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CounterPunch
December
13, 2002
Screw the Liberal
Hawks
by JORDY CUMMINGS
A group of New York area "liberals,"
the cream of civil society, listen to a group of liberal
hacks make arguments against a war on Iraq. All 150 of them seem
to agree with the speakers' standard liberal view about Saddam
being a monster but that inspections need time to work, etc.
They are quickly turned around by a genuine representation of
Iraqi-ness - - a real live Arab!! and not one of those
Palestinians either! - Kanan Makiya, who whips them into
a cruise-missile left frenzy with talk of how a war in Iraq is
a moral imperative, and that Iraqis generally want this war.
Makiya could very well genuinely believe that the distant goal
of neoliberalism gives moral neccessitation to the slaughter
of his country-men by new and improved Patriot missiles cheered
on by the patriotic left. As Edward Said has recently pointed
out, Makiya has the air of a scoundrel. Not to quibble further,
but I never saw Ken Saro-Wiwa beg the United States to invade
Nigeria, For that matter, I doubt that many Palestinians or Israeli
peace activists think the best way to end the occupation would
be for Uncle Sam to rain cluster-bombs on Tel Aviv. No sincere
believer in human rights can believe that a large human-rights
violator, let alone any nation, impose them.
What's the point of all this? A particularly
vulgar piece of journalism by one George Packer in the Sunday
New York Times magazine. In what seems disturbingly like a companion
piece, yet more cultural cold-war influenced than a recent
Nation article on the "left and 911," Packer interviews
a group of "liberal intellectuals," all of whom supported
US actions in the Balkans in the early 90's, something Packer
terms the "Bosnia consensus." This is the first step
in an underhanded effort to discredit the real antiwar
movement, not surprisingly Packer makes a David Horowitz-style
intellectual leap and claims Noam Chomsky defended Slobodan Milosevic.
Reading the interviews with the "New Humanitarians,"
of whom views are mixed in regards to Iraq (but all accept the
premise of US power) I found myself wondering why Packer did
not find it neccessary to interview one Muslim or Arab writer.
I should have known he would end the piece with a few fightin'
words from Makiya.
In fact, Packer deploys horrendous second-person
manipulation from the first sentence of the article, of which
it seems clear that the purpose is to alienate readers, even
those who are antiwar, from participating in any mass movement
against the upcoming Iraq war....
"If you're a liberal, why haven't
you joined the antiwar movement? More importantly why is there
no antiwar movement that you'd like to join?....Where are the
antiwarriors?"
Packer does give lip-service to the growth
of antiwar activitiy, but he notes in a Gitlinian fashion that
the demonstrators' slogans are not nuanced enough. Perhaps Leon
Weiseltier could have done a better job. This is followed by
the claim that being that it is unconsstructive, the antiwar
movement is unworthy of "liberal support." I am wondering
if the unnuanced songs of the Civil Rights movement were unworthy
of liberal support. Just about every positive mass movement in
American history gains elite acceptance, if not implementation
through "liberal support," and this is, underneath
the obvious critiques that dogmatic leftists and rightists may
have about liberalism, a good thing. The Tet offensive turned
a lot of establishment types against the war in Vietnam. Likewise
Bush's expected cavalierness in the face of succesful weapons
inspections. Make no mistake, Packer has good timing.
Packer constructs a false dichotomy between
the "left" that finds all American actions to be"Imperialist"
and a "right" that eschews foreign policy as social
work. The "Bosnia consensus" was formed by a number
of people, who had previously been anti-war, those who were involved
in "the sixties." These "new humanitarians"
were hellbent for leather for each and every Uncle Sam action
of the nineties, and following 911, the War on Terrorism. On
some level, this should discredit any honest particpation from
these types in an honest antiwar movement. Fuck the liberals.
Fuck them straight in their ears.
But wait. There is now some sectarianism
among this "tiny but influential" group of liberal
intellectuals. This sez Packer, is as fierce as any argument
since Vietnam. Oy. IT gets even more patheric...Packer
claims that there is a lesser and greater jihad for these folks.
The greater one is the one inside, between the hope of human
rights and democracy and their innate mistrust of President Bush.
It seems to me that even entertaining the notion that Bush has
plans at work to create a wonderful democratic Iraq is about
as delusional as thinking that the Soviet Union was really preserving
socialism in Prague.
There are a variety of interviews with
quite a few of the usual suspects, none of whom have anything
substantive to say beyond the script that Packer has already
written for them. They simply supply variations on the theme.
Here we see Ignatieff thinking containment has worked (never
mind the genocidal sanctions.) There we see Walzer being against
the war, not being "just" in his eyes, but explaining
that he wouldn't participate in a movement that would "strengthen
the hand of Saddam." Nevermind the Bushian turn of phrase,
Walzer is clearly not foursquare against the war. Though he claims
knowledge that the antiwar movement he joined in the sixties
"strengthened" the Vietcong because "they had
already won," he knows that no one is out to strengthen
the hand of Saddam, not even the Workers World Party. On the
other hand, Walzer has always enjoyed strengthening the hand
of Sharon, but that is an entirely different issue.
Christopher Hitchens out-Horowitzes Horowitz
in adopting the worst of ultra-left demagogery for ultra-right
purposes. He must really being entertaining himself. His argument
in favor of war is not liberal, it is neoconservative. He claims
that there is a "secret agenda" and lets us in, that
a democratic Iraq would lessen the dominance of Saudi Arabia.
He must have really been in a state of cognitive dissonance over
the Kissinger thing, because he embarassed even himself with
statements like "Americanization is the most revolutionary
force in the world.....I feel like I did in the sixties working
with revolutionaries...thats what I'm doing ...I'm helping a
very desperate underground....reminds me of my better days."
David Rieff has a nuanced position, and
seems to be the odd man out of this crowd, claiming realistically,
in my opinion, that the war in Bosnia was about supporting a
democracy, while Iraq is simply being sold as imposing democracy,
which isn't even clear. Leon Wieseltier plays an interesting,
if unintentionally pathetic doublespeak game by claiming that
war may be neccessary but he opposes it because it would be playing
with fire. Paul Berman goes off the deep-end like a typical neo-con
claiming that Iraq is a war for Western civilization. Most entertaininglyt,
he quizzically refers to Tony Blair as leader of the free world.
But he doesn't trust Bush and the neocons. In Packer's view,
this leaves him, like all of New Humanitarians, in the familiar
position of "intellectuals with an arsenal of ideas and
no way to deploy them."
This is the biggest lie of Packer's many
big lies. The liberal hawks have become America's secret strikeforce
to mobilize liberals, democrats and progressives to support the
homeland. They have had plenty of opportunity. Those who sincerely
oppose the war can throw caution to the wind and join and even
help organize "liberal," even New Republic editing
Zionists who happen to be opposed to Bush's war plans. This
is as important time as ever in American history to build a mass
antiwar movement of leftists and rightists and liberlas and socialists
and conservatives and communists and libertarians allike. Let
us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late. So come on,
Leon, come on, Michael, write a long-winded placard and tell
your friends. Maybe one of you can even come up to the dais.
Not gonna happen.
Fuck the liberals. Fuck them straight
in the ear.
Jordy Cummings
can be reached at: yorgos33ca@yahoo.ca
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