every kind of manipulative intent from ‘backstage’ of where one thinks to be free to act. The fruit of action is not validated by its effect so much as embodying worth that is recognizable in its effects. So keeping your ‘channel’ of communication open amidst the deceits and fakery that would break in to ‘divide and rule’ is fundamental to anything else one is then moved to do – or moved to refrain from doing.
Breaking the mesmeric spell of ‘fake mind’ is the key. Operating on fake news is operating from an unsound or false foundation. Fake currency can be passed on and become generally accepted – particularly when speaking truth would expose the ’emperor’ and be treated as a proof of illegitimacy. Our in vest-ments evaporate when their lack of substance reveals a wishful delusion taken for true.
We still have to use nouns in our language or we are not going to be able to communicate. The three “leftists” in your joke are all very confused people, and you do realize, of course, that anarcho-fascist is nonsensical and an oxymoron.
“you do realize, of course, that anarcho-fascist is nonsensical and an oxymoron”
You do realize it is a joke within a joke, no?
Yeah, but I was just checking. You seem to be on board, but I sometimes can’t tell because I have encountered that made-up term before and the person using it was being totally serious.
Your point is well taken that there tends to be a lot of in-fighting among what passes for a left in the Western world, but I still think that labels used correctly are important and we need to have some ideological unity if we are going to ever get somewhere – that is why I like Marxism-Leninism.
The meaning of words are important.
The problem with words, as I see it, is that some become emotionally charged ‘labels’ or ‘slogans’ or ‘slurs,’ and in that way are corrupted, so that ‘communication’ (and even ‘thinking’) tends to be more impeded than facilitated by their public use.
For example, if you wear your Marxism on your sleeve in a cultural context in which Marx and the ideas he disseminated have been so deliberately and intensively maligned over the years by the ruling establishment that public opinion now reflexively condemns them out of hand without giving them a hearing, then it tends to undercut the possibility that whatever you may have to say, regardless of whether it is both true and rational, will be heard by whomever you are trying to engage.
If, on the other hand, you are careful to avoid as descriptors of your outlook what you ought to know are likely to be emotional triggers, words like “Marxist” or “communist” or “Leninist” and so on, but instead speak to the content of your views, then by and large people will be more likely to hear what you have to say, and sometimes they will take it favorably, sometimes not, but they will be more receptive and likely to engage — and that’s far more important, I think, than to insist on the “proper dictionary definitions” of words as you think others should understand them, words that “in fact,” in the given climate of orthodoxy, make a rational exchange of ideas all too often impossible.
Yeah, I remember reading something about propaganda where the author said that what was most important is not what you say, but what people HEAR.
I just figure that when folks come to a site like Off-Guardian they are already prepared to hear views and opinions that are not mainstream and I think there is a difference in how people might react to the written word versus having an in-person conversation. Some people are not going to be receptive to socialism no matter what, but since over half of those under 30 in the US are favorable to the idea of socialism I feel like I can speak about it more openly than maybe even 10 years ago.
Also, this article is specifically talking about the Left and so I feel I should engage it directly with the proper Left terminology.
And my avatar is the state emblem of the USSR and I don’t want to change it. I think you have a point and others can dance around the issue, but I think it’s okay for some of us to use the direct approach.
Of course, I’m not remonstrating you, as such. Just saying. :->
I see that we are quite capable of doing to ourselves what we then blame on others or ascribe to others.
To what degree does a ‘fallen’ nature (misidentification) self-destruct? What else CAN it ‘do’?
Who cannot afford to give worth and share in it has to put others down to seem to have it.
A ‘story’ about events cast in a certain light, seeks validation and reinforcement through being given attention, agreed with or argued about. Addiction to story is called ‘identity’ or ‘face’.
Don’t let truth get in the way of a good story!
Humpty fell – or was he pushed ? Is it a false flag to keep the king supplied with men and horsepower?
The war against Life on Earth is the Economy-stupid. A reverse economy for live spelt backwards.
Evil does not create or extend the creative – but limits, divides and conflicts to feed upon its sacrifice in denial and destruction.
Fantasy acted out upon the body – and the body of the world. Story invested with reality and locked in with guilt.
Where the fantasy is held dear – is where it is undone – not in the symptoms.
“To be fair, though, I’m down with the flu and everything is a bit weird in my head at the moment . . . ”
Eat some raw ginger, baby! Although perhaps it’s too late for that. When I start feeling the flu-ache, I eat fresh raw ginger and go to bed early and feel perfect the next morning, usually.
This splitting hairs about which left is really left and which isn’t, sounds like a parody of what’s wrong with the ‘left.’ Or that sketch in ‘Life of Brian’ about the difference between the various revolutionary factions fighting for the liberation of Judea from the Roman yoke.
The ‘left’ or mainstream left and the ‘left-left’ are easily defined as the ‘left’ that actually has some support, compared to the various factions and cults who have next to no real support outside of their own fantasies or wishful thinking. That the ‘extreme, hard, left’ refuses to accept this, doesn’t make it any less true.
The left that votes for the Democrats and supports them at presidential elections and goes to sleep if a Democrat’s in the White House, has an awful lot to answer for in relation to the recent success of Trump.
The left made a massive historical mistake when they abandoned class politics and the working class; and accepted the false premise that ‘humanitarian warfare’ in the service of democracy was real and not a brazen falsehood. When the left embraced imperialism, for whatever reason, they basically signed the own death warrant. I don’t think they are gonna recover from this catastrophic mistake, typified by the fantasy that Obama wasn’t George Bush in blackface and nothing more.
“This splitting hairs about which left is really left and which isn’t, sounds like a parody of what’s wrong with the ‘left.”
Erm… bullshit? Being precise about definitions is important, especially when we’re immersed in an Orwellian field of hijacked signs and meanings. Defining a bunch of wishy-washy post-Clintonite (crypto-Reaganite) Liberals as the Left only further serves to marginalize the tiny (very tiny) part of the population that really is The Left.
And, as long as we’re doing definitions: A Liberal is a Conservative with a guilty conscience.
“The left made a massive historical mistake when they abandoned class politics and the working class…”
The Left did no such thing. The Left is bound and gagged and locked in the back room while impostors stand grinning at the counter. If you have zero access to Media, you may as well not exist, as far as Public Opinion goes. When I was on Faceborg, years ago, anyone who posted a genuinely Lefty sentiment against BHO’s warmongering was so relentlessly shouted down/ un”friended”/ ostracized that it became clear that the mechanism for silencing genuine dissent has been farmed out almost entirely to Duh Brainwashed Masses, who are happy to do this work for FREE.
The Young were once a self-renewing spring of dissident thought and action… but that was before TFIC figured out how to make it more fun to conform than to rebel: all the sex, money, pop and best drugs are now a product of the Right. When I was coming along, all the great sex went to the rebellious (the male squares could only manage to score the occasional handjob in exchange for an engagement ring)… now, to rebel is to get cut off from sex. So, you can see one of the problems right there…
Where do I start ? Oh, boy ! First, I have heard more times than I care to ” the left is being paid to protest “. Rush Limbaugh says it, all of the other right wing-nut broadcasters say it and now the guy in this movie you posted says it. Newsflash: I protested the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, and a few things in between. No one has ever given me a dime for protesting. Sometimes I drive, sometimes someone else drives. No one is paying us.
Second, at its peak there were 168,000 U.S. troops in Iraq under George W. Bush. After Obama was elected these troops were slowly pulled out.. ALL OF THEM. There are now 17,000 people in an embassy in Baghdad and a handful of contractors. You can look this information up quickly yourself. And so since he did exactly what he said he was going to do, why would we protest against Obama ?
The problem here, is the Democratic party has always viewed itself as the ” big tent ” party open to all and that’s one reason whey there is such a wide range of opinions. Yes, there is an elite group of superdelegates who put their thumb on the scale during the primaries. Hopefully the number of superdelegates will be reduced before the next election. There are anti-war democrats AND there are democrats who believe we should defend our country and there are even democrats who think perhaps we should take out leaders who kill their own people.
That seems to be where we get suckered into these wars ” He is gassing his own people…..we need a humanitarian intervention. ” Over the years people like Ghadafi have shot commercial planes out of the air and admitted it was his country that did it. And so there is less sympathy for characters like Ghadafi.
We need to stop jumping on other countries every time they breath. When Russia invaded Afghanistan back in 1979 we should have done nothing. They were asked to help put down a rebellion. I will stop here because at this point it could easily become a book…..
Couple of things:
1) Russia didn’t invade Afghanistan in 1979. The SU was asked by the Afghan government to lend assistance in the fight against the Taliban. You can reasonably argue the SU pressured the Afghans to make such a request, but nevertheless the request was made and the Soviet troops were there legitimately and by invitation and not as an invasion force.
2) Are you saying Gaddafi shot down a commercial jet, or just “people like” Gaddafi? can you give some details of these alleged shoot-downs?
A quick trawl of Google and I can extrapolate a figure of 4-5,000 US troops a-trainin’ and advisin’ in Iraq – that’s mission creeping up with the deployment of 600 into the Mosul campaign. So not all pulled out then?
As for civilian contractors (mercenaries) I can see several estimates of 5,000 deployed to guard the “greatest Embassy in the Universe” alone – so more than a handful.
(About that ’embassy’ – WTF! More like a city! Of the 12,000 or so civilian and diplomatic staff – how many of those are CIA? Methinks, at least one or two?)
I’m not going to be held to my estimates though, the general feel I get is that the Pentagon doesn’t want you to know how many troops are still deployed (the ‘force management level’); much less ‘civilian contractors.’ Temporary deployments don’t count, as the Pentagon was forced to admit when a marine from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit was killed last year. Basically, without making a career of it, your government is lying to you. Again.
Reasons to protest Obama – I haven’t got all night – but here’s a few major wars you might have missed: Libya, Ukraine, Syria…. here’s a list of 252 ways Obama destroyed your country: http://ftmdaily.com/global-issues/big-brother-government-global-issues/252-ways-president-obama-has-systematically-destroyed-america/
Not forgetting his greatest legacy – Donald Trump!
“Second, at its peak there were 168,000 U.S. troops in Iraq under George W. Bush. After Obama was elected these troops were slowly pulled out.. ALL OF THEM. There are now 17,000 people in an embassy in Baghdad and a handful of contractors.”
The Status-of-Force-Agreement (SOFA) with Iraq obligating the US to pull out pretty much all of its troops from that country was actually signed under Bush in December of 2008. By the time BHO was sworn in, it was already a done deal. By the way, under Obama, the US turned around a redeployed to Iraq in 2014, ostensibly for the purpose of fighting ISIS.
“Over the years people like Ghadafi have shot commercial planes out of the air and admitted it was his country that did it.”
Khaddaffi never actually admitted to having any role in the Lockerbie bombing. Under the terms of the agreement he arrived at with Britain, he didn’t have to. All he had to do to get the sanctions against Libya dropped was to pay the families whose loved ones had died in the bombing and indemnity.
There seems to be much confusion about. I know that I am more than a bit bemused, and I suspect as much about others, and the confusion that I’m on about seems to be on rather prominent display in this video-analysis .
But let me try to get this straight for myself:
So, under Obama’s rule, the ‘anti-war movement’ was not out in the streets making a lot of noise, and that was a bad thing, apparently; now under Trump, there seems to be a resurgence in “that kind” of ‘mobilization,’ but this is also a bad thing because, well, where the fuck were “they” when the “left,” which isn’t “really” the “left,” was in the White House?
Or am I oversimplifying the “critique” at hand a bit too much?
Oh, and then, of course, there are those among the “left” with a “Marxist” bent who are all about war and violence all of the time, who though they may at least be always consistent in this respect, because that’s how the “Marxist Left” is, are thereby always a very “bad crowd” to be getting on with, and shouldn’t you be avoided it at all cost?
Or did I miss something? Am I reading into the analysis anything that isn’t really there (which I admittedly may very well be doing)?
Question:
When have ‘mass protests’ of the innocuous placard waving variety ever prevented a war?
If you are against war, it seems to me, you don’t allow yourself to be used as a tool in either a logistical capacity for the effort or as cannon fodder, and every chance that you get you earnestly impart your anti-war views to your acquaintances, and you never apologize for those who ‘literally’ support the ‘effort’ by joining the military or working in the ancillary private sector ‘war industries.’
As long as people continue showing up for ‘duty,’ the slaughters will continue. Or is there something I’m missing, here?
So a ‘real anti-war movement,’ to my mind, wouldn’t be wasting it’s time waving placards and shouting slogans, but would be offering ‘real material support’ to people in the military or associated industries who might want to defect from the effort, but for economic reasons, under present circumstances, are unable to do so.
A ‘real anti-war movement,’ if there was one afoot, would be working to convince people in the military to mutiny or disobey orders — as did Chelsea Manning — against what they know all too well to be an immoral, criminal imperialistic enterprise, and if they don’t know that, then the “effort” becomes one of educating “them” that they are being used against their own best interests.
Anyway, I’m not entirely done brooding over this video. At first blush, I’m not terribly impressed by it. But maybe it will come off more favorably after a second or third viewing.
Norman, are liberals out in the streets protesting any of our wars now? I don’t see them protesting any wars at all; I just see them protesting against Trump personally. At least during the Bush years they pretended to give a crap about foreign policy. Now all they care about is political correctness–that’s where the Left goes to die, and that’s a big part of the reason why I no longer self-identify as leftwing.
I agree and entirely empathize with you. My comment is, as it were, an attempt to state what I perceive to be the standpoint of the video’s narration, which may a ‘misperception’ — others will rightly correct me if I am wrong — and then briefly contrasting that with my reaction to that ‘perception’ as well as my stance on what I take to constitute an ‘effective’ anti-war stance, about which I may also be wrong, which again others rightly might want to qualify or shoot down.
Maybe we see eye to eye?
Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
Try not to think of them as “Socialists” of any description and more along the lines of the pseudo left “progressives”(neo liberal) in which war and regime change can continue uninterrupted by any moral obligation to facts and ultimately the lives of the people their reductive ideology supports.
What is being referred to here as “the Left” is the liberal moderately progressive class that has always been weak on opposition to Western Imperialism. Chris Hedges analyzed their historic collapse throughly in his “Death of the Liberal Class” The actual Marxist socialist and anarchist left never fell for the Obama propaganda but without their liberal allies the antiwar movement stalled.
Using the term ‘the Left’ indicates a mind attempt to define relationship as in presumption to predict and control it.
The adoption or acceptance of identity labels is the loss of communication and relationship to a presumption of mental dominion or primacy.
So ‘the Left’ is a symptom of the mind that kills any movement of human solidarity in willingness for Life on Earth – (capitalized to indicate a true-living co-operation rather than an enslavement existence).
The built in sabotage against truly accepting and embracing what is here to truly life is identity gotten by defining against a hated or feared outcome, that usurps the natural and unfolding identity arising fro living the true of our willingness for life.
We become polarised and divided against the other without recognizing this is symptomatic of such division within our self.
The false or or fixed identity defends itself with all the energy or charge of the underlying hate, fear and anger of the inner conflictedness – while harnessed to the symbol and ‘rightness’ of the movement of our being to truly live.
This usurping of reality by the mind occurs in most every moment – as the assertion of a sense of definition, prediction and control. It is not wrong within its place – but if it is invited, invoked and employed to ‘run the place’ then the fight and flight binary mode suppresses all else to its never ending war.
The desire to strengthen and prevail one’s personal assertiveness of mind, opinion and influence is the investment in the personae or masking level of consciousness. It is generated as the escape from inner conflict or psychic-emotional trauma, as an attempt to mask off communication breakdown and forget it.
The personae level or surface appearance is the framework in which symptoms of dissonance and distress can never be truly addressed or resolved – but only ‘magically’ rearranged and redistributed – magic in the sense one can believe and experience as if real change has or is occurring.
One of the features of a negative loop, is that any energy given it is used by it as fuel. Any attempt to limit, strengthens it. Any attempt to kill it, propagates it, any attempt to understand it, strengthens its status as something worthy or capable of being understood and all insights are subverted and incorporated into its own defence against disregard – for it thinks with the forms of your insight – but at expense of the true-felt movement of your being.
The mind is a phishing ‘attack’. Always check that the thoughts are true-felt connection and no ‘attack’ has stolen your identity to pass off in your name.
Conservative and progressive movement is a wholeness of being. But progress based on a demonising invalidation of who we are and where we are can only ‘progress’ such a motive. Conserving a false or phished identity can only sacrifice the living to the dead concepts and symbols of corrupted law.
But the law is made for Man – to serve and hold and guide us into the law of our being.
When insanity frames the narrative so as to seem to ‘run the place’ – we need to look more deeply – more honestly at where we support it – especially in the trojan forms of seeming to be against it.
The currency of our thought and identity masks its own kind of ‘toxic debt’ lies.
The Movement for embracing Life on Earth is not in corporately or collectively framed identities of getting – or of getting away from.
Using ‘evil’ to make righteous and gain power – is being used by evil unwitting. The reversal of live is a war against Self – but when you hate or blame yourself – have you truly split into two? Or is such a split mind an imaged concept of your reality?
Since when was Obama left wing? This is nonsense. Was Thatcher a socialist too?
Of course it is nonsense. In the “west” EVERYTHING is “left” the very moment they talk “internationalism” (remember Marx?) which got new name now and is “globalism” – like we globally protect our environment (by talking about it of course), we support “free” trade (free for some of course as the ONLY free trade agreement is WTO and everything else is protectionism), then we come to “human rights” of course and so on. And we ended with Soros as “philanthropist” and it is only a matter of time when Hitler will join his mates in Nobel Peace Prize zoo and the mad-house is full and complete and looks better than any circus on this planet.
The left as they are currently calling themselves – which is an insult to true Marxist socialists, have killed socialism because they took a right turn at some point and still haven’t made their way back. It infiltrated the Stop the War Campaign thinking as well. So many are now representing themselves as the left without any idea of where they are in the spectrum of the political arena. They are just truly lost and in love with the idea of being on the side of the little man, without actually knowing who the little man or who can best represents what he wants.
The ‘left’ and liberals, by embracing neoliberalism, uncritical globalization, and, worst of all, neocon humanitarian warfare, interventionism and liberal imperialism abroad, have probably destroyed themselves politically and alienated huge swathes of voters who have lurched towards the populist right, which is perceived as being more interested in the lives of ordinary people and critical of the entire humanitarian war project. Will the left ever recover from this? They chose to abandon the working class and class politics, and now huge numbers of people have done the same to the left, they’ve abandoned them. In the age of Trump and rightwing populism the burning question isn’t only is the left relevant anymore, but is it even gonna be around for much longer? A left that only really opposes war and economic war aimed at the people, when the Republicans are in power, simply isn’t credible anymore and seems massively hypocritical and partisan at the same time. How can the left ever recover from this? Social Democracy, the mainstream left, is dying and the populist right is taking over with ‘social nationalism.’
Why (again) are we using the word “Left” when we mean “(neo) Liberals”? Is Amy Goodman the voice of the Left? Is George Clooney? The Left never supported BHO or the Clinton hydra. There is a Left and its voice is heard by very few; the basic rule is this: the further Left you are, the less visible you become. If you want some attention from Duh Masses, you have to indulge in naive equivocations, like “I support our troops but not the war” or “I support a female candidate for Caesar,” which define you out of the Left. The Left is, by definition, anti-War, anti-Materialist, anti-Hegemony. (One would like to think that the Left is also un-Dupe-able, but that’s not the case… and a different discussion).
Here’s one example of some anti-BHO critical thinking by a clearly unhoodwinked Left:
http://blackagendareport.com/content/amiri-baraka-and-barack-obama-%E2%80%93-then-and-now
PS Anyone who thinks Trump is in any fashion working to bring about Leftist improvements to the Simulocracy… should lay off the pipe for a while. The enemy of the enemy of your enemy is not your friend, it’s your enemy’s sibling. Judge them by their deeds, not by the deeds of those who oppose them.
It is time for OFFGUARDIAN to stop abuse of English word “left”. There was NEVER real “left” anywhere in genocidal “international community” sometimes parading as “west”. Maybe a bunch of useless silly folks bragging something they don’t really understand as social justice is a concept beyond their ability to understand or apply. Social justice appearance in parts of the “west” as western Europe for example was just a BRIBE due to the fear that USSR might prevail. Once the USSR was gone that whole “social justice” started collapsing and we are observing last bits and pieces of that being demolished. As we can see now – it was just a HUGE loan and it is time to pay it back.
Not entirely accurate. Granted their were few Stalinists because they would not have been socialists but communists. There is a difference which it would seem, certain hard left communists have a hard time grasping. The socialists of the first half of the last century did not want to take the uncompromising and unyielding doctrines of the communist ideology but wanted an inclusive society in which all would have a say rather than be dictated to by the upper echelon governing the hard left ideology. The problem with communism is that it, like the right wing capitalism, serves the few by using the many and once that was understood, the many decided they wanted none of it. The soft left is all that remains of Socialism in the UK, but it is at least, heading in the general direction of serving the many, hopefully without making too much compromise in trying to gain a decent following.
A Power to the People Proposal :
Robert David Steele is trying to help Trump avoid the sabotage attempts from both inside and outside of his administration. His suggestions aren’t partisan – he’s trying to help Trump wrest control from the Deep State and put it back in the hands of the people , especially via electoral reform , which I think is critical.
Read this short description ( with links to greater detail ) and share it widely ( share buttons at bottom of page ) if it suits you , as time may be short for Trump and Steele is trying to generate as much popular support for this as he can :
http://tinyurl.com/Memo4Trump
I hope you have read the situation regarding Trumps intentions correctly. Electoral Reform is essential in both the UK and the US. Neither country has true democracy and the only chances either country had were with Bernie Sanders, who bowed out, and Jeremy Corbyn, who is dodging knives in his back from his own party. The problem with Trump is that although Clinton was just as Islamaphobic and pro Israel, she disguised it.
It’s really hard to support a man who gives power to a rogue State(Israel)in perpetuating land theft and ethnic cleansing and wants to keep out followers of Islam, thus showing for all to see, how bigoted he is regarding the followers of Islam. I don’t like Trump but I hated Clinton, for me he was just the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately even that glimmer of hope may soon prove to be just wishful thinking on my part.
The neo liberal left ushered in under Blair/Clinton was the death knell of the entire class based left. UK anti war movement gone a similar way, now protesting Trump instead of British foreign policy or Obama actions etc.
The ‘Neos’ formed a one party corporate state, infiltrated all institutions it’s going to be along haul to root them out and so much damage has been done.
Apologies, I couldn’t restrain myself commenting before watching the video. Will do that now.
It angers me deeply that there is so much Trump bashing, not because he doesn’t deserve it, but because there were so many before him that should have been on the sharp end. Clinton, Obama, Bush, Allbright, Nuland(nee Kagan) were monsters of the first order and have actually schemed and succeeded in bringing about the death of thousands of human beings, something Trump has not yet achieved(but quite likely will). The EU and West seem more concerned about perception and PC than the thousands of people murdered by Trumps predecessors. Way to go all these humanitarians!
Even crazier are those trashing Trump have suddenly become super patriots who love America and want to kill Russia.
It is all about perception/image – reality doesn’t matter. This is the problem.
Identifying forcefully over and AGAINST something or someone is a symptom of masked rage. The mind attempts to force reality – to shut down and control the experience or outcome so as not to re-live a terrifying or deeply conflicted sense of self and world. I note that such a world is arising to our experience despite – and BECAUSE of such psycho-emotional defences. A hate-fuelled self and world.
Beneath anger is hurt and pain of loss and that which is hurt is of the nature of a hurt, denied, rejected, betrayed or abandoned love. Such a broken sense of love AND the sense of guilt/blame around its loss, corruption, and perceived weakness or unreality sets the love-hate conflict of the human conditioning – and of triggered reactions arising in defence of a sense of self already conflicted, fragmented or isolated – but under a narrative control of a seeming unity.
Manipulation of reality is 1. A joke. 2. Oxymoronic self-contradiction. 3. An exercise in dissociation and displacement. 4. Experience of being likewise done unto, and defined victim by subjection to oppositional will. 5. Entanglement in attempts to resolve an unreal or misperceived conflict in terms of the eradication or redefining of its symptoms. 5. Unreality operating the denial and sacrifice of the true as if the power under which all must align. 6. Loss of will. 7. Victory over Life in ‘death’. 8. How dark do you want to go?
To what degree is humanity a machine running an insanity? The the degree you and I consent to use and so be used by insane thinking. It is not the human being that is in error – or faulty – but the thinking by which our true being is usurped by doing (reaction) of a false foundation. I ponder this here with you – but cannot make another listen – nor change anyone’s mind in any degree they are not already the willingness of. But I can cease investing in the game of the power to change the world by changing my mind – or rather – allowing it to be renewed.
Persisting what does not work and can not work is running out of time. Time operates the delay of the inevitable by making things to do before attending the true call and nature of being. So many and so tangled as to believe there IS no truth or call to be. Only its pre-set denial as foundation from which to give power to illusion – and suffer it.
[[ we unpack how establishment Democrats have continued the wars begun by President George W. Bush and expanded them into Syria and Yemen through illegal proxy wars and an ongoing and intensified drone campaign across the Middle East. ]]
Americans are simple-minded folk, who have been hypnotised into believing any issue has two possible solutions – the Democrat answer, or the Republican answer.
Those of us living outside the USA remain unpersuaded that US intervention in any issues is beneficial or justifiable. In fact, it is utterly false and wrong to frame international conflicts and issues in terms of how they could be of benefit or discomfort to an American politician.
The problem isn’t Democrats or Republicans. The problem is the United Hates of America.