Said on Strategy

Greetings,

Another stunning article by Edward Said.  This one I think
many of you will find very useful, including Alan and
Richard who both have been rightfully asking for a
discussion on strategy.  Below is a short excerpt from
the essay, but if you are interested in reading the entire
piece you can find it at the following address:

http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2000/511/op2.htm

Khaldoun
-----------------------------------------------------
THE TRAGEDY DEEPENS
Edward Said
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line
7 -13 December 2000
Issue No.511 

No one can deny that Palestine is an exception to nearly 
all the colonial issues of the past 200 years. It is exceptional, 
but not removed from history. Human history is full of similar, 
if not absolutely the same, instances, and what has surprised 
me, as someone living at a distance from the Middle East but 
close to it in all sorts of ways, is how insulated from the rest 
of the world we keep ourselves, whereas, I believe, a great 
deal can be learned from the history of other oppressed 
peoples in the Americas, Africa, Asia and even Europe. 
Why do we resist comparing ourselves, say, with the 
South African blacks, or with the American Indians, or with 
the Vietnamese? By comparing I don't mean mechanically 
or slavishly, but rather creatively and imaginatively. 

The late Eqbal Ahmad, who was certainly one of the two 
or three most brilliant analysts of contemporary history and 
politics that I ever knew, always drew attention to the fact 
that successful liberation movements were successful 
precisely because they employed creative ideas, original 
ideas, imaginative ideas where in other less successful 
movements (like ours, alas) there was a pronounced 
tendency to formulas and an uninspired repetition of past 
slogans and past patterns of behaviour. Take as a primary 
instance the idea of armed struggle. For decades we have 
relied in our minds on ideas about guns and killing, ideas 
that, from the 1930s until today, have brought us plentiful 
martyrs but have had little real effect not so much on 
Zionism but on our own ideas about what to do next. In 
our case, the fighting is done by a small brave number of 
people pitted against hopeless odds, i.e. stones against 
helicopter gunships, Merkava tanks, missiles. Yet a quick 
look at other movements -- say the Indian nationalist 
movement, the South African liberation movement, the 
American civil rights movement -- tell us first of all that 
only a mass movement employing tactics and strategy 
that maximise the popular element ever made any 
difference on the occupier and/or oppressor. Second, 
only a mass movement that has been politicised and 
imbued with a vision of participating directly in a future 
of its own making, only such a movement has historical 
chance of liberating itself from oppression or military 
occupation. The future, like the past, is built by human 
beings. They, and not some distant mediator or saviour, 
provide the agency for change.