> Nathan Newman wrote:
>
>> We had no idea before either because Saddam Hussein was brutalizing
>> them.
>
> So you think it's ok for the U.S. to invade countries to "liberate" them?
>
>> And the failure of the Left to have a program for bringing democracy and
>> a
>> voice to the people of Iraq (and Afghanistan and Kosovo and etc.)
>> without
>> use of those B-52s is why it lacks the moral authority to stop any of
>> these
>> wars.
>
> So, as the shrinks say, what's your idea about that? A new Abraham
> Lincoln brigade? A better U.S. imperialism? Isn't the liberation of Iraq
> the business of Iraqis, and not Americans?
Good questions, and they raise something that's bothered me for a long time. Even before Pearl Harbor, there were Americans who wanted to participate in the fight against fascism. There's the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, of course, and I recall reports of men travelling to Canada to enlist with British forces. Of course, today, we respect those people for their early and forthright opposition to fascism, and for their bravery, of course.
But I don't recall anything like this happening from the Left since then. Sure, I can think of examples of right-wing fuckheads who leapt for the chance to fight in Asia (like John Birch), and even a few who went beyond reading _Soldier of Fortune_ to make a life for themselves as mercenaries in the world's various hell-holes. But by and large, the idea of men (and women) of the American Left organizing to take up arms against fascist regimes seems to have pretty much evaporated. There are rare exceptions, of course (the lone individual who might've travelled to Hanoi to help out). But the idea of an Abraham Lincoln Brigade-like group organizing around the project of, say, deposing the Taliban or Saddam Hussein seems to have evaporated.
I don't think it's a matter of simple isolationism; after all, the Left hasn't re-appraised the Abraham Lincoln Brigades as a bad thing, so I don't think that's the guiding principle here. But why is this? Is it due to a stronger pacifist stance following Vietnam? Has the U.S. government's record of intervention horrors given such things a bad name? Is it that warfare's gotten so horrific that a spontaneous, anarcho-syndicalist militia hasn't got a chance? Is it just a dislike of guns?