From The American Left History Blog Archives (2006) - On American Political Discourse  

Markin comment:

In the period 2006-2009 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.

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IT AIN’T GOING TO BE POPULAR BUT-HANDS OFF NORTH KOREA!

COMMENTARY

AMERICAN IMPERIALISM- WHEN YOU LET THE GENIE OUT OF THE BOTTLE –WATCH OUT-AND DON’T CRY

In a recent blog commenting on Massachusetts Senator John Forbes Kerry’s emerging presidential campaign for the elections of 2008 (see October 2006 archives, dated October 13^th) this writer commented on Mr. Kerry’s hue and cry over the fact that North Korea had recently detonated some small nuclear devise and the need to take ‘appropriate action’ including, presumably a preemptive first strike against that country. That position has also been echoed by others in the liberal establishment. At that time I wrote that I would have further comments later. Here goes.

The hard realities of international politics in the year 2006 is that any “third world” countries that are  in the crosshairs of the American imperialists( or other imperialists) need nuclear weapons in order to survive. I said this would not be pretty. The two destructive wars in Iraq over the past 15 years when a marginally harmful figure to imperialists interests (whatever they might be) like Saddam Hussein was dealt severe conventional military blows when the West thought he even had the potential in some distant future to produce such weaponry dramatically brings that point home. In the current one superpower world dominated overwhelmingly by a far-flung American military presence this fact cannot have been lost on any leader of a small nation-least of all Kim il Jung of North Korea. Western imperialism’s hypocrisy over the occurrence of the blast and its and the media’s treatment of it, replete with vintage film footage reminiscent of old May Day parades,  like some central event of the presumably long past Cold War seems strikingly irrational in the context of American military strategy. 

Let me cite the standard leftist comments on such hypocrisy. While such comments might seem tired and reflect an old Cold War reality they nevertheless should underline any leftist response to the international situation.  America, after all, let the genie out of the bottle when it first developed the atomic bomb for use in the waning days of World War II. Those who let the genie out of the bottle should not cry- over 60 years later- when some upstarts come along, use the simplification of that technology to develop their own weaponry and want to play in the same sandbox. Commentators in defending American leadership of an exclusive  nuclear club have placed great emphasis on the deterrent effect, based on mutually assured destruction, of the then escalating nuclear arms race during most parts of the Cold War which ended with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991-92. Two comments should disabuse the reader of that notion of firm stewardship by American imperialism over that time. One, the Americans ruling class did in fact use nuclear weapons on essentially defenseless and defeated people in Japan. And has been the only power in history to do so. Two, the American imperialists today have several thousand serious nuclear weapons with the capacity to launch them anytime, anywhere and if history is any judge with little compunction to use them. “Third World” tin pot dictators, quasi-socialist bureaucrats and other assorted rulers are not the only ones that should be worried by such facts. Damn, I am worried.        

Among the first political activities that I engaged in as a youth was the fight for unilateral nuclear disarmament. I admired the struggles of the British Labor Party to make Great Britain a nuclear-free zone during the height of the Cold War. As an advocate for a socialism that youthful dream still holds sway- but with a much better understanding of the nature of world politics, and far less naiveté about the nature and intentions of the American capitalist system. Iraq today is only the most graphic example of such ruthless- ness. Unlike such groups as the hard-line Stalinist Workers World Party which apparently wants the North Korean U.S. political franchise (for what it is worth) much as American Maoists of my generation fought for the Chinese franchise when China was a popular icon in the revolutionary pantheon I do not see Kim as one of nature’s noblemen. Nor is North Korea a “workers paradise” by any stretch of the imagination. But make no mistake I join them and others in demanding- HANDS OFF NORTH KOREA!