>Confronted with dangerous lunacy like that, the left has no choice but to
>forget its own differences and unite in opposition.
No, this is exactly what we should not do-- we should unite IN FAVOR of something, and if parts of the left can't be for anything (the WWP anti-war, but no mention of peace, tolerance or justice line), then they should be left by the wayside.
We need a Left that can say Yes- yes to justice, yes to tolerance, yes to peace, yes to rational policy that will both save lives globally while making Americans secure in a more peaceful and cooperative world.
If the Left can't promise security to the American people, then will be irrelevant politically and will remain so. Luckily, if the Left can just have the guts to vote down the WWPnicks, the policy most of the democratic left supports does promise that security, namely:
- cooperative police work between nations to catch the perpetrators - international tribunals to try them for war crimes to assure global acceptance of their trials - addressing real grievances of the muslim world (such as the Palestinian cause) to isolate the murderers from the general population - global economic justice to eliminate the misery which feeds resentment against the US and sympathy for such terrorism - defense of civil liberties in favor of sane security measures that don't breed more police abuses and cycles of resentment and violence
The lesson of dealing with terrorism in every nation has been that war and repression doesn't solve the issue-- the goal has to be to isolate from the general population the violence-junkies who fester like sores on misery. Rational security is useful but ultimately addressing real misery and real suffering leaves those violence junkies isolated and without legitimacy, leaving them to eventual exposure by previous allies more interested in preserving a just peace than risking new rounds of violence by leaving such terrorists loose.
But without the just peace as a precondition, no one will turn the terrorists over and help destroy them. Until that point, terrorism is supported passively as the tool of the weak whose inaction allows it to survive. The raw reality that the Bush bombers have to learn is that you can't bomb these passive non-actors into action, you need to positively solicit their action in a cooperative world through real justice.
That lesson in attaining security is what the Left has to offer the American people. Until we start offering it, rather than the thin gruel of morally blind empty anti-war rhetoric, the Left will be politically irrelevant in this debate.
Nathan Newman
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