sirenianshores

If you haven’t heard about it already, the Euston Manifesto is a declaration of principles and beliefs supporting human rights and opposing tyranny, terrorism, and racism. It was published online in April this year by a collection of academics, bloggers and journalists on the British left.

It’s currently being promoted by right-wing conservatives as a means to co-opt elements of the moderate left into supporting Bush and his policies in the War on Terror. The idea is to convince elements of the left that Bush believes in the same liberal ideals as the they traditionally have and consequently, they should ’see the light’ and join his valiant quest in defending those ideals from those evil terrorists and tyrants he constantly warns us about.

We are democrats and progressives. We propose here a fresh political alignment. Many of us belong to the Left, but the principles that we set out are not exclusive. We reach out, rather, beyond the socialist Left towards egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment. Indeed, the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between the forces of the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values. It involves making common cause with genuine democrats, whether socialist or not.

The present initiative has its roots in and has found a constituency through the Internet, especially the “blogosphere”. It is our perception, however, that this constituency is under-represented elsewhere — in much of the media and the other forums of contemporary political life.

The broad statement of principles that follows is a declaration of intent. It inaugurates a new Website, which will serve as a resource for the current of opinion it hopes to represent and the several foundation blogs and other sites that are behind this call for a progressive realignment. More>>

This week, one of it’s main authors has been defending the Manifesto in the London Times:

Here’s my take on the whole thing:

The time has never been worse for the idea that those on the left should join in supporting the Bush administration’s policies for the Middle East. The Neo-con project for Iraq is now seen as thoroughly discredited and currently failing in its present state. Given how events have turned out, the view on the part of the anti-war left is now one of vindication - ‘everything we said would happen did happen’. So it doesn’t make sense for them to suddenly ’see the light’ and jump on to what’s perceived as a ’sinking ship’ of sorts. There is even less incentive for the left to consider joining forces with Bush in rebuilding Iraq while he is apparently intent on starting another war with Iraqs neighbour, Iran. Endorsing Bush and his polices at this late stage would simply be seen by the left as bringing that war one step closer to reality.

With US public support for the war at an all time low, it would make more sense for the Bush Hawks to be 110% focused on gaining lost support among average/apolitical types of people who would have previously been supportive of the Iraq invasion.

As for the manifesto itself, it is hard to escape the conclusion it is little more than a call for more of the same, rather than some fresh ideas which the so called War on Terrorism could badly do with at the moment. It is also apparent upon reading it, that it contains a number of straw man arguments regarding the left. For example, the notion that people like George Galloway, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan are typical of the broad left. That’s as wrong as saying that all conservatives are mindless, bible-thumping, hypocritical, fundamentalist automatons whose political ideas are summarized by ‘lower taxes, ban abortions, gays are evil personified’. The reality is just as many left-wingers hate Moore and Galloway as agree with them. Sheehan is seen as a sympathetic, but largely irrelevant figure.

“Understanding” terrorists

Also, the idea that “understanding” the terrorist’s background is to make ‘excuses’ for it is misleading. Awkward questions like those are not allowed to be asked for fear it might expose the hypocrisy and arrogance of the West towards the Middle East - and consequently the role which we must play in cleaning up our own act before instructing others to do similarly.

Granted, there will always be fanatics who cannot be reasoned with but there are a lot of more moderate Muslims are also sympathetic to the causes they claim to fight for. Those reasons need to be addressed. They are genuine and heartfelt among many Muslims and should not be dismissed in favour of more simplistic arguments, such as ‘they hate us for our freedom’ etc. The examples of this are numerous: people imprisoned, tortured or killed by US-backed client states like the ones in Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Palestinians killed in their own streets with American made weapons wielded with impunity by a US client state, Israel. The battle against terrorism is a war of the mind as much as a military one. Take away those sources of rage and frustration and you have effectively won most of the battle.

The ‘(Un)Principled Left’

If the authors of the manifesto had any real sense of self-awareness, they might realise that blandly stating their affirmation of the noble principles of upholding democracy, human rights etc in a rather pompous manner, combined with obvious sideswipes at anyone who criticizes Bush’s policies is probably not the best means of winning over people to their side. There is of course no shortage of ‘principled’ folks on the left who care sincerely about democracy, freedom and human rights, it’s their means of achieving and promoting those ideals which those on the left tend to disagree with Bush. One of the main criticisms of Bush’s strategy is it’s over reliance on the blunt instrument of military force to solve the problem of Islamic terrorism and lack of focus on the political reasons behind it. Having said that, it’s also worth remembering, that the majority on the left actually supported Bush’s intervention in Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9-11 and still do in many cases. The Bush administration squandered any credibility they had with the moderate left (and indeed, the rest of the world for that matter) when they launched what was seen as an unprincipled invasion of a sovereign nation like Iraq which represented no direct threat to the US.

On hypocrisy:

The charge of hypocrisy goes both ways: while Bush calls for ‘democracy’ in the Middle East, there is a distinct lack of consistency between his words and his actions. The US has long supported, and continues support (under Bush’s watch), oppressive regimes such as the ones in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia. His setting aside democratic principles in his dealings with the Chinese regime are seen as further examples of hypocrisy. All that coupled with the US’s post WWII opposition to democracy where it clashed with its own strategic interests completely undermines any integrity which Bush’s words may have.

The document is an interesting read nonetheless and I do welcome any attempt by either side to bridge the current gap between the Pro-Bush hawks and the moderate left. But the way I see it, the chances of that happening are probably zero while the current administration is still in power and with a looming war with Iran. Perhaps if the next president happens to be a moderate Republican, along the lines of John McCain, or a Democrat, things may change for the better.