When Defeat is the Answer

(Analyst's note:  Troubling but every war seems to generate such people.  Wonder why this kind of thing always seems to come from California?)

by Donald Douglas

President Obama is still dithering over the war in Afghanistan, but his hard-Left base has increasingly decided to break with the administration to cheer for American defeat overseas.

The latest sign of the Left’s defection over the war comes from the Los Angeles chapter of the anti-war group International A.N.S.W.E.R. On Sunday, ANSWER sponsored an antiwar “teach-in” on Afghanistan at Los Angeles City College. The event was the group’s latest “local action” in its self-described “struggle” against alleged U.S. imperialism in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, the Philippines, Latin America and beyond.” All this is standard fare for the radical group, with one notable exception: It now considers the Obama administration the enemy.

To that end, ANSWER is accelerating its calls for grassroots resistance to the administration. In particular, ANSWER organizers claim they are seeking to block U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recent request for an additional 40,000 troops. But ANSWER’s ultimate goal is to support the insurgency seeking to topple the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul. According to Richard Becker, ANSWER’s West Coast Regional Director, and a keynote speaker at this weekend’s teach-in, a defeat for the current American mission in Afghanistan would strike a blow to the American “empire” in South Asia.

ANSWER’s anti-American agenda was well-represented by organizers and activists at this weekend’s teach-in in Los Angeles.

The first speaker was Muna Coobtee. An organizer with the National Council of Arab AmericansWestwood protest “Afghanistan and Iraq Will NEVER Accept U.S. Colonialism,” she implored activists to mobilize against the war. Pentagon warmongers can’t tell new recruits the truth about their mission, Coobtee insisted, since “then more soldiers and marines and their families would hesitate to continue to act as bait and cannon fodder.” (an ANSWER front group), she was emcee for the organization’s recent marking the 8th anniversary of the war. Coobtee claimed that the Afghan mission was in fact a doomed neo-colonial war. Denouncing the “occupation,” she claimed that American military goals are exclusively to “avoid defeat … or to avoid the perception of defeat.” Following the script in ANSWER’s communist pamphlet,

Coobtee was followed by ANSWER’s Peta Lindsay and Blase Bonpane (of the Office of the Americas and KPFK Los Angeles). Lindsay had just returned from a mission to Japan. She attacked the U.S. military presence there, conspiratorially denouncing nuclear-powered warships for widespread radioactive “contamination.” She also decried American sailors, who she claimed were “murdering Japanese women and taxi drivers.” In turn, Bonpane, who is something of an alternative media-celebrity, excoriated American neo-imperialism and argued that “the art of revolution is the art of organizing the majority of Americans to end the warfare state.”

An especially militant talk was delivered by (former) Corporal Michael David Prysner, an Iraq war veteran and radar specialist who was honorably discharged from service June 15, 2005. Prysner is a key organizer for ANSWER’S military resistance cell, March Forward! According to his personal statement at the website:

I left this Army with a new understanding of the system under which we all live, and the nature of U.S. foreign policy. But, I still had the same drive to fight for freedom, justice and equality as I did when I joined, and I understood that fighting for those things meant fighting against the U.S. government, not on behalf of it.

During his talk, Prysner parroted the March Forward! talking points. ....

In his remarks, Becker explained that defeating the current American forces under General Stanley McChrystal would strike a blow to America’s neo-colonial project. A U.S. withdrawal from the region would strike at the heart of “empire” in South Asia. “Every empire falls, and this empire will fall as well,” Becker declared. The audience erupted in applause at Becker’s appeal for American losses.

 

ANSWER man: Robert Becker calls for the defeat of the American “empire.”

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