Left's dilemma (NYT) (fwd)

Though the author of this piece is hardly neutra (being an apologist of
Clinton), he does bring into focus the key (though unstated) issue of the
brawl between Hitchens and Chomsky on the pages of the _Nation_:  which
response to Sept. 11th will lead to greater political influence of the
Left (and in what context?  the US? the world as a whole? and is the moral
response identical to the pragmatic response in this case)?

-----

October 7, 2001

AFTER THE ATTACKS

Which Side Is the Left On?


By MICHAEL KAZIN


WASHINGTON

BEFORE Sept. 11, American progressives had reason to hope they might be
emerging from the political wilderness. After years of bitter squabbles over
identity politics and the merits of the Clinton administration, the left
appeared to have reclaimed its anti-corporate heritage and was growing.
For the first time since the 1930's, student activists and labor officials
championed the same causes. At dozens of colleges, groups sought to curb
sweatshop manufacturing in the developing world and to demand a living wage
for employees at home. Organizers were predicting 100,000 protesters,
including many union members, would be in Washington in late September
during the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary
Fund.

Progressives inside and outside the Democratic Party exulted that President
Bush's poll ratings were not much higher than the percentage of the vote he
had won a year before and that his administration seemed without a purpose
beyond cutting taxes. Chances looked good that a liberal coalition could
help take back the House of Representatives in 2002 and maybe the White
House in 2004.

Those hopes, and the prospect of a unified left, disappeared along with so
much else in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack. While labor leaders and
liberal lawmakers endorse the administration's anti-terrorist campaign,
radical foes of global capital on college campuses and the streets talk of
peace and try to grasp why many in the Islamic world seem to hate the United
States.

In pleading their case, each segment of the left evokes the metaphors of an
earlier war — using two very different examples. For the embattled new peace
movement, the war is Vietnam; for anti-terrorist liberals, it is World War
II.

Indeed, the arguments of many peace activists echo those New Leftists made
30 years ago. "The fear and desperation that grows [sic] from poverty and
oppression is crucial to any understanding of violence throughout the
world," says a group called the Anti-Capitalist Convergence. Even symbols of
the earlier movement are making a comeback — an ad in The Nation features
the peace symbol, now colored red, white and blue. 

Accused of being anti-American, peace demonstrators respond that they are
upholding the most humane of secular and spiritual ideals — protection of
the innocent in a world where the gulf between the rich and poor is ever
widening. As with Vietnam, radicals accuse American policymakers of caring
about acts of mass slaughter only when their own citizens are its victims.
Meanwhile, most liberals and a few chastened radicals view the Sept. 11
attacks through the prism of World War II. For them, Osama bin Laden and the
Taliban represent what the author Christopher Hitchens labels, "fascism with
an Islamic face." Echoing the words of Mr. Bush, the anti-terrorist left
maintains there is a moral imperative to defend a society that remains,
whatever its flaws, a pillar of ethnic and religious pluralism and
representative democracy. 

Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, entered politics as an
opponent of the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race. But the religious
zealots who destroyed the World Trade Center and blasted the Pentagon remind
the Jewish liberal of the Nazis; she vows "to stop that from happening
again." Labor officials now struggling to help the families of the hundreds
of union workers killed on Sept. 11 — cooks and waiters, janitors and
security guards, as well as firemen and police — are hardly inclined to
disagree.

This is no time to talk of peace, such progressives insist, before action is
taken to punish those who planned the attacks and prevent them from
committing further carnage. Repeating a charge hurled against isolationists
60 years earlier, liberals accuse opponents to their left of being naοve
about the threat posed to a system in which a culture of opposition can
flourish.

This debate within the left also parallels divisions evident in earlier
wars. In the 20th century, visionary altruists were both the leaders of
America during each major conflict and spearheaded the opposition.
In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson insisted American troops were needed to
make the world "safe for democracy," while pacifists and Socialists charged
the doughboys were only protecting the profits of munitions makers and
British imperialists. In 1940, leftists and isolationists made a similar
indictment against Franklin D. Roosevelt when he urged passage of Lend-Lease
and the revival of the draft. (It took the attack on Pearl Harbor to squelch
or convert his opponents.) In 1965, most progressive Democrats backed Lyndon
B. Johnson's decision to defend the "freedom" of South Vietnam, while young
radicals argued that the liberal president was using American power to crush
a war of independence against foreign rule.

EACH of these ruptures affected the future of American politics in
significant ways. The divisions over World War I and Vietnam — unpopular
wars — helped conservative Republicans dominate Congress and the White House
in the 1920's and most of the 1970's and 80's. But most progressives backed
World War II as a battle against the enemies of freedom, and their cherished
causes of industrial unionism and racial tolerance gained as the fighting
raged

Now, though President Bush is a Republican, he is using words saturated with
historic left ideals to win the confidence of many Americans. In his address
to Congress, the president condemned the Taliban for barring women from
school and prohibiting any religious doctrine but their own. He has also
condemned acts of prejudice against Arab-Americans and wants to help
unemployed workers pay for health insurance. Mr. Bush's oratory of war
sounds a good deal like the reformist internationalism that guided the
foreign policy of Democratic presidents from Wilson to Bill Clinton.
Anti-terrorist liberals hope the war will be limited and that, as after
Pearl Harbor, the communal spirit that has animated New Yorkers and other
Americans since Sept. 11 will stir a desire to ease domestic injustices.
Antiwar radicals want Americans to put down their flags and address the
global ills that the demonstrations in Washington were intended to
dramatize.

But activists on both sides fear their chance to build a new left may
already have passed.







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