Greetings Economists,
The pro war intelligentsia recruited after the end of the Cold war to
represent traditional liberal ideology speak up (below) in their main forum.
They seem faltering and incoherent after such a brief period of ascendancy.
I think it interesting that a line is being created about the anti-war
movement, that it is 'leftist'. That 'real' liberals are not part of this
movement. Ceding the anti-war movement to the left when the left is very
weak and no threat.
Is the door for an organized left movement wide open? What is the left?
Across the board I see many people willing to characterize themselves as on
the left, and that has no ideological content as yet, the people have not
spoken yet, but they are being stirred by events. So for now things are
moving our way for practical reasons of liberals having to support
Imperialism that Capitalist require of their camp. That means the liberals
have abandoned their usual role of usurping left movements. They merely
criticize the 'left' as a left.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor
December 8, 2002
The Liberal Quandary Over Iraq
By GEORGE PACKER NY Times
If you're a liberal, why haven't you joined the antiwar movement? More to
the point, why is there no antiwar movement that you'd want to join? Troops
and equipment are pouring into the Persian Gulf region in preparation for
what could be the largest, riskiest, most controversial American military
venture since Vietnam. According to a poll released the first week of
December, 40 percent of Democrats oppose a war that has been all but
scheduled for sometime in the next two months. So where are the
antiwarriors?
In fact, a small, scattered movement is beginning to stir. On Oct. 26, tens
of thousands of people turned out in San Francisco, Washington and other
cities to protest against a war. Other demonstrations are planned for Jan.
18 and 19. By then an invasion could be under way, and if it gets bogged
down around Baghdad with heavy American and Iraqi civilian casualties, or if
it sets off a chain reaction of regional conflicts, antiwar protests could
grow. But this movement has a serious liability, one that will just about
guarantee its impotence: it's controlled by the furthest reaches of the
American left. Speakers at the demonstrations voice unnuanced slogans like
''No Sanctions, No Bombing'' and ''No Blood for Oil.'' As for what should be
done to keep this mass murderer and his weapons in check, they have nothing
to say at all. This is not a constructive liberal antiwar movement.
So let me rephrase the question. Why there is no organized liberal
opposition to the war?
The answer to this question involves an interesting history, and it sheds
light on the difficulties now confronting American liberals. The history
goes back 10 years, when a war broke out in the middle of Europe. This war
changed the way many American liberals, particularly liberal intellectuals,
saw their country. Bosnia turned these liberals into hawks. People who from
Vietnam on had never met an American military involvement they liked were
now calling for U.S. air strikes to defend a multiethnic democracy against
Serbian ethnic aggression. Suddenly the model was no longer Vietnam, it was
World War II -- armed American power was all that stood in the way of
genocide. Without the cold war to distort the debate, and with the inspiring
example of the East bloc revolutions of 1989 still fresh, a number of
liberal intellectuals in this country had a new idea. These writers and
academics wanted to use American military power to serve goals like human
rights and democracy -- especially when it was clear that nobody else would
do it.
Many of them had cut their teeth in the antiwar movement of the 1960's, but
by the early 90's, when some of them made trips to besieged Sarajevo, they
had resolved their own private Vietnam syndromes. Together -- hardly vast in
their numbers, but influential -- they advocated a new role for America in
the world, which came down to American power on behalf of American ideals.
Against the liberal hawks there were two opposing tendencies. One was
conservative: it loathed the idea of the American military being used for
humanitarian missions and nation building and other forms of ''social
work.'' This was the view of George W. Bush when he took office, and of all
his key advisers. The other opposing tendency was leftist: it continued to
view any U.S. military action as imperialist. This thinking prompted Noam
Chomsky to leap to the defense of Slobodan Milosevic, and it dominates the
narrow ideology of the new Iraq antiwar movement. Throughout the 90's,
between the reflexively antiwar left and the coldblooded right, liberal
hawks articulated the case for American engagement -- if need be, military
engagement -- in the chaotic world of the post-cold war. And for 10 years of
wars -- first in Bosnia, then Haiti, East Timor, Kosovo and, last year, in
Afghanistan, which was a war of national security but had human rights as a
side benefit -- what might be called the Bosnia consensus held.
But on the eve of what looks like the next American war, the Bosnia
consensus has fallen apart. The argument that has broken out among these
liberal hawks over Iraq is as fierce in its way as anything since Vietnam.
This time the argument is taking place not just between people but within
them, where the dilemmas and conflicts are all the more tormenting. What
makes the agony over Iraq particularly intense is the new role of
conservatives. Members of the Bush administration who had nothing but
contempt for human rights talk until the day before yesterday have grabbed
the banner of democracy and are waving it on behalf of the long-suffering
Iraqi people. For liberal hawks, this is painful to watch.
In this strange interlude, with everyone waiting for war, I've had extended
conversations with a number of these Bosnian-generation liberal
intellectuals -- the ones who have done the most thinking and writing about
how American power can be turned to good ends as well as bad, who don't see
human rights and democracy as idealistic delusions, and who are struggling
to figure out Iraq. I'm in their position; maybe you are, too. This Bosnian
generation of liberal hawks is a minority within a minority, but they hold
an important place in American public life, having worked out a new idea
about America's role in the post-cold war world long before Sept. 11 woke
the rest of the country up. An antiwar movement that seeks a broad appeal
and an intelligent critique needs them. Oddly enough, President Bush needs
them, too. The one level on which he hasn't even tried to make a case is the
level of ideas. These liberal hawks could give a voice to his war aims,
which he has largely kept to himself. They could make the case for war to
suspicious Europeans and to wavering fellow Americans. They might even be
able to explain the connection between Iraq and the war on terrorism. But
first they would need to resolve their arguments with one another and
themselves.
In my conversations, people who generally have little trouble making up
their minds and debating forcefully talked themselves through every side of
the question. ''This one's really difficult,'' said Michael Ignatieff, the
Canadian-born writer and thinker who has written a biography of the liberal
philosopher Isaiah Berlin along with numerous books and articles on human
rights. No one in recent years has supported humanitarian intervention more
vocally than Ignatieff, but he says he believes that Iraq represents
something different. ''I am having real trouble with this because it's not
clear to me that containment has failed,'' Ignatieff told me. This kind of
self-interrogation ends up with numerous arguments on either side of the
ledger. Here's how I break down the liberal internal debate.
For War
1. Saddam is cruel and dangerous.
2. Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction and has never stopped trying
to develop them.
3. Iraqis are suffering under tyranny and sanctions.
4. Democracy would benefit Iraqis.
5. A democratic Iraq could drain influence from repressive Saudi Arabia.
6. A democratic Iraq could unlock the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate.
7. A democratic Iraq could begin to liberalize the Arab world.
8. Al Qaeda will be at war with us regardless of what we do in Iraq.
Against War
1. Containment has worked for 10 years, and inspections could still work.
2. We shouldn't start wars without immediate provocation and international
support.
3. We could inflict terrible casualties, and so could Saddam.
4. A regional war could break out, and anti-Americanism could build to a
more dangerous level.
5. Democracy can't be imposed on a country like Iraq.
6. Bush's political aims are unknown, and his record is not reassuring.
7. America's will and capacity for nation building are too limited.
8. War in Iraq will distract from the war on terrorism and swell Al Qaeda's
ranks.
At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally
proves stronger than wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the
tongue. Caution over Iraq puts liberal hawks, who are nothing if not
moralists, in the psychologically unsettling position of defending a status
quo they despise -- of sounding like the compromisers they used to denounce
when it came to Bosnia. Fear means missing the chance for what Ignatieff
calls ''a huge prize at the end.''
But wish makes a liberal hawk sound like a Bush hawk, blithely unconcerned
about the dangers of American power. The liberal hawk is a liberal --
someone temperamentally prone to see the world as a complicated place.
This dilemma is every liberal's current dilemma.
The Theorist
After last year's terror attacks, Michael Walzer, the author of ''Just and
Unjust Wars,'' among other books, published an article in the magazine he
co-edits, Dissent, called ''Can There Be a Decent Left?'' Walzer harshly
criticized leftists whose first instinct was to blame American policy for
Sept. 11 and who refused to see the need for a war of self-defense against
Al Qaeda. The article threw down an angry marker between the pro- and
anti-interventionist left, and it drew heated attention to a 67-year-old
political philosopher with a far-from-confrontational manner.
A year later, Walzer finds himself an ambivalent opponent of war in Iraq. Al
Qaeda simplified things in favor of armed action; Iraq presents nothing but
complication. ''The uncertainties right now are so great,'' he told me as we
sat and talked at a cafe in Greenwich Village, ''and the prospects, the
risks, so frightening, that the proportionality rule forces you the other
way. And with a lot of other things going on -- suspicion of this government
of ours, anger at the automatic anti-Americanism of people here and other
places. It's all mixed up.''
Walzer is a strong advocate of multilateral action, and he faults the
administration and its European allies for bringing out the worst in one
another, American bellicosity and European complacency pushing the logic of
events toward a war he says he doesn't believe is justified yet. The
just-war theory requires that a threat be imminent before an attack is
started. Since this is not yet the case with Iraq, an American war there
wouldn't meet the criteria.
None of this means that Walzer is rallying opposition at teach-ins. In the
1960's, he was willing to join an antiwar movement that he says he knew
would strengthen the hand of Vietnamese Communists ''because I thought
they'd already won. I would not join an antiwar movement that strengthened
the hand of Saddam.'' And yet he can't imagine one that doesn't. The nature
of the enemy makes it almost impossible to be outspoken for peace, a dilemma
that has created what he calls ''a kind of silent majority, a silent antiwar
movement.'' Walzer's position offers cold comfort, for it ends up with
Saddam still in power. ''It leaves me unhappy,'' he says.
The Romantic
These days, Christopher Hitchens sounds anything but unhappy. His militant
support, first for the war with Al Qaeda and now for a war in Iraq, has led
him to break quite publicly with former comrades. He has vacated the column
he wrote in The Nation for the past 20 years and has said harsh things about
the ''masochists'' of the anti-American left. Hitchens's apostasy has
generated nearly as much attention on the left as the war itself, but over a
three-hour lunch in Washington, his position struck me as more judicious
than its print version.
Hitchens agrees with the ''decent skepticism'' of liberals who distrust the
administration's motives, but he has decided that hawks like Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz aim to use a democratic Iraq to end the regional
dominance of Saudi Arabia. If this is the hidden agenda, Hitchens wants to
force it into the open. He compares Saddam's Iraq with Ceausescu's Romania
in 1989: it's going to implode anyway, and America should have a hand in the
process.
In 1991, Hitchens was too suspicious of American motives to support the
first gulf war -- a hangover, he says, from his days as a revolutionary
socialist -- but on a visit to northern Iraq at the end of the war, he rode
in a jeep with Kurdish fighters he admired who had taped pictures of the
first George Bush to their windshield. It was a minor revelation. ''I'm not
ashamed of my critique of the gulf war,'' he says, ''but I'm annoyed by how
limited it was.''
Since then, Hitchens has steadily warmed to American power exercised on
behalf of democracy. When I suggested that since Sept. 11 he has gone back
to the 18th-century, when the struggle between the secular liberal
Enlightenment and religious dark-age tyranny created the modern world,
Hitchens readily agreed. ''After the dust settles, the only revolution left
standing is the American one,'' he said. ''Americanization is the most
revolutionary force in the world. There's almost no country where adopting
the Americans wouldn't be the most radical thing they could do. I've always
been a Paine-ite.''
British pamphleteer for the American revolution -- Hitchens has updated the
role for Iraq. His relish for war with radical Islamists and tyrants (''You
want to be a martyr? I'm here to help'') sounds like the bulldog pugnacity
of a British naval officer's son, which he is. It also suggests a deep
desire, and a romantic one, to join a revolution -- even if it's admittedly
a ''revolution from above.'' ''I feel much more like I used to in the
60's,'' he says, ''working with revolutionaries. That's what I'm doing; I'm
helping a very desperate underground. That reminds me of my better days
quite poignantly.'' Hitchens has plans to drink Champagne with comrades in
Baghdad around Valentine's Day.
The Skeptic
''Revolution from above'' was Trotsky's mocking phrase for Stalin's use of
the Communist Party to collectivize the Soviet Union. It implies coercion
toward a notion of the good. David Rieff, whose book ''Slaughterhouse''
condemned the failure of Western powers to intervene in Bosnia, compares
revolution from above to Plato's idea of ruling Guardians. What they share,
says Rieff, is a desire to pursue utopian ends by undemocratic means.
''I always thought there was more in common between Human Rights Watch and
the Bush administration than either would be comfortable thinking, because
they both are revolutionaries -- in my view, quite dangerous radicals. They
believe that virtue can be imposed by force of law and force of arms.
Christopher has the same view with his sense that a democratic alternative
can be imposed by force of arms in the Middle East.''
Unlike Hitchens, an Englishman who ''liked the United States enough to have
concluded when I was about 16 that I'd been born in the wrong country,''
Rieff is an American who grew up with a European education, traveled the
world as a teenager and always looked askance at the notion of America as
either savior or Satan. As an empire, America is neither better nor worse
than other empires -- but to expect it to behave like Amnesty International
is foolish. The difference between Bosnia and Iraq, Rieff says, is the
difference between supporting democracy and imposing it. The former was a
moral imperative as well as a strategic one; the latter is hubris. With
Iraq, this hubris is leading to ''a hideous mistake.'' ''I accept everything
that the Bush administration says about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein,''
Rieff says, ''but I do think it's a revolution too far.''
The Secularist
During the Congressional debates on the war resolution, it was just about
impossible to hear an argument in favor of the administration without the
words ''Munich'' and ''Chamberlain.'' The words ''Tonkin'' and ''Johnson''
were far rarer, which tells you something about the relative acceptability
of World War II and Vietnam -- appeasement and quagmire -- as historical
precedents. I wanted to ban all analogies, because they always seemed to be
ways of avoiding the hardest questions. But the analogies are hard-wired,
and Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, is right to
say that Americans of the postwar generation ''have operated with two primal
scenes. One was the Second World War; one was the Vietnam War. And you can
almost divide the camps on the use of American force between those whose
model for its application was the Second World War and those whose model for
its application was the Vietnam War.''
For Wieseltier, whose parents survived the Holocaust, the primal scene is
American power helping to end evil. Shortly before I met him at his
Washington home, Wieseltier had seen a TV documentary with rare footage of
the gassing of Kurds by Saddam's army -- a reminder of a primal scene if
ever there was one. But that was in 1988, when America failed to intervene.
Today, American and British pilots in the no-fly zone are preventing the
very genocide that Wieseltier feels would justify an invasion.
Wieseltier is a secular liberal in the classical sense. He says he believes
that the separation of religion and power marked a violent rupture with the
past. This rupture created a new and universal idea of freedom and equality
-- one that Islamic societies around the world have not yet been ready to
face. Sept. 11 was a cataclysmic ''refreshment'' of this idea, after years
in which only money mattered. But terrorism should not turn liberals into
simple-minded missionaries; being a secular liberal means accepting that the
world is a difficult place. ''Democracy in Iraq would be a blessing, but it
cannot be the main objective for embarking on a major war,'' Wieseltier
says. ''If there is one thing that liberalism has no time for, it's an
eschatological mentality. There is no single, sudden end to injustice.
There's slow, steady, fitful progress toward a more decent and democratic
world.''
Wieseltier says he believes that Saddam's weapons and fondness for using
them will probably necessitate a war, but unlike some other editors at The
New Republic, he is not eager to start one. ''We will certainly win,''
Wieseltier says, ''but it is a war in which we are truly playing with
fire.''
The Idealist
Paul Berman's book ''A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the
Generation of 1968'' traced a line from the rebellions of the 1960's to the
nonviolent revolutions of 1989. It is essentially a line from leftism to
liberalism. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the great ideological battles
of the 20th century seemed to have ended: liberal democracy reigned supreme.
Then came Sept. 11, which, Berman argues in a coming book called ''Terror
and Liberalism,'' showed that, as it turns out, the 20th century isn't quite
over yet.
''The terrorism we face right now is actually a form of totalitarianism,''
Berman told me in his Brooklyn apartment. ''The only possible way to oppose
totalitarianism is with an alternative system, which is that of a liberal
society.'' So the war that began on Sept. 11 is primarily a war of ideas,
and Berman harshly criticizes Bush for failing to pursue it. ''We're going
into a very complex and long war disarmed, in which our most important
assets have been stripped away from us, which are our ideals and our ideas.
He's sending us into war with one arm tied behind our back.''
Berman argues for a war in Iraq on three grounds: to free up the Middle East
militarily for further actions against Al Qaeda, to liberate the Iraqi
people from their dungeon and to establish ''a beachhead of Arab democracy''
and shift the region's center of gravity away from autocracy and theocracy
and toward liberalization. In other words, war in Iraq has everything to do
with the war on terrorism, and the dangers of an American military
occupation that might not be seen by everyone in the region as
''pro-Muslim,'' though they worry Berman, don't deter him.
Perhaps the boldest intellectual move he makes is to claim a liberal descent
for these ideas -- connecting the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bosnia, Kosovo,
Sept. 11 and Iraq. This lineage, Berman claims, is represented not by George
W. Bush but by Tony Blair, ''leader of the free world.'' Bush has presented
the wars on terrorism and Saddam as matters of U.S. security. In fact,
Berman says, they are wars for liberal civilization, and the rest of the
democratic world should want to join. It doesn't bother Berman to hear
conservative hawks at the Pentagon like Paul Wolfowitz talking similarly.
''If their language is sincere,'' he says, ''and there is an idealism among
the neo-cons that echoes and reflects in some way the language of the
liberal interventionists of the 90's, well, that would be a good thing.''
But Berman, unlike Hitchens, doubts their sincerity. And in the end, Berman
can't support the administration's war plan, ''because I don't actually know
-- I believe that no one actually knows -- what is the actual White House
policy.'' So he is left in the familiar position of intellectuals, with an
arsenal of ideas and no way to deploy them.
one chilly evening in late November, a panel discussion on Iraq was convened
at New York University. The participants were liberal intellectuals, and one
by one they framed reasonable arguments against a war in Iraq: inspections
need time to work; the Bush doctrine has a dangerous agenda; the history of
U.S. involvement in the Middle East is not encouraging. The audience of 150
New Yorkers seemed persuaded.
Then the last panelist spoke. He was an Iraqi dissident named Kanan Makiya,
and he said, ''I'm afraid I'm going to strike a discordant note.'' He
pointed out that Iraqis, who will pay the highest price in the event of an
invasion, ''overwhelmingly want this war.'' He outlined a vision of postwar
Iraq as a secular democracy with equal rights for all of its citizens. This
vision would be new to the Arab world. ''It can be encouraged, or it can be
crushed just like that. But think about what you're doing if you crush it.''
Makiya's voice rose as he came to an end. ''I rest my moral case on the
following: if there's a sliver of a chance of it happening, a 5 to 10
percent chance, you have a moral obligation, I say, to do it.''
The effect was electrifying. The room, which just minutes earlier had
settled into a sober and comfortable rejection of war, exploded in applause.
The other panelists looked startled, and their reasonable arguments suddenly
lay deflated on the table before them.
Michael Walzer, who was on the panel, smiled wanly. ''It's very hard to
respond,'' he said.
It was hard, I thought, because Makiya had spoken the language beloved by
liberal hawks. He had met their hope of avoiding a war with an even greater
hope. He had given the people in the room an image of their own ideals.
Copyright The New York Times Company
