" The Liberal Quandary Over Iraq I " (good! ....reprint from past NYT's Mag , Dec 8th)
By GEORGE PACKER
f you're a liberal, why haven't you joined the antiwar movement? More to the point, why is there no antiwar movement that you'd want to join? Troops and equipment are pouring into the Persian Gulf region in preparation for what could be the largest, riskiest, most controversial American military venture since Vietnam. According to a poll released the first week of December, 40 percent of Democrats oppose a war that has been all but scheduled for sometime in the next two months. So where are the antiwarriors?
In fact, a small, scattered movement is beginning to stir. On Oct. 26, tens of thousands of people turned out in San Francisco, Washington and other cities to protest against a war. Other demonstrations are planned for Jan. 18 and 19. By then an invasion could be under way, and if it gets bogged down around Baghdad with heavy American and Iraqi civilian casualties, or if it sets off a chain reaction of regional conflicts, antiwar protests could grow. But this movement has a serious liability, one that will just about guarantee its impotence: it's controlled by the furthest reaches of the American left. Speakers at the demonstrations voice unnuanced slogans like ''No Sanctions, No Bombing'' and ''No Blood for Oil.'' As for what should be done to keep this mass murderer and his weapons in check, they have nothing to say at all. This is not a constructive liberal antiwar movement.
So let me rephrase the question. Why there is no organized liberal opposition to the war?
The answer to this question involves an interesting history, and it sheds light on the difficulties now confronting American liberals. The history goes back 10 years, when a war broke out in the middle of Europe. This war changed the way many American liberals, particularly liberal intellectuals, saw their country. Bosnia turned these liberals into hawks. People who from Vietnam on had never met an American military involvement they liked were now calling for U.S. air strikes to defend a multiethnic democracy against Serbian ethnic aggression. Suddenly the model was no longer Vietnam, it was World War II -- armed American power was all that stood in the way of genocide. Without the cold war to distort the debate, and with the inspiring example of the East bloc revolutions of 1989 still fresh, a number of liberal intellectuals in this country had a new idea. These writers and academics wanted to use American military power to serve goals like human rights and democracy -- especially when it was clear that nobody else would do it.
Many of them had cut their teeth in the antiwar movement of the 1960's, but by the early 90's, when some of them made trips to besieged Sarajevo, they had resolved their own private Vietnam syndromes. Together -- hardly vast in their numbers, but influential -- they advocated a new role for America in the world, which came down to American power on behalf of American ideals.
Against the liberal hawks there were two opposing tendencies. One was conservative: it loathed the idea of the American military being used for humanitarian missions and nation building and other forms of ''social work.'' This was the view of George W. Bush when he took office, and of all his key advisers. The other opposing tendency was leftist: it continued to view any U.S. military action as imperialist. This thinking prompted Noam Chomsky to leap to the defense of Slobodan Milosevic, and it dominates the narrow ideology of the new Iraq antiwar movement. Throughout the 90's, between the reflexively antiwar left and the coldblooded right, liberal hawks articulated the case for American engagement -- if need be, military engagement -- in the chaotic world of the post-cold war. And for 10 years of wars -- first in Bosnia, then Haiti, East Timor, Kosovo and, last year, in Afghanistan, which was a war of national security but had human rights as a side benefit -- what might be called the Bosnia consensus held.
But on the eve of what looks like the next American war, the Bosnia consensus has fallen apart. The argument that has broken out among these liberal hawks over Iraq is as fierce in its way as anything since Vietnam. This time the argument is taking place not just between people but within them, where the dilemmas and conflicts are all the more tormenting. What makes the agony over Iraq particularly intense is the new role of conservatives. Members of the Bush administration who had nothing but contempt for human rights talk until the day before yesterday have grabbed the banner of democracy and are waving it on behalf of the long-suffering Iraqi people. For liberal hawks, this is painful to watch.
In this strange interlude, with everyone waiting for war, I've had extended conversations with a number of these Bosnian-generation liberal intellectuals -- the ones who have done the most thinking and writing about how American power can be turned to good ends as well as bad, who don't see human rights and democracy as idealistic delusions, and who are struggling to figure out Iraq. I'm in their position; maybe you are, too. This Bosnian generation of liberal hawks is a minority within a minority, but they hold an important place in American public life, having worked out a new idea about America's role in the post-cold war world long before Sept. 11 woke the rest of the country up. An antiwar movement that seeks a broad appeal and an intelligent critique needs them. Oddly enough, President Bush needs them, too. The one level on which he hasn't even tried to make a case is the level of ideas. These liberal hawks could give a voice to his war aims, which he has largely kept to himself. They could make the case for war to suspicious Europeans and to wavering fellow Americans. They might even be able to explain the connection between Iraq and the war on terrorism. But first they would need to resolve their arguments with one another and themselves.
In my conversations, people who generally have little trouble making up their minds and debating forcefully talked themselves through every side of the question. ''This one's really difficult,'' said Michael Ignatieff, the Canadian-born writer and thinker who has written a biography of the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin along with numerous books and articles on human rights. No one in recent years has supported humanitarian intervention more vocally than Ignatieff, but he says he believes that Iraq represents something different. ''I am having real trouble with this because it's not clear to me that containment has failed,'' Ignatieff told me. This kind of self-interrogation ends up with numerous arguments on either side of the ledger. Here's how I break down the liberal internal debate.
For War
1. Saddam is cruel and dangerous.
2. Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction and has never stopped trying to develop them.
3. Iraqis are suffering under tyranny and sanctions.
4. Democracy would benefit Iraqis.
5. A democratic Iraq could drain influence from repressive Saudi Arabia.
6. A democratic Iraq could unlock the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate.
7. A democratic Iraq could begin to liberalize the Arab world.
8. Al Qaeda will be at war with us regardless of what we do in Iraq.
Against War
1. Containment has worked for 10 years, and inspections could still work.
2. We shouldn't start wars without immediate provocation and international support.
3. We could inflict terrible casualties, and so could Saddam.
4. A regional war could break out, and anti-Americanism could build to a more dangerous level.
5. Democracy can't be imposed on a country like Iraq.
6. Bush's political aims are unknown, and his record is not reassuring.
7. America's will and capacity for nation building are too limited.
8. War in Iraq will distract from the war on terrorism and swell Al Qaeda's ranks.
At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue. Caution over Iraq puts liberal hawks, who are nothing if not moralists, in the psychologically unsettling position of defending a status quo they despise -- of sounding like the compromisers they used to denounce when it came to Bosnia. Fear means missing the chance for what Ignatieff calls ''a huge prize at the end.''
But wish makes a liberal hawk sound like a Bush hawk, blithely unconcerned about the dangers of American power. The liberal hawk is a liberal -- someone temperamentally prone to see the world as a complicated place.
This dilemma is every liberal's current dilemma.
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