Left Turns
Christopher Hitchens' column for Slate on Tuesday, 7 September 2004 ("Murder By Any Other Name," with the subhead reading: "The rest of the world may be tiring of jihad, but The Nation isn't") takes to task, beginning with its penultimate paragraph, Naomi Klein's column in The Nation's 13 September 2004 issue (posted on 26 August), which covered the Republican Party's national convention in New York City; Klein's piece was titled "Bring Najaf to New York," and is posted both on The Nation's site and her own site. (Klein is a leading antiglobalization activist and the author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies [2000] and Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate [2002].)
Hitchens is tenacious in his support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, even if he's not exactly a great fan of "Dubya" in particular or the neo-conservatives in general; for at least the past couple of years, however, he seems to have been shedding much of his former friends (Gore Vidal, to name one of the more prominent of them) and comrades, if not his leftist beliefs in toto. He sees Klein's piece as a not-so-veiled call for terrorist violence against the current administration and "an endorsement of Muqtada Sadr and his black-masked clerical bandits." Hitchens notes with some satisfaction that at least two other "pillars of the Nation family," Marc Cooper and Doug Ireland, posted, in their blogs (on 27 August and 30 August, respectively), critical responses to Klein's piece wherein they also find in her column an implilcit endorsement of Muqtada al-Sadr.
Here are some excerpts from Klein's column:
"What surprises me is what isn't here [in NYC prior to the GOP's convention]: Najaf. It's nowhere to be found. Every day, US bombs and tanks move closer to the sacred Imam Ali Shrine, reportedly damaging outer walls and sending shrapnel flying into the courtyard; every day, children are killed in their homes as US soldiers inflict collective punishment on the holy city; every day, more bodies are disturbed as US Marines stomp through the Valley of Peace cemetery, their boots slipping into graves as they use tombstones for cover.
...
"It's not just that sacred burial sites are being desecrated with fresh blood; it's that Americans appear unaware of the depths of this offense, and the repercussions it will have for decades to come. The Imam Ali Shrine is not a run-of-the-mill holy site; it's the Shiite equivalent of the Sistine Chapel. Najaf is not just another Iraqi city; it is the city of the dead, where the cemeteries go on forever, a place so sacred that every devout Shiite dreams of being buried there. And Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers are not just another group of generic terrorists out to kill Americans; their opposition to the occupation represents the overwhelmingly mainstream sentiment in Iraq. Yes, if elected Sadr would try to turn Iraq into a theocracy like Iran, but for now his demands are for direct elections and an end to foreign occupation.
...
"There is no chance for Bush's war agenda to be clearly rejected on Election Day, because John Kerry is promising to continue, and even strengthen, the military occupation of Iraq. That means there is only one chance for Americans to express their wholehearted rejection of the ongoing war on Iraq: in the streets outside the Republican National Convention. It's time to bring Najaf to New York."
Now Hitchens:
"Another small but interesting development has occurred among my former comrades at The Nation magazine. In its "GOP Convention Issue" dated Sept. 13, the editors decided to run a piece by Naomi Klein titled "Bring Najaf to New York." If you think this sounds suspiciously like an endorsement of Muqtada Sadr and his black-masked clerical bandits, you are not mistaken. The article, indeed, went somewhat further, and lower, than the headline did.
...
"When I quit writing my column for The Nation a couple of years ago, I wrote semi-sarcastically that it had become an echo chamber for those who were more afraid of John Ashcroft than Osama Bin Laden. I honestly did not then expect to find it publishing actual endorsements of jihad. But, as Marxism taught me, the logic of history and politics is a pitiless one. The antiwar isolationist "left" started by being merely "status quo": opposing regime change and hinting at moral equivalence between Bush's "terrorism" and the other sort. This conservative position didn't take very long to metastasize into a flat-out reactionary one, with Michael Moore saying that the Iraqi "resistance" was the equivalent of the Revolutionary Minutemen, Tariq Ali calling for solidarity with the "insurgents," and now Ms. Klein, among many others, wanting to bring the war home because any kind of anti-Americanism is better than none at all."
Now Cooper:
"I find [Klein's] assertions, simply, astounding. Al Sadr’s group are, indeed, terrorists. Maybe not “generic” ones,. But certainly ultra-fundamentalist gangs. There is, in fact, no evidence whatsoever that they represent the “mainstream sentiment” in Iraq. If so, then why has none other than Ayatollah Sistani (who now outflanks Naomi Klein on the left!) negotiated their disarmament? Most disturbing is the last line of this graph. Al Sadr’s ultimate goal, Klein concedes, is a “theocracy” but “for now” his demands are democratic because he’s for elections and he’s against the U.S. occupation. These twin assertions are so blatantly self-contradictory that it would be overkill to say anything more about them.
"Klein should know better. All enemies of the U.S. occupation she opposes are not her friends. Or ours. Or those of the Iraqi people. I don’t think that Mullah Al Sadr, in any case, is much desirous of support issuing from secular Jewish feminist-socialists. And no one can provide any credible evidence that the Iraqis wish to trade the dictatorship of Saddam or the uncertainty of American Occupation for a religious dictatorship run by a black-shirt militia which has so far distinguished itself only for unbridled violence and its absolute contempt for civil society.
"Klein, nevertheless, winds up demanding that the coming week’s peace marches bring “Najaf to New York.” What the hell does that mean? That peace marchers identify themselves as a domestic Mahdi Army resisting the forces of the American Empire? Should they also endorse Sharia - Islamic Law-while they’re at it?
"When the Bolsheviks, if you should pardon the reference, took power in Russia in 1917, you will remember, they did so on a platform of peace. Though they had just overthrown the ancien regime which was at war with the Kaiser’s Germany, they did not, however, rush to embrace the Germans as Lenin settled into the Winter Palace. “Neither nor war-nor peace” was the watchword under which the Bolshies entered into truce talks with the Germans i.e. we oppose this war, but we'll be damned if we are going to go supine before our old enemy's enemy, the Kaiser. (Realpolitik soon intervened, of course, and a humiliating peace was signed with the Germans but the original formulation was wonderful).
"Truly distressing is that there is at least an embryonic secular Left in Iraq but it continues to be ignored by Klein and just about the entirety of the Western peace movement, for that matter. Iraqi democrats and socialists make no illusions about the character of American occupation, but they have even less truck with Al Sadr’s death squads."
Finally, Ireland:
"It is useful to remember that the deeply flawed logic of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" motored US policy in the Cold War, driving it to embrace all manner of repressive regimes and dictators from Franco to Pinochet to Suharto. That's why it's sad to see Klein engage in the same sort of thinking in her column justifying the depradations of the so-called "Mahdi Army" as somehow expressing the desire of genuine Iraqi democrats. Muqtada al-Sadr is a sanguineous religious fanatic, whose thuggish followers engage in the slaughter of the innocents. They have killed more Iraqi civilians in their guerilla campaign against American occupation than they have occupiers.
"Back in November 2002, many months before the invasion of Iraq, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy (an organization I have long supported) launched an appeal--which I and many other antiwar intellectuals, artists, and agitators signed--entitled, "We Oppose Both Saddam Hussein and the U.S. War on Iraq: A call for a new, democratic U.S. foreign policy." The appeal concluded by saying: "Ordinary Iraqis, and people everywhere, need to know that there is another America, made up of those who both recognize the urgent need for democratic change in the Middle East and reject our government's militaristic and imperial foreign policy. By signing this statement we declare our intention to work for a new democratic U.S. foreign policy. That means helping to rein in the war-makers and building the most powerful antiwar movement possible, and at the same time forging links of solidarity and concrete support for democratic forces in Iraq and throughout the Middle East."
"That is a principle which is more than ever relevant today, at a time when the genuinely democratic forces in Iraq are caught in pincer between the U.S. puppet government under the thug Alawi--which has been cavalier in suspending fundamental liberties and imposing censorship at gunpoint--and sectarian warlords like the odious religious primitive Muqtada al-Sadr. As a gay man, I am particularly aware of the fate that would await people like me under al-Sadr's interpretation of the sharia if he ever came to power. The heroic blogger Salaam Pax, a gay Iraqi whose dispatches up to, during, and since the war helped the world feel and understand what was happening in Iraq, finds al-Sadr rather bloodthirsty (so do most of the other bloggers he lists on his blogroll). So, too, do the activists of the fledgling independent Iraqi labor movement, the Iraqi Federation of Workers' Trade Unions (IFTU), whose website recounts the efforts of the government to undermine and stifle it on the one hand, and the threat to it and other truly democratic forces by al-Sadr and others."
(I've reproduced Ireland's links above, for convenience.)
I must admit I'm a bit gobsmacked; I don't know what the hell to think.
I do hope that the left in the U.S. isn't further marginalizing itself by veering so sharply to the left that it ends up writing apologias for butchers like Stalin; we certainly don't need a rerun of that particular late-late show.
"Uh, guys? You're already on the outside looking in; you need to wrangle an invitation inside, so folks can see you're really not a bunch of ideological nutters."
While I don't think that Klein's piece is quite as inflammatory as Hitchens tries to portray it, it is a bit careless; and, again, it's more than a little disconcerting to find an educated Western woman all but endorsing the establishment of a regime based on sharia law. Folks of a conspiratorial bent might wonder if perhaps Ms. Klein has accepted any "gifts" from one of Karl Rove's front organizations; she's certainly scoring more points for the other team than she is her (putative) own.
Still, Ireland makes a timely point: Why the hell aren't the U.S. media devoting more ink and air space to those Iraqis who want a democratic government, who want an independent labor movement?
Oops, I forgot: unions have been persona non grata in the U.S. for several years now. And as for democracy....who the hell wants that?
Hitchens is tenacious in his support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, even if he's not exactly a great fan of "Dubya" in particular or the neo-conservatives in general; for at least the past couple of years, however, he seems to have been shedding much of his former friends (Gore Vidal, to name one of the more prominent of them) and comrades, if not his leftist beliefs in toto. He sees Klein's piece as a not-so-veiled call for terrorist violence against the current administration and "an endorsement of Muqtada Sadr and his black-masked clerical bandits." Hitchens notes with some satisfaction that at least two other "pillars of the Nation family," Marc Cooper and Doug Ireland, posted, in their blogs (on 27 August and 30 August, respectively), critical responses to Klein's piece wherein they also find in her column an implilcit endorsement of Muqtada al-Sadr.
Here are some excerpts from Klein's column:
"What surprises me is what isn't here [in NYC prior to the GOP's convention]: Najaf. It's nowhere to be found. Every day, US bombs and tanks move closer to the sacred Imam Ali Shrine, reportedly damaging outer walls and sending shrapnel flying into the courtyard; every day, children are killed in their homes as US soldiers inflict collective punishment on the holy city; every day, more bodies are disturbed as US Marines stomp through the Valley of Peace cemetery, their boots slipping into graves as they use tombstones for cover.
...
"It's not just that sacred burial sites are being desecrated with fresh blood; it's that Americans appear unaware of the depths of this offense, and the repercussions it will have for decades to come. The Imam Ali Shrine is not a run-of-the-mill holy site; it's the Shiite equivalent of the Sistine Chapel. Najaf is not just another Iraqi city; it is the city of the dead, where the cemeteries go on forever, a place so sacred that every devout Shiite dreams of being buried there. And Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers are not just another group of generic terrorists out to kill Americans; their opposition to the occupation represents the overwhelmingly mainstream sentiment in Iraq. Yes, if elected Sadr would try to turn Iraq into a theocracy like Iran, but for now his demands are for direct elections and an end to foreign occupation.
...
"There is no chance for Bush's war agenda to be clearly rejected on Election Day, because John Kerry is promising to continue, and even strengthen, the military occupation of Iraq. That means there is only one chance for Americans to express their wholehearted rejection of the ongoing war on Iraq: in the streets outside the Republican National Convention. It's time to bring Najaf to New York."
Now Hitchens:
"Another small but interesting development has occurred among my former comrades at The Nation magazine. In its "GOP Convention Issue" dated Sept. 13, the editors decided to run a piece by Naomi Klein titled "Bring Najaf to New York." If you think this sounds suspiciously like an endorsement of Muqtada Sadr and his black-masked clerical bandits, you are not mistaken. The article, indeed, went somewhat further, and lower, than the headline did.
...
"When I quit writing my column for The Nation a couple of years ago, I wrote semi-sarcastically that it had become an echo chamber for those who were more afraid of John Ashcroft than Osama Bin Laden. I honestly did not then expect to find it publishing actual endorsements of jihad. But, as Marxism taught me, the logic of history and politics is a pitiless one. The antiwar isolationist "left" started by being merely "status quo": opposing regime change and hinting at moral equivalence between Bush's "terrorism" and the other sort. This conservative position didn't take very long to metastasize into a flat-out reactionary one, with Michael Moore saying that the Iraqi "resistance" was the equivalent of the Revolutionary Minutemen, Tariq Ali calling for solidarity with the "insurgents," and now Ms. Klein, among many others, wanting to bring the war home because any kind of anti-Americanism is better than none at all."
Now Cooper:
"I find [Klein's] assertions, simply, astounding. Al Sadr’s group are, indeed, terrorists. Maybe not “generic” ones,. But certainly ultra-fundamentalist gangs. There is, in fact, no evidence whatsoever that they represent the “mainstream sentiment” in Iraq. If so, then why has none other than Ayatollah Sistani (who now outflanks Naomi Klein on the left!) negotiated their disarmament? Most disturbing is the last line of this graph. Al Sadr’s ultimate goal, Klein concedes, is a “theocracy” but “for now” his demands are democratic because he’s for elections and he’s against the U.S. occupation. These twin assertions are so blatantly self-contradictory that it would be overkill to say anything more about them.
"Klein should know better. All enemies of the U.S. occupation she opposes are not her friends. Or ours. Or those of the Iraqi people. I don’t think that Mullah Al Sadr, in any case, is much desirous of support issuing from secular Jewish feminist-socialists. And no one can provide any credible evidence that the Iraqis wish to trade the dictatorship of Saddam or the uncertainty of American Occupation for a religious dictatorship run by a black-shirt militia which has so far distinguished itself only for unbridled violence and its absolute contempt for civil society.
"Klein, nevertheless, winds up demanding that the coming week’s peace marches bring “Najaf to New York.” What the hell does that mean? That peace marchers identify themselves as a domestic Mahdi Army resisting the forces of the American Empire? Should they also endorse Sharia - Islamic Law-while they’re at it?
"When the Bolsheviks, if you should pardon the reference, took power in Russia in 1917, you will remember, they did so on a platform of peace. Though they had just overthrown the ancien regime which was at war with the Kaiser’s Germany, they did not, however, rush to embrace the Germans as Lenin settled into the Winter Palace. “Neither nor war-nor peace” was the watchword under which the Bolshies entered into truce talks with the Germans i.e. we oppose this war, but we'll be damned if we are going to go supine before our old enemy's enemy, the Kaiser. (Realpolitik soon intervened, of course, and a humiliating peace was signed with the Germans but the original formulation was wonderful).
"Truly distressing is that there is at least an embryonic secular Left in Iraq but it continues to be ignored by Klein and just about the entirety of the Western peace movement, for that matter. Iraqi democrats and socialists make no illusions about the character of American occupation, but they have even less truck with Al Sadr’s death squads."
Finally, Ireland:
"It is useful to remember that the deeply flawed logic of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" motored US policy in the Cold War, driving it to embrace all manner of repressive regimes and dictators from Franco to Pinochet to Suharto. That's why it's sad to see Klein engage in the same sort of thinking in her column justifying the depradations of the so-called "Mahdi Army" as somehow expressing the desire of genuine Iraqi democrats. Muqtada al-Sadr is a sanguineous religious fanatic, whose thuggish followers engage in the slaughter of the innocents. They have killed more Iraqi civilians in their guerilla campaign against American occupation than they have occupiers.
"Back in November 2002, many months before the invasion of Iraq, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy (an organization I have long supported) launched an appeal--which I and many other antiwar intellectuals, artists, and agitators signed--entitled, "We Oppose Both Saddam Hussein and the U.S. War on Iraq: A call for a new, democratic U.S. foreign policy." The appeal concluded by saying: "Ordinary Iraqis, and people everywhere, need to know that there is another America, made up of those who both recognize the urgent need for democratic change in the Middle East and reject our government's militaristic and imperial foreign policy. By signing this statement we declare our intention to work for a new democratic U.S. foreign policy. That means helping to rein in the war-makers and building the most powerful antiwar movement possible, and at the same time forging links of solidarity and concrete support for democratic forces in Iraq and throughout the Middle East."
"That is a principle which is more than ever relevant today, at a time when the genuinely democratic forces in Iraq are caught in pincer between the U.S. puppet government under the thug Alawi--which has been cavalier in suspending fundamental liberties and imposing censorship at gunpoint--and sectarian warlords like the odious religious primitive Muqtada al-Sadr. As a gay man, I am particularly aware of the fate that would await people like me under al-Sadr's interpretation of the sharia if he ever came to power. The heroic blogger Salaam Pax, a gay Iraqi whose dispatches up to, during, and since the war helped the world feel and understand what was happening in Iraq, finds al-Sadr rather bloodthirsty (so do most of the other bloggers he lists on his blogroll). So, too, do the activists of the fledgling independent Iraqi labor movement, the Iraqi Federation of Workers' Trade Unions (IFTU), whose website recounts the efforts of the government to undermine and stifle it on the one hand, and the threat to it and other truly democratic forces by al-Sadr and others."
(I've reproduced Ireland's links above, for convenience.)
I must admit I'm a bit gobsmacked; I don't know what the hell to think.
I do hope that the left in the U.S. isn't further marginalizing itself by veering so sharply to the left that it ends up writing apologias for butchers like Stalin; we certainly don't need a rerun of that particular late-late show.
"Uh, guys? You're already on the outside looking in; you need to wrangle an invitation inside, so folks can see you're really not a bunch of ideological nutters."
While I don't think that Klein's piece is quite as inflammatory as Hitchens tries to portray it, it is a bit careless; and, again, it's more than a little disconcerting to find an educated Western woman all but endorsing the establishment of a regime based on sharia law. Folks of a conspiratorial bent might wonder if perhaps Ms. Klein has accepted any "gifts" from one of Karl Rove's front organizations; she's certainly scoring more points for the other team than she is her (putative) own.
Still, Ireland makes a timely point: Why the hell aren't the U.S. media devoting more ink and air space to those Iraqis who want a democratic government, who want an independent labor movement?
Oops, I forgot: unions have been persona non grata in the U.S. for several years now. And as for democracy....who the hell wants that?