On Aug 26, 2009, at 11:33 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:
Here's Thomas Frank of "What's the Matter with Kansas" fame giving
Obama advice that he should be more like Harry Truman:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574373000964995482.html
In response to the article, I wrote him:
Whatever happened to the Baffler radicalism?
Tom Frank blurbed Peter Beinart's book, The Good Fight. Frank's blurb:
"Peter Beinart takes us on a vigorous and entertaining search for a
usable past. His reasoning must be heard."
And what's this book about? Publisher's Weekly's review, via Amazon.com:
This stimulating manifesto calls for a liberalism that battles
Islamist totalitarianism as forthrightly as Cold War liberals
opposed Communist totalitarianism. Former New Republiceditor Beinart
assails both an anti-imperialist left that rejects the exercise of
U.S. power and the Bush administration's assumption of America's
moral infallibility. America shouldn't shrink from fighting
terrorism, despite civilian casualties and moral compromises, he
contends, but its antitotalitarian agenda must be restrained by
world opinion, international institutions and liberal self-doubt,
while bolstered by economic development aid abroad and economic
equality at home. Beinart offers an incisive historical account of
the conflicts straining postwar liberalism and of the
contradictions, hubris and incompetence of Bush's actions. He's
sketchier on what a liberal war on terror entails—perhaps a cross
between Clinton's Balkan humanitarian interventions and the
Afghanistan operation, with U.S. forces descending on Muslim
backwaters to destroy jihadists and build nations. The tragic
conundrum of a fighting liberalism that avoids enmeshment in a
Vietnam or Iraq (the author now repudiates his early support of the
Iraq war) is never adequately addressed. Still, Beinart's
provocative analysis could stir much-needed debate on the direction
of liberal foreign policy.
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
