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| Fifth Column |
| Marxists Fisk Moonbats-"Nine Red Herrings: How the Western âLeftâ has Misread Iraq" |
| 2003-12-10 |
| This is a commentary from last April, but itâs still timely. File it under "intellectual ammunition" for any moonbat friends you have. EFL for length and liquid damage to computers. Is it really only two months since we wrote that the leftâs "efforts at mustering a mighty and lasting coalition of antiwar forces are likely to be stillbornâ? We donât make a habit of quoting ourselves, but for once it seems appropriate. We turned out to be better at prediction than we had thought we were, and certainly better at it than those who said that the war would go on for months, drawing the US-led coalition forces into âanother Vietnamâ and spreading across the region as the âArab streetâ rose up against the âinvadersâ. Indeed, one of the reasons why we supported the war throughout was that we expected it to be relatively short, relatively sparing of lives and infrastructure alike, and relatively effective in achieving its purposes (no absolutes for us, thankyou very much). As these expectations too were borne out by events, we have been able to celebrate the overthrow of one of the most murderous and dangerous dictatorships in the world with (again, relatively) few regrets. Unlike those who opposed the war, we have not been comprehensively proved wrong, nor have we betrayed any of our principles â let alone, as so much of the âleftâ has, betrayed every single one of them. But how is it possible for us to call ourselves Marxists and support a war waged by a coalition of rich western liberal democracies against the government of a poor âThird Worldâ country? We would turn the question round: how it is possible that Marxism has been so corrupted and distorted that âMarxistsâ prefer to see thousands more Iraqis die in the torture chambers of the Baâath, and millions more suffer under the iniquities excused (not caused) by the UN sanctions, rather than admit that socialists not only can but must support even the worst bourgeois democracy against even the least bad tyranny? For the beginnings of an answer, let us consider just some of the transparent and disgusting lies generated and spread by the western âleftâ before and during the war. (1) The Baâath regime was in some sense âprogressiveâ: It is very revealing that few western âleftistsâ ever went beyond ritualised, purely verbal opposition to the âexcessesâ of the regime, even in the midst of their efforts to hijack the leadership of the anti-war movements from the pacifists, Muslim fundamentalists, âNot in My Nameâ solipsists and other malcontents with whom they made such opportunistic alliances. Meanwhile, a horrifyingly large number of âleftistsâ actually praised the regime â for its âsecularismâ, disregarding the Baâathistsâ praise for Islam as the âsoul of the Arab nationâ, Saddamâs fictional claim of descent from the Prophet and the addition of âAllah is greatâ to the national flag; its âsocialismâ, disregarding the whole sorry history of tyrannies deploying empty leftist rhetoric; and its sporadic defiance of the western powers, disregarding the fact that it happily cooperated with those powers whenever it suited it and them to do so. The western âleftâ has evidently become so habituated to denouncing the hypocrisy and cynicism of western governments â which we also denounce, though more consistently â that it is now incapable of discerning the hypocrisy and cynicism of nonwestern governments. Any organisation that can call, as the Socialist Workers Party did, for âVictory to the Resistanceâ, as if the Baâath regimeâs last remaining loyalists, and those it imported from other Arab countries, resembled the French Resistance rather than the Vichy regimeâs Milice and their Nazi friends, has not just deserted Marxism, it has taken off into a world of fantasy from which it looks unlikely to return. It wasnât hard to notice (6) The war was opposed by majorities of the populations of Britain, the United States, Australia, Arab countries, Muslim countries, the whole world, and, if the Pope can be trusted, Heaven as well: The western âleftâ, having spent years denouncing opinion polls as just another part of the capitalist propaganda machine, suddenly took to citing them when they briefly seemed to go their way, then just as suddenly took to denouncing them again when they showed large majorities in many of the coalition countries supporting the war. Equally inconsistently, the British âleftâ dropped all their hostility to âparliamentary fetishismâ for as long as it looked as if the House of Commons might vote against the war, then reverted when the Commons voted in favour of the war, twice. But who really knows what most people support or oppose? Are demonstrations really more reliable guides to popular feeling than parliamentary votes or media campaigns? What if the government, in any of the coalition countries, had called their criticsâ bluff and arranged a snap referendum on whether to go to war? The chances are that they would have won a convincing majority â and that the âleftâ would have denounced it as manipulated and unreliable. Why canât the âleftâ simply argue its case strictly on its merits, regardless of whether it has majority support or not? It might then gain some more respect, and possibly a larger audience, than it does at present with all its lies and bombast. As for claims to be able to discern Arab or Muslim public opinion, either in general or within any one country, they must all be regarded as highly suspect. These are societies controlled by regimes that do not permit free media (even Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV are by no means as âindependentâ as they or their new fans claim they are); that impose severe restrictions on political activity; and that give religious fundamentalists privileged positions from which to spread their poison. There is thus no genuine Arab public opinion to be discerned, and not much in most other Muslim countries. Perhaps most Arabs do feel humiliated by the coalitionâs actions; perhaps they feel far more humiliated by the actions of Arab regimes; perhaps they are much less concerned about the fate of Iraq than we might wish them to be. In the absence of reliable evidence we refuse to trust any of the self-appointed experts, especially when their reading of Arab public opinion just happens to coincide with their own views and/or depends on applying monolithic stereotypes to millions of people â if that isnât racism, what is? OUCH! Thatâs got to hurt. Hereâs their comment about OOOOOOIIIIIIILLLLLL (7) The war was âreallyâ all about US control of the worldâs oil supplies: Of course the US ruling class is as capable of stupidity and ignorance as any other ruling class, but historically it has shown a keener sense of self-interest than this crass economistic nonsense suggests. If the fate of the oil industry was the overriding concern then the US government and the oil companies with which it is closely connected could and would have carried on as before, collaborating with the Saudis and others to keep the oil flowing. The fact that US oil companies are now being awarded contracts for work in Iraq indicates only that they are the leading players in the industry, their only serious rivals being French and Russian â and is it any surprise, or cause for indignation, that US and British decision-makers prefer to deal with US companies rather than companies from two of the countries that were close to the Baâath regime before and during the war? Meanwhile, we are not so naive as to suppose that, because oil was not the main motive, the liberation of the Iraqi people was. The US administration and the other governments in the coalition, with their customary cynicism, exploited that goal, and the issue of weapons of mass destruction, to promote their shared vision of an international order that is safer for capitalism, implying, among other things, more liberal democracies, with more compliant governments; more âfreeâ trade, in oil as in other commodities; and more effective joint action against terrorism. There is every reason to think that they are insincere about much of this programme, and that their definitions of such terms as âdemocracyâ or âterrorismâ differ from ours. There is no reason, however, to think that they are insincere about all of it â the western âleftâ has no monopoly on self-deluding idealism â and it makes more sense to assess each scene in this continuing drama on its own merits, by the light of the doctrine of the lesser evil, than to either buy into the whole deal or reject it out of hand simply because it isnât revolutionary socialism. Given the widespread popularity of capitalism and the vanishingly small support for socialism in the contemporary world, it would be stupid to expect anything more radical. On the other hand, as long as we are to be ruled by capitalist states, which would you rather be ruled by: a coalition of liberal democracies that pay at least lipservice to free speech, or any number of ruthless genocidal dictatorships that want to revive the worst aspects of the Middle Ages (and we donât mean folk songs or William Morris wallpapers)? If you canât or wonât answer that question, how can you claim to be interested in contemporary politics, as opposed to useless dreaming about the politics of the distant future? Thatâs got to sting! (g) Read the whole thing, and then check out their comments on the February 2003 protests "Marching into Oblivion" and their blog |
| Posted by:Ernest Brown |
| #5 B, No, they're serious, I think. How they're going to have a revolution without undermining the things they claim to stand for is a freakin' mystery. |
| Posted by: Ernest Brown 2003-12-11 12:50:41 PM |
| #4 hmmm...great piece and all. But I can't figure out if this is a parody or not. I suppose it could be a young fire-brand who has rebelled against his rigid Marxist upbringing - eager to keynote his own insight and superior intellect over his teachers. In the end..the ideal of Marxism is such a joke, I guess it's all one in the same, isn't it? |
| Posted by: B 2003-12-11 10:23:07 AM |
| #3 "you eventually start shooting"...not that I think that shooting even 1 "capitalist" is justified. The violent revolution they advocate is -never- going to lead to the goals they supposedly want, since that violence will consume the revolution from within. |
| Posted by: Ernest Brown 2003-12-11 3:54:04 AM |
| #2 Old Patriot, Yeah, these guys do have some sense, but that makes it all the more reprehensible that they give lip service to a punk like Allende (a Stalinist-Castro wannabe) as a liberator. They do recognize that self-examination is necessary: "Given the widespread popularity of capitalism and the vanishingly small support for socialism in the contemporary world, it would be stupid to expect anything more radical. On the other hand, as long as we are to be ruled by capitalist states, which would you rather be ruled by: a coalition of liberal democracies that pay at least lipservice to free speech, or any number of ruthless genocidal dictatorships that want to revive the worst aspects of the Middle Ages (and we donât mean folk songs or William Morris wallpapers)? " ...but my question is, "When eventually start shooting 'the capitalists,' when are you going to stop?" |
| Posted by: Ernest Brown 2003-12-11 3:46:48 AM |
| #1 When I first read the title, I thought it would be a diatribe against the "ninecompoops", as someone so adroitly named them. Now I'm not so sure it's about anything but how stupid anyone but a Marxist is. Geesh - after the huge loss the "movement" took in the fall of the Soviet Union, and the continuing swirl around and around the drainhole of China, NKorea, and Cuba, I think the "movement" needs to look in the mirror - surprise, surprise - a MOONBAT smiles back! |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-12-10 8:17:47 PM |