Thinking Meat

Those of you hoping that the "anti-war progressives" will accept defeat and get off your television set after Iraq is liberated, had better think again:

Yet for all our efforts, the likelihood of war with Iraq erupting in the next few weeks remains high. If it comes, war will pose an enormous challenge to the American peace movement. War will mark the beginning of its work, not the end.

I guess that's only to be expected, if you need to continue to remind yourself of just how, like, totally relevant you are, and how your protests totally stick it to The Man, just like they did in the Sixties, except, like, with web sites, man!

Once the fighting is over, another struggle will begin. The peace movement should be prepared to call for the immediate relief of civilians in need; the repair of essential infrastructure (roads, hospitals, power stations and so on); the rapid installation of a representative, democratically inclined Iraqi government;

Phew! Because without the all-important calls from the peace movement, we'd never build roads or hospitals there. Power stations would be totally out of the question!

(I dare not ask what a "democratically inclined" government is. Really, I think I'd rather not know.)

and the speedy replacement of US combat troops by a multinational peacekeeping force. We must not allow the obvious requirement for some sort of security presence in Iraq to be used as the justification for turning Iraq into a permanent US garrison.

Sorry, kids, you'll just have to deal. Iraq is going to be strategic to the region for the next few years at least, and we're not about to give control of it to the Egyptians or the Russians. (And please, don't make me laugh by suggesting the French...)

Finally, and most important, the peace movement must prepare itself to conduct a long-term struggle against the Administration's imperial designs in the gulf. These plans must be exposed for what they are: a classic appropriation of political power and material goods (especially petroleum) by military force masquerading as a campaign for democracy.

In other words, even if we liberate Iraq, we must not even try to recover the costs by selling some of their oil. This isn't an "anti-war" movement or a "peace" movement; it's the usual anti-"Imperialism" shtick, stale since the 1930s.

Oh, and in case you're wondering: yes, there is a link to ANSWER is the sidebar for that article. ANSWER is real big on promoting democracy and stuff.