Posted on 02/17/2003 4:55:05 AM PST by IronJack
America-haters around the world took center stage this weekend, in an organized demonstration of pro-Iraq, anti-war sentiment reminiscent of the Vietnam riots in the Sixties. A shadowy global network of resistance suddenly materialized, all mysteriously singing the same hymns and chanting the same rhetoric. It was a remarkable example of manipulated spontaneity, as choreographed as a Balanchine pas de deux. It has been planned and organized by sinister forces ever since the roar of outrage drowned similar mushy sentiments after 9/11.
I picture socialist cells in garrets across Europe drinking cut-rate vodka and whooping it up over guttering candles and Gauloise cigarettes. And Saddam sitting in one of his palaces, the hint of a tear in one corner of his eye, saying to himself, “They like me. They really like me!” The forces of appeasement spoke loudly on Saturday, but the silence outshouted them. Like an artist appreciating negative space, you have to look at who WASN’T in the streets to grasp the whole story.
Is there a sizable portion of the population strongly opposed to the war on Iraq? No. There is certainly a VOCAL portion, and there are other groups that have some legitimate misgivings. And even if I concede that their motives are respectable and honest, there is still a much larger chunk of America that firmly believes we should open a drum of keester kleaner on Saddam Hussein. Oddly, they don’t get much camera time.
Just like with the Vietnam War, the misperception is intentional, an illusion cultivated by according the objectors a weight and credibility they ill deserve, while denying that same gravitas to the pro-war majority. Numerically, the latter outnumber the former, and their passion for this war is equal to the passion of the resistors. Poll after poll - even when conducted by liberal-leaning establishments like Gallup and USA Today - show that a clear majority of Americans back Pres. Bush’s action against Iraq, even if the final effort has to be “unilateral” (a meaningless qualification when we already have a dozen nations behind us).
But the motives of the antiwar crowd ARE suspect. After the US withdrew from Vietnam, evidence showed that there WAS a fifth column operating in this country tasked with undermining public support for the war effort. The Viet Cong counted on eroding morale as much or more than they counted on their cannons and machine guns. And while America was clearly superior on the battlefield, the treachery of the enemy’s agents won the day on the battlefield of public opinion. When the pressure finally caused the US to back out of that conflict, the antiwar crowd counted it a victory. Hundreds of thousands died in the ensuing bloodbath; the much-maligned “domino theory” of Communist expansion proved true. But the Left was too busy celebrating to hear the screams of the dying, and they never looked over their shoulders to see the smouldering ruin their “triumph” left in its wake.
The Left is seeking the same kind of propaganda victory in this conflict. Americans, being people of conscience, can be manipulated into hand-wringing anguish any time war looms, regardless of how justifiable the war or how righteous our cause. The Left, which lives to sow discord, awakens its hibernating horde and drives them like wedges into the significant but manageable gap between blind hawk and dubious dove. Suddenly an America that was reluctantly resigned to doing battle with a madman is filled with doubt -- morally ambivalent, hesitant, and tepid. The dialectical split has been engineered over an issue that is inherently polarizing, especially when advanced among a people with a history of non-aggression. The Left can smell success, or at least an opportunity to re-energize its moribund foot soldiers. With all other Left-wing issues in retreat - radical environmentalism, affirmative action, unions, welfare, even homosexual rights - the Left has stumbled upon the galvanizing issue of our time. It worked in the Sixties, and they’re convinced it will work again. Finally! A flag to rally under again! An artificial moral bulwark to defend.
The lowest high ground on earth.
The radical Left of today was born in the antiwar movement of the Sixties. There’s an old saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer, suddenly everything looks like a nail. And when you define yourself as an antiwar ideologue, every war is wrong. Furthermore, you find your strength only when a (wrong) war is being waged. You pray for the day when you have a new war to protest, a new energy, a new reason for being. Iraq has provided that spark for the dusty hippies of the Left and their beret-clad modern-day counterparts. With any luck, their drive for peace will accord them the opportunity to smash some windows and burn some cars! If their pacifist dream bears fruit, there could be full-scale riots in the streets. Then, amid the mayhem and destruction, they can realize their reactionist nirvana. All they need is a couple of protest songs and a bag of good buzz, and they’ve invented a time machine to transport them back to the halcyon days when they were briefly and obnoxiously relevant.
Never mind that they find their validation by unleashing a madman; accountability has never been the Left’s strong suit. They were mysteriously silent when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge made killing fields of Cambodia. They discount the eyewitness tales of torture and tyranny from North Korea and China, even when a Tianenmen Square plays out before the world’s eyes. They’ve seen Marxist regimes wreck the economies of countries from Angola to Zimbabwe but they keep mum. And if they have anything to say about Fidel Castro and the disaster that is Cuba, it is only to mouth some Che-inspired platitudes about the glory of revolution and the liberation accorded the populace by slowly starving to death.
At the very least, the Left is a lousy judge of character. So it means very little when they say that Saddam isn’t such a bad guy. Chairman Mao was a real hoot too. And Ho Chi Minh knew some great card tricks. And the lesser-known luminaries who aspire to the Left’s dubious pantheon: Ramsey Clark (see “irrelevant”), Sean Penn (stick to making movies; better yet, take up rollerblading), George Clooney (Dingbatman), the usual suspects - are all high-minded moralists too. George Bush is a befuddled gunslinger to these people, but Saddam Hussein, who uses his own people as quality control agents for nerve gas, is a misunderstood sovereign. No doubt Hitler had his soft and tender side too; it was his idea to bring ferns into the Fuhrerbunker.
I wish I could chalk up this moral lethargy to inertia, or to a simplistic belief in the essential goodness of human nature. But Sean Penn has been around enough to know that there are bad people out there and Ramsey Clark lived through the bloody aftermath of Vietnam. There are no excuses, no apologies sufficient for men like Saddam Hussein. So the opposition to his ouster must be rooted in soil far more sinister than mere naiveté.
These people are motivated by a burning hatred of America, a formless guilt that they have it so well while the rest of the world lies mired in ignorance and darkness. To expiate some imagined sin, they are willing to sacrifice hundreds of their fellow citizens, to become willing tools of the powers that would destroy a way of life they indulge but find morally repugnant. Their highly public misgivings serve as self-flagellation, proof of their elevated social conscience and their willingness to suffer (at least nominally) on behalf of those oppressed. They make their fustian “sacrifices” in dramatic, headline-grabbing flourishes like a Pharisee tithing. Notions of honor are laughable anachronisms to them, fodder for their urbane scorn and that of their fellow posers. Only coarse provincial rubes believe in such quaint relics; the affected weltschmerz of the genteel set admits of no such sentimentality.
Meanwhile, humble average Americans go quietly about ridding the world of a lunatic who has taken up nuclear fission as a hobby.
The only protestors I can bring myself to respect are those who propose to go to Baghdad as human shields. When they start dying - and die they will - then at least one small element of the reactionary crowd will have shown itself to be principled. The rest will continue to mill about in the streets here in the States, sipping cappuccino and braying their angst to whatever microphone will listen. War is just ever so gauche, don’t you know? Meanwhile, the al-Qaida handlers giggle with glee and pray to Allah that history is foolish enough to repeat itself.
Do they not understand this? Or does their hatred for the US trump all else??
Is there a sizable portion of the population strongly opposed to the war on Iraq? No. There is certainly a VOCAL portion...
I don't believe a majority of these demonstrators, particularly at American rallies, are particularly opposed to the war on Iraq per se. What drives most of them is a desire to defeat President Bush in 2004 "by whatever means necessary." The looming war, for many of them, is nothing more than a convenient focal point for their opposition.
Talk with a protest rally participant, and you'll likely find little or no depth of understanding of the issues, the strategies, or the consequences of action versus appeasement. What you likely will find is an association with NOW, PETA, the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, or any of a myriad of leftist organizations, most with little to do with foreign policy or national defense issues.
It is quite striking, for example, how many so-called anti-war demonstrators (really, of course, they're anti-American demonstrators) are pro-abortion activists. Yes, they're concerned about Iraqi deaths, but wish to enable the deaths of American babies. And from their twisted perspective, it's logical: anything that will result in the defeat of George Bush, even if it means appeasement and a resulting foreign policy disaster, will enable them to start rebuilding their activist judicial majority.
Had Saddam not existed, the liberals would have, in effect, invented him. They would have found some focal point for their opposition to President Bush, no matter the consequences. Even now, for example, it is clear that liberals, both in and out of Congress, are doing everything possible to retard economic recovery; they desperately don't want success on George Bush's watch.
Well, nobody's ever told me I lift weights pretty well for a writer ...
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