| |
One of the frequent laments we hear from the buffoons in silly masks who make up the Greek chorus of the pseudo-left (and their co-excursionists) sounds rather like this:
If Saddam Hussein is tried for his crimes, there are others like Thatcher, Kissinger and Reagan who should be in the dock.
Or this variation:
Saddam knows where the bodies are buried, all sorts of stuff is going to come out about the US and UK administrations - and you're not going to like it are you?
Leaving aside the fact that Reagan is beyond the reach of any court - you've heard of trial by media, but trial by medium would truly be an innovation - I would be perfectly happy to see any number of former heads of state, ministers, and functionaries in the dock. Do not assume that those socialists who supported the deposition of the Hussein crime family are swaying giddily in the glare of GWB's goofy grin.
To pinch a quotation from Comrade Will:
Some people just don't get the idea of the movement of history being just that do they?
No, the patronising, paternalistic scum of the pseudo-left continue to whine about their democracy and their rights, incessantly bleating about the past, obsessed with it, and yet completely unable to learn anything from it, steadfastly incapable of looking to the future. The workers they claim to speak for have long ago marched on, bored or disgusted by the pessimism and hatred, knowing that what has happened cannot unhappen.
If Iraq, as the pseudo-left so desperately wishes, descends into civil war and hundreds of thousands are killed, it will not only be Iraq and bourgeois democracy which loses, socialism too will lose. The PUK and the Iraqi Communist Party and all of the other progressive, secular groups working for democracy will lose. The worldview of Kissinger and Associates will have prevailed for the moment, as they lurk there in the back row of the chorus - grinning behind their masks. The pseudo-left prefers fascists to democrats, mediaevalism to modernity and wraps itself in the tattered shreds of realpolitik - history will find them wanting.
Posted by hakmao at July 3, 2004 07:00 PM...the patronising, paternalistic scum of the pseudo left..."
It's late, I'm tired and I need to go to bed; but not before saying how pleasingly that rolls off the tongue. More to the point your suggestion, or Will's, that the pseudos have no understanding of the movement of history (historical materialism) and, by implication, only eclectic and opportunist positions in relation to historical and social currents - if it's US it must be bad, if it's anti US it must be good - is a point well made. Night all.
Tom Griffiths