I really object to the tendency to hone in on the anti-semitic, world domination angle re: Nazism. The moral entrepreneurship that goes on here is really troubling. Why play such a "shut down the conversation" trump card? It makes your and others' critique of the left look desperate.
I think it is true that there is a kind of self-hating American streak that runs through the left. Running through the not quite consciousness of our leftism, is probably an initial impulse that brought us to our critique of capitalism in the first place. It is really about self-preservation while trying to survive in the belly of the beast, no? It is not unlike what animates the underdeveloped critique of US culture in the Planet of the Apes. 9-11 left many people pounding their fists in the sand and screaming, "you finally did it you bastards" --though the dialogue changed slightly to: "if you had listened to us...the righteous ones..."
It is that kind of self-righteousness that got Noam Chomsky in trouble. It pressed too many hot buttons with people who are his putative allies because they sense, and rightly so, that this does not play well in Peoria. Why? Because while they might not articulate it this clearly, most USers felt the Schadenfrued.
There was a not insignificant response from non-USers on every list I belonged to at the time: "ha ha ha. You guys finally got it. You had it coming. And now you're knocked down a peg or two." It was a disturbing kind of Schadenfrued and that's what I, and I think Doug and others, sensed in the responses of some on this list.
In the face of that kind of psychological anxiety chain, there are a few ways to respond. For, after all, what is going on here if you're aligned with the left? As a USer, and you can't help having those feelings (Budge has a nice line from a song about this...hope he's reading!), what do you do? You are clearly a member of a group of people that is despised--and for good (from their perspective) they want to wipe the US out. So, Carrol's dictum--try to think of yourself as NOT an American--doesn't sit well.
But, you also recognize an affinity with the left, among whom are many non-USers who are trying hard to repress their own Schadenfrued--a not undeserved response, let's be clear. We are a bunch of self-absorbed whiney snots who lead relatively charmed lives.
The social defense is to engage in a kind of splitting and projection where the nuances Chip pleads for vanish, replaced by a dead end binarism.
Only one person upheld ObL, Inc. as a force of anti-imperialism. Another person occ. made forays in that direction, but never stuck to it.
A more significant group of lefties saw this as one of those peculiar historical events that can destabilize empire. The goal was to latch onto that event and exacerbate its impact, by marshalling the forces of anti-imperialism in one great surge against Empire. This is not to say that they envisioned that it would happen quickly. But, like Y*shie said, it would not be unlike WWI leading to the instantiation of a communist regime in Russia. That was and remains the goal for them, right?
What I saw in their response was not anti imperialism. Rather, what I saw was anti-US-imperialism. They were not 'hate America firsters' but, rather, 'hate US imperialism only, ignore other forms of imperialistic tyranny'. Their answer/defense is that US imperialism is the worst and the most damaging to everyone, and especially to the left. There is a binary decision structure here as to how to "rate" imperialist forces.
I'm not particularly fond of that approach, but I think it can have its uses and shouldn't be rejected out of hand. In this case, though, when talking about how to advance a viable left position, the black/white binarism has ho! ho! got to go! I recognize that this is what you are saying, but, like Dennis Breslin, I think it better to run far away from any defense of the justifications of the "War on Terrism" as grounded in rescuing people from their evil, nationalist, local oppressors.
Kelley