Smiley's (Anti-American) People

The New York Times ^ | January 11, 2004 | Geoffrey Wheatcroft

[quidnunc]

Bath, England – Anyone can see what happened in Iraq. It was nothing more than a war of colonial conquest fought for oil, "dressed up as a crusade for Western life and liberty," and its authors were "a clique of war-hungry Judeo-Christian geopolitical fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America's post-9/11 psychopathy."

These words are spoken in John Le Carré's new novel "Absolute Friends'' (Little, Brown, 2004). And although it is usually philistine and unfair to blame a novelist for what his fictional creations say, in this case the speaker expressing those opinions is plainly a point-of-view character — there is a vein of anti-Americanism running through his novels from nearly 40 years ago — and the opinions are shared by plenty of Europeans, the English among them.

Maybe "anti-Americanism" is a dubious concept (the idea of being "un-American" still more so). It might suggest bigotry, by analogy with "anti-Semitism," when hating America, whatever else it may be, plainly cannot be a form of racism. The accusation is often invoked by American politicians for their own purposes. But if it means hostility to the administration of the day, then most Americans must themselves have been "anti-American'' at times — since it was almost a logical impossibility, for example, to have admired and supported both President Richard Nixon and President Bill Clinton.

All the same, anyone who lives in the Old World knows that we are talking about something that exists, though it takes different forms from country to country.

-snip-

[Viking2002]

Ah, I see that another of the Left's anointed 'beautiful people' has decided to gas bombastic about America's new resolve.

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[McGavin999]

Is the NYT starting to wake up? I know it's probably just a survival technique, but there have been a couple of good articles in it lately.

[Captain Peter Blood]

I scorn Hypocrites like Le Carre. There were a number of reasons to take Saddam out, the most important one being we had to make an example of someone to show our resolve in the war on terror. He just happened to be the best one available.

Does anyone here think that Qadhafi in Lybia would not be giving up his weapons if it had not been for our invading Iraq?

Another thing, all these Left-Wing Liberal Trotsyite's are always telling us that everything they do is for the children. Well one of the prisons we opened up was one for children, their only crime was their parents were politcal enemies of Saddam and he had them locked up also. That was enough reason for me for the war. You don't hear much about those children from the left. Like they really care.

Le Carre is simply out of his depth and is just the kind of European Elitist Left-Wing Snob we need to hear less from.

For a guy who wrote such compelling spy novels against Stalinism, Communism, etc., he now seems to embrace totalitarian dictators. Ergo he is a First Rate Hypocrite!!

[Travis McGee]

LeCarre was always a moral relativist who wrote his CIA and KGB agents as moral equals.

Even his fake Frenchy pen name is an affectation.

[blackbart.223]

"Of course, the Americans are cowards," Evelyn Waugh cheerfully told Graham Greene. "They are almost all the descendants of wretches who deserted their legitimate monarchs for fear of military service.".

American "cowards" kicked the monarchs out of the country. Screw Europe.

[baseballmom]

bump

[blackbart.223]

Thank you.