The following point cannot be stressed enough; whilst the U.S. remains in Afghanistan, economic and social development will not occur much beyond current levels. This in turn means that the Taliban, as a broad-based movement of poor farmers and lower clergy, is the face of anti-imperialist resistance in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future.
To put it another way, if we, as avowed anti-imperialists, intend to wait around for a resistance movement that agrees with us on every issue, including the need to fight the oppression of women, gays, racial and religious minorities, etc., we’ll be waiting a long time. The Taliban is the resistance in Afghanistan and we must support it, critically, but unreservedly.
In previous posts I have wondered out loud about the silence of the left on issues of women’s rights and democratic reform in the middle east and elsewhere, and I have always maintained that the real struggle of the radical left is not about easing the plight of women and the oppressed; rather it is focussed on fighting against imperialism. These “revolutionaries” are truly blinded by their devotion to that very destructive cause, and I’m pleased to see that at least one of them has fessed up.
h/t to Terry Glavin and to Kate.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which revealed not only the economic failures of the totalitarian socialist state but also the censoring, imprisonment, and even execution imposed on it’s own dissenters, the left has had to turn elsewhere to find a “struggle” to champion. The latest socialist poster boy is Hugo Chavez.
I am not crazy about Chavez cadillio style of leadership but Venezuela is alot more democratic than Canada. … As you will read in Transforming Power, we should be studying Venezuela to see how we can deepen our democracy but instead in a throw back to the cold war, our media paints Chavez as a autocratic and a right-wing populist manipulating the people. I’ve been to Venezuela and the people there understand exactly what they like and don’t like about Chavez.
