To Gary Farber:
I did not not say solidarity is more important than truth. I said it was an unfair test to demand that the opposition to war mouth some sort of non-boilerplate test of decrying terrorism before it opposes the war, because to that is to concede to the war mongers that opposing the war in some way impedes efforts to reduce terrorism.
Accusations like yours are the sort that cut off conversations. That was exactly my point. And really, do you think the left needs more navel gazing? That there isn't enough critique of Answer? How much is enough?
Good morning.
Timothy: The lefties I've worked with are deep in it with the MDC, and they are active elsewhere in Africa. I'm sure you've had problems with mobilization, and I wish you hadn't, but my problem isn't with the incidental. You are not hallucinating, but you are generalizing in a way I think counterproductive. In this particular case, I just don't see any way to charge that the left is being soft on terrorism by opposing the war without saying x, y, or z, and not in making that charge serve the purposes of people with whom you probably don't agree.
As Bob notes, Yehudit pretty much makes my point. Look how quickly we slide from Stand Down is doesn't take on 3rd world dictatorships to the U.S. is not acting unilaterally and the adults are in charge and Walzer and Gitlin are wrong but at least they are sane because they do some ritual left bashing before making their point. I don't think a more forceful denunciation of Saddam Hussein (but hey, why not? I think he's evil!) is going to convince Yehudit that I'm right about the war.
OK, here's another (longish, sorry) go, without the snappishness I hope. Addressed to Timothy Burke, whose website I enjoyed reading last night (and whose dissertation I enjoyed reading too, ha ha!) even if I think the talk of the political irrelevance of the left is a bit much when Lileks and Sullivan are regular references.
I haven't moved any goalposts. Nor do I live in some fantasy world where Donald Rumsfeld will weep at the advent of world peace if I protest often enough with Noam Chomsky. I just think that the tendency to accuse the left of political irrelevance, and the argument that the left doesn't care enough about 9/11, or Saddam Hussein, is the sort of cheap propaganda that keeps Andrew Sullivan typing.
You say: It is neither tactical nor ethical stupidity to be concerned with a response to terrorism and maintain that this concern must always be simultaneous with opposition to the war.
Nobody disagrees with this statement except, maybe, a couple of lunatics. The people who sign that petition you are complaining about think that war against Iraq is not a good response to terrorism. They make a pretty good case.
Or, to put it another way, just because Chomsky and other luminaries of the left signed doesn't make it wrong.
You say: I am fundamentally opposed to the division of ethical labor that says George Bush is my problem and Saddam Hussein is somebody else's problem, or that 9/11 is everybody's fault but the men who actually flew the planes into the buildings.
Well, me too. It's insane to think the people who flew the planes into the World Trade Center aren't at fault. NOBODY THINKS THAT! When you put things this way, you buy into Bill O'Reilly's world, and you should be called on it. Really, I don't mean to be snappish here. I can imagine being irritated by someone on the left. But this caricature is unfair, and it puts a burden on anyone protesting the war that is unnecessary. Nobody thinks Saddam Hussein isn't a problem except for a few kooks at ANSWER, either. But we're a lot more likely to stop a unjust and stupid war by protesting against Bush, for any number of reasons that speak well of the U.S. (and other) democratic political processes. That doesn't mean that petition signers think Saddam Hussein is somebody else's problem. It means they are doing what they can when they can. Yes indeed, because they, and not the administration, are the hard-headed pragmatic realists after all.
You say: I also didn't give into the narcissism of saying that it was all Ronald Reagan's fault anyway even though there were plenty of ways in which the Reagan Administration bore tremendous fault for the sorry state of southern Africa in the 1980s.
This is what got me going in the first place. This is the caricature. That narcissistic left, so unwilling to face up to despotisms in South Africa. Well, I hate Mugabe too. So do others on the left. And there were precious few idiots who thought Reagan was responsible for all the evil in the world, and a lot more idiots who thought he defended freedom and democracy everywhere. I don't think it's all Reagan's fault, but I do think he was a bastard, and if he were starting this war I'd be looking for ways to tell people that he shouldn't.
You say: connect yourself more profoundly to a vastly wider and more complicatedly situated public that may not share every, or even most, of your pet orthodoxies--but which might be willing to oppose the war, if only opposing the war is not inevitably depicted by both right AND left as being inherently antagonistic or different from opposing terrorism.
What exactly do you know about my pet orthodoxies? You're assuming a great deal. But anyway, I stand by my original point. Your call for the protestors, and for the petition writers, to write something more than what you call boilerplate sure seems to bolster the case for war. What do you want them to say? "He's evil and has to go but not now with this President, or may with this president in a little bit and he's evil." Focus helps in a movement like this, and the focus is understandably on the war at hand. Not everything a Republican says is false, sure; but look at those poll numbers, and look at the streets. Are you so sure that the left is so attached to its pet orthodoxies that it isn't connecting with the masses?
Sorry to get so irritated. It was the "boilerplate" in Burke's note that set me off. What sort of statement wouldn't be "boilerplate" for someone so eager to find the left hating America first?
I got the same email Timothy Burke mentioned above, and I can't see what he's complaining about. People who believe that this war is morally wrong, will increase the chance of terrorist attack, and will inflate the sense of imperial right evident in Bush administration officials, are signing on to a statement against the war. But Burke wants a different statement, prefaced with an apology for not being hard enough on Saddam Hussein and evil? Fuck that nonsense. Tactically, that's a stupid move, conceding moral ground to your opponents. Historically, it's also crap: the left in the States has a pretty good record opposing state oppression, and not just that by client states of the U.S. Whatever you believe about that, in this case, it's surely Rumsfeld who needs to admit he's been coddling.
But Burke would have us believe that "It's just an expression of concern, nothing more--and a prelude to changing the subject back to something more favored. "Yeah, that's bad, but SO IS THE UNITED STATES." Bullshit. It's an argument that the Bush Administration hasn't made a case for war. And they haven't. The petition is right. What good would it do to print a petition against Saddam Hussein and send it to Iraq, anyway?
Again, same problem. Nobody on the left is allowed to make an argument, because "reasonable liberals" who are "really concerned about Saddam Hussein" (and fucking patronizing, too) keep asking leftists to denounce Noam Chomsky before clearing their throat. Just as Julian Bond is asked to denounce Louis Farrakhan before commenting on Florida. And just as ridiculous.
Just an answer from the Atrios comment section, cause I'm too slow and stupid to do it another way. I posted on the O'Reilly tough guys duping the reasonable left. You said it was over the line, because there is no betrayal of principle in conceding that the left has something to learn.
But there is. The left has no more to learn about foreign policy than the right; to my mind a lot less, sure, but let's call it equal for the sake of argument. This administration has proven itself totally inept in dealing with the violence that hit my and your city (and Jane Galt's too, but I guess she's so clever and reasonable she understood that violence better than us). This administration is the voice of the conservative foreign policy establishment. The really conservative foreign policy establishment. And Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz and the Res have shown themselves idiots -- miscalculating tactics, pissing away support, letting nuclear powers come close to dropping bombs, and even, in their very own showpiece for lefty weakness on foreign policy, creating a nightmarish mess in North Korea by alternately bullying and appeasing delusional Stalinists. To say, as do Tapped and Talking Points and I guess CalPundit, that there is some lefty tendency to avoid the hard issues of foreign policy, is masochistic. There may be cases -- there always are cases -- but there is no reason, other than the whining of armchair generals like Charles Krauthammer, to think the right is more serious or competent at the nuts and bolts of foreign policy. For christ's sake, the administration is trolling for votes on the security council to start a war that even Americans don't want. Why in hell should we have to listen to reasonable liberals tell us that the left has a problem (that the right presumably does not) after that?
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| 2003 | 7 |
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