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Today's Stories February 27, 2008 David Rosen Playing the Race Card: Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political Dirty Tricks February 26, 2008 Debbie Nathan Confessions of a Gitmo Guard Alan Dershowitz v. Frank Menetrez On Finkelstein Harvey Wasserman How Ohio Got Nuked Michael Colby Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals Gary Leupp Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade David Orchard The New Conquistadors: Canada in Afghanistan Martha Rosenberg The Big HRT Fran Shor The Electoral Circus and Nader's Sideshow Serge Halimi The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto: Bernard Henri-Levy's Plan for the French Left Global Balkans Neo-Liberalism and Protectorate States in the Post-Yugoslav Balkans: an Interview with Tariq Ali Website of the Day Texistentialism   February 25, 2008 Roger Morris A Death in Damascus Anthony DiMaggio Military Bases, the Media and the Democrats Ralph Nader Why I'm Running Patrick Cockburn Iraq Broils Paul Craig Roberts Kosovo and the Empire Crazies Peter Morici Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms Dave Lindorff General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That Minot Nuke Incident Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film Heather Gray James Orange, Civil Rights Legend Robert Weitzel Accomodating Torture John Halle Kucinich Goes Down Website of the Day Do the Trunk Monkey! February 23 / 4, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain Paul Craig Roberts Obama and Global Trade Wajahat Ali Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon on the 9/11 Commission Ralph Nader Neutering the FDA Jürgen Vsych "What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?" Fidel Castro Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo David Macaray Unions Under Assault Jeremy Scahill The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence David Krieger Stanley Sheinbaum Caging the Cold War Monster Ron Jacobs Building for the Future Michael Garrity The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies Brian McKenna Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down Missy Beattie Over the Hill with John McCain Fred Gardner American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly) Boris Kagarlitsky The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement Mike Ferner Kick That Barrel Dan Bacher On the Trail with the Border Angels Christopher Ketcham Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread Poets' Basement Davies and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Obama Mariachi   February 22, 2008 Mike Whitney The Bonfire of Capital Jason Hribal Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet Liaquat Ali Khan Arresting Musharraf Joshua Frank That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child Dave Lindorff Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for Her! Liliana Segura When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion Robert Fantina Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen? Yifat Susskind The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women Norm Kent Pushing 60 with Pot Website of the Day Bush Gets Down in Liberia February 21, 2008 Saul Landau Fidel Steps Aside Elizabeth Schulte Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed Helen Redmond Health Care as a Human Right Benjamin Dangl Undermining Bolivia Michael Levitin Kosovo's Dilemma Liam Leonard Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle Patrick Irelan Land and Food in Venezuela Linn Cohen-Cole Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto Michael Simmons Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music CounterPunch News Service A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs Website of the Day Cop Abuse in Shreveport   February 20, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Lies and Spies Paul Krassner My Brief Encounter with Fidel Castro Fawzia Afzal-Khan The Pakistani Elections Farzana Versey The Great Dictator: Musharraf, Peace and the Autumn of the Patriarch Allan Nairn Dying for a Second Round: Israel's New Plan to Attack Lebanon John V. Whitbeck If Kosovo, Why Not Palestine? Niranjan Ramakrishnan A Balcony Seat to Our Own Balkanization? Steve Eckardt Cuba Sans Fidel: No News is Big News Lee Sustar Union-Busting at Freightliner Mike Ferner How Sick of It are You? Website of the Day The US Military Index   February 19, 2008 Uri Avnery Blood and Champagne Paul Craig Roberts Paying Insurgents Not to Fight Gary Leupp The Independence of Kosovo Fidel Castro The Moment Has Come David Macaray Management's Dirty Little Secret Reza Fiyouzat Buck the Circus! The Left and the Elections Valerie Morse The New Zealand Terror Raids: Land of the Long White Lie Walter Brasch Bush on Safari Website of the Day Don't Think Twice, It's Alright   February 18, 2008 Wajahat Ali Free Pakistan: an Interview with Imran Khan Diana Johnstone NATO's Kosovo Colony Paul Craig Roberts What Do We Stand For? Andy Worthington Gitmo: "We're Making This Up as We Go Along" Debbie Nathan Bernie Ward's Sex Tapes Anthony DiMaggio Following the Money Trail: the Democratic Party and the Business of Elections Bill Simpich Ten Years Ago, People Power Stopped Clinton in Iraq Eva Liddell A Short History of Super-Delegates: Hope, Yes! But Pay in Cash Christopher Brauchli The President Who Couldn't Keep His Word: Short-Changing Veterans Stephen Soldz Wikileaks is Under Attack! Johann Rossouw The Ouster of Thabo Mbeki: South Africa and the Costs of Neoliberalism Website of the Day Sick of It Day!   February 16 / 17, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Terrorists Still at Ground Zero, 7 World Trade Tower, Lower Manhattan Ralph Nader We the Corporations ... David Macaray The Big Buy Out: Did GM Drive Another Nail in Labor's Coffin? William J. Peace Wheelchair Dumping Ron Jacobs War on the Psyche: Shellshock and Redemption Diane Christian War Corrupts Alan Maass Oil, Blood and Greed: Taking Upton Sinclair to the Big Screen (and Beyond) Ramzy Baroud Iraq and the US Elections Michael Donnelly Genitalia First! Old Guard Feminists Play the XX Card Cpt. Paul Watson The Art of Finding Whalers James L. Secor China Diary: Spring Festival and New Year 2008 Eve Bachrach Bush Returns to Africa Nikolas Kozloff Hugo Chávez's Anti-Imperialist Army Stephen Gowans Steven Spielberg, Faux-Humanitarian Missy Beattie To Vote or Not to Vote? David Michael Green Warming Slowly to Obama Wajahat Ali Attack of the Info-tainment Circus Poets' Basement Gibbons, Willson, Mickey Z., Orloski and Reuther Website of the Day Yellowstone's Bison Need Your Help--NOW!     February 15, 2008 George Szamuely The Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo Patrick Cockburn Ground-Truthing the Surge: Is the US Really Bringing Stability to Baghdad? Wajahat Ali Pakistan is Burning: an Interview with Steve Coll on the Taliban, Bin Laden and the Bush Administration Mike Whitney Henry Paulsen's Wild Ride on the Economic Hindenberg Alan Farago God and the Democrats Chris Genovali Alberta's Black Gold Rush Jacob Hornberger Courting Injustice: Scalia on Torture Dave Lindorff Snoops Always Ring Twice: Bush's Protect America Bill Bull Website of the Day Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams     February 14, 2008 Kathleen and Bill Christison Palestine in the Mind of America Mike Whitney Swan Song for NATO Clancy Sigal Strike Notes from a Screenwriter George Wuerthner A Bloody Sham: the Yellowstone Bison Slaughter Peter Morici Is Bernanke Headed for the Exit? John Ross Drug War Mayhem Boils Over from Border to Border Allan Nairn Mafia Rules in the Middle East: If You're Big Enough, You Can Whack Anyone Rannie Amiri Lebanon's Warmongers Niranjan Ramakrishnan The New Tractatus: Where Wittgenstein Meets Feinstein Donna Volatile Be Careful What You Vote For, You Just Might Get It Seth Sandronsky The Student Squeeze: Fighting California's Tuition Hikes Website of the Day Conventions: the Land Around Us   February 13, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff Meet John McCain: Mr. Big Stick in Latin America Alan Farago Hell to Pay: Warren Buffett on the Goal Line Christina Kasica King's Dream Foreclosed: the Subprime Crisis in Black America Vicente Navarro How to Read the U.S. Primaries Hall Greenland Australia's Finest Hour Lee Sustar Strange Stimulation: Too Little for Those Who Need It Most David Macaray The Writers' Strike Finally Ends Roderick Frazier Nash Celebrating Wilderness Patrick Irelan Hugo Chávez and High Anxiety at the NYT Anthony Papa Mean Mister Mukasey: AG Tries to Block Crack Cocaine Releases Carl Finamore Another Parade Passes Me By: Don't Let Your Movement be Coopted by Politicians Website of the Day John He Is   February 12, 2008 Frank J. Menetrez The Case Against Alan Dershowitz Paul Craig Roberts War Without End Dr. Trudy Bond The Elephant at Gitmo: Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Six: Why Charge Them Now? What About the Torture? Col. Dan Smith The Psychology of Killing: Close In or Far Away? Ronnie Cummins Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road Ralph Nader Open the Government John V. Walsh Antiwarriors, Divided and Conquered Dave Lindorff Obama and Progressive Change: Let's Hope the Movement Transforms the Candidate Michael Donnelly Who's Pimping Whom? The Clintons' Selective No Talk Rules Ron Jacobs La Lucha Continua: Castro's "Life" Ben Tripp Beggars Collide Website of the Day Springsteen and Youngstown   February 11, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Lessons for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate? Wajahat Ali A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel Lobby Ray McGovern Waterboarding for God and Country Allan Nairn The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta Uri Avnery An End Foreseen? Chris Floyd American Psycho: the Meaning of Mitt Romney's Exit Speech Martha Rosenberg School Lessons in a Lunchbox: Lunchmeat from Tortured Cows Stephen Fleischman The Bonnie and Clyde of American Politics Marc Lamont Hill Not My Brand of Hope Liliana Segura Obama and Torture: the Sounds of Silence and Equivocation Peter Morici Challenges for the New President Christopher Brauchli A Drug Rant from a Former Taker Website of the Day Annie vs. the Blue Angels   February 8 / 10, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Does the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves? Patrick Cockburn Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold? Mike Whitney The Great Bust of '08 Anthony DiMaggio How the Press Covers Waterboarding Andy Worthington The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists? Linn Cohen-Cole Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto? Firmin DeBrabander Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency Cpt. Paul Watson The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering and Deaths of the Great Whales Kenneth S. Pope Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association Jacob G. Hornberger American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy Robert Bryce Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ... Then What? P. Sainath The Last of the Buccaneer Editors Allan Nairn Give Me Back My Land Fred Gardner / Pebbles Trippet "The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the Law!" Andrew Wimmer Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death Robert Fantina America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr David Michael Green Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves Kevin Zeese Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd? Peter Morici Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence Chris Driscoll Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008? Prairie Miller Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen Poets Basement Davies and Buknatski   February 7, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Why Baghdad Will Explode Again Bill Christison Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians David Anderson NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for the Sake of Ratings Ron Jacobs Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill Nikolas Kozloff Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing Jane Rockefeller The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation Andy Worthington On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden Dave Zirin Instep Intifada Saul Landau The "Honestest" Candidate Since Lincoln Susie Day Our Blob in the White House Website of the Day George Carlin on Voting   February 6, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Super Tuesday's Vote for Chaos Ben Rosenfeld Informant Games: The Disturbing GreenScare Case of Briana Waters Vijay Prashad An Intellectual Hustler Lays It All Out Joe Bageant Nine Billion Little Feet on the Highway of the Damned Michael Donnelly What White Women Do In Private Voting Booths Allan Nairn Does the US Need a Civilizing Mayan Invasion? Kathryn Gray Wilderness on Edge: The Fate of Donner Summit Ray McGovern Powell's UN Fiasco Sheldon Richman The Whining Empire Paul Cantor / Roger Sparks A Presidential Aptitude Examination John Chuckman Political Bits and Pieces Website of the Day Save the Albatross February 5, 2008 Winslow T. Wheeler The Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget Tariq Ali Why I Will Not Participate in the Turin Book Fair Stephen Soldz The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq: Did Rumsfeld Authorize War Crimes? Chris Floyd Strange Fruit: America's Gulag and the Good War William S. Lind Saddam's Secret War Strategy: Die and Win Martha Rosenberg Live From the Killing Floor Heather Gray Conversations with Georgia Voters Ayesha Ijaz Khan Obama, Bhagwandas and the Battle for a Secular Politics David Macaray Unions Need to Stop Being So Nice Eliza Ernshire Making Music and Laughing Till the Tears Run Brenda Norrell Hated Nation Website of the Day The Things I Used to Do     February 4, 2008 Marc Levy Winter in America Patrick Cockburn The Bird Market Bombings Saree Makdisi Strangling Gaza Uri Avnery From Stalingrad to Winograd Alan Farago Let's Get Bambi! Someone is Slaughtering Florida's Key Deer Ben Tripp Spare Change: the Whine of the Progressive Voter Paul Wolf Civil Wars North and South Paul Craig Roberts Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed? Joshua Frank MoveOn's Obama Endorsement: Why There's No Hope for Change John Halle Whither Progressive Democrats? Website of the Day How to Cheat in School   February 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Hot Democratic Properties Pam Martens Bankers Gone Bonkers: Global Finance and the Insanity Defense Ralph Nader The Great Clinton-Obama Debate: Questions They Weren't Asked John Ross Hilaria vs. "El Moreno" Wajahat Ali Hillary, Obama and the Clash of Civilizations: an Interview with Imam Zaid Shakir Robert Fantina A Colony by Any Other Name: Iraq as Stepchild of the American Empire B. R. Gowani Not All Veils and Guns James L. Secor China in Winter: On the Western Edge of the Great Snow John V. Walsh The Invisible Green Primary Niranjan Ramakrishnan Barack's Bubble, Bubba's Trouble Dave Zirin Who Stole the Super Bowl's Soul? Jeremy Scahill Blackwater and Blood Fidel Castro Reflections on Lula Joe Allen Tet Reconsidered: the Turning Point in the Vietnam War Stephen Lendman Life in Occupied Gaza Patrick Irelan What Happened to the Streetcars? Andrej Grubacic Ziga Vodovnik Caligula's Horse: the USA, New Europe and Kosovo Josh Karpoff Dead Soldiers and the Antiwar Movement Ron Jacobs Carl Oglesby's War Paul Krassner Tom Waits Meets Super-Joel Website of the Weekend Company Woman: Hillary and Wal-Mart   February 1, 2008 Ray McGovern The Iniquities and Inequalities of War Diane Farsetta The Wild Career of James "Dow 36,000" Glassman Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Country in the World for Journalists Tariq Ali Et Tu, New York Times? Allan Nairn Eating Dirt for Lunch in Haiti Rannie Amiri Collective Punishment in Beirut Ramzy Baroud People Power in Gaza: They Simply Did It Kenneth Couesbouc The Mother of All Snowballs Peter Morici Recession Looms Mumia Abu-Jamal Witha "Brutha" Like This: Bill Clinton as White Negro Rosemary Jackowski 27 Reasons Nader Should Run for President Scott Campbell Direct Action to Stop the War Re-emerges Website of the Day Betes et Hommes   January 31, 2008 Saul Landau Return to Afghanistan Andy Worthington Horror at Guantánamo Mike Whitney Rate Cut as Dagger: America's Teetering Banking System Jeff Ballinger Sustainability for Dictators Initiative? Clinton Praises the "Suharto of the Steppe" Tiffany Ten Eyck The Saga of the Freightliner Five William Loren Katz Waterboarding: Torure or Mystery? Alan Farago Why the Republicans are in Deep Trouble Col. Dan Smith Oh Say Can You See the 2009 Budget? China Hand Slouching Toward Islamabad Dave Lindorff The Usual Suspects Once Again Wadner Pierre Fake Democracy in Haiti Website of the Day One Big Union   January 30, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair McCain vs. Clinton? Christopher Ketcham The Genius of the Development Industrial-Complex Robert Weissman America By the Numbers: The Shameful State of the Union Neve Gordon An Experiment in Famine Paul Craig Roberts Regulation or Deregulation, Which is Worse? Joanne Mariner How Anti-Terror Laws Threaten Free Speech David Macaray Labor's Only Real Weapon Liaquat Ali Khan Is NATO Committing Genocide in Afghanistan? Raymond J. Lawrence Prankster-in-Chief: Bush's Troubling Non-Verbal Communication Dan Bacher The Collapse of the Central Valley Salmon Website of the Day Onward Through the Fog   January 29, 2008 Franklin C. Spinney Bush's New War Budget: the $70 Billion Hand-Off Mike Whitney The Great Credit Unwind of 2008 Alan Farago Buyer Beware: Florida, the Candidates and the Latin Builders Association Patrick Cockburn "The Americans Bring Us Only Destruction" Gary Leupp "We Can't Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans:" a Sibel Edmonds Timeline R. F. Blader A World Without Abortion: USA v. Romania Ahmad Faruqui Musharraf's Post-Electoral Prospect Fran Shor Obama, the Kennedys and "Change We Can Believe In" Jeremy Scahill Secret Trials and Criminal Convictions: the Ordeal of the Blackwater Protesters Allan Nairn Bush's SOTU: Entitlement, Justice and the War of All Against All Website of the Day The Ghost of Rambo   January 28, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Return to Fallujah Paul Craig Roberts The End of American Liberty Allan Nairn The Breaking of the Gaza Wall Eyad al-Sarraj / Sara Roy Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza Martha Rosenberg Obit for the "Front Page" City Corporate Crime Reporter How They Rip Us Off David Michael Green Kristolizing Iraq: What a Great Freakin' War Jennifer Van Bergen What's Left? Nancy Oden Survival Tips for Hard Times Divya Karnad Saving India's Sea Turtles James L. Secor Pissed About Pistorious: Why the Olympics Needs a Gimp Website of the Day Yellow Journalism?         Subscribe Online

February 27, 2008 An Interview with Jerry Lembcke Conspiracy Theory, Fears of Betrayal and Today's Anti-War Movement By STEPHEN PHILION Jerry Lembcke is professor of sociology at Holy Cross College and the author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam and CNN's Tailwind Tale: Inside Vietnam's last Great Myth. Philion: What drives you to have a concern about conspiracy theory in American culture and anti-war movements? Why should we be concerned about it? Lembcke: Well, I think conspiracy theory is a great diversion from what we need to be thinking about and the way we need to be thinking about problems in the country. Two things: it points people to conclusions that are way too simple and it contributes to our avoiding real problems. If we take 911 for example, Americans went very quickly to the conclusion that there was one man responsible (namely Osama Bin Laden), that he had a network of people, and that he masterminded all of it. So, it followed, he has to be the culprit to be hunted down and made answerable. The media, far from exempt from vulnerability to conspiracy theories, was very ready to pick this up. It'll take a long time for people to consider the media's role in this. But, if you go back to soon after 911, Al Qaeda is put forth as this organization with a Bin Laden at the head. You would think, to read press accounts, which were, of course, parroting the Bush administration, that Al Qaeda was a full blown military organization with a hierarchy of credentialed leaders, officers ("Bin Laden's lieutenants" is a favorite phrase), and the like. In reality, it really was no such thing. There was a British journalist named Jason Burke who wrote an article in Foreign Policy, with the headline "Al-Qaeda - a meaningless label". At about that time (2004), he had a book coming out, titled Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, in which he described it as a network of networks, which is a vague amorphous identity. Of course, the bad news is that it made a very elusive, mercurial target for the Bush administration as it mounted a propaganda campaign to mobilize public opinion for a war. Better for it to have us believe there is something more material, more organizationally identifiable, an Al Qaeda as an organization. Despite the fact that a prominent establishment foreign policy journal like Foreign Policy ran Burke's piece, day-to-day mainstream coverage continued to legitimate the idea of Al Qaeda as a military organization. I began by saying that conspiracy theory acts as a diversion, which I think was Burke's point too. The real point is the widespread animosity toward US foreign and economic policies around the world. But the American people can't see that, don't see that, because we're so focused on this mythical problem of Al Qaeda. Philion: Of course, this conspiracy theory orientation in American politics isn't something that emerged with 911, right? Lembcke: I think it's something that's very deep in American culture. There's sort of a Protestant puritan ideology that is central to American culture: "Bad things happen because of bad people." God holds individuals responsible for bad things that happen. So, morally, ethically, legally, a good society has to act in accord with that principle. We have to find individuals to be responsible for bad things. The simplicity in that is that social reality is much messier. There's lots of contingency in social reality. There are multiple causations, factors that converge to motivate people to do things, and the simple answer isn't always the right answer. Right now we have an administration that is influenced by this fundamentalist ideology, they adopt this perspective and it resonates with the American people because it's very longstanding in American culture. Periodically throughout history it's revivified in historical events-certainly in the 20th century-which stir a fear of left wing conspiracies that are often alleged to have some religious (often Jewish) overtones. Philion: Racial ones as well ... Lembcke: Yes, racial ones as well. Very central to the idea of conspiracy is the idea of secrecy. The line between conspiracy and group planning is really the line of secrecy. The power of conspiracy theory is the fear of the unknown. People we don't know are said to be carrying out actions against us in secret and in ways that deceive us through 'trickery.' And the roots of that in fundamentalist Christianity are very deep. Satan presents himself in the New Testament and Old Testament as good. Ultimate evil masquerades as good, hides, and tricks us. We can't know it, so we're at risk because of what we don't know. That's very central to the form of Christianity and the powers-that-be that established this nation and dominated its culture for 400 years. That becomes a subtext of much of our political culture. And there are times in our history when that subtext becomes text, comes to the surface and drives our culture. It doesn't take much at a time like 911, when emotions are running high, for political leaders to make vague references to shadowy figures that we don't know. That encourages the thinking that runs in the direction of conspirators and conspiracy. In the case of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the fact that it's a non-Christian religious movement with very strong anti-Christian overtones has enough resonance with the same things that anti-Semitism brings to the surface. It enables a bonding between the religious and political sentiments. Philion: The Left is supposed to provide a structural critique, one informed by an analysis and a politics that is different from this, but conspiracy theory seeps into the Left also? Lembcke: It does. I've said that conspiracy theory emanates from right-wing culture. But in times of flux, when the Left is floundering and lacking a sense of direction, people who are of the Left are not invulnerable to these theories; they can be attracted to them. The people the Left is trying to recruit and appeal to are sensitive to these things. The political right, like the Left in America, finds fault with the government. The Right in America is very libertarian. It believes in the free market, government free society, or at least local/small government. Again, it's the fear of the unknown. If you live in rural Iowa where I grew up, Washington DC is unreachable, inaccessible, and unmanageable. So the central/federal government becomes the source of your fears. Political movements that give expression to those fears and that target the government as the problem in your life resonate with people influenced by those fears. The far right feels the government is the Achilles heel, the soft spot in American culture. It's where evil and evildoers can make inroads into American culture, a sandbox for evil because it's beyond the reach of ordinary Americans. For the far right, the central government is the port-of-entry for foreign alien influences. So, during the McCarthy years, where did McCarthy say the communists were? Everywhere, yes, but the greatest amount of damage they were said to create was in the government. So McCarthyites contended the communists had to be rooted out of government. The John Birch Society took that line well into the Vietnam era. Communists in government, Birchers argued, were the cause of America's problems, stirring up trouble; the war in Vietnam was (they claimed) perpetrated by communists in the government to create disturbance and chaos in American society, which Communists could "take advantage of to destroy American society." Now, if we just start right there, people on the anti-war Left were opposed to the government at that time, too; they opposed the US government's prosecuting and the US military's carrying out of the war in Vietnam. So, if you look at it very superficially, you can see how Left and Right can speak to each other on these kinds of issues. You can see how they can confuse each other; how people who maybe have come to their antiwar views from the political left can think the Right's views are just as good. Philion: That then leads to the challenge, to people like you, and other leftists who criticize conspiracy theory, such as Noam Chomsky, Chip Berlet, and Michael Albert: is there a way the left can engage with conspiracy theorists? Is there a need to disengage from them or make a harsh critique of them? In other words, what's really at stake here? Is the conspiracy theory movement manageable at all, as it were? Or do such groups continue to pose a barrier to progressive left organizing in the antiwar movement? Lembcke: Well I think conspiracy theory is a barrier to progressive organizing. It doesn't mean it's an insurmountable one. There are currents and counter-currents on these issues. On the one hand you have people like a Cindy Sheehan coming from the left who seems to be wooed by a conspiracist agenda. Chip Berlet wrote an article 5, 6 years ago called "Right Woos Left". I think that dynamic's still in play. I think there are still too many people on the left who are wooed by this. Philion: Over a month ago there was considerable upset about Moveon.org's "General Betrayus" ad in the New York Times. Most of the media 'discussion' revolved around the theme of propriety and respect for the military. But you've suggested that the way 'betrayal' exists as a leitmotif in the anti-war movement and the population in general is what makes their ad's frame problematic. Can you explain? Lembcke: What's interested me most about the affair was that MoveOn was assuming that this betrayal-themed ad would resonate with its left-of-center constituency--and, given that it was the political right and mainstream media rather than the Left that reacted critically to it, it appears they were right. That's troubling because the specter of government betrayal as an explanation for costly wars of expansion is itself an emanation of Rightist political culture. Philion: And you've written that the betrayal narrative for lost wars reached an apogee in the post-Vietnam years--the 1980s and '90s in particular. Lembcke: The American anti-war movement is not of a single mind on this theme, however. Columnist Eric Alterman warned in the October 15 issue of The Nation magazine that the Bush Administration is preparing to blame the loss of the war in Iraq on home-front treachery, reviving the German stab-in-the-back legend that led to the rise of fascism in the inter-war period, and the myth of spat-upon Vietnam veterans that fed the rise of Neo-conservatism era. Philion: So you're suggesting that some on the anti-war Left--MoveOn, for example--embrace what is essentially a Rightist leitmotif, the betrayal thesis, while others on the Left--Alterman--see through that and warn us away from it. Lembcke: Right. The problem is that these voices within the anti-war movement are not speaking to one another. Alterman is not speaking directly to MoveOn to say, "Hey, you're giving voice a Rightist view that can have a very pernicious effect on the movement." Philion: And you think that there are receptive ears in the American middle and the political left to what MoveOn is pitching? Lembcke: Absolutely. Just as popular culture rendered the war in Vietnam to a war on the home front--all but eliding the Vietnamese from the story--Hollywood is rescripting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to appear as conflicts between Americans set mostly in America. Films like The Valley of Elaw, Rendition, and Lions for Lambs are all about Americans at odds with other Americans. In Lions for Lambs by the way, the enemy "Talies" (for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan) are reduced to blinking cursors seen on a computer screen--we never see or hear them as living human beings. Philion: And what about the Left? Lembcke: Well, since the dispatch of troops to Iraq in the spring of 2003, the most vocal wing of the anti-war movement has aped the Right's support-the-troops rhetoric, making "the war" all about the people sent to fight it rather than the politics and economics of the war itself. The war in Vietnam ended with public discourse about the war displaced by discourse about the people sent to fight the war; means and ends reasoning got collapsed. When the means of war became the ends of war, the soldiers and the POWs become the national concern. The current war in Iraq picks up where Vietnam left off; the public discourse about Iraq in 2003 was not about Iraq, it was about supporting the troops sent to fight the war. Cindy Sheehan gives a face to that; she's the booster rocket for that when her son Casey is killed and much of the anti-war movement falls in behind that. The public discourse about the war today is overwhelmingly dominated by the issue of PTSD and the treatment of the veterans of the war. Every major news network has done a special or more than one special on the damage done to soldiers. The Boston Globe recently did a four part series on it, and what there is in that, I think--and I can only assert this at this point--is a resonance with a betrayal theme. Some leading voices in the anti-war movement seem to feel that what will really move Americans is not the material stuff, the political economy of war or even the loss of life and limb per se. It's that someone 'lied' to us about this war, someone sent my son off to war and now they don't care about him. There's an assumption that sentiment and emotion move people and particularly the sentiments surrounding betrayal, which goes right back to conspiracy theory. There are links missing there in the way I've said that, but what people who are part of that wing of the antiwar movement are really upset about is that someone in government lied to us. For them, the war is about 'we were deceived', and 'we got into this war because of deception'. And that's the playground of Left and Right. Philion: It's a game that doesn't allow a Left perspective on war. Lembcke: No, it does not. The alternative to that is what has been displaced, which does help end wars, namely the politicization of those who have been sent to fight the war. The focus on veterans as victims of 'betrayal' displaces from focus on veterans as political actors. I mean how many television specials have there been on Iraq Veterans against the War? It's a growing political movement and the media all but ignores it. And if they don't ignore it, they merge it in with a narrative of damage done to these people by the war; they pathologize it. Now, returning to the role of conspiracy theory in the anti-war movement, the flirtation of Sheehan with this conspiracy theory business is really kind of scary because there are a lot of people around her who are very vulnerable to this. I have friends who are going to say to me "Cindy Sheehan says this, what do you say now?" I have friends I've been arguing with about the '911 inside jobs' business for several years now. Once people get locked in on that idea, it's really hard to move them. Philion: Recently on the Left Business Observer on-line discussion list (LBO-Talk), there was a discussion about a concrete question, namely what to do about conspiracy theorists who show up at local anti-war meetings. What to do if you're running the meeting and someone from the 911 Truth organization, say, wants to make 9/11 conspiracies the focus of the meeting. How does one handle this during meetings? In the discussion, this generated a number of responses from those who thought such a thing was not terribly desirable for developing a Left understanding of the war. The consensus seemed to be, among others, 'keep'em busy with minor tasks and get everyone to agree the focus of the meetings and activity is 'what's the best, i.e. most effective, way to end the war' instead of, say, 'why did the Twin Towers fall?" And then what happens is people stay focused on the important matter of how to get people out to stop the war. Whether 911 was a conspiracy, which conspiracy best 'explains' 911, etc. distracts from this goal. Lembcke: Well, I think keeping focus on how to end the war, that's the key. In a similar vein, I run into this at meetings and public discussions where PTSD and 'betrayal of soldiers' come up. People will object, "You haven't said anything about PTSD or the soldiers at Walter Reed." My response is I say we have to focus on the veterans and soldiers as key actors in ending the war, not as victims. Of course as a society we need to take care of casualties of the war, but our goal at this meeting is to end the war. And that usually works. I suppose it's similar to the problem that the 911 Truth angle presents to antiwar meetings you mentioned. Philion: What was interesting from the discussion on the LBO-talk discussion list was that none of the people in the discussion proposed that such people be kicked out of the meetings (nor would I). The consensus seemed to be, instead, that such persons and their issues shouldn't be allowed to become the focus or the face of the movement. That on-line discussion seemed to tell me this discussion you and I are having about conspiracy theory is one that is not just 'academic', but a very practical one for the Left in the antiwar movement. Conspiracy theory is a very real problem from the vantage of the Left, at a time when the anti-war movement is already so much captured by those who don't have a left analysis of the political-economic causes of this or any war, much less capitalism. Lembcke: I think the war is about development rights in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and the former Soviet Republics. It's about commodification of culture, economic life in that part of the world, modernism versus traditionalism, and versus socialism. And, yes, it's about oil, but not just oil. Oil as metaphor, it's not just oil. Stephen Philion is an assistant professor of sociology at St. Cloud State University in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, teaching social theory, sociology of race, and China and Globalization. His writings can be found at his website. He can be reached at: stephen_philion@yahoo.com

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