One of the most aggravating things about American (and British) liberals has been how they consistently line up with the US government shouting ‘Self-Determination! Self Determination!’ every time the Pentagon uses some small nationality against another government.
When Australia wanted to split East Timor off of Indonesia, this was their shout. When the US and the Western Europeans wanted to carve up Greater Yugoslavia into nation-lets under their control this was their call. We hear their call again against China as the US government wants to use Tibet to propagandize for the Pentagon and against the Chinese. We hear it in Africa as they use the issue of the fighting in Darfur to move against Sudan.
Liberal radicals are always using the issue of ‘self determination’ to support US militarism while pretending to be doing the exact complete opposite. That is why their silence is so deafening now about keeping quiet about ‘self determination’ for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Apparently the liberal interventionist American Left is only for ‘self determination’ when the Pentagon calls for it? This is a sad illustration about the liberal Left’s own lack of self examination and their pro US nationalism and pro imperialism that hides behind liberal human rights rhetoric. Some even hide behind Marxism to justify what positions for the Pentagon they take!
What about the Ossetians? Once again the Libertarian Right is more honest than the pseudo Marxists and Left liberal ‘Progressive’ community is. They ask the question about the Ossetians when the phonys remain silent. While the pro Democratic Party liberals/radicals are out cheerleading Barack it is antiwar.com that keeps us informed about the dangerous buildup for war involving Russia and the US. And unfortunately, this constant misuse of the issue of ‘self determination’ in support of State Department propaganda is often used by many even to the Left of the Democratic Party, too. Shameful. But now they are all silent when it comes to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
hello tony,
their agenda says it all, its always
tibet, darfur, zumbabwe, taiwan….
oh, many have added xinjiang to their list lately.
these guys seem to get their scripts from the neocons themselves.
Denk, I’d have to agree with you. This liberal habit of selectively supporting small national Independence Movements always seems to come and go depending almost totally on the current US media propaganda campaign of the moment. And the US media always shill for current US government foreign policy to get us to support it.
Take Kashmir for just one example. Here the area has been oppressed horribly for decades yet liberals have never taken up the cause. Why is that? The answer seems merely to be that US government foreign policy has never seen fit to manipulate and agitate for this group to be split away from India, therefore neither has the media, and trailing even farther behind, neither have the American liberals ever campaigned for these people of Kashmir oppressed by the Indian government for so very, very long.
Likewise, American liberals and radical ‘Progressives’ have never agitated and gotten worked up in favor of Kurdish ‘self determination’, and that has been the case for the very same reasons as with Kashmir. Liberals only seem to push for ‘self determination’ if it is part of what US government foreign policy is supporting currently in its imperialist Crusades.