Nathan Newman wrote:
> How about the pathetic number of people at antiwar marches in New York
> City
> for the two years that ANSWER was leading the rallies. As soon as
> groups
> like United for Peace & Justice took over organizing them, they ballooned
> to hundreds of thousands of marchers.
-That's a very convenient liberal take on the anti-war movement, which -just happens to be wrong. The problem with the anti-war movement is more -than just one cause. It certainly didn't help that the liberal left has -conveniently been supporting imperialist wars when they were conducted -by their guy (Bill Clinton).
Except the folks I'm talking about who were alienated from the ANSWER-led antiwar movement were also alienated from those same people because they didn't seem to give a shit when the Kosovars were being mass murdered. The indifference to the murder of those in the Twin Towers and the Kosovars are in that sense linked-- as long as they were allied with "imperialism", the left called for doing nothing to help them or bring their murderers to justice.
I think it's precisely the moral apathy you promote which makes Bush's calls for global democracy seem so appealing to many Americans. While the left has a rhetorical commitment to democracy and justice, they have no program for achieving it, other than screaming "bring the troops home" or whatnot. Even when Kosovars were being murdered on the nightly news, the ANSWER-led coalitions were hailing Milosevich as a legitimate leader whose "national sovereignty" had to be respected.
Frankly, my criticism of Bill Clinton is that he didn't do enough. I wish he and others countries had done more when the slaughter in Rwanda started. As the recent movie HOTEL RWANDA made clear (with very good politics), the root of the conflict lay with the imperial powers, but that was no excuse for them to sit it out and watch hundreds of thousands of people murdered.
It is just a bizarre argument for the Left to argue that because US actions created horrible conditions around the world, we should now therefore defend that horrible status quo at every turn in the name of "national sovereignty."
The poverty of the antiwar movement is that they had no non-violent program for promoting democracy and human rights in Iraq. Instead, they let Bush define the choice as between his invasion or doing nothing. And given that choice, the population went with Bush, since they had no third option to uphold human rights for the Iraqi people.
That's the political bankruptcy of the antiwar left, that most of the time Bush sounds more committed to human rights these days than the antiwar activists. He doesn't really mean it of course, but it's sad he sounds so much better.
Nathan Newman