sirenianshores

Guardian commentator, Nick Cohen, gives his opinion on what he sees as the betrayal of left-liberalism in the last few years of the War on Terror.

Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal left is against come from the liberal left? Why will students hear a leftish postmodern theorist defend the exploitation of women in traditional cultures but not a crusty conservative don? After the American and British wars in Bosnia and Kosovo against Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansers, why were men and women of the left denying the existence of Serb concentration camps? As important, why did a European Union that daily announces its commitment to the liberal principles of human rights and international law do nothing as crimes against humanity took place just over its borders?

Why is Palestine a cause for the liberal left, but not China, Sudan, Zimbabwe, the Congo or North Korea? Why, even in the case of Palestine, can’t those who say they support the Palestinian cause tell you what type of Palestine they would like to see? After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington why were you as likely to read that a sinister conspiracy of Jews controlled American or British foreign policy in a superior literary journal as in a neo-Nazi hate sheet? And why after the 7/7 attacks on London did leftish rather than right-wing newspapers run pieces excusing suicide bombers who were inspired by a psychopathic theology from the ultra-right?

In short, why is the world upside down?

In defence of the left, I would make the following points:

It is a fallacy to portray the left’s lack of support for the Iraq war as somehow supporting Saddam Hussein. If the Iraqis really wanted their freedom, they should have fought for it and not had a bunch of foreigners, with their own separate agenda, try to do it for them. The Iraqis should be entitled to figure out for themselves how best to govern their own country without having somebody else make their mistakes for them and suffer the consequences on their behalf.

Nobody, left or right, could support in good faith, a war which was justified on the grounds of so many falsehoods. In fact, if all Bush had dropped the WMD and connections to Al Qaeda arguments in favour of solely humanitarian justification’s, then perhaps more on the left may well have supported the war. The fact that Bush and Blair were perceived to be lying and manipulating only raised people’s suspicions about what their real intentions were.

The notion of left-wingers ‘opposing freedom for Iraq’ only holds water if you believe that the Bush administration had any genuine interest in spreading freedom and democracy in the Middle East. Most of left-wingers didn’t buy the ‘freedom’ argument for good reason. Aside from the fact that many in the Bush administration, such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, supported Saddam in the first place, witnessing Bush preaching about democracy and freedom while continuing to support neighbouring dictatorships in Egypt, Kuwait and Jordan and opposing freedom for the Palestinians completely undermined his arguments. Also, I find it a stretch to believe that those on the right, who make a point of cutting benefits for the poor in their own country, somehow care deeply about the welfare of bunch of foreigners they have never met.

Try as they might, the right demonising the left as ‘anti-American’ and what not, doesn’t justify their own position. For all the supposed good intentions of Americans, the war in Iraq has unleashed an evil all of its own. An evil which is killing thousands of Iraqis every single month and has caused literally millions of them to flee the country. Exactly as many on the left had predicted and one of the main reasons why they had opposed the war in the first place. The only thing the left got wrong about the Iraq war, was underestimating the severity of these sectarian animosities which are now fuelling a vicious civil war, which the Americans are powerless to stop. As far as fighting terrorism goes, the general view on the left was that invading Iraq would end up creating more terrorists, not less, which appears to have been the case. Reflexively dismissing these views as ‘anti-American’ and ‘pro-Saddam’ is intellectual laziness - the sort of intellectual laziness which prevented the supporters of invading Iraq from having to think too deeply about justifying their own positions on the war.

Right from the start, the Iraq venture reeked of utopianism and naivety with its grandiose plans for turning the Middle East into a paradise for democracy and freedom - something which those on the left who still felt the bitter aftertaste of the dreams communism could surely attest.

Outside of the US at least, it was not just the left who opposed the war. Despite the misconceptions, many, both left, right and independent, were united in their opposition to the war. Judging purely by the caricatures of the anti-war people, you would never know this. The leftists on the 2003 protest marches were joined by the lefts traditional enemies, such as Christian groups and also apolitical types who had never protested before. 60’s radicals were often in the minority, with many of the younger left-wingers having no real concept, if memory of, what communism had been.

Should the left have supported the US as efforts in ‘post war Iraq’? Possibly. But incidents like Abu Ghraib and the Bush administration’s general contempt for human rights in the form of extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo Bay, would have drastically undermined the moral support for the Bush administration’s efforts.

The left could have supported the war, but they would have been given absolutely no stake in it. The war was being seen as ‘owned’ and exploited by the US Republican party for their own partisan political reasons. All the advice given, no matter how well-intentioned, would have been duly ignored by the Bush administration - further disincentives for the left to jump on board for the sake of saving the project in Iraq. Given the lack of planning and unwillingness to learn from past mistakes, the Iraq war could not have turned out to be anything but a disaster. At that rate, the left would have ended up with as much blood on their hands as Bush did.

It is also incorrect to say the left have ignored tragedies occurring elsewhere. While it is true to say that the main focus of the left has been on the war in Iraq and the Middle East in general, many on the left have been agitating consistently for the West to do something about the situation in Sudan and Darfur, despite being derided by the right for doing so. It is worth mentioning also that most on the left still agree with the war in Afghanistan.