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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NickSE who wrote (108769)	7/29/2003 7:12:01 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Check out this terrific and eloquent blog by one Norman Geras Good piece. The left's reaction to 911 reminds me of the left's reaction to the Hitler/Stalin pact when Hitler became a "good guy" overnight.

To: NickSE who wrote (108769)	7/29/2003 10:05:43 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

Thanks - that was a good article. The Left is largely ignoring the moral case for the war. I'm thinking much of the hue and cry raised over things like the Baghdad Museum and the Niger memo is to try to drown out the news of the hundreds of thousands of mass graves and the atrocities now coming to light. Norm Geras is correct to point out the argument for war was multi-faceted and did include the humanitarian aspect as one supporting reason: it is disingenuous of the war's critics to speak now as if the humanitarian case for war formed no part of the public rationale of the Coalition, since it was clearly articulated by both Bush and Blair more than once.

To: NickSE who wrote (108769)	7/29/2003 11:08:10 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

re: THE PRO-WAR LEFT: The blogger you linked to, describes himself as an ageing Trotskyite. That's about as irrelevant as you can get. They haven't been a significant part of the Left, or even of Marxists, anywhere, since the 1920s. Even the mainstream Marxists are now fossils, a small and fading part of the Left. The U.S. effectively has no Left. In Europe, there is the Green Party, who has replaced the Communist Party everywhere as the main party of the Left. This blogger buys into the same either/or fake dualism of NeoCon ideology. Being against the NeoCons doesn't mean being pro-Saddam. The millions who demonstrated against the war understood that clearly. <So much for solidarity with the victims of oppression, for commitment to democratic values and basic human rights.> Yes, the Marxists always gave lip service to those lofty ideals, just as the NeoCons do now. But neither Marxists nor NeoCons are very good at following through on those ideals. It was, and is, just PR. <although national sovereignty is an important consideration in world affairs, it is not sacrosanct> Again, here is an issue on which both marxists and neocons agree: we are not going to pay much respect to the idea of sovereignty. The Revolution (whatever kind) can't wait for such niceties. Onward, smashing all borders, all law, all treaties. <the freeing of the Iraqi people> <The liberation of Iraq> He sees freedom and liberation, where almost everybody else in the Left sees colonization and occupation.