The smug attitude is directed at other leftists who are in the "ladder of force" camp or who are according to Edward Herman, "Left accommadationists" i.e. collaborationsists.
"The reasons for this Left accommodation to what we must call the Superterrorist's antiterrorist agenda are mainly twofold. One is the power of hegemonic ideas, so that even leftists are swept along with the general understanding that the United States is fighting terrorism and is only [?!-pk] a victim of terrorism. Some swallow the New Imperialist premise that the United States is the proper vehicle for reconstructing the world, which it should do in a gentler and kinder fashion. Thus Richard Falk takes this for granted in declaring the U.S. attack on Afghanistan 'the first truly just war since World War II' (The Nation, Oct. 29, 2001)"
Who the fuck on the left is saying the U.S. is *only* a victim of terrorism? Falk certainly doesn't. Herman repeats the "only" bit a number of times in the article Mark Pavlick posted on the 17th.
The New York Times Magazine has a very interesting article on the Communist hunger strikers in Turkey. For some reason it conjured to mind the smug left of Michael Albert, Herman, Yoshie, Carrol, et al. who think a "cultural hunger strike" by the left will win over the masses. As with the Turkish strikers, I doubt it will work, but we'll see.
New York Times Magazine October 21, 2001 THE HUNGER WARRIORS Investigating a Different Kind of Suicide Mission By SCOTT ANDERSON
[clip] Although virtually unnoticed by the outside world, since last autumn Turkey has been the site of the longest -- and now the deadliest -- hunger strike against a government in modern history. At the time of my first visit to the houses of resistance in Kucuk Armutlu in mid-July, the 29th striker had just perished, and the deaths of at least eight more -- including Fatma, Yildiz and Osman -- were imminent.
But even these numbers don't prepare you for the deluge to come. Most of the dead thus far have been from the first wave, those who began their strike last autumn, and very few strikers from that wave are still alive. But four new teams, comprising some 180 more strikers, have joined the fast since then, which means the dying might continue into next summer or beyond, and the final toll could reach the hundreds.
A hunger strike might seem to be an act of ultimate desperation, a weapon of last resort for the powerless, but the reality is a bit more complex. Politically motivated hunger strikes tend to occur in a very specific kind of society and at a very specific time: namely, in places with a long history of official repression, but where that repression has gradually begun to loosen. If it is the institutionalized nature of abuse that fuels the strikers to such extreme action, it is the cracks of liberalization that lead them to believe that such a course might shame the government into change -- and often they are right. Mahatma Gandhi's hunger strikes against British rule in India helped turn British public opinion and hastened Indian independence. Even the 1980-81 hunger strike by the Irish Republican Army -- abandoned after 10 men died -- could be considered a partial success in that it strengthened a perception of the Thatcher government as callous and swelled I.R.A. recruitment. What is remarkable about the Turkish hunger strike, by contrast, is both the apparent smallness of the issue that sparked it and that it continues despite all evidence that it is and will remain a failure.
While the Armutlu strikers have a number of grievances against the Turkish government, their core demand is for the abandonment of a new generation of modern prisons in which inmates are housed in one- or three-man cells and a return to the dormitory-style prisons of the past. It is for this that by mid-July, 29 people, most current or former inmates serving time for political offenses, had died.
For its part, the Turkish government depicts the strikers, most of whom belong to an outlawed Communist group, as members of the ''lunatic left'' -- either ''terrorists'' bent on undermining the state or, at best, impressionable and misguided youths brainwashed into throwing their lives away in a kind of slow-motion Jonestown. So far, it would seem that the Turkish public has largely accepted the government's view, or is simply indifferent, but this has done nothing to dampen the strikers' ardor.
''This is a death fast,'' explains Resit Sari, 44, a member of the second wave. ''We stay on until we die, and when we do, another group will take our place, and another one after that. It goes on until the government agrees to our demands or all of us are dead.'' To underscore that determination, Resit offers a chilling statistic; according to him, not a single striker has voluntarily quit the death fast since it began.
[end clip]