Walzer on the Left

[C. G. Estabrook]

Sounds to be of a piece with his studies of just wars. Not surprisingly,
only a very few turn out to have been just -- Israel's -- to which we can
now add recent outings by the US.  His influence is apparent in the awful
"What We're Fighting For: A Letter from America," in which "sixty scholars
make the moral case for the war on terrorism," and to which he was a
signatory.  (As a lad, he organized for Eugene McCarthy.) --CGE

On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:


> At a repulsive and tedious Dissent event last week, which for some
> reason I subjected myself to, Walzer & Co. launched their latest issue
> on human rights interventionism. The air was thick with concern -
> though a very depoliticized concern. We heard about Rwanda and Bosnia
> - and U.S. indifference to both - but never anything about the
> politics that produced these disasters. "We" just had to intervene.  
> Hardly a word about the causes of U.S. indifference, and never a word
> about, you know, imperialism. At one point, a rather mild-mannered
> German got up to ask Walzer if he'd support a UN effort to protect
> Palestinians from Israeli violence. For this, he had to endure taunts
> from a few audience members for being European (no kidding) and for
> being indifferent to Israel's safety. Walzer, of course, rejected the
> idea of such a UN force, citing the UN's dismal record (he always
> pointed to the worst of the UN, in an implied contrast with a humanely
> interventionist possible US, a purely phantasmic construction) and the
> fact that both sides want to destroy each other. That only one side
> has the capacity to destroy the other didn't enter into Walzer's
> fantasy. I'd say that's not only stupid, it's dishonest, and an
> apology for imperialism.
> 
> Doug
>