Leftists Who Love the War Too Much

[Mark Pavlick]

>
>Richard Goldstein
>Neohawks
>Leftists Who Love the War Too Much
>October 30 - November 5, 2002, Village Voice
>
>
>Greil Marcus is a discerning radical humanist. So it was a shock to pick up
>the progressive paper First of the Month and find him dissing leftist
>intellectuals for their skepticism about the war on terror. Marcus is not
>the only member of the counterculturati to find the hawk within. Dan Savage,
>the shoot-from-the-hip sex columnist, has lately become hip to the shoot.
>Then there's Christopher Hitchens, the ex-socialist who has found an
>occasion in 9-11 to revise his ideological profile. He is now a latter-day
>incarnation of the Cold War liberal. Hitchens's recent homage to George
>Orwell includes a remarkable defense of his work for the British government
>during the McCarthy era, when Orwell supplied lists of suspected com-symps,
>dutifully noting who was homosexual-or Jewish. Hey, says Hitchens, Orwell
>wasn't lying.
>
>I can't think of any comparable example of bad faith among the neohawks, but
>I do have some thoughts about what makes them run. For one thing, there's a
>real temptation to leave the chronic depression and ample masochism of the
>left behind. The war on terror can seem like an opening to build a muscular
>new progressivism with its feet on the ground. And speaking of feet, there's
>an undeniable satisfaction in kicking a masochist while he's down. Among the
>many rewards for sadism these days is the power it confers-and for
>progressives power is in terribly short supply. Finally, never underestimate
>the appeal to a critic of being taken seriously, and that means declaring
>your independence from left-wing "orthodoxies."
>
>This is not to say that the thinking of these neohawks can be dismissed as
>status anxiety. The danger is real and their sense of urgency is
>appropriate. Hitchens is correct to point out that the militant Islamists
>are fascists. Marcus is right to recoil from Noam Chomsky's reductive
>response to 9-11 (though he's guilty himself of a reductive response to
>Susan Sontag). But there is much more to the anti-war movement than
>ideologically driven rigidity. There are plenty of pragmatists arguing for
>peace, and a sound moral case for standing down. It's not the critique but
>the contempt for their dovish peers that reveals the neohawks' denial.
>
>When Ron Rosenbaum lambastes anti-U.S. peace marchers-and uses his disdain
>for them as an excuse to declare his severance from the left-he represses
>his memory of the Vietnam peace movement, which also had its share of
>self-righteous fools. Such amnesia is a prerequisite for breaking ranks,
>which has become a post-9-11 ritual among pomo pundits. Like the revisionist
>liberals who became neocons in the 1970s, these neohawks invoke the blessed
>memory of Orwell or Hannah Arendt-as Marcus does when he argues that the
>situation produced by 9-11 is entirely new. Therefore, the knowledge gleaned
>from Vietnam-and from all the disastrous campaigns of American imperialism
>over the last century-is to be disregarded. In order to respond to the
>present danger, we must forget what we know.
>
>
>What we know about U.S. foreign policy is that it played a crucial part in
>the rise of Muslim militance. You don't have to condone the attacks of 9-11
>to understand that suicide bombers are driven by a response to real
>conditions, and America had much to do with creating those conditions. Now
>we find ourselves in the unenviable (but not unfamiliar) position of
>bolstering dictatorships in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt that suppress
>a democratic opposition-because it is Islamist.
>
>The Bush doctrine comes veiled in an assurance that the societies we create
>in the countries we invade will be democratic and moderate. But how is that
>possible in the current climate? Already there are rumblings about returning
>a king to Iraq. Shades of the Shah, whom we foisted on Iran after we helped
>overthrow its democratically elected leader in 1953. We know where the
>Peacock Throne led. How can anyone believe that the U.S., which gave
>chemical weapons to Saddam (in order to strengthen his position against
>Iran) and armed the fundamentalists in Afghanistan (in order to build a
>bulwark against the Soviets), is now able to manage a region embroiled in
>the consequences of its machinations?
>
>We know that Bush's motivation in Iraq is at least partly economic.
>Regulating the flow of oil from the world's second-largest petroleum
>producer would enable us to undercut OPEC and give us enormous leverage over
>Russia, which is dependent on oil prices for its recovery. Military bases in
>Iraq and Afghanistan would allow us to surround Iran and loosen our ties to
>the Saudis. Zionists who welcome the protection of America should consider
>that Israel could become expendable if it is no longer deemed geopolitically
>necessary. That's just one of the cataclysmic changes that may ensue from
>U.S. ambitions, which are imperial in the most traditional sense. The Bush
>doctrine abrogates the major innovation of American foreign policy, which
>was to rely on our economic strength rather than our military power. Now we
>are setting out to run the world by force of arms, a monumentally
>expensive-and offensive-proposition.
>
>What will America be like in a permanent state of combat? The working
>assumption is that the economy will rebound, but even if it does, the cost
>of keeping the military locked and loaded against many enemies is bound to
>shrivel the already shrunken public sector. That means an even greater
>income gap and a further erosion of funding for education, environmental
>cleanup, health care, and the rest. We will be a country in which Billie
>Holiday's maxim "God bless the child that's got its own" becomes a fact of
>life for all of us.
>
>In many ways, this potential America corresponds to the conservative
>worldview, but for progressives it should be as ominous as the threat posed
>by terrorists. And we will still face the danger of strikes against our
>cities by a transnational movement that would like nothing better than to
>see the Ashcroft doctrine fully implemented here. When Osama bin Laden
>predicted that America would become a hell for its people, he was speaking
>from a deep understanding of freedom's fragility. Even a victorious war
>could produce the conditions that fulfill his dream. The great strength of
>the left is its analysis of social dynamics. To jettison this knowledge,
>along with the lessons of recent history, is to invite the worst possible
>future.
>
>This is not a brief for pacifism. There are times when war is necessary,
>and, in the media at least, there is a real debate about whether this is
>such a moment. The discussion isn't being led by chastened radicals but by
>mainstream liberals. The best arguments against invading Iraq can be found
>in The New York Times. Here you will discover an alternative to both Noam
>Chomsky and the Bush doctrine-a policy based on cooperative engagement and
>domestic defense.
>
>9-11 did produce a new situation, but it makes a very old demand on us: to
>comprehend the world's complexity. That's something the neohawks have yet to
>demonstrate.
>
>
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>This story is part of the Voice's ongoing coverage of the war on terror.
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