Why We Fight – And Why We Don’t
I’m not much of a joiner. Wasn’t even back when I actually used to join this or that group. Those groups were — mostly– left-libertarian or even anarchist. My suspicion and fear of anthing that even has a whiff of “party-discipine” attached to it makes me tremble.
But I have decided to put my signature on the new Euston Manifesto. Hardly an organized movement (fortunately), it’s mostly a statement of priniciples.
I encourage you to the read the entire statement. Even as loose as it currently stands, it’s still a bit rigidly “progressive” for me. Yet it comes very close to what I feel nowadays. And I was happy to see some folks articulate some of those otherwise incohate notions.
Let me pre-empt – if possible– some of the predictable sniping from hard lefties that is about to ensue. My, my, we’re going to be told, Marc you’ve signed something –sputter, sputter– endorsed by such liberal interventionists and pro-war advocates as Paul Berman and Norman Geras.  Proof positive, goes the argument, that I hate the anti-war movement as some of our softer-headed commenters have already alleged.
Baloney. This manifesto was written and supported by a group that includes pro and anti- Iraq war advocates. I have been and remain among the latter. I merely think, as we argue in the manifesto, that the menu of political challenges before us transcends the simple Bush-Blair policy in Iraq. My criticism of the anti-war movement has been on its terrible inefficiency and lack of coherent strategy — not on its overall goals.Â
Again, have the courtesy of reading the entire statement. I’ll be happy to engage any and all commenters on the substance of the manifesto. But check your ad hominem at the door or don’t bother to knock.
April 16th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
I’ve already made a couple of comments here, Marc.
April 16th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Yeah, all the “antiwar” people are like you. They write 1000 words blasting the antiwar movement for every word they write against the war. Frankly, anybody who signs this stupid manifesto is interested in attacking the left rather than building it. Ask yourself what this gaggle of retired professors and pampered journalists have done to concretely oppose US or British imperialism over the past 5 years. The answer is nothing. Frankly, Hitchens is more honorable than Cooper because he at least has the guts to line up with the Donald Rumsfelds of the world. All Cooper has the guts to do is line up with the second tier: Pajamas Media; Euston et al.
April 16th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Marc, I will have to examine this document further before I make a direct comment – a cursory reading will not do. Rest assured, that I will not attack on the basis of who affixed signature to this document, but for what was written. Thanks for the clarifications.
April 16th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
“My criticism of the anti-war movement has been on its terrible inefficiency and lack of coherent strategy — not on its overall goals.â€
How would you propose creating a more efficient ant-war movement, perhaps, a management consulting firm could be employed, so that a more creative strategy would be developed.
The “ironic” problem, is that War and NO draft, causes the average young American to feel detached, because they are not coerced to feel the pain of war personally–an this results in complacency, which you define as inefficiency.
If there was a draft the immigration demonstrations would be dwarfed by the outcry against the Iraq War.
April 16th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Eleanore asks Cooper for an alternative strategy than the one supported by the antiwar movement. Well, that’s a no brainer. He advocates continuing presence of US troops in Iraq in order to avoid chaos. At least that was the position he held a while back until just about the entire world figured out to stay in Iraq another day longer was completely insane. Cooper seems to have dropped that position somewhere along the line. Unlike him, the antiwar movement has always demanded the immediate withdrawal of US and “coalition” troops, something that the Norm Geras’s of the world regard as tantamount to supporting Islamofascism. This stuff is not “leftist”. It is Democratic Party centrism of the kind that is little better than Nixon’s “Vietnamization” formula, etc.
April 16th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Randy… I like some of your criticisms of the manifesto. I think you indentify some of its weak spots.
Eleanore: Come on, Eleanore, everything Ive written about the anti-war movement is public and easily searchable.
Saperstein: If it comforts you to think of me as a Democratic Party centrist, then by all means go ahead and pleasure yourself. I might also be a green-tinted Martian. When you actually have an IDEA rather than a personal attack to put forward, please do so.
April 16th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
I think you’ve been conned. The forces behind this ‘manifesto’ are 100% pro-war and are united in their hatred of all those who opposed the invasion.
Read this critique for starters
http://www.mikemarqusee.com/index.php?p=180#more-180
April 16th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
“It involves making common cause with genuine democrats, whether socialist or not.”
Woop De Doo…!
The banality of this “new leftism” is about the only thing that staggers my imagination.
Anybody who feels the need to write such commonplace tripe in their first paragraph and considers it some sort of “new” anything must have been living in a closet for the last three decades. Frankly, the forty-plus year old Port Huron Statement is, for all of it’s cobwebs, still more thought-provoking than this document.
April 16th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
That’s very gracious of you, Reg. It’s a shame that everyone can’t be as bold and as pungent as you are in outlining political principles. Maybe you should try it some time. Take an hour or two and write down what you believe in and I’ll be happy to post it.
But, yes, by all means– I think liberals should really pile on these guys (myself included) because they are clearly a dire threat.
April 16th, 2006 at 8:41 pm
I didn’t say they are a threat. Hardly. Wish they were more of a threat to the right-wing and the authoritarianisms that they rightly oppose. Just that they’re not saying much of anything that’s remotely original.
As subtext and context, I wouldn’t trust some of these characters to come up with anything remotely resembling coherent advice on U.S. foreign policy given their recent track record.
As for the prospect of me taking an hour or two to write down what I believe in, my problem with this statement is that’s precisely the way it comes across.
April 16th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
The debate goes much deeper than the Iraq war. It really depends on how you interpret the forces of “globalization” (broadly understood). Either you see it as a morally neutral phenomenon which can be harnessed to spread human rights and social justice, or you see it as driven by the interests of capital and inherently imperialistic. The problem seems to be that both interpretations are to some extent correct.
April 16th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
So when does reg get banned since he doesn’t adhere to the manifesto?
April 16th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
To be more precise in my lack of enthusiasm for this thing, Nick Cohen and Norm Geras discussion (in The New Statesmen article where they roll out their bar room manifesto) of their perception of the central issues inherent in a reasoned, informed criticism of the war in Iraq betray a fundamental ignorance of the damage the war has done to the ability of the U.S. to effectively defend itself against bin Ladenist terrorism and of the crucial question of hubristic intervention as a precipitate of destabilization that can hardly be summed up as “liberation”, which is the Geras/Cohen denominate for the post-Saddam outcome. They force the terminology of abstract leftism on this Iraq war discourse for what I would consider to be an obvious reason. In the vernacular, it’s called painting lipstick on a pig. Any discussion of what the war has actually wrought appears to be something they want to put behind them. They seem satisfied with rhetorical support for some “democratic” force in Iraq which doesn’t appear to actually exist on the ground and they paint the “insurgency” and internal conflict as purely a function of the terrorism we would associate with 9/11, when even the U.S. military command mostly acknowledges that it’s far more complex and ranges from a small bin Ladenist minority to Baathists to Sunni nationalists to Shiite fundamentalists. And they focus their greatest passion on lambasting the most leftist version of anti-war opposition – which, of course, isn’t the most coherent or consequential bloc of critics – except in the eyes of people who are “left-obsessed” – which is a symbiotic indulgence generally isolated on the ideological left and ideological right ends of the political spectrum.
What relevance marginal guys like Norman Geras or Paul Berman have at this point to trying to cobble together a viable liberal politics – rooted in a left-center coalition – in the wake of what we’ve experienced in the last half decade of BushCo – not to mention to the larger context of complex globalization, media saturation, consumerist politics and the rest of it in post-industrial hyper-capitalism – completely eludes me.
Of course, I could just be really stupid.
We’d be better off just letting go of anything that smacks of “manifesto” leftism IMHO. Geras and Company expounding on the “left” remind me of some guy who dated a hot girl back in high school who turned out to be a monstrous wench and he spends the rest of his life talking about what a horror she was, how he’ll never make that mistake again and of all the other women he sees who remind him of her. I try to avoid these types.
April 16th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
This document seems to be a mixture of plain points which one can agree with, yet it seems to diverge in specific areas trying to pin certain groups they cannot agree with – some valid considerations and others which are straw. It calls for a broad inclusion, it rightfully excludes oppressive regimes, yet fails to recognize these same tendencies in what it embraces. It seems to place itself as the only hope of the liberal left, but seems to retain the framework of an old oppression we all face, let me explain.
Point one is well taken with no disagreement, but it seems to have swallowed whole the traditional view of the United States and other Western governments with no critical eye. That when one reads the constitution of the US it can be applied to a ruling class, yet exclude the people.
Otherwise, why was there such an outcry and demand for the Bill Of Rights Amendment? In turn, why was there such resistance to it’s application by those who penned the Constitution?
It fails to see this conflict from the infancy of the United States between a monied and propertied class, which resulted in riots, deaths, and imprisonments (not found in our official scholastic historical texts, K-12), where men dispaired that the revolution was for the enrichment of a new aristocracy. Where senators were not elected by the people until the 20th century.
I am reduced to explanations like this, because even though the document you point to is in it’s infancy, it assumes some form of pristine application of the principles it espouses. This goes on in the first point speaking of a “legacy of good governance” ?
Any good governance arose from the demand and pressure of the people – am I supposed to deny history to embrace this document? I love America, specifically she is great and good only because the people held feet of representatives to the fire, in a good many instances, these reprobates who were elected.
I have no argument with the first part of the second point, but than the well is poisoned by the second half – “left-liberal voices today quick to offer an apologetic explanation for such forces.” As if they know the intent of a resistance on foreign soil, and that those who recognize a given resistance let’s say approve of heads being chopped off!
A complete failure to understand the complexity of a given resistance, and a quick quip to put down anyone who “understands” the outrage against an aggressive, deadly, mechanized force, traveling thousands of miles under the guise (at least at this point) of establishing democracy, only to further oppress a weakened and exploited population! Oh yes, they are not waiting long to make their point of exclusion – and Marc, this goes a long way in explaining your repeated statements of how much you dislike people who recognize the least bit of resistance to this sham of bringing democracy.
Point three continues this diatribe from point one, it starts with an assertion anyone can embrace – but than it devolves into this same nonsense. As if there is no difference between the most powerful force on the face of the earth acting in a self-serving atrocious manner, from the agony of a people who have been smashed into disarray! Further, that many on the left somehow excuse the actions of the other nation – what kind of argument is this? As if someone cannot equally stand appalled at violent acts – yet dismiss the instigation of the whole matter? This is a patently fallacious construction.
Point 4, is a lightly mixed bag, I can agree with almost the whole, but find questionable points. The part regarding “best economic forms,” which is left open – broad indeed, are we supposed to embrace this voracious and unbridled capitalism, just let it continue? I ask this because it has now become the predominant form of oppression (we all acknowledge that the cessation of the strong is much harder, don’t we?), and left to itself will continue on this current exploitative path. I like how it is framed in this “broader equality,” you could bait the entire right with this, including some neocons – because all they are interested in is perpetuating the economic reign of the few.
Now set this 5th point in contrast to the fourth where I have elaborated (economic) – how do you embrace those who maintain the status quo, and yet stop serving “a small corporate elite?” Do you expect to reason them out of their position? Point five is a good goal, but how do you dismiss it from the methodology of regime change? How do you distinguish base exploitation with military action from serving the people? However, this is seen in other parts of this document.
I think I have amply answered point six, the Anti – American charge, read some original documents. This point says they are aware of the “problems and failings,” we are great because of the people and their democractic struggle. The constitution is an inert document at face value, it can be applied and interpreted to protect the wealth of the few (which is part of our struggle) – it is nothing without the amendments, nor the peoples insistance of real representation. My criticism is it’s elite ruling class (which is now married to the corporate elite), not the people or the country per se. Once again we find this confoundation of what many on the progressive left oppose, with reality.
I’m afraid I will stress the reading ability of many, so let me make short work of the remaining points.
7). Two state solution – let’s be definitive, if you mean a prosperous Israelis state, as opposed to segregated concentration camps for the Palestinians, we do not agree. If you are talking about equitable existence, than lets talk.
8). Racism is out of the question, well taken. However, if you are now going to confound the disagreement of the government of Israel and it’s policies toward the Palestinians, with racism, you stretch beyond what is taking place.
You are quick to condemn Islamic Fundamentalism but slow to recognize Zionist Fundamentalism – get an equal brush, both are at the root of terrible atrocities. As you would say not all of Islam is fundamentalistic, neither is all Judaism – period.
9). Yes, we all oppose terrorism – but do not enlarge Islamist terrorism and forget state terrorism. You want to argue about it? Even this present administration speaks of state sponsored terrorism – they need a mirror.
10). Oh yes, spreading democracy by the sword, how quaint. I’ll make a deal with you, the next time we practice our “responsibility to protect,” if you can prove there is no ulterior motive (resources, global positioning, corporate interest, etc.) I will go along with it – until than it is a stupid point.
11). No one wants to devolve to Stalinist or Maoist centralism, that is, no one of consequence. To allude that those who recognize “why” a terrorist act might have taken place (9/11) with accepting the act is dishonest – and to try to put it in the same paragraph with Stalinism and so on is twice dishonest! To say that some on the left, in this same paragraph do not believe there is common gound of dialogue with the right is triple dishonesty! It is dishonest because there are mush deeper and valid points of disagreement than this narrow lot – and to say that this is who you disagree with means by default, that anyone that does not wish to dialog with you falls into one of these groups, is a logical fallacy.
12). Is just a continuation of point 11, useless prattle.
13). I completely agree with this point, but that does not control the reaction you will get from such activity. Understand?
14). Excellent point.
15). Good points, now lets employ them.
This was long, I hope it contributes to this dialog. I would compare your document to a half baked cake (to be kind), not because it is incomplete, but because it carries many fallacies and straw arguments. It is hard to put my finger on why it argues in this fashion (because I am not terribly familar with the authors), it feels like someone is trying to justify recent history (Western) and attempting to obscure, particularly, US and Western history for the last few hundred years. It is simplistic, let’s say it does not understand opposition – rather than being dishonest (to give the benefit of the doubt). Either they do not know the beast they are dealing with, or they just care to enter a dialogue with business as usual.
April 16th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
I find myself agreeing with most of the points in the Manifesto, although I have problems with a few of them, most importantly this one:
“We are also united in the view that, since the day on which this occurred, the proper concern of genuine liberals and members of the Left should have been the battle to put in place in Iraq a democratic political order and to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, to create after decades of the most brutal oppression a life for Iraqis which those living in democratic countries take for granted — rather than picking through the rubble of the arguments over intervention.”
This implies that the US military could or could have been a potentially progressive force in Iraq once the dust settled, and that the motivations and conduct of the invasion became irrelevant once it was a fait accompli. History has shown us just the opposite. Those who really wanted to see democracy in Iraq, on the left and the right, should have advocated a completely different way to accomplish that goal, one that did NOT involve a US invasion, and one that did not involve a bait and switch operation where WMD was the bait and alleged democracy in Iraq was the switch. That is what history now shows.
I also question why there are so many specific points one must agree to, it smacks of an attempt to corral people into an entirely new alignment of political correctness–and what are the signatories and founders of the statement now going to do? What actions are called for?
The least relevant arguments, however, are from Manny Saperstein, who obviously has his own alternative manifesto which he thinks we must sign onto if we want to be genuine members of his Left.
April 16th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
“the antiwar movement has always demanded the immediate withdrawal of US and “coalition†troops”
Just a little more on Manny Saperstein’s comments. This may or may not be true of the “official” anti-war movement as defined by its leading organizers, but is it a requirement that someone take this position to be certifiably anti-war? If so, then it help might explain why the anti-war movement has been so ineffective, because many and probably most Americans who now question the war do not take this position but prefer a phased withdrawal.
April 17th, 2006 at 1:45 am
I don’t know, Marc.
Aside from Randy, Virgil and Balter’s objections (which I agree with), and even though I generally agree with some of the broadstrokes, there’s something about the tone of this thing as a whole that really creeps me out. Geras and company are all for the free flow of ideas—unless, of course, your ideas don’t happen to conform entirely with theirs, in which case they resort to name calling or they try to throw you off the playground—-or both.
For instance, I notice under the EM we’re allowed to disagree with the current US administration but not TOO much, or TOO energetically. (We’re supposed to hoard all that really good energy for the condemnation of the Iraqi insurgency and the jihadists, groups over which we have so much personal and political influence. Otherwise they will have “no truck’ with us. The horror!)
And, admittedly I think it’s very nice that we’re permitted to want a two state solution for Israel/Palestine and, even better, allowed to consider that the Palestinians also have legitimate rights and interests along with the Israelis. (The modifier worries me a little in that sentence, but probably I’m just jumpy.)
However, I couldn’t help but note that if we bring up for discussion certain other related pesky subjects….like, say, the notion that Israel lobbying interests in the US might have undue influence on American policy, why then our permission for open political discourse is quickly revoked, and we’re summarily stamped anti-Semitic, and bigoted.
So much for the ol’ “Freedom of Ideas†thingy that the manifesto was touting.
(I’m only guessing, but does this mean that John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government have not invited to be EM signatories?)
I’m with you on most things, Marc. But not on this puppy.
April 17th, 2006 at 1:46 am
As a leftwing Brit I am struck (though not surprised) by the enthusiasm for Euston on the American Right. I agree with many of the views expressed here, and it seems posters here are far better able to see the document for what it is than many British commenters.
April 17th, 2006 at 2:58 am
“And, admittedly I think it’s very nice that we’re permitted to want a two state solution for Israel/Palestine and, even better, allowed to consider that the Palestinians also have legitimate rights and interests along with the Israelis. (The modifier worries me a little in that sentence, but probably I’m just jumpy.)”
Rosedog, I think you have expressed better than anyone here the mindset that does seem to be behind this statement; and I too, although I agree with Marc on most things, have to wonder about this one. The section you quoted above seems to be a thinly veiled warning not to criticize Israel too much, a restriction which I could not sign onto (even though I am Jewish, and particularly because other sections of this manifesto make me think that if I were not Jewish I could be branded an anti-semite if I did criticize too harshly.)
Again, the tone of this thing seems to go in the direction of pushing people to take specific positions on a whole host of issues at a time, to buy into a package as it were–for what reason?
April 17th, 2006 at 4:09 am
I mean, is this some kind of new standard for political activists? Sort of like an ISO-9000 certification for decent progressive practices?
It’s a nice statement. Nothing substantive to object to, really: personally, it strikes me as a little too harsh on powerless leftish cranks, and not hard enough on powerful institutions, but that’s just my gut reaction.
But I could never understand what _use_ such statements were. Statements such as these are rarely read by circles outside of the academics and Big Name Activists who’ve been asked to sign it– beyond that, other “radicals” start sniping at it or making their Chasms of Small Differences known far and wide.
As for the rest of Progressive America… well, it seems more likely that people will _agree_ with it, maybe even _sign_ it, and then carry on with their usual idiocies even when the statement expressly condemns them. I could easily see someone read this, circulate it, cite it as a New Port Huron… and ten minutes later, complain about Israel running U.S. foreign policy and “explain” third world mob violence as a political statement.
April 17th, 2006 at 4:20 am
Marc: you’re not a ‘joiner’ if you sign on to something that accurately describes your point of view.
April 17th, 2006 at 4:24 am
Stormin’ Marxist is toast of the neocons
Maurice Chittenden
AN OBSCURE Marxist professor who has spent his entire academic life in Manchester has become the darling of the Washington right wing for his outspoken support of the war in Iraq.
Despite his leanings Norman Geras, who writes a blog diary on the internet, has praised President George W Bush and says the invasion of Iraq was necessary to oust the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein.
His daily jottings have brought him the nickname of “Stormin’ Norm†from the title of his diary, Normblog. The Wall Street Journal has reprinted one of his articles in its online edition and American pundits often cite his words.
But the British left has turned on Geras, a veteran of demonstrations against the Vietnam war. He has been denounced as an “imperialist skunk†and a “turncoat†in e-mails to his blog, which has up to 9,000 readers a day.
Most mornings Geras, 61, the author of such obscure books as Solidarity in the Conversation of Humankind: The Ungroundable Liberalism of Richard Rorty, sits in the upstairs study of his Edwardian semi in Manchester to type his latest entry.
Last week he gave thanks to Bush, quoting an Iraqi who wants to build a statue to the American president as “the symbol of freedomâ€.
He also lambasted “all those conflicted folk who would like to remain true to their values and be pleased about the Iraqi election, but don’t want George Bush to be able to take any credit for itâ€. He picked Simon Kelner, editor of The Independent newspaper, for special mention.
In another posting he imagined awakening from a nightmare to see Ken Livingstone, Harold Pinter, George Galloway, John Pilger and other opponents of the war advancing upon him — only to raise a finger stained with the purple dye of an Iraqi voter.
Stephen Pollard, David Blunkett’s biographer and another avid blogger, describes him as “unmissableâ€. Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times’s columnist in Washington, said: “He’s fearless, intellectually honest and actually cares about democracy in Iraq and the degeneracy of the Euro-left.
“The medium of blog has made his ideas transmissible across the Atlantic. He’s a genuine man of the left, which means he barely recognises the quislings and cynics who now make up much of it.â€
Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, whose instapundit.com has become one of the most influential websites in American politics, said: “He writes well, and what he writes makes sense. Unlike too many on the left these days, his moral sense hasn’t been obliterated by hostility towards the West in general and America in particular.â€
Geras, who was born in what was then Southern Rhodesia, earns no money from his blog and pays about £3 a month to post it on the internet. He started it in July 2003 after he retired from Manchester University, where he is still a professor emeritus of politics.
He intersperses his political writings with salutes to the Australian cricket team and polls among readers to find the greatest rock’n’roll band — the Rolling Stones came top.
“I am part of the 1960s generation,†he said last week. “I was no Tariq Ali but I took part in demonstrations against the Vietnam war and other issues. Luckily I was never arrested.
“I was at an academic conference in Italy the day the left-wing Allende regime was overthrown by a coup in Chile in 1973. I left the conference to join a march in the streets.â€
April 17th, 2006 at 4:53 am
Rosedog: “However, I couldn’t help but note that if we bring up for discussion certain other related pesky subjects….like, say, the notion that Israel lobbying interests in the US might have undue influence on American policy, why then our permission for open political discourse is quickly revoked, and we’re summarily stamped anti-Semitic, and bigoted.”
Perhaps, Rosedog, the notion is it’self wrong. Israel has been a tiny state completely surrounded by a peoples who want nothing more than to shove all the Jews into the Med. Everybody wants to? No, of course not, but then it would be difficult to find Pali’s, Jordanians, Egyptians, Muslim Lebonese, Saudi’s etc. that are brave enough to say so.
Admitting that the Israeli’s have some dirt on their hands in all the difficulty in the region is easy. The Pali’s however are not some heroic folk beset by the behemoth or sadistic Jew portreyed in the Arab press. Most long term refugee’s usually are absorbed into the local culture. Not the Pali’s, they were kept in the “camps” not by the Jews, but by their “fellow Arabs.” Jordan could have, at any time, made a state of the west bank between 1948 and 1967. Egypt could have done the same in Gaza. They didn’t because they used the Pali’s for a foil against Israel.
Do the Israeli’s have all that much influence? I know that the Arabs and the islamo-fascists would want us to think so. Is it true? I have my doubts. I suspect (though I cannot know) that one of the major reasons that the state of Israel gets so much from us is that they are very much like us in terms of governance. The Arabs get more also, and it used to be because we didn’t want the Soviets to have too much influence in the Middle East. Now it seems a habit.
Perhaps the Israeli influence in the US Government is just a canard.
April 17th, 2006 at 5:04 am
Pardon the second posting but this is from the last thread: April 16th, 2006 at 7:10 am Here is something interesting. Called the Euston Manifesto I suspect (though I cannot know) that Marc Cooper would agree with most of it just as I suspect (again, though I cannot know) that many of the commenters here would not.
For those of you who don’t click on links provided by “wingnuts†do try this one.
Am I prescient or what?
April 17th, 2006 at 5:18 am
Marc Cooper: Just Can’t Help Himself!…
Marc has signed on to the Euston Manifesto and blogged about it here. Typically, some of the harder left members of his commentarian peanut gallery have taken him to task. Read the whole thing, read the comments and you will get an elightenment a…
April 17th, 2006 at 6:50 am
“and you will get an enlightenment” about what ? Oh, yeah “about how the hard left excommunicates anybody who disagrees with them…blah…blah”
Are you prescient ? No – just the usual blather merchant. You obviously can’t read criticical discourse and in-depth discussion without making ridiculous charges about “the hard left”.
More nonsense from the man who brought his readers the news that “General Zinni is an anti-Semite” based on precisely zero evidence…except of course that GMR disagrees with the General’s obviously “prescient” criticism of the Bush administration’s war.
And FYI, the apparently “prescient” Manny Saperstein linked to this thing first in that previous thread with some negative – and typically obtuse – comment about Marc’s having signed on.
Prescient: “Knowing or anticipating the outcome of events before they happen.”
General Zinni’s criticisms of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy, which began before the war did, fit the definitioin of “prescient”. The characterization of this discussion as “hard left excommunication” on the GM’s Corner blog is just more recycled gas from a “usual suspect” who’s taken to slandering veteran military officers for saying things the right-wing blahgosphere can’t stand to hear.
April 17th, 2006 at 7:45 am
The one thing I noticed that should be controversial (aside from the fact that Marc, who claims to be antiwar signed it – what other antiwar signers does it have? I can’t count one – yet Marc still claims to oppose the war) is that it seems simply to be primarily a means of solidifying Tony Blair’s fraction in the British “New Labour” party.
Its pretty meaningless unless all the signers actually are active in the other areas of activism aside from supporting war. Anyone can talk a good anti-capitalist game, but it seems that every signer (uniformly pro-war except fencesitter Cooper) is mostly busy advertising their support of war, not, say, working as an open source activist (the only part of the manifesto that I found agreeable.)
“
April 17th, 2006 at 8:05 am
reg -
The whole topic of the importance of what we both seem to agree is an unhinged portion of the left would be worth exploring.
You keep saying they’re not improtant. I keep saying they’re crucially important and that their attitudes are deeply embedded in the domestic and especially the global left.
I perceive that the authors of this manifesto agree with me and that’s the main reason they wrote it: to try to come up with a statement in opposition to that.
Anyway, your basic attitudes are based in large part, I don’t think you’d disagree, on that assertion: that the unhinged left is not important and has for some reason become a fixation of people like me. And my attitudes are of course based on the opposite.
It just seems obvious to me that your view of the unhinged left is the odd one. I see it and its adherents and secret disciples everywhere. I hear its lies and avoidant atttitudes coming out of mainstream politicians and editorial boards all around me.
Recently a friend said to me that the unhinged left is analagous to the far right-wingers, the white supremacists and what not. If so, it really makes me happy that so many mainstream politcians are catering to the Kos crowd, setting up their “diaries” there and what not.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:06 am
In fact, most commenters here seem to encapsulate proof that what you say about the unhinged left is not correct.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Maybe the Euston people are just sick of the fact that the Left has pro-totalitarian elements/islamist organizations (which should NOT be invloved in the left) have formed an alliance with the Left.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:36 am
To clarify: I agree that for the most part Democratic politicans don’t usually talk like members of the unhinged left. But I see no real emotion or energy in the base anywhere but on the unhinged left. That’s my main belief. And I see a few key bizarrenesses coming out of mainstream politicians increasingly regularly.
Example: I’m perfectly willing to consider the immediate withdrawal of our troops; I would love it to be true that it is now the wisest course.
But to call for it in the certain, high tones that Murtha does – channeling the attitudes of some people here – that’s unhinged. He has no idea whether it’s the best course. It’s a gamble.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:42 am
It just seems obvious to me that your view of the unhinged left is the odd one.
That may be the most thoroughly self-serving statement I’ve ever read.
PS,
I’m hardly unhinged, nor do I believe Reg, Michael Balter, Rosedog, Mavis Beacon and Virgil Johnson are. I made some cogent, on-target criticisms of the manifesto. I think it has some good ideas and in many other ways, it’s downright disingenuous and assumes facts not in evidence, failing to distinguish between opinion and fact.
I’ve found this hairshirt wearing of the pro-war left to be tedious. Nutty extremists exist on both sides.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:46 am
He has no idea whether it’s the best course. It’s a gamble.
You mean like invading Iraq based on hyped claims of WMD’s then completely dropping the WMD argument in favor of liberation or the biggest gamble of them all: shortchanging the troop levels resulting in a vicious insurgency that, despite Cheney’s claims nearly a year ago that it was in its death throes, shows no signs of abating.
Yeah. No gambling there . . .
April 17th, 2006 at 8:48 am
Virgil Johnson:
Your attitudes about the “real nature” of the West and the US especially are interesting. Definitely worth considering as we continue on our constant path of self-inspection and gradual halting improvement, which is the best reality offers. (You ever notice that? How reality works, I mean?)
And do you ever apply the same deep critical analysis toward, oh, the nations of the Middle East? Or are those people simply creations and results of our deep evil, with no moral standing or responsibilities of their own?
Your attitudes and analyses can mask a deep-seated cowardice, by the way. “We’ve met the enemy and he is us” can be so comforting.
The left is the political side that can produce the Wormtongue option. There are flaws on the right, moral traps, but that’s not one of them.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:49 am
Randy -
You second comment: I agree, and irrelevant.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:51 am
Randy -
Your first comment: Did you stop reading after that statmen tyou quote?
It’s a statement of my view. Backing it up is a long process, obviously; I offered a few thoughts on why I think that way afterwards. Maybe they didn’t appear on your screen. Try tapping your computer.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:53 am
Murtha represents the “unhinged left”? Holy Jesus, when did I arrive in BizarroWorld? Interesting to think how a comment like that would have resonated during, say, the Reagan years, when Democrats actually were liberal.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Rosedog– as usual, your comments hit home. Nice post.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:58 am
[...] The Euston Manifesto that Norm Geras posted about last week is beginning to draw some attention from the Left Blogosphere. TBogg mocks it. Duncan Black proclaims it wankery. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is the sort of thing that will get a lot more attention from the Right Blogosphere than from the Left. They really aren’t interested. Aziz is for it, of course. There’s the decent Left and the power-is-all kind. Marc Cooper is for it. [...]
April 17th, 2006 at 9:01 am
I wrote a much better manifesto, in five minutes, here: http://limitedinc.blogspot.com/2006/04/common-sense-in-foreign-policy.html. Then I went to a bar afterwards. I figure manifesto writing should be pre-drinks, and then the drinks.
Simply put, the non-progressive, non-left, common sense manifesto says: a democratic society calls for democratic foreign policy making. No tricks by the executive branch to lure us into war, no sending of thieves and thugs to foreign countries as proxies of a supposedly “democratic” intervention, strict timelines to be imposed on said intervention, true powersharing among multi-national forces if said forces occupy a country, transparency for the occupied country’s governance, and recognition of the difference between ‘universal’ rights (the violation of which supposedly conduces to intervention) and the interests of the occupier states such that it bars changing the infrastructure of the occupied country to serve the political, economic or security interests of the occupiers.
Pretty simple, right? Since every single point was violated in the invasion of Iraq, it would have pre-empted this war, and disappointed the Geras set cruelly. Meanwhile, the Euston group is revving up to support the next war panic: on to Iran. Except that I think they are going to be disappointed this time. That war is much too expensive to actually wage.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:03 am
I’m afraid I find this discussion of the “unhinged left” way too vague, because one person’s unhinged is another’s voice of reason and sanity. It would be more enlightening to talk about specifics and specific issues. The term also implies a heavy dose of political correctness, for example its okay to be left in this way but not in that way. For example, if I think that Israel is more to blame than the Palestinians, does that automatically make me unhinged? Or if I don’t want to question why we invaded Iraq, as the Euston Manifesto suggests I should avoid doing, am I unhinged? No, it just means that those are my political positions. A meaningless term, really.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Anyway, I’m not gonna get sucked in any more.
I probably shouldn’t have addressed the first comment specifically to reg; my little thought is more general than any kind of disagreement with him specifically.
The basic point is: the subtext of this Statement and the response is as I said: the nature and importance of the unhinged left. Many/most commenters here see the Statement as absurd and counterproductive because they don’t share the authors’ views on that.
I do think it’s kind of funny when members of the unhinged left insist that the unhinged left is totally irrelevant to anything.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:12 am
I think that there’s more to fear from the unhinged right: John McCain is giving the commencement address at Jerry Falwell’s “Univeristy.”
I don’t see Russ Feingold speaking at ANSWER meetings.
Randy -
You second comment: I agree, and irrelevant.
Sez you.
By the way, since someone wrote that Wikipedia is “neutral,” I know of at least one person who disagrees and makes a compelling argument as to why.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:12 am
I mean I want to question why we are in Iraq, of course. Marc, what happened to our preview box?
April 17th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Oh, except I’ll add a quick response to Michael Balter’s reasoned questions quick.
Questioning why we’re in Iraq does not make one a member of the unhinged left.
Believing Bush is impeachable does not automatically make you a member of the unhinged left.
Wondering if the Israelis might have had undue influence doesn’t automatically make you a member, as long as you recognize the other influences also at play, and the inherent contradiction in also insisting that the Bushies are under the way of the Saudis.
Wondering if the corporate connections manifested in and symbolized by Halliburton might have had undue influence doesn’t make you a member of the unhinged left UNLESS you refuse to at least consider the view that perhaps even an evil right-wing administration might consider that an awfully trivial reason to mangle its political prospects and throw the world into turmoil.
Let’s go Foxworthy:
If you believe there was no conceivable reason to consider deposing Hussein; you might be a member of the unhinged left.
If you can’t at least see the dilemma the 2002-03 Hussein situation posed to the country: you might be a member of the unhinged left.
If you believe the oil-for-food scandal has absolutely no relevance to the dilemma above: you might be a member of the unhinged left.
If you believe that Saddam Hussein had “absolutely nothing to do with al Qaeda†(to quote a recent Star-Trib editorial), or with international Islamic terror in general, you might be a member of the unhinged left.
If you believe that the ONLY legitimate perspective through which to view all of our foreign policy is by accepting the inherent evil of our nation from its inception: oh man, you are such a member of the unhinged left. If I handed you a hinge you would say: what’s this? Get this away from me.
Just a few specifics. Now I’m off to raise money for the oppressed.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:34 am
Paul,
I appreciate your comment regarding my post. My concern is not for our “halting improvement” but with fallacies that do not reflect the hard facts of history, and their lying at the base of many assumptions. Perfection of course, is unattainble – stopping the regurgitation of lies in public about our beginnings is attainable. Critique regarding foreign policy is much more attainable when we ground ourselves in reality regarding our beginnings and halting progress (terra firma – foreign, not the othe way around). I am not implying that the “august” company that wrote this is under these misconceptions, but it is improper to infer them.
As far as applying deep critical analysis of the Middle East, I have been reluctant to delve to deeply because foreign invasion and distubance – oh, let say for the last couple of hundred years! Also, I have found our texts somewhat prejudically colored – but I am gradually buying some more “objective” material.
Of course, our nation has not suffered any invasion or disturbance akin to the Middle East, which makes me cautious in regard to my sheltered observations. Personally, I have lived since childhood in very oppressed neighborhoods – if the condition of the Middle East is in any way similar to my limited experience, I would have a tendency to cut them some slack.
Once again, thanks for the points.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:39 am
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything with the name ‘manifesto’ which seems so bent on qualifying its every argument and sanding down its own rough edges. A more nuanced, even-toned and temperate manifesto has probably never been written. Made me wonder a bit why such a muted rallying cry needed to be uttered at all. I say this while agreeing with almost all of its points, but then my politics are decidedly un-vehement.
That said, I was disturbed that the authors felt the need to immediately offer caveats after declaring, several paragraphs in, a kind of lukewarm support for social-democratic policies. Can politics on a mass scale be built on sentiments this sober and self-effacing. Can such sentiments engender large-scale enthusiasm? It seems to say something about the lack of self-confidence on the left nowadays. At least this segment of the left seems able only to seek the synthesis of extremes. Even though I find most of the ideas unobjectionable, it’s kind of sad that there’s nothing more left to offer. In light of his support for this ‘manifesto’ I’m a little perplexed at Marc’s constant condemnation of the Democrats for not taking firmer stands.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:47 am
Virgil – and thank you. Don’t mean to slam you too hard; in a freewheeling mood this morning. A tendency for some to ascribe all moral repsonsibility to “our” side is one of my bugaboos.
A very general point: it wasn’t Europe’s fault that the Ottoman Empire just kind of fell apart when it did. And once it did, it was well-nigh inevitable that Europe would have a hand in figuring out what to with the pieces. In fact you could argue some role was necessary and even requested. And given that, can you even conceive of a reality where that would be done with absolutely no eye toward the various actors’ interests?
I agree that W is just about the worst president we could possible have asked for in articulating the history of all this. I just wish more of the left would squint a little and see how his attitudes and actions actuallt might sort of be a step in the right direction, if harnessed correctly.
Because: acquiescing in the French preferences toward Hussein really would have meant buying back into the old “deal with the genocidal strong man because at least it’s stable” strategy.
Did you ever see that wonderful Laurel and Hardy short where they and their wives are attempting to leave on an “automobile ride†– “We’re going now! Goodbye!†– and it keeps breaking down? Hilarious. That’s like me today.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:52 am
marc, first, want to say this is a great post on your part. the manifesto, if people read it through, will help each of us define better where we stand and in relation to each other.
and thats the beauty and downfall of such statements.
the statement appears born out of the split among the left over primarily the iraqi war, which hitchens and others have exposed and begun to represent. i have long been a big fan of hitchens’ writing, and still appreciate his voice even when i disagree with him on some things, which i do. but whether i did or didn’t disagree with hitchens on some things, the really ugly attacks on hitchens that ensued for his supposed “betrayal” of the left really exposed the hypocrisy and ugliness of many of our so-called “real†left. i bring up hitchens because he is the posterboy of the excommunication that has taken place against those on the left who came out in favor of the iraqi war. and the sniping that has ensued, while some of it hit a mark, for me left me really lost as i had long considered myself a leftist but the past few years was not sure i wanted to be in the same left as some as these people as it appears they had indeed become selective and hyprocritical and fascist, with their core values.
still, I am not one to support broad, global sweeping manifestos of this kind. And I think the signers of this document have fallen down much of the same, mistaken road as their leftist critics, they purport to know “the way†and those who are not with them are wrong and misguided. This is the downfall of such efforts. I believe too much in diversity and tolerance of differing opinions, and so get a large feeling of uneasiness with such a broad, sweeping statement of beliefs.
specifically, however, while I do agree to varying degrees with much of this manifesto, I mainly depart on the following:
the manifesto point #5 on development for freedom, while we can all support eradicating poverty and making a better quality of life for all through socially just development, etc, etc, this point is worded in such a way that seems to think if we just make global trade more “pc†then the development problem will be solved. Yet its version of pc only pays brief lip service to the issue of the environment. the planet earth is finite, our ecosystems have limits, and there is no arguing with the fact that we are battering those limits and already causing much of our environment to not just deteriorate but disappear because of our blind notion that more growth means more progress without understanding there is also a cost to uncontrolled growth. I am not against global trade, some trade is beneficial, but it is in the vast majority of tradeable goods a highly inefficient enterprise, which, if relied upon to solve all our development problems, will ultimately destroy the natural resource base upon which it depends. There needs to be a greater push for countries and communities to develop a stronger, local self-reliance, for one. Especially, because development through trade relies on lots of trade, in other words, lots of economic growth, which more often than not turns into lots of alarming pressure to our ecosystems. As the late environmental leader david brower would say, there will be no life, no sex, no anything, on a dead planet. We need therefore to devise a global economic system that really does protect our lifesupport system, not simultaneously says it does while battering it. I get the impression that this doc does not really understand well, and does not place much importance on, the environmental factor.
Manifesto point #10: while I can agree with a new internationalism in principle, I think this statement is worded in such a way that makes any war justified if “a threshold of humanity†has been crossed. While I of course think the world should act to help put a stop to crimes against humanity anywhere, it should try to do so as much as possible in a civil, peaceful way. War truly should be the last resort and avoided, avoided if we can. But this point is worded in such a way that it could be construed as condoning military action everytime some dictator or loony murders and tortures his people. But there are often many other ways to accomplish the same internationalistic objective. It would be good to see in this point, or somewhere in this doc, this idea that we should strive for the goal of no more war and at the least solving conflicts wherever humanly possible through non-violence. This does not mean I am a pacifist, I am only a pacifist up to a point. But, again, there are often more options available. One of my biggest criticisms of the war in Iraq is, for example, the bushies rush to war without giving the united nations more time to let its inspections run their course and build more global consensus on the issue.
One other thought, it is unfortunately no longer a big issue anymore for most on the left, because the cold war is over, but we still need to get rid of the nuclear threat to our future somehow – this is no where to be seen in this new progressive manifesto.
April 17th, 2006 at 10:49 am
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dd_guttenplan/2006/04/no_sects_pleaseyoure_british.html
April 17th, 2006 at 11:20 am
GM: “Perhaps the Israeli influence in the US Government is just a canard.â€
Not in my experience.
But, GM, the point is that this is something we should be able to discuss openly and it good faith without being branded anti-Semite. But Geras states plainly that, uh-uh, this one’s off the table. And anyone who doesn’t like it, is simply a bigot—no room for argument.
This appears to be his attitude throughout.
Paul… “If you believe that the ONLY legitimate perspective through which to view all of our foreign policy is by accepting the inherent evil of our nation from its inception: oh man, you are such a member of the unhinged left.â€
I’d certainly go with that one.
April 17th, 2006 at 11:33 am
rosedog -
You’re right — it should be open to discussion, though I rarely hear it done with any nuance or balance. In fact it surprises me how rarely it’s raised by someone who doesn’t simply seem reflexively hostile to Israel (I’m not including you in that category). This may account for some of the defensiveness it produces. I read a 20 page version of Mearsheimer and Walt’s piece before it became a cause celebre and was more than open to hearing its arguments. However, I was almost immediately turned off by what seemed like a fundamental antagonism towards Israel itself. It would be an overstatement to call it thinly veiled. This antagonism (in my eyes) undermined the points they had to make about US policy.
April 17th, 2006 at 11:52 am
“I see it and its adherents and secret disciples everywhere. ”
Dude,
They have drugs for that now.
April 17th, 2006 at 11:59 am
“In fact it surprises me how rarely it’s raised by someone who doesn’t simply seem reflexively hostile to Israel” and “I was almost immediately turned off by what seemed like a fundamental antagonism towards Israel itself”
I’m not trying to pick a fight with you, evets, but these phrases imply to me that it is okay to criticize Israel a little bit as long as it is not too much. This is also clearly the viewpoint of the manifesto, as both rosedog and I have pointed out. In my view, Israel should be criticized no more and no less than it deserves to be for its actions, just as any other nation.
April 17th, 2006 at 11:59 am
JCummings. Excellent link. Thanks.
Among the highlights, the observation that the Euston Manifesto is for “Historical Truth†but only when said truth serves one of its agendas. However it’s happy to be cheerfully ahistoric when “historic truth†isn’t….you know….convenient.
“Political honesty and straightforwardness are a primary obligation for us,†says the EM.
Um, actually, no. I hate to be harsh, but judging from a closer analysis of the document, I’d say the opposite is true.
April 17th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Rosedog: “But, GM, the point is that this is something we should be able to discuss openly and it good faith without being branded anti-Semite.”
I couldn’t agree more, but that still doesn’t mean that it is not a canard. I’m pretty down on some of the Israeli policies, I think that they too often accept that the Pali “government” (quotes because it doesn’t seem to want to or can govern) will deal honestly with the Israeli government. On the other hand, you must admit (I think but perhaps not) that the “original” complaints about the “Neo-Cons” were that they were Jesish folk that precipitated a “coup” of the administration solely for the benefit of Israel and noted the Jewishness without shame. That to me is highly anti-semetic. Too often, that charge is repeated knowing full well that it carries an anti-semitic bent with it, even when not explicitly stated. Ole reg is of the opinion (if his confused thoughts can be fairly described as such) that a General would not make an anti-semetic comment (see his comment above).
OTOH, I grew up in the military, I listened to lot’s of Generals, Col’s etc and there is an underlying racism and anti-semitism in many of these folk (but not all by a long shot). Zinni has gone overboard in my opinion in his attacks on Neo-Cons when it wasn’t necessary in order to outline and make his charges. Is he an anti-semite? I have no idea, but I know the use of an anti-semetic remark when I hear it.
Once as a youth, I stated to a Jewish friend “Don’t try to jew me down.” He called me on it and he was right to do so. I didn’t make the comment to be anti-semetic, I only repeated some of what I’d heard as a younger person, not being smart enough to recognize it for what it was. Fortunately, he was a bigger man than I was and forgave me and we were friends for many years (he has since passed away at too early an age).
It truly ought to be on the table, but what also ought to be on the table is the context in which the charge against Neo-Cons is made.
April 17th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Michael Balter -
That’s not at all what I’m saying. Too often those who who decry Israel’s effect on American policy are folks like Pat Buchanan, or Walt and Mearsheimer. Hostility to Israel seems to underlie their argument. The argument would have more force if it were made by folks without that fundamental hostility. It would also tend to be less heavy-handed.
April 17th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Evets, I agree and that is regardless of any thing that Mearsheimer and Walt’s tried to say. Their argument was overshadowed by their arguments if you will.
April 17th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
I’m Jewish, and I don’t think it is anti-semitic to say that a very high percentage of the leading neocons are Jewish, that they were staunch defenders of Israel, and that they saw US and Israeli interests as inextricably linked. From there, how much you want to say that their outlook hurt US interests is a judgement call, a matter of opinion.
April 17th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
“The argument would have more force if it were made by folks without that fundamental hostility. It would also tend to be less heavy-handed.”
And what if the hostility has a basis in the harm that Israeli actions have caused? Sorry, evets, but your response confirms that you said what I said you said.
April 17th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
My guess is that after reading the comments here, Marc is even less likely, in the future, to be a “joiner”. Ironic because many of us here have chided him for not taking sides and he, us, for doing just that.
This is a manifesto of platitudes and partial truths and is not worthy of your usual good sense. Better luck (or better judgment) next time, Marc.
April 17th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Evets, I agree. There are assuredly people at the left fringe who are reflexively antagonistic to Israel, and for a percentage of those people, I believe the antagonism does indeed veil anti-Semitism. The latter group deserves to be aggressive sidelined along with bigots of any stripe.
But, to those of us who have long wanted a reasoned discussion on these issues, the way such discussions have been systematically destroyed over the past quarter century whenever they approach the mainstream, is both chilling and heartbreaking. I tell you this both from long term observation and from direct personal experience.
And on the subject of Walt and Mearsheimer, whether one agrees with them or not, the paper could and should have finally opened the door to a much needed dialogue on the subject. Instead, it triggered, not a reasoned discussion, but instead a relentless personal and professional smear—nevermind the fact that both men had stellar and unblemished reputations as sober-minded scholars in the past. That I found very troubling.
Okay, no more blogging. I can feel editors glaring psychically my direction. (Paranoid? I don’t THINK so.)
Marc, at the very least, this post of yours has provided food for thought and discussion.
April 17th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
By fundamental hostility I mean hostility that is not, in fact, based on the harm Israeli actions have caused. That’s why it’s fundamental; it colors the way Israel’s actions are perceived. Most who criticize Israel are not fundamentally hostile; their criticisms derive from a reasonably even-handed evaluation of Israel’s actions. Such people are also capable of acknoweldging deficiencies on the Palestinian/Arab side. I don’t put Pat Buchanan in that category. Walt and Mearsheimer likewise cut Israel no slack and are remarkably reluctant to criticize the Palestinians or Arabs. There are plenty of supporters of Israel with equally essentialist biases.
April 17th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Forgive the time-lag on my posts. By the time I write ‘em, others have posted.
April 17th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
OT—- One more thing…. I’m totally thrilled to note that the New Orleans Times-Picayune just won two Pulitzers (for Breaking News and Public Service)—as many of us hoped and believed they would. (We hoped for one, but 2 is way cooler!)
(The Rocky Mountain News won two too, which is kinda cool.)
http://www.pulitzer.org/
Okay, now I’m REALLY outa here.
April 17th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
“By fundamental hostility I mean hostility that is not, in fact, based on the harm Israeli actions have caused. That’s why it’s fundamental; it colors the way Israel’s actions are perceived.”
Evets, not to belabor this, but: I understand and appreciate the distinction you are trying to make, and you now state it very concisely. My problem is that fundamental hostility is in the eye of the beholder, and thus can always be ascribed to critics of Israel by Israel’s apologists. I have to agree with rosedog’s comments about Walt and Mearsheimer in this context.
To take it further, what about the fundamental hostility of so many Palestinians towards Israel? How much is this explained by anti-semitism and how much is it a fair reaction to how they have been treated? I think there is a wealth of documentation that the Zionists always intended to take over as much of Palestine as they could (Ben Gurion made no bones about this), and I can tell you that as a Jew growing up in LA all my relatives were explicit on this point. Of course, this is how I see things and I don’t expect everyone to agree, but rosedog’s point is crucial: We must be able to discuss it without branding anyone who steps over a certain imaginary line as being “fundamentally hostile,” otherwise there can be no debate.
April 17th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
To chime in on point 7′s two-state solution, it seems to me that talking only about it as a goal without unequivocally pointing out all the things that prevent the goal from happening is the height of cynicism. Anti-semitism and Arab violence against Jews are clearly not the only obstacles to peace. To suggest this is to shill for those who want the status quo or the continued expansion of the Occupied Territories.
April 17th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Just as a side point, it takes two to tango – it is not merely an Israelis interest that moves the world of the neocon. There might have been a contributing factor, but I think mutual interest rules the day. So, sorry, there is no giant Jewish conspiracy.
On the point of US intervention, I remember having the displeasure of listening to a two and a half hour summary of how we, that is, the US military was going to be the new world savior in trouble spots – including humanitary intervention. Perhaps this declaration is the lefts contribution to the neocon cause….
April 17th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
“Such people are also capable of acknoweldging deficiencies on the Palestinian/Arab side. I don’t put Pat Buchanan in that category.”
So what’s the point then of dwelling on pat Buchanen? most of the people i know who are crtical of israeli state policy and in support of palestinian national rights are not right wing isolationalist, but decent folks committed to universal human rights.. I think part of what you’re getting at, evets, is the question of what lens you use to view the conflict of Israel/palestine. Is it, for example, just to see a symattry in the conflict. Are we to castigate both Israeli state action and Palestinians equally as you suggest. Post modernist thinkers, feminists, liberation theologians and other progressive scholars have long since debunked the myth of objectivity and insisted on ‘disclosure’ as a precondition to dialogue; tell us about your class and gender interest? What are the lenses with which you view the world? A denial of lenses is really tantamount to the acceptance of a dominant status quo. It’s a bit like the word ‘mankind.’ ‘Oh,’ the supposedly ideologyless argue, ‘why do you want to politicize words and make a fuss about language? When we say ‘mankind’ we really include women!’ Uninterrogated, language often functions as an instrument of subjugation. In this myth of language as neutral, the use of the alternative and more inclusive ‘humankind’ is dismissed as ‘political’ and political correctness, as a fad of nostalgic hippies who have not smelt the coffee heralding the end of the Sixties, rather than viewed part of a quest for greater gender justice – however flawed and inadequate.
When I walk through the districts where sex is on sale; I can choose to see it through they eyes of the ‘sex tourist’ or through the eyes of the sex worker sold into the trade or driven by their poverty and exploitation into it. I choose to look at Palestine/Israel though the eyes of the marginalized and the exploited and I choose to privilege this perspective over other perspectives.
So is it “sex tourism” or “sexual exploitation?” Or worse, is it a refusal to name it and a preference to speak about the seemingly neutral “just having some fun” or “relaxation?” It depends on where you are located in the power structure.
I am astonished at how ordinarily decent people whose “hearts are in the right place” equivocate when it comes to Israel and the dispossession and suffering of the Palestinians. And now I wonder about the nature of “decency.” Does “objectivity,” “moderation,” and “both sides” not have contexts? Is “moderation” in matters of manifest injustice really a virtue? Do both parties deserve an “equal hearing” in a situation of domestic violence where a woman gets beaten up by a male who was abused by his father some time ago because “he, too, is a victim?” Why must someone else suffer because the husband was abused by some other male yesterday?
When we reduce the problem to “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” – or worse, the “Israeli-Arab conflict,” or “the Middle East situation;” what does it really say about us, our own power interest and our refusal to have our comfort zones disturbed? To describe violence against women as just that risks alienating the male partner. If that abusive male husband is also our business partner, or possibly one”s boss, or one”s primary funder, then things can get really sticky. So we walk away saying, “I do not want to get into the middle of all of this” or we delude ourselves with seemingly conciliatory mutterings without ever addressing the question of abuse.
We are in the middle of it because we do business with the abusive husband (or we profit from his abuse of his wife) and we sustain his delusions that he is OK, a part of the civilized crowd. We seek refuge in “both sides have a story to tell” as a way of dodging our own complicity. Rather than us merely hallowing the abuser with the mantel of respectability, our silence draws us into a web of complicity. (As indeed, can be the effect of an uncritical solidarity with the victims of oppression.) However small a minority they may have been, only those who refused to turn a blind eye to the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis were civilized; only those who refused to be silent were civilized; all others had Jewish blood on their hands. Talking about the “Jewish-German conflict,” or the “Black-White situation,” or “marital problems” in the face of manifest injustice and domestic abuse is no great virtue; it is the path of, initially, acquiescence and, ultimately, complicity.
April 17th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
‘But Geras states plainly that, uh-uh, this one’s off the table. And anyone who doesn’t like it, is simply a bigot—no room for argument.’
I’m liking the term ‘deranged left’. To continue a list started by someone else:
if your political biases prevent you from reading honestly a one page piece of text, you may be a member.
April 17th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
‘Post modernist thinkers, feminists, liberation theologians and other progressive scholars have long since debunked the myth of objectivity’
I can sympathise with those people who started life with limitations in their ability to judge and discern, but the plight of those who deliberately chose to intellectually mutilate themselves is a thousand times more tragic.
Sorry, post-Bush, no more compromise with that crap. You can’t fight anything if the first thing you do is pluck your own eyes out.
April 17th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Shouldn’t a manifesto be inspiring?
I think I get the drift of the alleged manifesto, and actually mostly agree, but so what? It’s what Brian said: an ISO-9000 certification for ideology (of any sort) will only thrill ideologues and hair-splitters.
April 17th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Ahmed had important things to say, I hope people actually take what he wrote in, not just look at it as “unhinged.” On another note, though unique to the Anglo-American psyche, most of what strikes many decent-leftists, conservatives, neocons and liberal hawks as “fringe” or “unhinged” is mainstream, even middle of the road everywhere else in the world.
There is absolutely – literally – you have to resort to mysticism to prove otherwise (and no one in Israel, particularly in the military itself disagrees with me here) NO symmetry between Israel and Palestine. Some Palestinians resort to horrifying attacks, like wha
April 17th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
(hit send by accident) like what took today – yet this is by no means representative of Palestinian society as a whole. Israel has for over half a century dominated their lives and occupied their land. Its surprising that there has been such restraint on the Palestinian side, given the circumstances. Do I defend violent means opposing the occupation? Its not up to me, but I’ll be the first to point out that suicide bombings play into Israel’s hands, so are tactically as well as morally horrible. To do it as well during Passover is horrible, just as it is when Palestinain holy days are violated far more often by Israel.
I agree that some people, perhaps Buchanan, though I don’t really think so – have pre-existing animus towards Jews and try to piggyback that onto ostensibly ProPalestinian sentiment (something the Palestinian solidarity movement does not need, as acknowledged by every Palestinian I’ve ever known – who are the first to acknowledge Jewish historical suffering) – but this is no reason to label all Anti-Zionism as Anti-Semitism, especially considering
A) the open embrace of Zionism by AntiSemites ike Balfour, the Xtian right and some Nazis, as well as the open embrace of Anti-Semites by Zionists, including shameful Zionist behaviour during the Shoah.
B) the far more glaring Anti-Semitism expressed by the The-Jews-Stole-Christianity movement as exists today in America.
April 17th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
“When I walk through the districts where sex is on sale; I can choose to see it through they eyes of the ’sex tourist’ or through the eyes of the sex worker sold into the trade or driven by their poverty and exploitation into it.
I choose to look at Palestine/Israel though the eyes of the marginalized and the exploited and I choose to privilege this perspective over other perspectives.”
Exploitation, corruption and crimes against humanity are in the eye of the beholder; judged subjectively, just like BEAUTY!
” Opposing anti-Americanism.
We reject without qualification the anti-Americanism now infecting so much left-liberal (and some conservative) thinking. This is not a case of seeing the US as a model society. We are aware of its problems and failings. But these are shared in some degree with all of the developed world. The United States of America is a great country and nation. It is the home of a strong democracy with a noble tradition behind it and lasting constitutional and social achievements to its name. Its peoples have produced a vibrant culture that is the pleasure, the source-book and the envy of millions. That US foreign policy has often opposed progressive movements and governments and supported regressive and authoritarian ones does not justify generalized prejudice against either the country or its people.”
Just what we all need, a “manifesto” instructing the Left how to be polictically
correct, in their admonishment of the U.S. government and its corrupt policies– so it’s acceptable to be critical, but please do not be too assertive nor antognistic. Try to be a nice polite leftist–always be charming.
So is it “sex tourism†or “sexual exploitation?†Or worse, is it a refusal to name it and a preference to speak about the seemingly neutral “just having some fun†or “relaxation?†It depends on where you are located in the power structure.”
Exploitation, corruption and crimes against humanity are all in the eyes of the beholder,
April 17th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Paul – the unhinged left may seem important to you because you’ve been close to it so recently. If you think Markos Moulitsas is “unhinged left” I think you, frankly, are the one who’s unhinged.
Roper – you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Your charge against Zinni is crap. You owe your readers an apology. All of the double-dancing in the world won’t alter the facts. Who cares about what you said to a friend years ago? You made a slanderous charge against Zinni because you “think” it’s true. Garbage. Pure and simple. Lawrence Wilkerson, who made a similiar charge of a “cabal” in Cheney’s office worked directly under Powell. Is he an anti-semite ? Is Cheney Jewish ? Was Larry Franklin, the neo-con guy convicted of spying – i.e. handing secret documents over to AIPAC Jewish ? Get real. You’re unhinged and in the gutter on this one.
April 17th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
“Ole reg is of the opinion (if his confused thoughts can be fairly described as such)”
My understanding was that the ad homina were to be checked at the door. How about cutting the childish crap?
April 17th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
“Paul – the unhinged left may seem important to you because you’ve been close to it so recently.”
I should have made clear that’s my speculation. If not, fine. But you sound like somebody who was ingesting a lot of Chomsky until recently – like Michael Totten – and suddenly figured out that maybe the world was more complex. (Not a lot more, in Totten’s case, of course.) Anybody who thinks Noam Chomsky is a big player in American politics might tell me exactly when the last time he was invited as a commentator on an major broadcast newstalk/analysis gabfest. I can’t remember him ever even being invited to come onto the Newshour. That he sells books on a lot of campuses isn’t impressive IMHO. The Vice President of the United States, on the other hand, has appeared on the Rush Limbaugh show – and I can’t imagine that any sane person would consider Chomsky to be a more toxic or unhinged figure than Limbaugh. Cheney kisses Limbaugh’s ass and, in effect, endorses him as a legitimate source of news and comment. Chomsky isn’t even considered reliable as a polemicist by a fair number of the writers who contribute regularly to The Nation (Cooper, of course, and Alterman come first to mind – and I doubt that either Schell or Grieder – or KVH – would consider themselves in Chomsky’s “orbit”. Comparing any politically significant segment of the left as “unhinged” at the same level as the “unhinged” wingnut but politically significant right is a fool’s errand. Leave it to people like Woody and Roper. Don’t embarrass yourself.
April 17th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
My front door mat–does not say WELCOME, it say ad hominem
April 17th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
My front door mat–does not say WELCOME, it says ad hominem
April 17th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
“Ole reg is of the opinion (if his confused thoughts can be fairly described as such)â€
Thanks Rich, but consider the source. I’ll take my “confused thoughts” over the fellow’s slanderous ranting any day. I’d like, point by point, to hear what’s “confused” in my opinion of this garbage charge against Zinni, incidentally.
April 17th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism
No. 30 1 March 2005 / 20 Adar Rishon 5765
Jews against Israel1
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Noam Chomsky
Several Israeli academics were among the signatories of anti-Israeli petitions.15 Tanya Reinhart of Tel Aviv University was particularly active. In a letter to another left-wing professor, Baruch Kimmerling of Hebrew University, who opposed the boycott, she wrote that what Israel is doing exceeds the crimes of South Africa’s white regime.16
Reinhart, a linguist, is a pupil of Noam Chomsky, a well-known professor of linguistics at MIT in Boston. Chomsky’s pronouncements make him a Jewish paradigm of Cotler’s definition of cultural anti-Semitism. He has systematically attributed to Israel a mix of evil qualities over the decades. In his student days, Chomsky belonged to a group called Avuka (Hebrew for “torch”) which opposed the establishment of a Jewish state.17
Alan Dershowitz considers Chomsky “the intellectual godfather” of the anti-Israel campaign, mentioning that Chomsky seeks the abolition of the state of Israel.18 This makes Chomsky an anti-Semite according to the definitions of both Cotler and the Berlin Anti-Semitism Center, as he expresses views that define Israel as a state fundamentally distinct from all others in a negative sense.
Chomsky also wrote an introduction to a book by the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson.19 Yet his reputation has survived internationally among many.20 Chomsky’s systematic role in promoting hatred of Israel has impacted many others. When analyzing academic discrimination of Israel, one finds direct or indirect indications of his influence in many places. One is that among those active in the academic boycott of Israel, linguists seem disproportionately represented. This concerns both Jews and non-Jews. Some examples are the aforementioned Tanya Reinhart as well as Francesco Gatti21 and Rodolfo Delmonteboth of CÃ Foscari University in Venice. A disproportionate number of linguists at Harvard and MIT have signed anti-Israel petitions.23 One organizer of a campus divestment campaign was Uri Strauss, a citizen of Canada and Israel and a graduate linguistics student at the University of Massachusetts.24
No one can criticize Israel–if you do it’s like consuming the “sacred cow.” I personally believe that Israel, carries out policies which are approved by the U.S. They’re the fifth largest military power; thanks to us.
April 17th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Eleanore: “Just what we all need, a “manifesto†instructing the Left how to be polictically correct, in their admonishment of the U.S. government and its corrupt policies– so it’s acceptable to be critical, but please do not be too assertive nor antognistic. Try to be a nice polite leftist–always be charming. ”
Perfectly said, And for God’s sake, we don’t want liberals to start turning over the furniture. Particularly the women. So unseemly!
Reg: “If you think Markos Moulitsas is “unhinged left†I think you, frankly, are the one who’s unhinged.”
I was avoiding saying this, but….uh….yeah. Exactly. Or, if you’d prefer, Paul, you’re badly mistaken in that regard.
That’s why this EM feels so annoying. It conflates the unhinged left (I’m coming to rather like that term. It’s a nice bookend to “wingnut.â€) with the masses of ordinary progressives out there working hard to build a sane, responsible and responsive base, apart from the suicidal, control-freak manipulations of the DLC.
PS: Good post, Ahmed.
April 17th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Aside from Randy, Virgil and Balter’s objections (which I agree with), and even though I generally agree with some of the broadstrokes, there’s something about the tone of this thing as a whole that really creeps me out. Geras and company are all for the free flow of ideas—unless, of course, your ideas don’t happen to conform entirely with theirs, in which case they resort to name calling or they try to throw you off the playground—-or both.
Amen.
April 17th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
“Comparing any politically significant segment of the left as “unhinged†at the same level as the “unhinged†wingnut but politically significant right is a fool’s errand. Leave it to people like Woody and Roper. Don’t embarrass yourself. ”
Or to put it another way, on the left the unhinged element is at the fringe. On the right, it’s presently calling the shots.
April 17th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
Amen…
April 17th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
If you believe the oil-for-food scandal has absolutely no relevance to the dilemma above: you might be a member of the unhinged left.
Looks like your side of the aisle, Paul, is hip deep in this:
Heal thyselves!
April 17th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
I think I’ll agree with the concept of the sinister nature of the “unhinged left” – i.e. those “disconnected”, as “unhinged” implies, from careful and considered analysis – if certain others will at least entertain the thought that the “hinged right” – which some have termed the “neo-con cabal” – suffers seriously from precisely that same problem. (We’re not talking about Incoherent George here, but some of the “smart” people who can write books, edit magazines and manage Think Tanks.) That’s a judgement I make based soley on the evidence of performance as their Worldview took wings in recent years.
As for the Right-wing talkradio and CoulterClown crowd – they are just a bunch of sorry opportunists who couldn’t make it in show business and had to settle for the Hatemongering Minstrel Circuit.
April 17th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
GMR – (on U.S. handouts and military aid to various and sundry Middle Eastern regimes) “The Arabs get more also, and it used to be because we didn’t want the Soviets to have too much influence in the Middle East. Now it seems a habit.”
GMR – have you ever heard of…what’s that stuff called ? Oh yeah…Oil!
April 17th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
“If you believe that the ONLY legitimate perspective through which to view all of our foreign policy is by accepting the inherent evil of our nation from its inception: oh man, you are such a member of the unhinged left.â€
I’ve certainly never believed that, nor do I know anyone who does, nor have I ever known anyone who does.
April 17th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Well it certainly sounds like to hear some tell it, but I wouldn’t consider them a critical mass of the progressive left so Randy Paul is correct.
“On the right, it’s presently calling the shots.”
Boy Howdy.
April 17th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
I thought the evil of our nation didn’t start at it’s inception but when the gays, pro-abortionists and people who hate Christmas took over. Am I missing something ?
April 17th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
More evil…
http://tinyurl.com/zljkk
April 17th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
$70 a barrel for oil today. Boy that land grab really worked out well!
April 17th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Yes you are. They say it started when we brought diseases from the East. Of course no one knew what a germ was but no mind. It’s the deed that counts.
April 17th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Randy,
Isn’t Australia part of the coalition of the willing?
As of July 1, 2005, there were 26 non-U.S. military forces participating in the coalition and contributing to the ongoing stability operations throughout Iraq. These countries were: Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, United Kingdom, and Ukraine.
COALITION OF THE WILLING OR COALITION OF THE COERCED?File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
http://www.ips-dc.org/COERCED.pdf – Similar pages
April 17th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
Reg…re, your last “evil†post, go to: http://www.dixiechicks.com/
For the full effect, wait for the music, and read the lyrics as you listen.
(Meanwhile, insert visual of rosedog head-bobbing in front of laptop while waving arms and yelling, “You go, grrrllllllsss!!!” …all done in a decidedly undignified fashion,)
April 17th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
“Undignified” would be calling these women “fat fucking slags”.
Of course no one with a grain of class would ever do something like that.
April 17th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
I thought this was an interesting excerpt from the “Coalition of the Coerced”:
Mexico
The United States, the destination of more than 80 percent of Mexico’s exports, wields
tremendous influence over its southern neighbor. To frighten President Vicente Fox into
supporting their position, Administration officials have warned that a failure to do so would likely
spark an anti-Mexico backlash in the U.S. Congress. According to the Washington Post, U.S.
Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza warned that U.S. legislators might block any legislation
related to Mexico as revenge for a “no†vote in the Security Council.8
At the moment, Fox is in a particularly vulnerable position, as he is relying on the Bush
Administration to continue to allow Mexico to delay the lifting of tariffs on sensitive farm
products. In January, tens of thousands of Mexican peasants threatened to close key border
points if tariffs were reduced on chicken and a number of other products, as required under the
North American Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. government agreed to the delay, but could
change its position at any time if Mexico doesn’t back a war in Iraq. President Fox has also
worked to develop strong relations with the United States in order to curry support for
immigration policy reform that would include amnesty for undocumented Mexican workers in the
United States. Granted, the plan did not garner much support north of the border even before the
Iraq debate, but a Mexican vote against the United States could deal the final deathblow.
Typical of public opinion around the world, the percentage of the Mexican population opposed to
military action stands at 80 percent.9 That public pressure has significantly strengthened Fox’s
willingness to remain firmly in the “Inspections Not War†camp despite his country’s intense
vulnerability to U.S. economic pressure.
B. Those with Economic Interests
TURKEY: With some 95 percent of the country opposed to war, the Turkish government has
played hardball with U.S. officials determined to use the country’s bases in the assault on Iraq.27
As of February 24, the U.S. government had reportedly offered Turkey a package of $5 billion in
grants and $10 billion in loans to soften the arrangement. Although the deal must be approved by
the Turkish parliament, it is likely to pass, as the ruling party holds a significant majority.
COSTA RICA: After Costa Rica’s UN ambassador gave a statement in favor of continued
inspections, the country’s foreign minister ordered him to resign, stating that he had not received
authorization for the speech and that his remarks conflicted with Costa Rica’s official position.
Within a day, the foreign minister abruptly reversed his position and reinstated the ambassador
after receiving what he described as an appropriate apology and the assurance that future
statements would be authorized. The Costa Rican government is no doubt jittery about straining
relations with the United States, since it is in the middle of negotiating a free trade agreement
between Central America and the United States. Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco is one of
the most fervent supporters of the negotiations, which began in January 2003.
PHILIPPINES: The Philippines is dependent on the U.S. government for both economic and
military assistance. The country received $71 million in USAID money in 2002. Perhaps even
more significant for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is the U.S. assistance in fighting Abu
Sayyaf, an armed Muslim criminal gang operating in the southern part of the country that
Washington claims has had relations with al Qaeda. On February 21, 2003, the U.S. government
announced that it would boost its support by sending another 1,700 U.S. troops in to help with
direct combat.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
Randy,
Isn’t Australia part of the coalition of the willing?
Eleanore,
Exactly my point. The right has been strangely silent about Oil-for-Food since they’ve found one of their own so deep in it.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Here is one of the reasons why Americans have a bit of a problem discussing Middle Eastern issues:
http://www.jsalloum.org/planet9a.mov
Now, I wonder why we have plethora of this in our entertainment industry? If this is common major media fare, I say something is terribly wrong.
Or do you think this bombardment just fell from heaven – or is it used merely for drama purposes? Yeah right. Our country has a BIG problem of villifying who it intends to exploit, period. To be frank, I am getting really tired of polite conversation which ignores this type of garbage we are treated to daily – how about you?
You want a dialogue, or is this to confrontational for you? Let me know, because I am tired of the banal left posturing. Is this clear enough?
April 17th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Marc, the problem with this document (among a few others) is that it does not specify whether or not the U.S. should continue to act preemptively and unilaterally in violation of the UN Charter (It does mention ” a new internationalism,” but it is rather vague…) I can only surmise that since specific language regarding the United Nations and its role in intervention is excluded, then the answer, at least tacitly, is “yes.” Do you believe in that?
April 17th, 2006 at 10:25 pm
I myself was in favor of the Iraqi invasion, with the understanding that (1) the administration would have worked with the Security Council to rid Iraq of both WMD’s and Saddam Hussein, and (2) if the administration had secured a declaration of war from Congress (pursuant to the War Powers Act, and the constitution).
Unfortunately, the document that you signed says nothing to the effect of either of these things.
April 17th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
“I can’t remember [Chomsky] ever even being invited to come onto the Newshour.”
Actually I saw him on the Newshour some years ago as he debated James Woolsey. But your point is well taken.
I read a study a few years ago (Maybe it was FAIR) that analyzed the number of appearances that Chomsky made on American television compared to other political figures. It was quite interesting: For example, at the same time that his book “9-11″ was a bestseller in the U.S. and outselling titles by other figures, his appearances on American television compared to others was nill (Horowitz was being outsold by Chomsky, and the ratio for these two was something like 78-2).
Chomsky’s books, by the way, outsell those of his counterparts on the far right (and the entertainment based people like Coulter) overseas, particularly in Europe. But while he is a frequent guest on BBC and other European media outlets, he cannot even buy time on CNN International.
And for the record, he did not know that he was writing an introduction for a holocaust denier. At the time that he wrote it, he thought that he was writing a defense of free speech. It doesn’t read at all like a book introduction, and I suspect under U.S. law the publisher could have gotten sued for running with it.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:01 am
I found most of the thousands of words spent in the comments above to be — sorry to say– useless. I liked Brian’s critique a lot, however.
Days like this push me towards shutting down comments altogether. I figure my friends can communicate with me thru email and the others… who cares?
But I am NOT going to do that.
I am going to warn Eleanore that she either learn to post links and avoid 500 word long comments or else.
Jcummings: I’m a little weary of your stupendously stupid mind-reading –claiming that I am somehow secretly for the war. Knock off your leftier-than-thou BS and fight out your arguments like a man — instead of like a wimpering knucklehead.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:53 am
Resistor says,
‘I think you’ve been conned. The forces behind this ‘manifesto’ are 100% pro-war and are united in their hatred of all those who opposed the invasion.’
This is a lie. A good number of the first signers and authors and creators of the Manifesto were anti-war. I am one of them. Please be more careful and check your facts.
April 18th, 2006 at 3:04 am
brian jones: *…the really ugly attacks on hitchens that ensued for his supposed “betrayal†of the left really exposed the hypocrisy and ugliness of many of our so-called “real†left. i bring up hitchens because he is the posterboy of the excommunication that has taken place…*
Brian – I think that’s more than a bit of an unfair characterization of Hitchens’ place in the discussion of the war and “the left”. Personally, I don’t care that much about the “left” that Hitchens represents because – truth be told – he was in the orbit of people like Cockburn and Chomsky who I happen not to pay much attention to or consider particularly important and still burns a candle for Trotsky. But Hitchens was specifically and apparently rather passionately asked to stay on as the “contrarian” columnist at The Nation, the most “left-wing” magazine that I happen to read and, arguably, the most “left-wing” magazine that is of any political importance, as politics is normally defined (“art & science of governing” as opposed to the “art & science” of picking lint from one’s own or other’s navels, which is the character of most “leftism”). Hitchens has also made it standard practice to accuse various and sundry opponents of the war as having succumbed to the wiles of “islamofascism” and routinely uses phrases like “fucking fat slags” to characterize war opponents who are much, much closer to the American grain – which isn’t a condition I disdain but, in fact, cherish in all of it’s complexity – than Comrade Hitchens could ever dream of being. Of course, that’s not his dream. I’m not sure what it is – something to do with the Kurds and his “internationalist” credentials, perhaps – but the fact that he was buddies with Cockburn and now they hate each other is of zero interest to me – at either stage of their symbiosis. I happen to find Hitchens a terrific writer on literature – when I’m in the mood for indulging myself in that kind of stuff – and I was following him rather enthusiastically for a couple of months after 9/11 until he started to clearly veer off the deep end, signing on to the “Dubious From Day One” Iraq Crusade – but I find the man increasingly incoherent when he writes on the war as reality takes it toll on what was once speculative and arguable, if profoundly unconvincing. And I find him near-toxic when he writes about his old environs and old friends and how much he detests them at this juncture – particularly when he turns around and ascribes “idealism” to a Paul Wolfowitz or pursues the “WMD evidence” of Doug Feith and The Cabal as Holy Grail to justify what has proven to be his terrible judgement in the view of most of us (“us” not being “the left” but people across the political spectrum who are following the course of the war and looking back at how we got to this sorry juncture.) Personally, I’m with “those fucking fat slags”, The Dixie Chicks on the war, on Bush (and on a host of less divisive issues, for that matter, that may seem mundane to anyone who’s ever used “comrade” as a preferred form of address ) and a man who sides with those Yahoos and crypto-fascists whose response to their anti-war stance was to, in fact, excommunicate them wholesale for their expression deserves to be considered a boor and an ass, at best. Hitchens has chosen his fight and at times he wages it like certain of the worst of his new comrades and certain of the worst of his old ones. He’s the last guy in the world who deserves “kid gloves” treatment. Even if some of the folks who spit in his direction are as creepy as he his – like his ex-soulmate Cockburn.
April 18th, 2006 at 3:28 am
I should have added a sentence after that “Nation” remark that, in response to his editors, Hitchens decided to “excommunicate” himself. And this was long after Hitchens had soiled himself in the view of conventional liberals by engaging in an active alliance with toxic waste like Ann Coulter and Lucianne Goldberg during the “Get Clinton” era. (I’ve always thought that a cheap pun of a book title which calls Bill Clinton’s family “The Worst” was something of a clue to Hitchens’ seriousness and the “comfort zone” of his own often rabid rhetoric.) I should also have noted that an apparently drunken Hitchens recently called Richard Armitage “Colin Powell’s bitch” on Hardball, no less. Just blurted it out when Armitage’s name was mentioned by Mathews. Bizarre. This is the Hitchens I’m aware of…I don’t read “Counterpunch” or concern myself with the polemics of Tariq Ali nor am I privy to what went on during parties at Edward Said’s place – or at lunch with Sid Blumenthal.
April 18th, 2006 at 4:26 am
Sometimes I think that parts of the left are more interested in ideological purity or moral posturing than in actually helping real people who are poor and oppressed
April 18th, 2006 at 6:58 am
To Reg – Chomsky isn’t invited to gabfests because he usually refuses invites. He is literally the most read American foreign policy analyst in the world. He has a following, I’m told, in the military and State Department.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:13 am
To Cooper – I do “fight out my arguments like a (hu)man”
I believe that you ostensibly sit on the fence in regards to the war, but have been – and the long record shows this – more critical of the antiwar movement than the war. I believe you are very critical of the direction Bush is taking America, as evidenced by your posting stuff about the generals and Andrew Bacevich.
You are at the same time of the belief that the “left” can only have influence if it “participates in the real arguments,” thus you sign the Euston Manifesto, get on the board of the more odious Democratiya, etc. This doesn’t entail outright support of war, but it doesn’t entail opposition either. Certainly allowing yourself to be used by the Euston crowd as the guy that they can say “look an antiwar leftist signed our manifesto” as was roughly stated on some liberal hawk blog yesterday, or worse yet, to have the whole manifesto used by the pro-concentration camp Michelle Malkin….shows that you aren’t firmly in solidarity with those opposing the war.
Inre the antiwar movement… As far as I know, you have never written anything about Iraqi Vets against the War or the military families that are becoming the heart of the movement. If you write about Cindy Sheehan, it is to distance yourself from her.
So how is it that you oppose the war?
April 18th, 2006 at 7:23 am
Jane Ashworth doesn’t say how many a good number is…
…as for her opposition to the war – I’d like to see some evidence.
Ashworth is a Trotskyist turned neo-con who suports the military occupation of Iraq – hardly anti-war.
She is now repeating the Blair line that those who opposes the wat should ‘move on’ and support the occupation. I think we knw whose side she is on.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:23 am
Susan has it nailed. It applies to a broader swath in my opinion, but there it is. The left is long on talk and short on real action. Note: Marching and chanting in a free nation that respects your right to do so isn’t action; its posturing. Try going to one of the ‘stans and marching and chanting. Now THATS action as you will be speaking truth to REAL power that actually oppresses, as opposed to one that guarantees your right to voice a contrary opinion. I have 23 years in the military and I’ve served in Iraq, helping to free a nation from a maniac and also helping them secure a new country with a chance to free themseves from the type of governments usually inflicted on ME countries. How do I know what I did was worthwhile? Iraqis told me so every day and proved it by voting in overwhelming numers in three very dangerous elections.What have YOU done to free the oppressed?
April 18th, 2006 at 7:49 am
As I’ve said before: the sinister power of the unhinged left is rather like that of termites eating away at the foundations of a house; or the power of the unacknowledged Jungian shadow. The fact that they’re “not in power” is absolutely irrelevant to how I think about it, except that in the way the unhinged left uses its lack of power as proof of the evil/corrupt/beguiled nature of the system and the electorate.
reg, to deny the allure of Chomsky-ism in the intellectual left is absurd. Come on. It’s a subjective thing, I suppose. But it just leaves me weak, trying to figure out a way to counter that.
But: I don’t live in the depths of radical academia; I live in liberal SW Minneapolis and work in the non-profit world that is supported by the vey liberal foundation world hereabouts. That daily life context is not “fringe;” it’s the heart and soul of the Democratic Party base. There is no more solid manifestation of what the current Democratic party is all about.
I don’t believe I know anyone in that world who doesn’t basically love the heck out of Noam Chomsky. Who doesn’t just automatically believe that it’s high tragedy he isn’t more widely worshipped and listened to.
You dismissal of the importance of the academic left is a major point of disagreement between us, too. I’ve long intended to write a piece explaining how I feel about it; but in general, I suspect you’re not all that confident in your dismissal yourself.
To me, it seems like one of if not the only major fount of “thinking” contributing to left politics.
April 18th, 2006 at 8:04 am
The point I take out of the oil-for-food scandal with regard to Iraq is the solid evidence it provides that the UN is structurally unable to seriously and permanently guard over a country and ruler that manifestly does not want to be guarded over and is conscsiously and aggresively figuring out ways to subvert and evade the controls. The UN is incapable of resisting the decay and corruption urged on it by the guarded-over in such a situation.
The fact that some American, British, and Australian companies were taking part in the corruption, and that it might have been possible for us or our allies to discover some of that corruption, makes the point more complex but I don’t think it destroys it. (What it mainly does is offer a way for people on the left to pretend it only supports their perspective, in fact.)
Had we begun a serious effort to investigate in the heated pre-war context, we would have been mightily resisted by the same powers that mightily resisted the war itself. We would never have discovered the extent of the corruption, and the directed way Hussein was using contracts and bribes to subvert the sanctions and set up relationships for later use.
April 18th, 2006 at 8:38 am
“reg, to deny the allure of Chomsky-ism in the intellectual left is absurd.”
I didn’t say that. You’re creating a discussion between yourself and your shadow. I said that Chomsky is irrelevant to American politics. As are most of the favored icons of the intellectual left. You are totally obtuse. The majority of the “intellectual left” is obviously as irrelevant to American politics as Chomsky. From what I’ve seen of it, most of those on “the intellectual left” can’t even write a coherent sentence, much less persuade anyone with a coherent argument. There are a handful of left-wing intellectuals who have some political resonance but they are few and far between, and even most of them don’t have much actual influence.
Incidentally “J” – I think that the idea that Chomsky has a “following” in the State Department and military is bizarre and sounds like wishful thinking on your part, but if he, in fact, does it’s because his research is valuable. His analytical abilities as regards the political implications of the material he collates are, to my mind, incredibly narrow and one-dimensional, not to mention utterly predictable. And if you think the main reason Chomsky isn’t regularly interviewed as an “expert” on, say, The Newshour is because he won’t go on as opposed to the fact that broadcast gabfests rarely, if ever, draw their “experts” from the far left, you’ve completely missed my point. I wasn’t talking about “Chomsky” as Chomsky, but as the best known of his “type”, so I may have been painting in broader strokes than justified in his specific case.
April 18th, 2006 at 8:51 am
“I don’t believe I know anyone in that world who doesn’t basically love the heck out of Noam Chomsky.”
That you are in the midst, apparently daily, of a world where you don’t know anyone who doesn’t “love the heck out of Noam Chomsky” is precisely proof of my point. I’ve worked with numerous people in the non-profit world myself over the years and while there were some who were no doubt familiar with Chomsky, they were probably in the minority. But the “non-profit” world is hardly the “core” of the Democratic party. To make such a statement is also proof of remarkable isolation. I work among people in the “profit” world these days and while it happens that most of them are hard-core liberal Democrats, they are not the type of people who read Noam Chomsky. They do, however, give money to candidates over the Internet, etc. I also happen to know quite a few “average” liberal Democrats from the heart of the Midwest and Chomsky doesn’t figure into their politics at all. Al Franken – who’s just slightly left of the DLC and who I’ve never, ever heard mention Noam-fucking-Chomsky in all of the hours I’ve listened to him – is likely to be influential, but they don’t read stuff like ZMag or Counterpunch. Most of the people I’ve known who obsess on Chomsky qualify as Greens. Which is one reason I can’t stand Greens.
April 18th, 2006 at 8:54 am
I don’t see the point of arguing this, but outside of the States, Chomsky’s on television all the time. He has said that he doesn’t like beintg on American television. If he’s “irrelevant” to American politics, despite his wide readership (far more than every decent lefist combined) the system, as he would put it, is not responsive to public opinion. That the most widely read foreign policy analyst in the world is irrelevant in American politics, if true, is sad, regardless of what one thinks of his views.
I personally know of people in the military who swear by Chomsky. I also know of people who work for State who read him. I also know that Pat Tillman was a reader, and before he was killed, a meeting was to be arranged stateside between him and Noam.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:02 am
“Sometimes I think that parts of the left are more interested in ideological purity or moral posturing than in actually helping real people who are poor and oppressed”
As opposed to…the right ???? I actually agree that “posturing and purity” has always been a major failure of the “self conscious left”, but I also have to say that the broadly liberal and left wing of the poltical spectrum are the only one’s I’ve ever seen even raise the issue of “real people who are poor and oppressed” as something to be addressed beyond pious pronouncements or an occasional donation to charity.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:11 am
“helping them secure a new country with a chance to free themseves from the type of governments usually inflicted on ME countries”
A chance which appears to have been tragically squandered…
Who do I blame for that ? Michael Moore ?
April 18th, 2006 at 9:24 am
“don’t see the point of arguing this, but outside of the States, Chomsky’s on television all the time.”
J – I was discussing American politics. I know Tillman read Chomsky and wanted to meet him. Tillman was, however, a grunt. I also would have paid money to be the fly on the wall for that one. I think it’s fine for intellectually curious people to read Chomsky as part of what would hopefully be a larger program of “continuing education”. Personally, I’ve always found him to be utterly predictable, dry and, ultimately, a boring thinker who doesn’t have any useful insight into the world of politics (politics as opposed to cataloging nefarious activities and drawing the most dire and extreme conclusions possible). He strikes me as a run-of-the-mill pessimist with a mechanistic view of politics. My gut feeling about Chomsky is that if he did happen to be right, “we-are-so-fucked” it wouldn’t really matter.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:25 am
‘From what I’ve seen of it, most of those on “the intellectual left†can’t even write a coherent sentence, much less persuade anyone with a coherent argument.’
Which is precisely why they are a problem.
When scientists want to wipe out mosquitos, supposedly all that is necessary is to release some sterile male mosquitos. These proceed to spend months searching out and consuming resources from the precise niches that mosquitos fit in. In return for all those scarce resources, they contribute nothing to future mosquito numbers.
The result is population collapse.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:28 am
reg you need to go there and quit relying on Al jazeera and Al Rueters. The country isnt in civil war despite the concerted effort in the press to paint it as one. They arent squandering anything. What is being squandered is the true picture by a press that is sympathitic to one political party and its reporting reflects that. My problem with the press isnt their criticism of the current administration. Its their lack of criticism of the other side.
Michale Moore is an idiot. His movie is a fraud.
Again, what have YOU done to free the oppressed?
April 18th, 2006 at 9:32 am
Reg –
You seem to be admitting that the intellectual left is solidly obtuse, while also simply insisting somehow that’s not a problem?
Doesn’t that leave us inevitably with just kind of an unmoored left side of politics with – at best – nothing but a vague sense of complaint as their basic motivation?
And of course, to restate, I think it’s conceptually illogical to beleive that nothing from the intellectual left has any kind of impact on left politiics – especially if you accept that there’s not much else out there idea-wise. A vacuum will be filled.
So like I’ve said before, there are glimpses of the effect of the obtuse intellectual left all the time in mainstream politics. Ideas that are so ridiculous, so unmoored in reality, that they seem based more on a religion, a set of catechisms, than on reality.
I didn’t say the non-profit world was the core; I said (or meant) that the population manifested by SW Mpls could not be more representative of the core. It’s a fairly obvious statement. It’s the blue region surrounded by the red in the suburbs and what we call outstate.
Today’s Democratic party: non-profit workers, government workers, teachers, academia, the low-income, the gradually disappearing union workers. Just off the top of my head. Of that list, I’d conjecture that the first four contain huge numbers of people who either are enthusiastic fans of Chomsky or just vaguely positive about him, with no concept of how dark it’s possible to see him as.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:33 am
Michael Yon claims it’s in civil war. As do most serious analysts who’ve been there. The people I’ve heard claiming Iraq isn’t in civil war are the chickenhawk pols. I don’t rely on Al Jazeera or Reuters.
You don’t know me and I don’t know you. I could tell you where I’ve been and what I’ve done when your GOPer friends were laughing and jeering at people who worked for freedom for “the oppressed” but since you’re just some clueless asshole bragging on the internet I don’t need to get into a pissing contest. Your attitude betrays you as a rather remarkably unreliable observer even of your own experience.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:34 am
That was for SGT Ted…
April 18th, 2006 at 9:37 am
Paul – you’re gonna have to work this stuff out for yourself. There are lots of liberal thinkers I find valuable and who are influential. They aren’t the people who come to mind when someone raises the spectre of “the intellectual left”.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Reg-
Chomsky’s actually not pessimistic at all. Please let me know what you mean.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:55 am
Great, who do you mean?
April 18th, 2006 at 10:52 am
“That the most widely read foreign policy analyst in the world is irrelevant in American politics, if true, is sad, regardless of what one thinks of his views.”
Jcummings, what do you make of the fact that Iraq’s prime minister is a fan of Chomsky and wondered why he didn’t visit Iraq? The New Republic reported this and if I was conspiracy-minded I would say this is part of the reason the U.S. is trying to push him out, unsuccessfully at the moment.
All I know is that if before the war I had said that replacing Saddam with a fan of Chomsky couldn’t be all bad, I’d be denounced as a civilian-killing, laptop bombadier chickenhawk. But Rumsfeld shook Saddam’s hand!
Chomsky also wrote that the “Israeli Lobby” professors were wrong in some ways. Often the U.S. acts to restrain Israel rather than Israel acting to influence the U.S.
Chomsky did predict genocide in Afghanistan after 9.11 and was wrong on that.
April 18th, 2006 at 11:01 am
I agree with you on Jafaari – but its more complicated – Jafaari wants partial nationalization of oil while the man being pushed by the US is to quote reports more “free market.”
Its not that replacing Saddam with a fan of Chomsky is bad, its that the price of getting there – and the powerlessness of the Iraqi government over their resources – compared with Imperial masters – is not worth it. Incidently Jafaari is not the only world leader to be a Chomsky reader.
I agree with Chomsky on the Israel lobby. Its main source of power is domestic – harassing opponents of Israel, ensuring that chomsky, otehrs, need police protection when they speak publicly – but in terms of international affairs, its a bit player.
Chomsky did not predict genocide, he warned of the possibility. When a weatherman warns of a potential tornado, and its nothing but wind, does he lose his job?
April 18th, 2006 at 11:18 am
The fact that some American, British, and Australian companies were taking part in the corruption, and that it might have been possible for us or our allies to discover some of that corruption, makes the point more complex but I don’t think it destroys it. (What it mainly does is offer a way for people on the left to pretend it only supports their perspective, in fact.)
And in you’re case it does the same for people on the right.
You’re obfuscating here and you ignored this:
The UN is as good as its member states behavior. The fact that PM Howard paid no attention to diplomatic cables about bribes businesses in his country had paid to the leader of a nation he was about to help invade says what? He’s incompetent? He’s corrupt?
Put the blame where it belongs
You also ignored the fact that McCain is giving the commencement address at Falwell’s Liberty University. Surely I don’t need to remind you about Falwell’s special brand of hate?
So, as other have mentioned the difference between the unhinged right and the unhinged left is that the unhinged right is close to the seats of power.
April 18th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
R Paul –
A basic – very basic – point I forgot to to mention, foolishly yielding in your attempt to change the focus of what matters, is this: oil-for-food provides definitive and crucial proof – yet another piece – that Hussein was simply not doing what he was commanded to do according to the many UN resolutions over a decade. His conscious cooptation of the program, his use of it to set up favorable contracting relationships and bribe foreign officials and what-not, should – in a sane world, and in combination with dozens of other examples – have been enough for the UN to decide to take him out.
In fact had the Aussie government investigated, it would have provided more evidence that Hussein was not to be trusted.
What people coming from your view always forget is this: *It was not the world’s job to enforce all these sanctions against a struggling, writhing, escape-seeking Hussein. It was Hussein’s job to comply, willingly.*
It’s that kind of supremely obvious point that people l like you frantically try to ignore so you can persist in calling the war utterly without justification. We were knee-deep in clear justifications. Whether it was wise to do, or whether the case was made well or honestly, are different issues.
Your whole way of looking at things essentially grants the game to Hussein’s strategy.
Beyond that:
I didn’t ignore that quoted section. It’s specifically what I was addressing, loosely admittedly. I do know the only way the left addresses oil-for-food is the way you are, looking for the outs, while overlooking the amazing and conscious cooptation of the whole infrastructure by Hussein with the facilitation of the UN.
I also don’t know thd details all this Aussie stuff; if it follows the pattern I see repeatedly in these scandals of the right, once I dive in it’ll turn out the coverage is dishonest in some respect, tending toward making it appear as bad as possible while leaving out any kind of mitigating subtext. The Halliburton no-bid contracting situation is a classic of the genre.
Re McCain: If I am morally compelled to bring up in this forum evey single thing that happens that you believe I should address, I’m afraid you’ll never be satisfied.
April 18th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
I’m going to repeat it, because it’s key:
It was not the world’s job to enforce all these sanctions against a struggling, writhing, escape-seeking Hussein. It was Hussein’s job to comply, willingly.
Believing it was up to the world to enforce them while Hussein resisted, and that any failure in that regard undercuts the moral justifications for the war, essentially grants the game to Hussein’s strategy.
It allows him to resist – it grants him leave to do so – and guarantees no justification to remove him, because there will always be enforcement failures even from nations generally wanting to.
And of course, as i said before, what oil-for-food also revealed was that in a situation where there is active resistance, the UN itself seems to turn automatically into a compliant facilitator of that resistance.
April 18th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
And with that as background, all W did – prodded by 9-11 – was call the question that should have been called years ago.
It might have been wiser to decide that the correct answer was to let Hussein reenter the community of nations rather then remove him, on doability and on “we might make things worse” grounds.
But in the post-9-11 context, it sure as hell doesn’t seem like that would have been the easy obvious moral decision. It would have been a surrender to a genocidal madman who’d discovered and proven that bullying resistance actually works; and that the international organization game is a fraud.
April 18th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
Worth reading: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dd_guttenplan/2006/04/no_sects_pleaseyoure_british.html
April 18th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Is anyone going to say “But the inspections were working”?
April 18th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
Your whole way of looking at things essentially grants the game to Hussein’s strategy.
Oh, poppycock. Don’t insult my intelligence. I have no doubt that Saddam solicited bribes. if he solicited a bribe to the AWB, it was up to them to say fuck you and your bribe, I won’t lie down with dogs.
Obviously they didn’t along with many others. It takes to successfully effect
April 18th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Your whole way of looking at things essentially grants the game to Hussein’s strategy.
Oh, poppycock. Don’t insult my intelligence. I have no doubt that Saddam solicited bribes. if he solicited a bribe to the AWB, it was up to them to say fuck you and your bribe, I won’t lie down with dogs.
Obviously they didn’t along with many others. It takes two to successfully effect a bribe.
As for McCain, the reason why you don’t address it is because it displays the intellectual weakness of your harping on the unhinged left. If you can’t acknowledge the fact that the front-runner on your side is whoring himself to
April 18th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Your whole way of looking at things essentially grants the game to Hussein’s strategy.
Oh, poppycock. Don’t insult my intelligence. I have no doubt that Saddam solicited bribes. if he solicited a bribe to the AWB, it was up to them to say fuck you and your bribe, I won’t lie down with dogs.
Obviously they didn’t along with many others. It takes two to successfully effect a bribe.
As for McCain, the reason why you don’t address it is because it displays the intellectual weakness of your harping on the unhinged left. If you can’t acknowledge the fact that the front-runner on your side is whoring himself to a man who is the number 1 symbol of the wingnut “religious” right, it’s becasue you lack the intellectual honesty to do so.
April 18th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Sorry Hit submit twice by mistake.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Like I said in a forum a while back: considering the questions of our foreign policy and especially our alleged and actual depradations since we began to go international would be a good thing for the country. In part because at this point their active description and interpretation is the exclusive province of the far left, and the academic left.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
“if he solicited a bribe to the AWB, it was up to them to say fuck you and your bribe, I won’t lie down with dogs.”
Right – would have been better for them to do that. Leaving unaffected the vast majority of bribe-takers and nations who had no motivation to act that way. Who, in fact, had direct motivation to play along.
Leaving your answer to my basic point on perspective as “poppycock.”
April 18th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
What is “my” side?
I’ve never denied the existence of damaging wingnuttery on the right. it’s a long-acknowledged and well-known aspect of American politics. In fact its existence is one factor allowing the left to ignore their own problems. It’s the universal response to what I talk about: but look over there!
This is a comparison I’ve made many times: the right’s wingnuttery is like the crazy aunt in the attic everyone in town knows is there; the left’s (as I said a while back) are like termites no one acknowledges yet.
I don’t know why McCain is doing this. He’s either shrewder or stupider than we thought.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Also leaving unaffected the proof of Hussein’s extreme duplicity.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
“the right’s wingnuttery is like the crazy aunt in the attic everyone in town knows is there; the left’s (as I said a while back) are like termites no one acknowledges yet”
An oddly weak analogy, since a crazy aunt could hardly be considered threatening–certainly not compared to termites, which threaten a house’s foundation. If that’s the way you see the religious right, then you’ve been spending too much time sipping lattes in Uptown, rather than living with and among people with wingnuttish right-wing views. Turn the ‘crazy aunt’ into a ‘crazy axe-wielding murderer’ and your analogy can be taken a bit more seriously with respect to the threat and power of the religious right. Otherwise, your comparison just sounds silly.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
I see your point; I’m talking mostly about visibility. Maybe somewhere in between those two in terms of damage potential, though. I wouldn’t go as far as your description.
I do stand by the aunt image in terms of how generally in control they are, though.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
That’s because I don’t buy the common notion here that today’s conservatives in power are controlled by the rightwing wingnuts.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
“That’s because I don’t buy the common notion here that today’s conservatives in power are controlled by the rightwing wingnuts.”
I disagree completely (though my claim is not one of total control–just greater relative control than during, say, Bush I). I suppose that’s a topic for another occasion, because my list of examples is uber-long. One that is immediately relevant: McCain courting Falwell in ’06, but not in ’00. Say what you want about McCain’s motivations, but the political need to perform the act speaks for itself.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
“Incidently Jafaari is not the only world leader to be a Chomsky reader.”
Probably the only world leader who’s election was made possible by the U.S. military.
“the powerlessness of the Iraqi government over their resources – compared with Imperial masters – is not worth it.” There is a sort of contradiction with Bush pushing democracy in the Middle East. As a result you get Jafaari who wishes Chomsky would visit and parial nationalization of Iraq’s oil and you get Hamas in the Palestinian territories. The thing is I believe the U.S. can live with it because there’s no Soviet Union looming in the background.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Look, to close; R Paul, I checked out your site, your self-description, you seem like a rational guy pursuing the same thing I see myself doing: opposing those who believe they are in possession of absolute morality.
My whole thing with Iraq is as I said: the way I think about it, it is jarringly obvious given Hussein’s behavior all though the 90′s (in the wake of the united world’s move to oust him from Kuwait) that a move from the outside to oust him and his sons from power – far preferably by the UN – was justified a dozen times over.
Was that smart for the US to do largely on its own? Was the path we chose honestly argued and rationally discussed? It’s very possible to answer “no” to those questions. Is it possible we’ve done more harm than good? it’s very possible to answer yes. Is Bush impeachable? Perhaps yes.
As I’ve said and maybe you’ve missed, in the end, by a close margin, I decided it was a bad idea, especially without the UN, even as unlikely as that ever was.
But once the war started, it became our war, not W’s war. That’s just a sad fact. And the overwhelming tendency on the left to use the flaws/dishonesties in W’s case as an excuse to describe the war as utterly without any conceivable justification, as clearly only an imperialist oil-grabbing adventure – the tendency to ignore the plain irrefutable (to me) reality I started this comment with – that drives me up a fucking wall.
April 18th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
(By “plain irrefutable fact” I mean the fact that SH was begging to be taken down starting shortly after Gulf War I ended.)
Goodbye.
April 18th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
I’d like to get back to this declaration if those who want to argue Chomsky vs Hitchens vs Iraq will let me. Someone upthread, I forgot who now in all this verbiage, had it about right when he/she observed that all these signers were “New Labor” Brits trying to throw Tony Blair a liferaft. You know Blair is the LBJ of British Politics. He will be remembered as the PM who reformed the British Constitution by granting Scotland and Wales limited Home Rule and turning the Lords into something other than a backwater. And he made the Labor Party the “Natural Party of Government.” No small accomplishments. But then he threw it all away with his reflexive pro-Americanism and slavish devotion to George Bush. And for this the Bushies have given him NOTHING. If he is called “Bush’s Poodle” he is lucky since “Bush’s Bitch” could be just as accurate. I think his actions have done the most to discredit progressive ideas since the Vietnam War lead to the Great Dem Crackup in the Sixties.
But then, what do I know.
Oh yes, the Manifesto – I mean, Declaration. About as platitudinous as any manifesto/platform. Me, I’ll stick to the Port Huron Statement. It seems more honest even though I know how SDS ended.
April 18th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
“I’ll be happy to engage any and all commenters on the substance of the manifesto”
Marc numerous commentators here (rosedog, virgil, jordy..the excellent guadian articles, reg )have made fairly substancial, thoughful and varied critiques of the rather mundane Geras/waltzer and company manifesto. You kind of betray your declaration by dismissing them as useless, no?
April 18th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
I think the inspections were working but Blix wasn’t moving fat enough for W et al. That’s because it was a done deal. To me that’s no way to run a railroad. How to get rid of Hussein was another matter, but he did say he had no wmd. He was right. We could have made him an offer he couldn’t refuse without blowing the place up. And us with it.
April 18th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Sorry Paul and J – I left to go work before I saw your last questions. The discussion has moved on and I’ve said more than enough on this thread to support my original point – which was simply whether “mainstream” political discourse was being more heavily influenced – some would say driven into a ditch – by “hard” ideological rightists, including but not exclusively wingnuts, or “hard” ideological leftists, including but not exclusively “the unhinged” (which I think both of you veered away from).
April 18th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
“I don’t buy the common notion here that today’s conservatives in power are controlled by the rightwing wingnuts”
I would contend that the neoconservatives have proven themselves to be a relatively sophisticated form of “wingnut”. Douglas Feith is about as toxic and loonytoons as someone with a Harvard education can get. Richard Perle is a total zealot and a war profiteer to boot. They don’t come much more wacked out than that crew – and get in shouting distance of the Oval Office and the upper echelons of the Defense establishment. Not since Curtis LeMay.
April 18th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Also the bureaucrats INSIDE THE ADMINISTRATION that are trying to keep a lid on environmental issues, pushing creationism, holding education and prevention programs hostage to “abstinence only”, etc. are, in fact, representatives of the wingnut factions that are an essential element of Rove’s coalition. Paul, I think you’ve got termites eating away at your house and you just aren’t willing to admit it.
April 18th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
It was I who said the Euston Manifesto is probably a Blair/Mandelson trick to warn Gordon Brown not to become more Eurocentric. This is the sum total of the whole bullshit sectarian nonsense – trying to help Tony, whose police state measures are arguably worse than Bush.
April 18th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Paul,
Fair enough I can agree to disagree. What I cannot abide, however, is the notion that what you refer to as the “unhinged left” is really of any consequence in the political debate.
I think that the examples Reg mentions at 4:52 and 4:58 speak eloquently to the fact that there are many in power in the Bush administration who are extremists.
And the overwhelming tendency on the left to use the flaws/dishonesties in W’s case as an excuse to describe the war as utterly without any conceivable justification, as clearly only an imperialist oil-grabbing adventure – the tendency to ignore the plain irrefutable (to me) reality I started this comment with – that drives me up a fucking wall.
I’ve never said that, but here’s what drives me up a fucking wall: the constant smearing of those who dare to criticize this administration. For example, I don’t believe in trashing Christopher Hitchens for his smoking and drinking habits – whatever they may be – but when he writes pernicious McCarthyite nonsense McCarthyite nonsense like this, he’s launched himself into the sewer with both feet.
April 18th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
Funny. Randy Paul objects to a reference of the “unhinged left” while, within the same thread, he links to his own reference of the “loony right” (with an inaccurate premise, I might add.) Maybe he should have wiped the “stuff” off of his shoes before traipsing into Marc’s house.
April 18th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
[sniffs the air]
Nah, nothing there.
April 18th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Then never, ever whine to me again about being offended over completely logical conclusions about your mental state. Apparently, if I can’t “sniff” anything, then anything that I say will be acceptable. Thanks for helping to clarify the rules.
April 18th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
[BIG YAWN]
April 18th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
“I’ll be happy to engage any and all commenters on the substance of the manifesto”
Well, I guess not. You still haven’t answered my question, Marc, about preemptive military action.
April 18th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
“He [Chomsky] has said that he doesn’t like beintg on American television.”
I had the opportunity to interview him, and I can assure you that this is not the case.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
“When scientists want to wipe out mosquitos, supposedly all that is necessary is to release some sterile male mosquitos. These proceed to spend months searching out and consuming resources from the precise niches that mosquitos fit in. In return for all those scarce resources, they contribute nothing to future mosquito numbers.
The result is population collapse”
Soru,
What scientists can do, is search for the remains of dead crows, it might indicate the potential cases of Lyme disease, or they can check the anus of a deer for ticks; or perhaps, they can ask why Rumsfeld
and his buddies made a bundle on Tamiflu, with their bullshit pandemic scares!
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0511/S00036.htm
April 18th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
“Also the bureaucrats INSIDE THE ADMINISTRATION that are trying to keep a lid on environmental issues”
Ya mon.
“Also Friday, George C. Deutsch, 24, a NASA spokesman who resigned this week after allegations that he had edited scientists’ writings to conform to administration views and tried to limit reporters’ access to Hansen, e-mailed reporters to say there is a “culture war” in the government over climate change. Deutsch’s resignation came after it was learned he had not graduated from Texas A&M University, as he claimed on his résumé.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/10/AR2006021001766.html
“Anyone perceived to be a Republican, a Bush supporter or a Christian is singled out and labeled a threat to their views. I encourage anyone interested in this story to consider the other side, to consider Dr. Hansen’ s true motivations and to consider the dangerous implications of only hearing out one side of the global warming debate,” Deutsch said.”
April 18th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Extremely pathetic, Randy, but I’m sure it was the best that you could do. I usually laugh at you, like I did when you put up your “itinerary of life,” grasping for respect, but I can see that you’re sad and blinded by your unhinged leftist rage–some would even say psycho. Please don’t expect any more gracious apologies.
To get on topic, it’s wacko views and totally undeserved arrogance by leftists like you who will shut out and make sure that moderating influences like Marc Cooper will not have an impact on the selection of the next Democratic presidential candidate–insuring another Republican victory in 2008. Thank goodness. I want a President who isn’t backed and elected by people who can’t see any more good in America than it’s scenery.
Now, if you wish to keep up the ad hominem (while attempting to deny it to others), then I suggest that we take this off line in respect for Marc’s wishes–if you have any decency within you, which is a real stretch and has never been noted before.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
In other words please consider our debunked BS as if it was equal to real scientific conclusions. War, science, social policy whatever fantasy in the face of counterfactual evidence is the order of the day and will until they leave office.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
The Euston Manifesto, written for the Alan Colmes wing of “progressive” American politics, baldly misrepresents the leftist critique of the war on terror. And it does so for the callowest of reasons.
Most American liberals opposed the Iraq war because they strongly suspected it would lead to chaos in the country, and it has. Many American liberals supported the war because they thought it would help Iraq and the region to remove Saddam Hussein, even under the false, unilateral pretences employed. It hasn’t. The American left said removing Saddam would prove a huge benefit to Iran, while in turn helping the worst elements of that regime expand their constituencies. That is exactly what has happened.
Moreover the level of political chicanery necessary to get us into the war, pay for it and keep us into continues unabated, which is exactly what liberals predicted.
As a liberal American, I feel no need whatsoever to dignify the Fox News Channel/Wall Street Journal/radio talk show representation of the American left as movement that hates America, apologizes for terrorists and thinks cultural relativism means “anything goes.” That is not the American left. It never has been and probably never will be.
The American left is, rather, a bastion of patriotic realism that has always rejected fringe appeals to reverse jingoism. The canard that elements of the left made apologies for Mao and Stalin is a risibly ahistorical canard. The Democratic Party and mainstream American liberalism has always relegated these fringe voices to the far fringe–exactly where they belong, of course. The conflation of sometimes-strident criticism of the U.S. with hating America is a rhetorical hallmark of the paranoid style of politics.
If there has been a problem with American liberalism in this regard, it is rather that it can’t seem to control its urge to dance to the right-wing simpleton tune that it is “weak” on totalitarianism and somehow in the thrall of anti-American jingos touting Stalinism as a viable ideology.
Marc Cooper seems to live in constant fear that he’s going to come out on the losing end of an exchange with Sean Hannity.
I’d like to ask Marc would it would take, at long last, for him to give up his much discredited position that the war in Iraq is a noble cause badly managed. How many more dead? How much more tragic imperial history revisted? How many more no-bid contracts, revolting generals and spreading propaganda exposures?
You’d think after events in Iraq and elsewhere have so thoroughly thrashed the liberal pro-war position, Marc would show a little more concern about his image on the left than for his preserving his risible credentials with Rupert Murdoch conservatives.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Woody from what I’ve seen there isn’t anyone who hasn’t laughed at your version of logic. I suspect even your kids do.
April 18th, 2006 at 8:17 pm
Ahmed and David Cummings: Ive had two back to back 15 hour workdays with a lot of added stress from a very edlery and ill parent. That’s why Im not taking the time to fulfill my promise to respond.
To Bunkerbuster: Ur a nut, kid. The day I wake up worrying about what my “image on the left” is will be the day I decide to sleep in.
I do find that comment quite revealing, however. You can go all the way back to Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier (70 years ago) to see his observation of how the political left (and I would add the right as well) attracts so many fringe personalities. Especially in the U.S. where becoming an activist is often much more an act of self-validation and redemption than it is an act of necessity or self-interest. I know darn well that many lefties are INDEED worried about their image — worried that someone actually might be to the left of them. BB, if u havent yet figured out that I couldnt give a flip about such concerns, then you are more shell-shocked than I thought.
One thought about the Chomsky thread: given the supposedly unfair lack of attention he gets from the American public, maybe he could dismiss the public and elect a new one.
I have read Chomsky for decades. Heard him speak oodles of times. And I have interviewed him perhaps on a dozen occasions and maintained long email exchanges with him. He is clearly a very smart man and can –on occasion– offer some political insight. He can also be extremely boring, aloof and inaccessible — both in substance and in emotional caliber. People have a right to read him, hear him and as well as a right to ignore him.
April 18th, 2006 at 8:22 pm
I’m surprised Bush hasn’t handed out the Rasputin Science Award–the winning experiment could be alchemizing Bush’s brain so that it would register on a CAT Scan.
His intellectual statement today: “I’m the DECIDER–Rumsfeld stays.”
April 18th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
To Bunkerbuster: Ur a nut, kid. The day I wake up worrying about what my “image on the left†is will be the day I decide to sleep in.
Then we agree, Marc. You are flamboyantly unconcerned about your image on the left and obsessed with it on the Pantload Media right….
April 18th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Right, your a genius BB. Did you think that all up by yourself? Or did someone help you with it?
April 19th, 2006 at 1:03 am
Well, that’s it, I have completely unhinged myself from both the left and the right (perhaps I have been unhinged all along). I think the proof is in the lack of details found here – to think and work inside the conventional box appears to be a mild form of insanity.
Because you refuse to get out of the box I might as well point out that this is the reason why an exploitative, vicious, and unrelenting ruling class (which you seem oblivious to) can get a little verbal tape, and seal you in your proverbial box. Maybe they will all do us a favor and mail you to where the weapons of mass destruction reside.
April 19th, 2006 at 3:03 am
On the influence of the “unhinged” left vs.the “wingnut” right – where did Rumsfeld go to defend himself yesterday ? The Rush Limbaugh show…
April 19th, 2006 at 4:27 am
“The American left is, rather, a bastion of patriotic realism……”
Sounds like you’re somewhat concerned about the image of the left itself Bunker. It will take a lot more than empty statements of patriotism. Patriotism and American Left is an oxymoron.
Show me one F_ing positive statement the left has ever made about America, aside from your empty image repair statement. I take it ‘Patriotic Realism’ is PC for relentless criticism, never an encouraging word, always taking the opposite side of our elected leadership in foreign policy and in foreign lands. And with a socialist or outright communist agenda, a deep disdain for our economic system that encourages SELF DEPENDENT FREEDOM in place of crushing and corrupt GOVERNMENT DEPENDENT NURTURING…..or should that be NEUTERING?
The American Left never displays a flag because they don’t own one. Besides, even if they did, that would be real corny.
Disclaimer: This is a generalised observation. There will always be a minority in a generalization who don’t fully understand what they are aligned with and may be observed not only displaying the American Flag, but in rare cases actually pledging an allegiance to it……..without the dumb ‘under God’ part of course.
April 19th, 2006 at 6:07 am
Jim: I see your point. For you, patriotism equals “making positive statements about America” and “owning flags.” So in that sense, you are correct: the left isn’t patriotic, if that’s how you define it.
I prefer a more realistic definition of patriotism; one that is based on actions and principles, not slogans and banners. I used the phrase “patriotic realism” because I wanted to distinguish between this kind of principled, deed-based patriotism and the kind you describe.
Marc: “check your ad hominem at the door or don’t bother to knock”
April 19th, 2006 at 6:43 am
“Show me one F_ing positive statement the left has ever made about America”
Start with everything Thomas Paine ever wrote, move right along to Walt Whitman’s poetry, fast forward to the songs of Woody Guthrie and then bask in the writings and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. To keep current, go out and buy a couple of Springsteen albums.
And that’s just a skim of the surface for a handful of greatest hits. (I’m assuming by “positive” you don’t mean “glib”, “fatuous” or “preening”. We have a perspective as regards loving our country that’s a bit more challenging, but at least it gets you to a place worth going.)
April 19th, 2006 at 6:46 am
And Jim, if you want to read a critical discussion of the question that’s nagging at you in a totally current context, check out Todd Gitlin’s “Intellectuals and the Flag”.
April 19th, 2006 at 6:59 am
One more note – and this may seem like a weird tangent – but I’m going to toss it in as counter to your warped view of “the left”. Yip Harburg, who wrote Somewhere Over The Rainbow and the rest of the songs in Wizard of Oz, was a leftist. And Norman Rockwell and Thomas Hart Benton, the most graphically “American” of artists, were both left-liberals/progressives who were staunchly dedicated to the New Deal and became critics of the Vietnam War. Rockwell painted staunchly pro-FDR and pro-civil rights pieces when that was quite controversial and even contributed a cover portrait of Bertrand Russell to the the left-wing magazine Ramparts during it’s heyday in the ’60s.
April 19th, 2006 at 7:01 am
Well, Gitlin’s a poseur – but Paul Robeson – a communist – wrote Ballad for Americans. Most of the world war 2 patriotic “popular front” patriotic songs and films were moved along by a very patriotic, pro-US communist party.
April 19th, 2006 at 7:12 am
Incidentally, as regards patriotism, image and “ass-covering” – which you claim is the province of the left – I would observe that while the right-wing has traditionally, even famously, been a bastion of patriotism as the “last refuge” for their scoundrels and virulent demagogues, it seems that we’re seeing that the “Oliver North” defense isn’t quite good enough anymore. With Tom DeLay we’re seeing the ascendence of “Christian martyrdom” as the preferred method of explaining away indictments and any other sins. In fact, with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and some others on the Christian Right, we’re actually seeing a rather blatant “hate Amerca” wing of the Right evolving, in which “America deserves terrorism” because God can’t abide gays, abortion, feminisim, etc. etc. What’s disturbing is seeing a supposedly decent guy like John McCain kiss these people’s ass.
April 19th, 2006 at 7:16 am
Marc – goor Brecht paraphrase – but my intent was no saying that the public ignores Chomsky. The public does not ignore him, and more specifically, polls show that the public supports his point of view, give or take. Chomsky is actually far less left-wing than people think. He didn’t vote for Nader in either 2000 or 04, is against a boycott of Israel (significantly bothering some of his fans) andi actually considers Al Qaeda a threat.
April 19th, 2006 at 7:25 am
Springsteen has few rivals in sincerity and poetic purchase on the American dream, but I wonder whether he would consent to being described as part of the American left.
Jackson Browne, on the other hand, has a history of the kind of activism Marc is so fond of scoffing at. And he wrote this:
For America
As if I really didn’t understand
That I was just another part of their plan
I went off looking for the promise
Believing in the Motherland
And from the comfort of a dreamer’s bed
And the safety of my own head
I went on speaking of the future
While other people fought and bled
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn’t quite as sweet when the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
It’s in my blood and in my bones
By the dawn’s early light
By all I know is right
We’re going to reap what we have sown
As if freedom was a question of might
As if loyalty was black and white
You hear people say it all the time-
“My country wrong or right”
I want to know what that’s got to do
With what it takes to find out what’s true
With everyone from the President on down
Trying to keep it from you
The thing I wonder about the Dads and Moms
Who send their sons to the Vietnams
Will they really think their way of life
Has been protected as the next war comes?
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
Her shining dream plays in my mind
By the rockets red glare
A generation’s blank stare
We better wake her up this time
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn’t quite a sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
I can’t let go till she comes around
Until the land of the free
Is awake and can see
And until her conscience has been found
Now that’s what I call patriotism.
April 19th, 2006 at 7:25 am
J- Gitlin’s a poseur in your opinion. I guess I’m a poseur too, because IMHO that’s an excellent set of essays. Gitlin’s been around the block since long before he found a perch as a professor, so even if you disagree with him, I don’t think he qualifies as “poseur”.
Earl Robinson, another progressive songwriter, is the guy who actually wrote “Ballad For Americans” and Robeson sang it. As regards the WWII “patriotic” communist party, I think Earl Browder certainly qualified as a “poseur” given the zigs and zags the party went through leading up to the war and after. I would agree that the vast majority of people who joined the “popular front” left were deeply patriotic but let’s not romanticize the whole business at the level of the party itself, because they proceeded to do massive damage to the very idea of a radical left – in the process poisoning and betrayiing tens of thousands of activists who had worked with them – by militantly, even virulently, propagating their Stalinist delusions.
April 19th, 2006 at 7:29 am
“I wonder whether he would consent to being described as part of the American left.”
I think the fact that his latest album is an overt tribute to Pete Seeger is at least a partial answer to that question. Springsteen speaks directly out of the traditions of the cultural left. Doesn’t matter what he calls himself.
April 19th, 2006 at 7:42 am
The popular front did more good than harm. Yes, people were wrong about Stalin, but the American CP, Browder notwithstanding, did yeoman’s work far before the rest of the liberals, on issues like labor, civil rights and others. My bad on Robeson’s songwriter – I’d add though that Wizard of Oz and Yip Harburg, as a film, was a left parable.
April 19th, 2006 at 7:57 am
The Communist Party, ultimately, did more harm than good IMHO. I don’t think this is arguable over the arc of the several decades when they weren’t a moribund sect. They were notably out front on civil rights, but they get far too much credit for what millions of people who were in the orbit of union activism accomplished and their sectarianism set a tone and established a practice on the left that ultimately destroyed it and made it impossible for much of the left to survive into the Cold War. Unfortunately the “anti-Stalinist” left also became absorbed in a bizarre symbiosis with the Stalinists and an enormous amount of energy and credibility among progressive-minded folks that should have gone into building a popular American left-liberal coalition was expended on battling over the question of the Party’s allegience to Soviet foreign policy over and above authentically progressive issues that weren’t wedded to arcane ideology. Unfortunately this was not a slander but a fact and the people who wanted to keep distance from the CP had plenty of good reason. I detest the hard-core leadership of the CP. Ultimately they functioned as a terribly destructive force on the left.
April 19th, 2006 at 8:00 am
Also to say the CP was “wrong about Stalin” is sort of like saying “George Wallace was wrong about civil rights”. It doesn’t quite capture the essence of what went on and how poisonous it was.
April 19th, 2006 at 8:07 am
I don’t disagree – but I’m talking the broad popular front….In reality, the Wobblies did the most important work at the time. Further, most people involved were not Stalinists. The Democrats, which depend on the CP vote to this day – are they dangerous?
April 19th, 2006 at 8:11 am
I don’t think the Democrats “depend on the CP vote”…
If Democratic politicians made pilgrimages to the People’s Weekly World editorial committee to solicit their endorsement, the way John McCain appears to be going to visit Falwell to secure his support, the formulation might make sense to me and I would consider them crazy, at the very least, if not dangerous.
I’ve gotta get to work…
April 19th, 2006 at 8:27 am
Ooops – I lied. But after this I really am out of here.
One more thing for Jim Russell that just came to mind – Garrison Keillor. Says positive stuff about America all the time. Even corny stuff. He is also a dedicated man of what I would absolutely consider “the left”. A Wellstone Democrat. Wrote a terrific little book, “Homegrown Democrat” as his political manifesto. (Made lots more sense to me than that Euston thing.)
Here’s a recent Keillor essay on some of the matters at hand:
Impeach Bush
The man was lost and then he was found and now he’s more lost than ever — and he’s taking us into the darkness with him. It’s time to remove him.
By Garrison Keillor
Mar. 01, 2006 | These are troubling times for all of us who love this country, as surely we all do, even the satirists. You may poke fun at your mother, but if she is belittled by others it burns your bacon. A blowhard French journalist writes a book about America that is full of arrogant stupidity, and you want to let the air out of him and mail him home flat. You hear young people talk about America as if it’s all over, and you trust that this is only them talking tough. And then you read the paper and realize the country is led by a man who isn’t paying attention, and you hope that somebody will poke him. Or put a sign on his desk that says, “Try Much Harder.”
Do we need to impeach him to bring some focus to this man’s life? The man was lost and then he was found and now he’s more lost than ever, plus being blind.
The Feb. 27 issue of the New Yorker carries an article by Jane Mayer about a loyal conservative Republican and U.S. Navy lawyer, Albert Mora, and his resistance to the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. From within the Pentagon bureaucracy, he did battle against Donald Rumsfeld and John Yoo at the Justice Department and shadowy figures taking orders from Dick (Gunner) Cheney, arguing America had ratified the Geneva Convention that forbids cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, and so it has the force of law. They seemed to be arguing that the president has the right to order prisoners to be tortured.
One such prisoner, Mohammed al-Qahtani, was held naked in isolation under bright lights for months, threatened by dogs, subjected to unbearable noise volumes, and otherwise abused, so that he begged to be allowed to kill himself. When the Senate approved the Torture Convention in 1994, it defined torture as an act “specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” Is the law a law or is it a piece of toast?
(snip)
When Americans start pulling people’s fingernails out with pliers and poking lighted cigarettes into their palms, then we need to come back to basic values. Most people agree with this, and in a democracy that puts the torturers in a delicate position. They must make sure to destroy their e-mails and have subordinates who will take the fall. Because it is impossible to keep torture secret. It goes against the American grain and it eats at the conscience of even the most disciplined, and in the end the truth will come out. It is coming out now.
According to the leaders of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, our country is practically as vulnerable today as it was on 9/10. Our seaports are wide open, our airspace is not secure except for the nation’s capital, and little has been done about securing the nuclear bomb materials lying around in the world. They give the administration D’s and F’s in most categories of defending against terrorist attack.
Our adventure in Iraq, at a cost of trillions, has brought that country to the verge of civil war while earning us more enemies than ever before. And tax money earmarked for security is being dumped into pork barrel projects anywhere somebody wants their own SWAT team. Detonation of a nuclear bomb within our borders — pick any big city — is a real possibility, as much so now as five years ago. Meanwhile, many Democrats have conceded the very subject of security and positioned themselves as Guardians of Our Forests and Benefactors of Waifs and Owls, neglecting the most basic job of government, which is to defend this country. We might rather be comedians or daddies or tattoo artists or flamenco dancers, but we must attend to first things.
The peaceful lagoon that is the White House is designed for the comfort of a vulnerable man. Perfectly understandable, but not what is needed now. The U.S. Constitution provides a simple ultimate way to hold him to account for war crimes and the failure to attend to the country’s defense. Impeach him and let the Senate hear the evidence.
April 19th, 2006 at 8:27 am
bunkerbuster:
“Most American liberals opposed the Iraq war because they strongly suspected it would lead to chaos in the country, and it has.”
That’s why I opposed it; and it may have been why most liberals opposed, although we really have no idea, because it sure wasn’t why the loud ones who dominated the debate opposed it. If that had been the primary argument being offered, we might have had a rational debate.
But to claim that as the centerpeice of the war opposition now is rewriting history. The possibility of chaos was in the mix, of course, because every possible reason to oppose the war was thrown on the table. But the centerpiece was “no war for oil.” I see that as impossible to deny.
April 19th, 2006 at 10:29 am
tacky, anonymous Bunkerbuster:
” it can’t seem to control its urge to dance to the right-wing simpleton tune that it is “weak’’ on totalitarianism and somehow in the thrall of anti-American jingos touting Stalinism as a viable ideology.”
A certain segment of the left is weak as hell on totalitarianism. Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, etc. If they were listened too, Saddam Hussein would still be running a totalitarian society in Iraq.
All the manifesto is saying is lets be honest about the terms of the debate. Anti-war people constantly minimized how totalitarian Saddam was.
April 19th, 2006 at 11:30 am
There is no debate. Saddam was totalitarian. The war was wrong. Now they want to nuke Iran.
In the second world war, much of Imperial Japan’s actions precipitated and indirectly helped anti-colonial movements in East Asia. This does not make Japan’s moves rightful. Likewise, the Soviet Union really was fighting fundamentalism in Afghanistan, but that doesn’t make their invasion right.
Even if one’s “enemy” is terrible, the principle of universality only applies if the crimes comitted by the enemy are not also comitted by the prosecutor. The US has lost – if it ever had any – moral authority.
April 19th, 2006 at 11:44 am
I apologize Marc Cooper, I pray good health to them.
April 19th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
Euston Declaration anyone?
April 19th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Secret agent Peter K writes:
“A certain segment of the left is weak as hell on totalitarianism. Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, etc. If they were listened too, Saddam Hussein would still be running a totalitarian society in Iraq.”
The fringe “segment” you refer to doesn’t define the American left.
If the mainstream American left had been listened to, tens of thousands of Iraqis would still be alive, the nation’s oil and power infrastructure would be belching along and the ethnic divisions within the country would be at a simmer, not the present roiling boil. Iraq would continue to be a problem for the U.S. and the region, but nothing close to the present disaster.
Moreover, had prominent liberals in academia, punditland, arts and entertainment and elsewhere been listened too, there would still be a chance of ending Saddam’s reign of terror on terms that would not result in the disintegration of Iraq, hundreds of thousands of dead, hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars spent and decades-old regional and global alliances trashed.
If liberals like George Soros, Al Gore, Harold Pinter, Norman Mailer and leftist Alexander Coburn had been listened to, the U.S. might still have the goodwill, sympathy and diplomatic support that flowed so freely from other countries after 9/11.
Far more important, had the left been listened to back in the 1980s, Cold War paranoia would not have enabled the disastrous intervention in Afghanistan that helped crystallize the violent mode of jihadism as we known it. On Iraq, had the left been listened to back in the 1980s, Don Rumsfeld would not have been around to fellate Saddam and remind him that, at the peak of his regime’s atrocities, he could count on U.S. support.
Moreover, principled opposition to the speculative aggression in Iraq was not by any means the exclusive province of the left. Many moderates and conservatives opposed the war on similar grounds.
The most pathetic part of Euston is the way it attempts to conflate the naked demonization of brown-skinned tyrants with intellectual integrity.
And Agent K writes:
“tacky, anonymous bunkerbuster.”
Tacky? Guilty as charged, but hey, this ain’t no fashion show. As for “anonymous,” Mr. K, I would have thought the hypocrisy would be obvious enough even for you.
Paul from Mpls opines that “no blood for oil” defined the left’s opposition to the war in Iraq. I can find no evidence for this claim. If you have some, Paul, bring it on. Here’s how wikipedia leads off its entry on why people opposed the war:
“Critics of the invasion claimed that it would kill thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and civilians, that it would have a negative effect on the peace and stability of the surrounding region, and that it would fail to accomplish its stated goals. Some opposed the war on principled pacifistic or anti-imperialist grounds, while others, who supported a right for the United States and allied nations to intervene militarily in foreign countries in some circumstances, nevertheless opposed the invasion of Iraq on pragmatic grounds, or on the basis that without United Nations approval it was a violation of international law [1].
Wikipedia does, later, bring up the “blood for oil” slogan as a common one among opponents of the war. But it’s clear that it’s not a central theme. Not suggesting wiki is a final authority, but it is some reflection of the consensus, at least. If you have any counter evidence, I’m all ears.
April 19th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Peter K writes: “Anti-war people constantly minimized how totalitarian Saddam was.”
I can think of no one within the mainstream anti-war movement that “minimized” Saddam’s atrocities in any way whatsover. You say it happened “constantly” so, surely, it will be easy for you to provide some examples.
Or maybe what you really mean is that the left was constant in its refusal to buy into pro-war propagandists’ favorite false dichotomy: those who oppose the war by definition do not oppose Saddam sufficiently.
That tawdry Orwellian trope has got to go. The left opposed the war and Saddam, past and present. Got it?
April 20th, 2006 at 6:19 am
BB – Pinter and Mailer are not liberals, they’re leftists.
April 20th, 2006 at 6:30 am
JC: I link to think that the all leftists are liberals, while not all liberals are leftists. But there’s no reason to blur the distinctions that way and, yes, I do agree that Pinter and Mailer are more leftist than liberal…
April 20th, 2006 at 6:59 am
Christopher Hitchens, September 2002 (Mirror UK): Just on the material aspect – I love it when people darkly describe the coming intervention as “blood for oil”, or equivalent gibberish. Does this mean what it appears to mean, namely that oil is not worth fighting over? Or that it’s no cause for alarm that the oil resources of the region are permanently menaced by a crazy sadist who has already invaded two of his neighbours?
—-
“Anti-war people constantly minimized how totalitarian Saddam was.”
You’re either incredibly stupid or incredibly dishonest. Apparently you know nothing of “anti-war” people or the debate over the war that actually went on in liberal – not to mention conservative – circles. You’re obsessed with a sliver of the hard left and about as irrelevant.
April 20th, 2006 at 7:01 am
Damn Reg, if I’d knew you was one of those lefties I wouldn’t dared challenge them. I thought you was one of those lib-or-tarians.
Ok. If you’re claiming Paine, Whitman, Guthrie, Martin, Rockwell(god that hurt) and Springsteen for your side, then I want Washington, Franklin (Ben and FDR), Lincoln, Truman, JFK, Regan and Thoreau(just kidding..I think) for mine. Because when our nation was in troubled times, they didn’t forever intellectually quibble over the small stuff. They put their country and its people first and did what needed to be done to that end, the PRIMARY requirement of our Constitution btw. An example some may consider following today.
Regarding your 7:12AM comment, I agree with all of it. McCain is going to have to stay away from Falwell and Fox(the Vicente kind anyway) if he wants my time support. He has my one vote at this point.
April 20th, 2006 at 7:17 am
My comment responds to Reg’s earlier comments, not the last he posted.
April 20th, 2006 at 8:22 am
liberal and leftist are two different world-views. A belief in social progressivism usually marks both, but otherwise they are in many ways diametrically opposed to each other.
April 20th, 2006 at 8:52 am
“Anti-war people constantly minimized how totalitarian Saddam was.â€
You’re either incredibly stupid or incredibly dishonest. Apparently you know nothing of “anti-war†people or the debate over the war that actually went on in liberal – not to mention conservative – circles. You’re obsessed with a sliver of the hard left and about as irrelevant.
————–
It’s interesting that so-called anti-war folks can’t acknowledge this fact. Talk about dishonest. If you were against the intervention – like the dictators of Sudan, Iran, Saudia Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Russia and China were – you were logically for leaving Saddam alone and for abandoning the democratic forces of Iraq, like Chomsky-fan Prime Minister Jaafar, and Sistani.
April 20th, 2006 at 9:04 am
Bunker – Wikipedia is a reflection of the guy who wrote the entry.
April 20th, 2006 at 9:06 am
You don’t organize massive marches and throw around slogans like “Bush is the worlds’s worst terrorist” and “we are the rogue state” based on “this might be a justifiable war but we fear it will cause chaos.”
Remember: I’m talking about the loud base, the people who provided the emotion of the anti-war movement.
April 20th, 2006 at 10:51 am
Peter K calls theocrat Sistani a democractic force. Yes, it was said long ago by Chomsky, Klein, others (while Hitch et. al spouted venom at them – particularly Naomi Klein) that Sistani (and Sadr’s) uprisings pushed the occupiers to allow elections. Bremer initially didn’t want them. So if democratic forces are arising in Iraq, it is despite the occupation, not because of it.
Sistani is hardly a democrat, and his views on gays and women are no better than other Islamists. Jafaari is powerless. I’m sure Peter K though wishes it was Chalabi in power.
April 20th, 2006 at 10:53 am
Peter K also seems obsessed with an either/or perspective, negating the democratic and radical left’s perspective of neither Moscow nor Washington during the cold war.
April 20th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
I see that this thread still has a few readers so, with that in mind, here’s a smart NY Times Op Ed on the Mearsheimer/Walt paper, “The Israel Lobby,” and the storm of reactions to same combined with the woeful undercoverage of the controversy in the American media.
http://tinyurl.com/lup6g
April 20th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Its a good piece – Tony Judt wrote the introduction (which I think was a Nation tribute piece originally) to Edward Said’s last book From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map.
April 20th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Peter K writes:
“Anti-war people constantly minimized how totalitarian Saddam was.â€
Any examples? I’m mean you’re so convinced, you must have a few handy.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Paul from Mpls writes: “Wikipedia is a reflection of the guy who wrote the entry.”
no. it’s a reflection of all who wrote and edited it. if you don’t know how wikipedia works, I suggest it’s worth your time to find out, it’s quite interesting.
You do have point that wikipedia is not a final authority, which is exactly what I said in my previous post citing them. If you have any examples–even one!–of leftists making “no blood for oil” the key theme of the anti-war. Bring it on. If you don’t have any examples, you may want to reconsider the origins of your view.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
I just read tony judt’s judicous piece in the ny op ed. thanks rosedog
April 20th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Oh god Peter K, you’re not even worth arguing with. You’re a classic sophist – if not totally sophomoric. Sorry spectacle, that sort of Weekly Standardese you seem to have backed yourself into…
If you want to nurse your lingering bile against people who actually had a clue about this war and leverage your “we wuz right even tho’ we got everything except ‘Saddam’s a tyrant’ wrong – and who else knew ?” discourse on the slogans of the loudest people fronting the anti-war marches, you’ll have to head for the Euston bar and take it up with someone who might actually give a shit. You’re in Saddam-hugger Rumsfeld’s camp – deal with it.
And, of course, no comment on Hitchen’s belief that the war was, indeed, in it’s “material aspect” about oil and well worth the fight for it !!!!
April 20th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
“I’m sure Peter K though wishes it was Chalabi in power.”
Hell…if the truth be known, I wish Chalabi was in power, given the disastrous-if-predictable turn of events. But I’ve always known that was a neo-con fantasy, at best, and with a kid in the military who’s scheduled for duty in the Persian Gulf, I’ll be damned if I’ll support “Blood for Oily Crooks”, even oily crooks who Comrade Hitchens considers “democrats”.
Just saying that a sleaze-bag crook who owes us, like Chalabi, is preferable – from a U.S. perspective, which is where I happen to sit – to a pro-Iranian faction of Islamic fundamentalists, all other things being equal (which, of course, they never are.) That’s the “realist” point-of-view, which ironically seems to converge in some small slice of wishful thinking with the faith of the neo-con crackpots and crazies. Of course the fundamental difference between realists and crackpots is that realists don’t make policy based on their wishful thinking. So I guess the point is moot.
April 20th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
James R – Given the set of names you “claim” for your “camp”, I think your camp is just fine. Except I don’t happen to agree that Reagan is in it.
April 20th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
Ahmed writes:
“I just read tony judt’s judicous piece in the ny op ed.”
judicious indeed. not to mention maddeningly equivocal. but it is in the New York Times, so one can’t fault Mr. Judt alone for that…
April 21st, 2006 at 5:49 am
“your camp is just fine. Except I don’t happen to agree that Reagan is in it. ”
Why not Reg? Millions of walled-in people were allowed to set themselves free on his watch, and he wasn’t a passive participant.
April 21st, 2006 at 6:31 am
Regarding ‘The Israel Lobby’ article, Israel does not need a big lobby in the US to have influence on US policy. The reason is simple. Israel is a free democratic civilized people walled-in and continuously terrorised for 50 years by surrounding religious dictatorships using uncivilized behaviors on its civilians to create chaos, fear, and defeat in their professed goal to drive them into the sea.
We don’t take these kind of behaviors and threats on a free people kindly. It just the way we are, and we are damned proud of it.
It was a very sad day for all concerned in the Israeli/Palestinian 50 year war when the Palestinians, finally given the opportunity to choose their leaders for the future, voted for potentially 50 more years of hate and death for both sides.
What can a free people do in this backward world but wall-in themselves.
April 21st, 2006 at 6:48 am
My “nutshell” version of Reagan as the genius who “ended the Cold War” is the observation that if Reagan’s 1980 version of the nature of the “Evil Empire” had, in fact, been an accurate, credible analysis, Gorbachev would have been an impossible figure to arise on the political landscape within a few short years. I’m not sure anybody got much of anything right – predictively or otherwise – but Darth Vader turned out to be Humpty Dumpty. The collapse of the Soviet Union was NOT, in my view, the product of a few years of Ronald Reagan’s brilliant, innovative strategizing. It was a long time coming and, clearly, the right-wing vastly over-estimated the “totalitarian” nature of a badly fractured, remarkably inefficient social system. Anyone who thinks that movements like Solidarity – or the ultimate ascension of some internal reformist elements like Gorby – were dependent on Ronald Reagan’s theatrics or wild schemes like Star Wars is kidding themselves. Reagan is best remembered as the guy who traded arms with the Ayatollahs, assisted Saddam in his war crimes and assisted the cause of the crazy Jihadists.
That said, the guy had a certain talent and considerable charm and he was nowhere near as delusional as the present Occupant. My wife has worked with guys who met the retired Reagan in the course of producing TV spots with him – lefty types with no political sympathies for the guy – and they said he was one of the nicest men they’d ever met, very unpretentious and jovial, who seemed to genuinely enjoy the company of these lowly video grunts who were just there to do a job. Nancy, on the other hand…
April 21st, 2006 at 6:52 am
Israel is walled in? Not defending Hamas, but you do know that it is Palestinians who are walled in. In terms of the Israel lobby, it is not all-powerful, but when was the last time Israeli Nukes were a story here? Its practically forbidden to talk about.
April 21st, 2006 at 6:55 am
Enough with the anti-semitism, cummings.
April 21st, 2006 at 7:13 am
You’re kidding right?
April 21st, 2006 at 7:26 am
You bastard. You know how much I hate it when I have to explain my jokes.
April 21st, 2006 at 7:32 am
Its hard to tell – I’m accused too often of “anti-semitism” or “self hatred.”
April 21st, 2006 at 7:47 am
“Gorbachev would have been an impossible figure to arise on the political landscape within a few short years.”
Two deaths of leadership had something to do with it.
I am disappointed reg. I specifically did not imply Reagan was a genius and agree with all the other contributing factors you mention, but to diminish Reagan’s contribution to the Berlin Wall coming down when it did exposes an inability for a smart man to recognize his biases.
April 21st, 2006 at 1:27 pm
“Two deaths of leadership had something to do with it.”
Still doesn’t explain how a guy who had obviously more in common with social democrats than Stalinists in terms of his core beliefs could have risen to the highest position in the Soviet leadership and allow the breakup of Eastern Europe without a shot fired if, in fact, the Evil Empire was a totalitarian system with essentially the same proclivities as Hitlerism, bent on our destruction and unresponsive to “detente”. There was no mass movement inside of Russia – just scattered dissidents, including a handful of celebrities – so, as far as I can tell, Gorbachev’s ascension was obviously the outcome of tendencies that had evolved within the Soviet establishment for years. I just don’t see how one can get from “Reagan’s World, circa 1981 when he took office, to a man with Gorby’s open, flexible outlook in four years.
Of course the older layers of the Brezhnevite establishment had to die off, but I believe that the rise of some post-Brezhnev reformist faction was probably inevitable – and that, in fact, this tendency can be traced back to Khruschev, who for all of his flaws and inability to rise above the circumstances and beliefs of his generation, was a pivotal, if contradictory, figure in Soviet politics who deserves at least as much credit as calumny. I’ve always thought the “Soviet threat” was to a great extent overblown and politicized.
(Nixon was a one-man lesson in using communism as a domestic club against political enemies, while fully recognizing that in the “real world” it was a complex issue, to the extent that he could successfully engage the Chinese while they were still in thrall of Maoism. I think this is a lesson that Bush could take from Nixon as regards Iran, frankly – but we don’t really have statesmen any more. Not even one’s who I have the luxury of detesting, like Nixon. At this point I’d vote for Nixon’s corpse in a matchup with Bush. The guy was sinister, but he was also canny and shrewd on the big issues of global confrontation in a way that deserves respect. A serious Poker player vs. the current crew where Condi appears to specialize in Old Maid, Bush in Charades, Cheney in Shadow Puppets and Rummy in Dodgeball.)
April 21st, 2006 at 3:56 pm
Shit…who gives a fuck – but I can’t help myself.
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/04/christopher_hit.html
April 22nd, 2006 at 6:23 am
You’ve been drinking that cheap shit again reg.
April 22nd, 2006 at 9:30 am
I do, in fact, periodically drink Evan Williams bourbon and Dunlivet scotch – both of which qualify as “cheap” but not “shit”. I prefer Evan to Jack and Dunlivet to Dewars (non-reserve) – for both absolute quality and relative value. Not my favorites, but decent and reliable. Of course, these are matters of taste and subjective. One thing I stay away from is Kool-Aid. A lot of the Reagan-worshipers – Peggy Noonan comes first to mind – sound to me like they drink a lot of it.
April 23rd, 2006 at 10:25 pm
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