TNR: A Fighting Faith
There is currently a flurry of largely negative responses on DailyKos to Peter Beinart's article in The New Republic (A Fighting Faith: An Argument For A New Liberalism).
I actually think it is the best thing I've seen written on the subject of Where Do We Go From Here since the disaster of November 2, 2004. I say that not because I agree with it in its entirety, and not because I don't have reservations about it. I say that because it introduces some important arguments into the discussion -- arguments far more important, in my judgment, than who the next Chairman of the DNC will be.
I hesitate to make pronouncements such as this from my lowly perch, but I guess I will do it anyway: this is an important article. I intend to say more about it later, but in the meantime let me just urge my fellow Lefties to not dismiss this thing too quickly. Let me urge them to read it a couple of times before they give in to any urge they might have to toss it against the wainscoting.
...Islamist totalitarianism--like Soviet totalitarianism before it--threatens the United States and the aspirations of millions across the world. And, as long as that threat remains, defeating it must be liberalism's north star. Methods for defeating totalitarian Islam are a legitimate topic of internal liberal debate. But the centrality of the effort is not. The recognition that liberals face an external enemy more grave, and more illiberal, than George W. Bush should be the litmus test of a decent left.
Today, the war on terrorism is partially obscured by the war in Iraq, which has made liberals cynical about the purposes of U.S. power. But, even if Iraq is Vietnam, it no more obviates the war on terrorism than Vietnam obviated the battle against communism. Global jihad will be with us long after American troops stop dying in Falluja and Mosul. And thus, liberalism will rise or fall on whether it can become, again, what Schlesinger called "a fighting faith."
Of all the things contemporary liberals can learn from their forbearers half a century ago, perhaps the most important is that national security can be a calling. If the struggles for gay marriage and universal health care lay rightful claim to liberal idealism, so does the struggle to protect the United States by spreading freedom in the Muslim world. It, too, can provide the moral purpose for which a new generation of liberals yearn...
The war in Iraq was a stupid, misguided, ideological, expensive and deadly mistake. It has put us in far more danger than we otherwise would have been in. But a war, a smart war on Islamic totalitarianism is not a mistake. I'm sorry, it just isn't. Not to this Leftie.
And so let us proceed to thrash this thing out...
The problem with this entire approach is the idea that it is a "war" against Islamism. It distracts us from why the problem exists in the first place. We stopped helping people in poor Muslim areas, and that left the way open for madrasses that trained boys to hate us. We kept propping up corrupt dictatorships and that gave them more reason to hate us.
Even so, the Islamists were defeating themselves as their violence revolted most Muslims, even before 9/11. By 9/12, even in Iran we were getting more sympathy than Osama and his pals.
But then Bush exploited it for his mad purposes. Instead of investing in a real democratic plan for Afghanistan, we invaded Iraq, virtually announced that we were at war with all of them, not just the few (and they were just the few) who were planning terrorist attacks against us.
The only way to fight radical Islamism is to stop fighting Muslims, period. We can't be at war with them, because we can't tell them apart and we are obviously just attacking them all indiscriminately.
Clinton at least had the right idea - treat terrorism as a crime. That wasn't enough, but it was better than overreacting the way Bush did. But then, he stopped several 9/11-style attacks from happening, and that wouldn't have served Bush's purposes.
Posted by: Avedon | December 03, 2004 at 08:07 PM
And we can't do anything at all until we have managed, somehow, to repair the damage Bush has caused. There's an article I'm reading right now in Foreign Affairs called "The Sources of American Legitimacy". There are some who will say America can have no legitimacy in this realm, at least not anymore, but I disagree. I think most of my compatriots on the left also disagree. Before we can even think about a "war" against totalitarian Islam, we've got to do something to restore our good name. I think there are things we can actually do, but I will try to write about that in a subsequent post.
Where I sort of sideways-disagree with what you say is in this:
I certainly don't disagree that we got a great deal of sympathy even in the Islamic world in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. But I'm not sure that's a reasonable measure of anything. I think even if Bush hadn't started his disastrous war, that sympathy would have faded fast. I think it would have faded because of American policy toward the Islamic world, which is misguided in a number of ways, some of which you list.But setting aside for a moment the vast problem of ever getting to the point where some sort of war on Islamic totalitarianism could actually be waged with any sort of legitimacy at all, I want to imagine for a moment what sort of war we might be talking about then. Imagine the impossible (certainly at the moment) situation where the people of Iran have become totally fed up with their rulers and actually want help getting rid of them. There are a number of dubious assumptions here. One would be that the information we are thinking of acting upon is actually correct. That is, making sure we don't have the Chalabi problem. But let's say we are convinced ourselves, and are able to persuade the world, that this is not the figment of some neoCon's imagination. Let's say they really are asking for our help. Do we give it, even as a last resort, in the form of war?
Is there any scenario at all when a shooting war with an Islamic totalitarian government is even imaginable, let alone legitimate?
Well, it was imaginable once, of course. With Afghanistan. At first, it was even legitimate. It's difficult for me to describe how appalled I am at the degree to which Bush screwed up that (horrific) "opportunity". That's all been thrashed out before so I won't go into it now, except to say that it does serve to show that it is possible to imagine such a thing. But even if we somehow manage to salvage something out of all the damage that Bush has done, there is still so much more work to do to get to the point where we could again fight a war like that and not have it do more harm than good.
The thing is, obviously, the threat is real. Something has to be done. The only question is how do we best approach the problem. As a really rough stab at it, I'd say we have to get busy, now, getting ourselves into a position where we could actually fight whatever wars that might need to be fought in the future. That means, just to taste the long, long list of things we have to do to get to the point where we might be able to respond, militarily, to a legitimate plea from an Islamic society that wants to be freed from its totalitarian rulers... jesus gawd, solve the Israeli-Palestinian difficulties, and solve it in a manner that both sides can live with, stop supporting the Islamic totalitarians themselves, help (as you say) the poor in the Islamic world both economically and educationally. The list goes on and on.
Michael Sheuer of Imperial Hubris fame said long ago that they don't hate us because they hate our freedoms, they hate us because of our policies. Now, thank gawd, we are starting to hear that repeated elsewhere.
So, I'm still working through all of this. There is a ton of stuff to get through, a ton of questions to think about. Do I want the C.I.A., assuming their information is precise, assassinating Certain Types? Well, depending, yeah, I might just want that, but I also want someone in our government to be perfectly accountable for that. I want the president to be accountable for it. One of the really ghastly problems we have now, with regard to actually making ourselves safer, is that nobody is accountable for anything in the Bush Administration. The only punishable fuck-up is disloyalty to Bush. It's a nightmare.
So, yeah, I'm still working through all this, but that's why I think the NR article is important. It's making me ask of myself, what sort of Leftie do I want to be? What exactly am I for? That's one of the useful points it makes, I think. Stop thinking about what you are against. Think about what you are for. I don't address that to anyone else but me. I'm no one to say what anyone is or isn't thinking about.
But I am thinking of writing some posts for my own benefit on the very question of "What sort of Leftie do I want to be?" I'm not sure I really know in any sort of over-arching, thematic way. I mean, I have a sense of it, but I think maybe there is a value in actually putting it into some form that I can identify as My Positive Principles, or something. I'm tired of being against stuff. I want to be for stuff, but I want to be precise about the stuff that I'm for.
Which is why this reply is so long-winded, of course. It's complicated.
Posted by: Mike | December 03, 2004 at 09:53 PM