[Debate] Trita Parsi on Libya, Syria, and Iran

[Ran Greenstein]

Beyond being wrong (it is primarily local and regional elites, their
greed and quest for power, that have fuelled the DRC conflict), the
introduction of notions such as 'western surrogates' and 'western
pawns' provides no help at all. It is a rhetorical device that allows
you to transform every local mess into an example of western
intervention, and thereby escape the need for local and contextual
analysis, and it also allows people to avoid responsibility for their
own actions. It brings to mind Schumpeter's classic quip on Marxist
analysis: 'everything, short of the physical extermination of the
bourgeoisie, can be said to be in its direct or indirect, short-term
or long-term, intended or unintended, interests' (not precise quote).

On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 8:29 AM,  <grinker at mweb.co.za> wrote:
> Actually the DRC is riven by factional wars of pillage and dispossession
> driven mostly by Western surrogates. As the recent expose of the western
> shooting down of Dag Hammarskjold's plane indicates, the country has almost
> never been free of foreign interference. Lumumba too was almost certainly
> murdered by western mercenaries. As for Rwanda, the current dictator is
> little more than a western pawn (who has also been utilsied in the pillage
> of DRC).
>
> I think the concrete analyses of individual contexts that you demand would
> tend to show overwhelmingly that western meddling has in fact
> been all-pervasive and usually disastrous. Western countries of course these
> days seldom present themselves in the guise of old style colonial occupiers
> when they meddle.
>

-- 
Ran Greenstein
Johannesburg, South Africa