Re: Bosnia and CPUSA

[Jeffrey Booth <booth2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

        Keep beating the war drums you bastard!  But when the shit starts
flying, I hope you volunteer for the infantry!
        I tried to make this point before, and no one responded.  But I
think it's an important, down to earth aspect of this discussion:  working
class people on all sides will face a more horrible genocide from an
Imperialist intervention than anything happening now!  I know what I'm
talking about.  I'm working class.  All the males of my family and
extended family have been used as cannon fodder at one time or another in
Imperialist wars.  I've never heard my brother, who was in the Marines in
'Nam, talk about intervening in Yugoslavia.  WE DIE WHILE YOU TALK.  No
working class person should join an imperialist army unless they're going
in to consciously win people over to a revolution like the Bolsheviks did.
I was in the damn ARMY ROTC and I saw what a monstrous thing the army is
and how innocent and desperate a lot of the ranks are.
        I don't trust the institutions of Imperialism, period.  I thought
this was a sort of prerequisite for any claim to Marxism.  Is that wrong?
        I'm not advocating pacifism.  I would join a people's army, not a
bosses army.  I would fight in a revolution, not a police action.
        
        Send me a copy of your enlistment papers after you join up,
Wohlforth.  Then we'll have a more substantive discussion.

                                -- Jeff Booth

On Thu, 3 Aug 1995 TimW333521@xxxxxxx wrote:

> Perhaps one of the saddest aspects of the general paralysis of the Left in
> relation to Bosnia is the "sentimental" attachment of some with Russian
> strategic interests. (What in the Hell is "progressive" about contemporary
> Russia or Serbia?  The Mafia?) These interests include a tilt towards Serbia.
>  I have in mind CPUSA, Alexander Cockburn, Sparts(?) -- clarify me on the
> Sparts but general they follow Cockburn or Cockburn follows them and both
> always seek the Stalinist low-water mark!,  and, disgracefully, the pacifist
> Dave McReynolds.
>
> The factual record shows, without any room for doubt, that the aggressors in
> the region are the Serbs and the victims the Muslims ( while the Croats are
> more or less holding their own).
>
> It is silly and dangerous to argue whether or not the removal of a population
> of hundreds of thousands of people from homes they have occupied for hundreds
> of years because of their religion, is genocide.  It is, without question, a
> crime against humanity which, must not be permitted!  Yet the West permits
> it.  And we, the Noble left, squabble.  Is this or is this not the truth?
>
> I have argued for three years now that Serbian aggression must be resisted
> militarily by the United Nations forces and we should Demand U.S.
> participation in such forces.  There is no other alternative!
>
> But, many on the left argue, the UN is an imperialist front and the U.S.,
> above all, is The imperialist power!  Yet, is it not interesting that this
> imperialist front and this mega-imperialist power have done everything they
> can do to Avoid intervening?  Please, please, please, my Marxist fellow
> comrades, explain this "contradiction" to me.
>
> My own explanation is simple.  I do not deny the imperialist nature of the
> major powers.  I simply insist they have no interest in acting when they do
> not directly benefit financially (may even cost a couple of kopecs) and when
> humanity's interests are all that is at stake.
>
> If we fight to force these "scum bags" to grant us social security, medicare,
> a living wage or what have you, what is so wrong about demanding that they
> stand up against the ghastly crimes taking place in Bosnia?  We do not wait
> until the revolution to demand social services so why should we wait to the
> revolution for the state to enforce a humanitarian policy in Bosnia?
>
>
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>


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