Salon Magazine on antiwar leftists (not a pro article)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: 
Reply-To: John Sears <john () sears net>
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 17:11:46 -0500
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Salon Magazine on antiwar leftists

Dave
 
I found the below article in Salon by Andrew Sullivan compelling.  You may
wish to share it with your readers.
 
Slate is a subscription site, so I include the entire article.
 

 
John Sears
Rochester Hills, MI
 
..............
 
http://www.salon.com/opinion/sullivan/2003/03/29/de_genova/
 
"A million Mogadishus"

Those antiwar leftists who equate Bush with Saddam and cheer U.S. military
setbacks bring moral squalor to their cause.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Andrew Sullivan

 <http://www.salon.com/opinion/sullivan/2003/03/29/de_genova/print.html>
<http://www.salon.com/opinion/sullivan/2003/03/29/de_genova/email.html>

March 29, 2003  |  The coming weeks are going to be critical for the left in
this country for a very simple reason. Legitimate, important, valid or even
extreme and hyperbolic arguments before a war are one thing. But they have a
different salience when they are made during a war -- especially one that
has barely even begun. There are already polling suggestions that the
antiwar movement is at this point bolstering public support for the war. But
if the antiwar rhetoric among the extreme left continues in the same vein as
it has this first week, the marginalization of the left in this country,
already profound, might become irreversible.

Let me take two comments this past week. In the Boston Globe, James Carroll
explicitly denied any moral difference between the regime in Baghdad and the
administration in Washington. He described the "shock and awe" air campaign
as if it were the direct equivalent of 9/11:

"And what, exactly, would justify such destruction? What would make it an
act of virtue? And is it possible to imagine that such violence could be
wreaked in a spirit of cold detachment, by controllers sitting at screens
dozens, hundreds, even thousands of miles distant? And in what way would
such 'decapitation' spark in the American people anything but a horror to
make memories of 9/11 seem a pleasant dream? If our nation, in other words,
were on its receiving end, illusions would lift and we would see 'shock and
awe' for exactly what it is -- terrorism pure and simple."

This lazy form of moral equivalence is not rare among the radical left in
this country. But it is based on a profound moral abdication: the refusal to
see that a Stalinist dictatorship that murders its own civilians, that sends
its troops into battle with a gun pointed at their heads, that executes
POWs, that stores and harbors chemical weapons, that defies 12 years of U.N.
disarmament demands, that has twice declared war against its neighbors, and
that provides a safe haven for terrorists of all stripes, is not the moral
equivalent of the United States under President George W. Bush. There is, in
fact, no comparison whatever. That is not jingoism or blind patriotism or
propaganda. It is the simple undeniable truth. And once the left starts
equating legitimate acts of war to defang and depose a deadly dictator with
unprovoked terrorist attacks on civilians, it has lost its mind, not to
speak of its soul. 

9/11 and our current campaign against Saddam are, if anything, polar
opposites. With overwhelming firepower and complete air command, the allies
in Iraq could reduce Baghdad to rubble if they wanted to. Instead they are
achieving what might be an historically unprecedented attempt to win a war
while avoiding civilian casualties. Even if you take Iraqi numbers of dead
at face value, even if you believe that every explosion in Baghdad has been
the result of allied air power, the number of civilian casualties is still
minuscule, compared to the force being used. On 9/11, in contrast, the
entire aim of the exercise was to kill as many civilians as possible. For
James Carroll to equate the two is a moral obscenity.

How big a leap is it from decrying allied warfare as terrorism to actually
actively supporting the Baghdad regime against U.S. troops? In the past two
years, we have indeed seen some misguided Americans fighting for the
Taliban; we have seen human shields attempting to support Saddam's war
crimes; we have seen an American soldier try to kill his own fellow service
members; we have seen extremist Muslim Americans murder people in sniper
fire and at airport counters. These people are very few in number, and
should not be conflated with the "antiwar" movement as a whole. But
observing "peace" rallies where Bush is decried far, far more passionately
than Saddam -- where, in fact, Saddam is barely mentioned at all -- suggests
that something not altogether different lurks beneath the surface among many
others. Nick Kristof <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/28/opinion/28KRIS.html>
this week bemoaned the fact that "in some e-mail from fellow doves I detect
hints of satisfaction that the U.S. is running into trouble in Iraq -- as if
hawks should be taught a lesson about the real world with the blood of young
Americans." (When you read Eric Alterman's blog,
<http://www.msnbc.com/news/752664.asp>  and see him almost high-five every
allied setback, you can see what Kristof is worrying about.)

Then last week, someone actually came out and said it. Columbia University
professor Nicholas De Genova hoped
<http://www.newsday.com/mynews/ny-nyprof283195355mar28.story>  at an
"antiwar teach-in," hosted by left-wing writer and historian Eric Foner,
that there would be "a million Mogadishus" in this war. To translate: This
guy wants to see a million young American troops subjected to war crimes,
shot and mutilated, and paraded through the streets. No one in the crowd
objected. "The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the
U.S. military," he elaborated. And to loud cheers from an Ivy League college
audience, he thundered, "If we really [believe] that this war is criminal
... then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the
defeat of the U.S. war machine."

Notice how de Genova parroted Saddam's propaganda that the dictator and the
"Iraqi people" are indistinguishable. But notice something far more obvious.
If de Genova's comments aren't an expression of a fifth columnist, someone
actively supporting the victory of a vicious dictator over the troops of his
own countrymen, then what, please tell me, is? And please, don't give me the
old McCarthyite "J'accuse." De Genova has every right in the world to say
what he believes; and I would defend his right to say it anywhere, free from
any governmental interference. By the same token, I am allowed to say that
his views are morally repugnant.

But then again, he has a point, doesn't he? The rhetoric of the "antiwar"
movement has consistently argued that this is indeed a criminal war: that it
is being conducted by an illegal president for nefarious ends -- oil
contracts, the Jews, world domination, etc., etc. When you have used
rhetoric of that sort, when you have described your own country as
indistinguishable in legitimacy from a Stalinist dictatorship, when you have
described the president as the equivalent of the Nazi SS, when you have
carried posters with the words Bush = Terrorist and "We Support Our Troops
When they Shoot Their Officers," then why shouldn't you support the enemy?

Before the war, such hyperbole could perhaps be dismissed as rhetorical
excess. During a war, when American and allied soldiers are risking their
lives, it is something far worse. Before the war, it was inexcusable but not
that damning for the mainstream left merely to ignore the rabid, immoral
anti-American rhetoric of some of their allies. But during a war, ignoring
it is no longer an option. In fact, the mainstream left has a current
obligation to declare its renunciation of what amounts to a grotesque moral
inversion, to disavow the sentiments that were cheered at Columbia
University. 

You can see why they might be reluctant. De Genova's rhetoric -- and that of
the rest of the far left -- describes President Bush as an unelected,
maniacal tyrant, a caricature that is useful to Bush's political enemies.
But indeed, if the president is what de Genova says he is, if he is, as the
posters have it, the same as Hitler, then why indeed isn't Saddam
indistinguishable? Why should we back one unelected dictator against
another? Those are questions the rest of the antiwar left never answered
categorically before the war, because they didn't have to. Now they do.


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