IP: The new pro-war liberalism

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 02:06:38 -0800
> From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ultradevices com>
>
>
> I tend to agree with this view that the Bush Administration's military 
> action against the Taliban is appropriate and has worked well, while their 
> domestic attacks masked as Sept 11th security actions against civil rights 
> and the environment is very disturbing.
>
> "The North Vietnamese never bombed American cities"
>
> Progressive congressman Barney Frank talks about why he supports the
> war, opposes Bush's attack on civil liberties and thinks Clinton's
> military legacy is just fine.
>
>                             - - - - - - - - - - - -
>                             By David Talbot
>
> Nov. 22, 2001 | Ever since the Vietnam War, the American left has
> tended to be pacifistic and deeply suspicious of overseas military
> expeditions. An entire generation of liberals grew to equate B-52
> airstrikes with blood-and-iron imperialism. Think the Empire's
> towering killing machines mowing down the helpless Ewoks in "Return of
> the Jedi." Even when times changed and U.S. firepower was used for
> heroic purposes -- such as the Clinton administration's air assault
> against the genocidal Milosevic regime in the Balkans -- many on the
> left (and the right, for that matter) remained stuck in the past,
> convinced that the bombing was part of an imperialist power grab or
> that America was headed toward another Apocalypse Now.
>
> It's a political version of post-traumatic stress syndrome, and
> considering the epic horror of Vietnam, it was understandable. But a
> quarter century later, we face a world that has its own new
> nightmares. Since Sept. 11, the Vietnam generation has been forced to
> reassess its views of American military might and most, like the
> Afghan people cheering in the streets of Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif,
> have come to see the U.S. war machine more as a liberator than an
> oppressor.
>
> While Berkeley congresswoman Barbara Lee received massive media
> coverage for casting the sole vote against President Bush's war
> resolution, the more representative voices of the Vietnam generation
> belong to political leaders like John Kerry in the Senate and Barney
> Frank in the House of Representatives. Rep. Frank, D-Mass., who has
> served in Congress for over 20 years, has staked out a strong pro-war
> position, while simultaneously lashing into the Bush administration
> for trampling on civil liberties in its anti-terror drive (joining
> other critics like conservative congressional leader Bob Barr) and
> calling on the president to help secure peace abroad by rebuilding
> Afghanistan and aggressively pursuing a Mideast settlement. Salon
> spoke with Frank by phone in his Capitol Hill office on the eve of the
> Thanksgiving holiday.
>
> What do you say to your friends on the left who attack the
> U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan and compare it to the Vietnam
> War?
>
> Well, first of all, the North Vietnamese never bombed American
> cities. Some antiwar critics have accused me of voting for the Gulf of
> Tonkin resolution all over again when I voted for Bush's war
> resolution. But the World Trade Center was actually bombed. Those Navy
> ships in Vietnam probably never were.
>
> Secondly, we backed the wrong horse in Vietnam. Osama bin Laden is no
> Ho Chi Minh, who actually had the support of many Vietnamese. Bin
> Laden brought his war to Afghanistan and he's not even an Afghan! He's
> wildly unpopular there. If I had lived in Vietnam, I would not have
> wanted to live under a communist regime. But the fact is Ho's
> government was very popular there.
>
> Osama bin Laden has no humane values. He's a mass murderer who
> happens, unfortunately, to be very skillful at it. And you'd have to
> go back to Mao, Stalin and Hitler -- or perhaps Pol Pot -- to find a
> more noxious regime than the Taliban. So I think there's a moral as
> well as pragmatic case for our war against bin Laden and the Taliban
> that was lacking in Vietnam.
>
> You hear people say that since Sept. 11 Americans have lost their
> innocence. But I think it's more profound than that. I think we've
> lost our sense of guilt, which we've had ever since Vietnam. The
> left-wing critics of the war in Afghanistan represent a tiny slice of
> the population. American people across the political spectrum
> overwhelmingly support the war, because they know it is overwhelmingly
> just.
>
> What about the antiwar claim that civilian casualties in Afghanistan
> undermine the moral legitimacy of the U.S. campaign?
>
> Any time you go to war, civilians suffer. There were civilian
> casualties in World War II as well -- in Germany, Italy and
> Japan. Civilians died during Sherman's march to the sea. You have a
> moral obligation to minimize these casualties, and I think the
> U.S. military in Afghanistan has gone to great lengths to do this. In
> fact, [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld was criticized in some
> circles for holding back our military.
>
> Some antiwar critics have been clamoring for a ground war, saying
> there would be fewer civilian deaths. But ground troops kill innocent
> people too, it's a fact of war. War is not like "The Lone Ranger"
> where the good guy shoots the gun out of the bad guy's hand and that's
> the end of it. Because civilians inevitably suffer in wars, you have a
> moral obligation to make sure that going to war is the last
> alternative. But with bin Laden, this clearly was the only option. If
> we had not responded militarily, bin Laden would have struck again and
> many more innocent people would have died.
>
> Now that our military strategy in Afghanistan seems to be meeting with
> stunning success, some in the Bush administration, like Deputy Defense
> Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Advisor Condoleezza
> Rice have been suggesting that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq may be
> our next target. Do you think the U.S. should extend its military
> operation into other parts of the Islamic world?
>
> We might very well find that Saddam is guilty of sponsoring terrorism
> against the U.S. But before we think about extending the war, we've
> got to make sure that the people of Afghanistan have food and
> shelter. We did that in Europe after World War II with the Marshall
> Plan, and even General [Douglas] MacArthur -- who was no liberal
> paragon -- did a fine job of overseeing the reconstruction of
> Japan. We need to earn the right to extend the war by rebuilding
> Afghanistan first.
>
> It's not only the right thing to do, but it is politically vital. By
> helping Afghanistan, we will send a message to the rest of the Muslim
> world that we weren't just concerned about avenging American deaths
> and screw everyone else, but we want to leave that country in a much
> better place than it was before we intervened.
>
> <snip>
>
> --
> Robert J. Berger
> UltraDevices, Inc.
> 257 Castro Street, Suite 223 Mt. View CA. 94041
> Email: rberger () ultradevices com http://www.ultradevices.com
> Voice: 408-882-4755 Fax: 408-490-2868


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