Posted on 05/23/2003 12:28:16 PM PDT by LdSentinal
Unless you live at the bottom of a well, you've probably noticed that 9/11 and Iraq have had a transforming effect on the American Right. The short formulation is that so-called neoconservatism has triumphed. In 1999, Republicans bitterly opposed U.S. action against a rogue state in Central Europe; in 2000, their presidential nominee ran on an inward-looking, reactive, "humble" foreign policy. All of that is history now. It is hard to find a conservative who does not believe, as the neocons do, in robust and pre-emptive American action against tyrants and terrorists.
That change is, I believe, a watershed, akin to Democrats' side-switch on civil rights in the 1960s and Republicans' switch on budget-balance in the 1980s. In the rush to notice neocons, however, another transformation has been overlooked. A new kind of leftist agenda has emerged from 9/11 and Iraq, one that both mirrors and inverts neoconservatism, and one whose implications seem just as profound.
To understand "neoleftism" (as I might as well call it), consider an ostensibly odd fact: Many neoleftists saw not failure for their side in the fight against the Iraq war, but success.
Success? Even though the Left's street demonstrations around the world failed to stop the war? Even though the quick victory and Iraqi celebrations seemed to vindicate neocons' predictions? Well, yes. Here is how The Nation, which is to the neoleftists something like what Commentary once was to the neocons, put it in an April 7 editorial:
"If we are present at the creation of a new American empire, we are also present at the creation of another superpower -- the largest, most broadly based peace and justice movement in history, a movement that has engaged millions of people here and around the globe."
President Bush's arrogance and aggression, in this view, have catalyzed the truly international sort of activist network that the Left has long dreamed of. At last the globalized economy faces a globalized Left, one that can come together at the speed of e-mail to oppose corporate power -- and American power.
"As the United States government becomes more belligerent in using its power in the world, many people are longing for a 'second superpower' that can keep the U.S. in check," writes James F. Moore, of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, in an article that he posted online. The newly energized Left is just such a force, he argues. True, "the second superpower is not currently able to match the first. On the other hand, the situation may be more promising than we realize. Most important is that the establishment of international institutions and international rule of law has created a venue in which the second superpower can join with sympathetic nations to successfully confront the United States."
Note that Moore speaks of confronting not imperialism or corporate capitalism or human-rights abusers, but the United States. This is significant.
In the years after the Soviet Union collapsed, the Left drifted ideologically but seemed to settle on two main priorities: advocating human rights and opposing corporate capitalism ("globalization"). If leftists could do both at once, for example by campaigning against "sweatshops" in developing countries, so much the better.
In the Iraq crisis, however, neither mantra worked. The war was, if anything, disruptive to multinational oil and business interests, especially those of Russia and France, and Saddam Hussein was a monstrous human-rights abuser. Leftists, caught on the wrong side of their own ideals, were reduced to harping on Iraqi war casualties and mumbling that one sort of misery was replacing another. Just last week, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a Democratic presidential candidate, was asked whether the Iraqi people weren't better off with Saddam gone. "Well, that remains to be seen," was the best he could manage, before mustering this rousing condemnation of the Butcher of Baghdad: "I think most people would agree that Saddam Hussein was not an individual who the world could count on to work cooperatively."
Why is the Left suddenly unable to support or celebrate the downfall of a fascist tyrant? Because, just as neocons regard projecting American power as essential for making the world safer, neoleftists regard containing American power as essential for making the world safer. If containing America means tolerating or even supporting tyranny or terror in particular places -- well, that is a price that must sometimes be paid.
In this neoleftist view, containing American power is important partly because far-right-wingers such as John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, and Bush himself happen to be in charge. But containing America is also important for its own sake. As egalitarians, neoleftists are alarmed and angered by America's preponderance of power. America is a bully not just because Bush is a bully but because the United States is simply too big to play fair.
That, indeed, was the whole point of the war: for America to kick a small country around. "The primary aim of the war," writes John Berger in The Nation, "was to demonstrate what is likely to happen to any leader, nation, community, or people who persist in refusing to comply with U.S. interests." Just as the disparity of power makes sexual relations between a boss and subordinate abusive even if the subordinate consents, so it made America's attack on Saddam abusive even if Iraqis celebrated. Thus can Berger write, of Iraq, that "one tyranny is overthrown not by its subjects but by another tyranny."
Now, anti-Americanism is nothing new for the Left, but neoleftism sports a distinctive variety. The Marxist and countercultural Left of the 1960s viewed "Amerika" as a fundamentally rotten place. Neoleftists, by comparison, are pretty happy with minivans and disposable diapers, and they like America's labor laws and litigation system enough to want to export them. Their beef is with American power, not American culture. Neoleftism thus exchanges the idealism of the 1960s for a kind of realpolitik. The second superpower may not be able to cure all the world's ills, as socialism once promised to do, but it can at least keep a rogue giant in check.
How, then, should the world deal with vicious regimes that have horrible weapons? Neocons say America should always be free to act alone; neoleftists say it should never be free to act alone.
Thus, again in The Nation, David Cortright, a founder of the Win Without War coalition, acknowledges the need for "an alternative vision, one that takes seriously the terrorism and proliferation threat but that provides a safer, less costly, and ultimately more successful strategy for countering these dangers." And that strategy is? "A global prohibition against all weapons of mass destruction," enforced by a hundredfold increase in the United Nations' weapons-inspection capability. If countries refused to cooperate, they could be hit with sanctions or even force.
Force? "This is not a pacifist vision that eschews all uses of military force. The threat of force is sometimes a necessary component of coercive diplomacy." The key, however, is that force should be used "only with the explicit authorization of the Security Council or regional security organizations. In no circumstance would the United States or any other nation have the right to mount a military invasion to overthrow another government for the ostensible purpose of achieving disarmament" (italics added).
That makes it about as clear as it could be that the first priority is not to disarm rogues but to defang America. It also makes clear that the Left is on the brink of a historical and fateful, and possibly also fatal, choice. The Left's idealism and anti-Americanism blinded it to the realities of Soviet Communism and put it on the wrong side of the Cold War. Now the Left is poised to repeat its mistake, letting its egalitarianism and anti-Americanism put it on the wrong side of the fight against tyranny and terror.
Far-fetched though the notion of a leftist "second superpower" might seem to a Washington establishmentarian, it is not necessarily pie in the sky. The passage in 1993 of the North American Free Trade Agreement was a tactical defeat for the Left, but it brought into being a far-flung and effective leftist anti-trade constituency. With the Iraq war, something analogous may be happening.
But the Left will pay a crippling price. If its new rallying cry is going to be "Contain America first!" the Left had better pack its bags for a long, long stay in the political wilderness, at least in America; and if it is going to make excuses for Saddam as it once made excuses for Stalin, it can kiss its moral relevance goodbye. One only wonders whether the Left still has time to back away from the cliff.
It wasn't the policy; it was the "Commander-in-Chief." Bill Clinton never prosecuted a war that wasn't, first and foremost, as means of either distracting from his numerous scandals, or a way to make himself look "Presidential." It was all about him, not about international alliances or confronting tyrants.
Besides, to say that Republicans "bitterly opposed" the air war against Serbia isn't true. If memory serves me correctly, Bob Dole supported the war on Serbia, as did George W. Bush.
So - its the economy vs. the Left. Their enemey is that which provides everyone a job.
Finally they admit the truth. The left is made up of self hating individuals who's goal it is to commit suicide.
I never understood one important scene in the book "Atlas Shrugged", where Dagny (I think) is confronting her looter brother. Her brother basically has a nervous breakdown, and then Francisco or someone says something like, "yes, yes, now you understand, its your own death you're working for". I never understood it, but that's what they really want. Like the Greens, the left hates humanity so much they want humanity to go away, even if they have to die as well.
Their beef is with American power, not American culture.
How to explain, then, the attack on SUVs, the traditional family, white males, the justice system, and the existence of class warfare, revisionist history and rampant political correctness, all serving in effect to annihilate our culture?
Does this mean the left will only attack our military in the future and leave our culture alone? I doubt it very much.
In a dangerous world, who in their right mind would want these guys in power? I believe in the future they will view the Clinton years to be their heyday. Pretty sad, I must say.
Another intersting question for those who would restrain America through "multilateralism" is: why? Why should America restrain its pursuit of what it perceives to be in its own best interest unless it is able to gain the approval of an unspecified number of other nations who, in deciding whether to grant that approval, will be pursuing what they perceive to be in their own interest?
In the case of Iraq, America was opposed by France, Germany, and Russia because, among other things, those countries believed correctly that the removal of Saddam would result in the concurrent removal of the commercial advantages enjoyed by them under the sanctions regime. One of the great ironies of the whole affair was to see leftists cheering the French Foreign Minister who was essentially advocating the retention of a brutal, corrupt totalitarian regime for the crassest of capitilist motives.
The great myth of "multilateralism" is that there exists a set of common international values and that only the "international community" can be trusted to pursue those values. The truth, as demonstrated vividly by the Iraqi situation, is that there are no common values, only common interests and that those interests are constantly changing.
It wasn't a rogue state. It was a Clinton's way of making America forget about the impeachment. Our troops didn't even know who the enemy was, because Not-So-Bright apparently didn't either. As a result, the Muslims are busily building their Greater Albania in the Balkans and the killing continues.
But it was Clinton, so tht makes it ok.
But that is not, in my opinion, an end in itself for the left, as the article suggests. America is powerful and represents the four things the left hates most: freedom of speech, the rule of law, the notion that men are equal as a god-given gift (or for the athiests, by natural law), and a market based economy. We export these virtues unconsciously. They export so easily because of the strength and attractiveness of our culture. The left knows that America must be destroyed or subverted. Unless the left succeeds in destroying or subverting America, our culture is likely to become, eventually, the universal norm on earth--simply as a matter of Hayeckian economic cultural darwinian pressure.
Thus, containment is a necessary step toward the destruction of America, as a beacon of liberty. Contained, America would be unable to defend itself against conventional or assymetric attack. We would eventually face destruction or subversion because our success and culture is based on openness and trust--neither of which would survive repeated 911's.
By way of contrast, were the US to become the nasty, totalitarian state for which the left so yearns, the leftist agenda would no longer be to contain America. America's military would be promptly used to squash all remaining liberty in the rest of the world. Imagine Hugo Chavez with the world's most powerful armed forces.
Reason number 5,866 to prevent Hillary from becoming president.
There is a sense in which the bombing worked in that Serbia eventually capitulated, but prosecuting the war from 30,000 feet dramatically increased the suffering of both Kosovars and Serbs. As usual Clinton wasn't thinking of anyone but himself.
The left never said much about the civilian casualties either.
Oh, really....
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