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[Editorial]

Wanted: A loyal opposition

The left hasn’t raised much-needed questions about our war on terrorism

Gone are the days when to stand on the left meant you favored civil rights, opposed the war in Vietnam, voted against Nixon, recognized that Ronald Reagan’s Central American policy was unconstitutional, and knew that supply-side economics were designed to make the rich richer. And it’s too bad, because we need that kind of alternative political voice in this country after September 11’s terrorist attacks. Congress is on the verge of passing an anti-terrorism law that will severely curtail civil liberties. The American flag, a ubiquitous symbol of national grief and mourning just weeks ago, is in danger of becoming a litmus test for one’s patriotism. Commentators who have pointed out that the attacks occurred within the context of an arrogant US foreign policy are being labeled treasonous. There was a time when we could have counted on the political left to be a critical yet constructive voice in these circumstances. But no more.

Some elements of the left, as epitomized by organizers of the anti-globalization protests in Seattle, Quebec, and Genoa, see the United States as unrepentantly evil and citizens of non-Western nations as America’s hapless victims.

If you believe in this paradigm, it’s difficult to do anything other than blame the victim for the terrorist attacks. And that’s because September 11 turned the paradigm upside down: people from non-Western countries performed acts of unspeakable evil against Americans (and others from more than 60 countries) — victims who were guilty of nothing more than having gone to work that morning.

During an antiwar rally sponsored last Saturday in Washington, DC, by Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) and broadcast live on C-SPAN, one speaker, reading a statement from an activist (based in Vieques, Puerto Rico) who couldn’t attend in person, declared: " It’s sheer hypocrisy for the government of the United States to say it has been the victim of terrorism " when it has been the main purveyor of terrorism throughout the world.

Teresa Gutierrez, a co-chair of ANSWER from New York, piously pointed out that " window washers and security guards " lost their lives in the attacks on the World Trade Center. It’s hard to understand what her point was. That we can mourn the attacks because working-class people died? As if we couldn’t if the only ones killed had been stockbrokers and bond traders?

Leslie Feinberg, well known in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community for her groundbreaking work on behalf of transgendered people, also spoke. " Racism and war are not the answer, " she said. " Health care, education, and jobs are the answer. "

Which left us wondering whether we’d been considering different questions. Ours is this: how do we prevent more terrorist attacks? The threat is real, but the answer is not easy. Surely we already know that health care, education, and jobs, along with food for people who live in abject poverty under tyrannical regimes, should be part of the solution.

It’s not anti-American, though, to point out that these attacks could have been predicted. They were. A 2000 report by the National Commission on Terrorism states in its executive summary: " Today’s terrorists seek to inflict mass casualties, and they are attempting to do so both overseas and on American soil. They are less dependent on state sponsorship and are, instead, forming loose, transnational affiliations based on religious or ideological affinity and a common hatred of the United States. " (Read the full report online at http://w3.access.gpo.gov/nct/.)

It is indisputable that the United States is despised in many parts of the world. And this isn’t because legions of loud, tackily dressed American tourists make poor ambassadors for our country. It’s because our government has, in the past, made compacts with despots and oppressive regimes to achieve foreign-policy goals. We have done more than look the other way when these regimes have tortured and murdered their own citizens. We have propped them up with money and support. Witness our past relationships with Middle Eastern countries such as Iran and Iraq and rebels such as the Afghan mujahideen. Not to mention the United States’s shameful record in Latin America. It’s not enough to claim, as commentators on the right do, that we haven’t done the killing ourselves. We’ve helped make the killing possible.

Students of this history are understandably alarmed that the Bush administration, in its attempt to defeat terrorism, is once again forming alliances with despots and oppressive regimes.

Is this the only way we can win the war on terrorism? A war that must be fought? Frankly, we don’t know. But there’s been almost no debate on the topic. And what little criticism there’s been has resulted in claims that the critic is blaming America for the terrorist attacks. Take Charles Krauthammer’s September 21 column in the Washington Post, in which he wrote: " This is no time for ... agonized relativism. Or, obscenely, for blaming America first.... This is a time for clarity. At a time like this, those who search for shades of evil, for root causes, for extenuations are, to borrow from Lance Morrow, ‘too philosophical for decent company.’ "

Nothing could be further from the truth. And while nothing that the United States has done can justify the terrorist attacks of September 11, we need to understand why they happened.

Even THOUGH the United States is hated by many, it is among the most generous of nations. We give away billions of dollars for humanitarian purposes each year. And yet this country has, ironically, a long history of isolationism — it took an attack on Pearl Harbor to get us involved with World War II, for instance. Such isolationism has been a hallmark of the first eight months of the Bush administration: our abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol, our unilateral pursuit of a global ballistic anti-missile shield, our initial decision to pull out of the peace talks the Clinton administration initiated in the Middle East. These US-centric policies will not help us in the long collective fight against terrorism. Let’s hope that Secretary of State Colin Powell, who favors coalition building, winds up with Bush’s ear — and not Vice-President Dick Cheney, who in the past has favored go-it-alone policies.

But what may help us win is a combination of our generous tendencies with lessons learned from our years of going it alone. As David Corn notes in " Unlikely Doves " (page 1), in order for the United States to win this war, it will have to become " a force for social justice overseas. " Winning the war doesn’t hinge only on our military’s ability to stop Osama bin Laden. It hinges on our ability to change our foreign policy. How far are we willing to support new allies such as Uzbekistan, for instance, which represses its own people? In fighting the war on terrorism today, we don’t want to make things worse 20 years from now. This is what happened after our victory in the Cold War, a victory that the United States saw mainly as an opportunity to exploit new markets. We felt no sense of responsibility for the political democratization of the former Soviet republics (our new " allies " Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan among them). Indeed, our failure to stay in Afghanistan and help after the Soviets were defeated in 1989 gave rise to our new enemy: the Taliban.

The last thing we need to do now is repeat history. We could use strong and sane voices on the left to help us avoid that fate.

What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com

Issue Date: October 4 - 11, 2001





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