> At 12:02 PM -0400 9/29/02, Nathan Newman wrote:
> >Actually, I think the broad point is best phrased as Napoleonic, since
that
> >was the first wave of invasion backed by the idea of spreading democratic
> >enlightenment ideals. Without democracy, governments have no legitimate
> >sovereignty over their peoples so other governments have as much right to
> >displace them as they do to hold that illegitimate power. The issue is
not
> >the "oppressed masses" since they have no say either way.
>
> Why the constant necessity to refer to wars and revolutions of the
> past? Because the present gives you no plausible excuse for this war
> -- the war to destroy the republican principle, not to spread it,
> unlike General Bonaparte's -- that a self-identified leftist can
> believe in without a bad faith.
Since I was responding to the charge of cultural imperialism, I was pointing out that the principle I was noting comes not from the colonial period but from the Napoleonic one where white countries were invading other white countries. It is not "White Man's Burden" but the basic thrust of the Enlightenment critique of the legitimacy of non-democratic governments.
And how does an invasion of dictatorial Iraq attack the republican principle? That's just bizarre.
The "anti-imperialism" of the 90s-- defending the dictators of Haiti, Somalia, Serbia and Iraq from overthrow -- has picked some of the most miserable examples of governance to defend. Of course, on principle one defends bad actors for the ideal, such as defending Nazis free speech, but when the bad actors become the rule, one has to ask if something else is going on.
Part of the answer is that real progressive anti-interventionism won significant political victories in the 1970s in convincing the American people not to attack legitimate democratic regimes in the developing world. Despite the anticommunism of the Reaganites, they could not sell military action against the Sandinistas and had to settle for the on-off support for the Contras, far less than they wanted. This has left the only targets of American militarism the worst refuse of dictatorial governance around the world.
My argument is not for war in Iraq-- since as I've repeatedly noted I'm against the war -- but that the left makes a grave mistake when they dismiss the arguments of fellow progressives who support intervention. There are principled reasons to support such intervention. I just think the likely empirical results rule against such an intervention, but arguing such empiricism requires facts and argumentation, not denunciation and excommunication of heretics.
-- Nathan Newman