LEFT OPTIMISM -- TOO EARLY

Amidst all of the news about Lebanon, we can see the various media resources of the Left exuding optimism over the US/ Israeli failure to exert their will upon the world. For instance, Gilbert Achcar, writing for ZNet, writes of the "sinking ship of US imperial designs," and in the same publication, Immanuel Wallerstein tells us that

Israel is now engaged in the exact same catastrophic blunder, from its own point of view, as George Bush's invasion of Iraq. Bush thought that a show of military strength would establish U.S. presence unquestionably in Iraq and intimidate the rest of the world. Bush has discovered that Iraqi resistance was far more formidable militarily than anticipated, that American political allies in Iraq were far less reliable than he assumed they would be, and that the U.S. public's support of the war was far more fragile than he expected. The United States is heading towards a humiliating withdrawal from Iraq.

Stan Goff's blog parades an article from Asia Times celebrating the near-end of the Atlantic Alliance. I've already told you about the article in the Socialist Worker. (I'll find more of this stuff later.)

Let me respectfully suggest to all of these optimistic parties that it is WAAY too early to see anything good coming out of this, and that US/ Israeli decadence may precipitate a collapse of imperial regimes, but that nothing is ready to take the place of the sole-superpower set-up. In short, the emperor may have no clothes, but his dethronement is still a very long way off.

Given the political climate of the present, it would be more meaningful for the Left to echo Juan Cole's sentiment:

The idea that the whole Eastern Mediterranean had to be polluted, that the Christian Lebanese economy had to be destroyed for the next decade or two, that 900,000 persons had to be rendered homeless, that a whole country had to be pounded into rubble because some Lebanese Shiites voted for Hizbullah in the last election, putting 12 in parliament, is obscene. Bush's glib ignorance is destroying our world. Our children will suffer for it, and perhaps our grandchildren after them.

Optimism allows us to believe that some countervailing force is already in place that can stop this. Sorry, it's just not there.

I've been tempted at some point to rename this blog "Ecosocialism or Barbarism." Sometimes I am of the opinion that the latter is the more likely future.