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Fifth Column
The Left splits
2001-10-04
  • Andrew Sullivan, WSJ Editorial
    Of course the initial response of left-wing intellectuals to Sept. 11 was one jerking of the collective knee. This was America's fault. From Susan Sontag to Michael Moore, from Noam Chomsky to Edward Said, there was no question that, however awful the attack on the World Trade Center, it was vital to keep attention fixed on the real culprit: the United States. Of the massacre, a Rutgers professor summed up the consensus by informing her students that "we should be aware that, whatever its proximate cause, its ultimate cause is the fascism of U.S. foreign policy over the past many decades." Or as a poster at the demonstrations in Washington last weekend put it, "Amerika, Get a Clue."

    Less noticed was the reasoned stance of liberal groups like the National Organization for Women. President Kim Candy stated that "The Taliban government of Afghanistan, believed to be harboring suspect Osama bin Laden, subjugates women and girls, and deprives them of the most basic human rights--including education, medicine and jobs. The smoldering remains of the World Trade Center are a stark reminder that when such extremism is allowed to flourish anywhere in the world, none of us is safe." The NAACP issued an equally forceful "message of resolve," declaring, "These tragedies and these acts of evil must not go unpunished. Justice must be served."

    "To excuse such an atrocity by blaming U.S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are responsible for their actions."
    Left-wing dissident Christopher Hitchens, meanwhile, assailed his comrades as "soft on crime and soft on fascism." After an initial spasm of equivocation, The American Prospect magazine ran a column this week accusing the pre-emptive peace movement of "a truly vile form of moral equivalency" in equating President Bush with terrorists. Not a hard call, but daring for a magazine that rarely has even a civil word for the right.

    Most moving was Salman Rushdie's early call in the New York Times to "be clear about why this bien-pensant anti-American onslaught is such appalling rubbish. Terrorism is the murder of the innocent; this time, it was mass murder. To excuse such an atrocity by blaming U.S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are responsible for their actions."

    Whatever else is going on, the liberal-left alliance has taken as big a hit as the conservative-fundamentalist alliance after the blame-America remarks of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
    • Posted by:Fred Pruitt

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