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Leftist Hawks Double-Talk on War
Foreign Affairs Opinion (Published)
Source: Newsday.com
Published: 04/28/00 Author: Benjamin Schwarz
Posted on 04/29/2000 21:12:06 PDT by Miss Antiwar
Leftist Hawks Double-Talk on War
By Benjamin Schwarz. Benjamin Schwarz is a correspondent for The Atlantic
Monthly.
DESPITE ALL the discussion and debate surrounding the anniversaries of both
the Vietnam and Kosovo Wars, one of the Kosovo conflict's most important
legacies has been largely ignored: The war galvanized a pro-war left that
embraces Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's foreign policy doctrine of
"virtuous power." Since the American victory in Kosovo, a significant
segment of the U.S. and European left has exorcised the ghost of Vietnam and
learned to stop worrying and love a globalist American foreign policy.
Many prominent left-wingers have taken to heart British Prime Minister Tony
Blair's announcement that this was "the first progressives' war" and have
with a new martial spirit celebrated the conflict against Serbia as the kind
of crusade the West should undertake in the future.
But these progressives have never explained why they were so enthusiastic
for U.S. intervention in the Balkans when they were so critical of
intervention in Vietnam. To be sure, there were many sound reasons to oppose
the Vietnam War: No intrinsic American interests were involved in that
geopolitically peripheral country; "victory" was unattainable at any
remotely acceptable cost; fighting that war, as would fighting any war,
perforce required unsettlingly brutal actions on our part.
A number of figures-most prominently such non-leftists as George Kennan, J.
William Fulbright, Hans Morgenthau and Walter Lippmann -invoked these
arguments. They added their conviction that it was dangerous and arrogant
for America to regard instability, aggression and tyranny as threats in
themselves.
Today, many progressives dismiss this sort of reasoning as "isolationist"
and coldly "realist." And, although the left availed itself of these
arguments during the Vietnam War, its critique of the conflict hinged on its
idealized view of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, which it perceived as
benevolent forces fighting for liberation and self-determination against
American oppression.
During the Kosovo war, many of these same progressives demanded that America
make war in the Balkans to protect and advance democracy and human rights
and to punish an aggressive dictator. But, if these should be the purposes
of U.S. foreign policy, why weren't these progressives advocating
intervention against the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong during the
Vietnam war? After all, although the South Vietnamese regime was clearly
corrupt and incompetent, the 1 million who fled the North when Vietnam was
partitioned in 1954 attest that that Stalinist state was far more
intolerable.
Leftists such as the writer Susan Sontag-perhaps the most vocal and
persistent progressive hawk during the Kosovo war-have compared Serbia to
"Nazi Germany." But North Vietnam's totalitarian, Communist Party state,
which she lauded in 1968 as "a place that deserves to be idealized" was
indisputably a much more oppressive regime than is Slobodan Milosevic's
indisputably thuggish one.
Sontag decried America's role in Vietnam as immoral and, in contrast,
proclaim- ed that America's intervention against Serbia was "a just war."
However, upon coming to power in 1954, North Vietnam's leaders murdered
50,000 people and then condemned hundreds of thousands to die in labor
camps; the Viet Cong massacred more than 3,000 when they occupied the city
of Hue in 1968. And, with the "liberation" of South Vietnam in 1975,
probably more than 10,000 people were executed; anywhere from 150,000 to 1
million were confined for years in gulag-style "re-education" camps;
millions were forced to work in labor gangs, and tens of thousands of ethnic
Chinese were driven from the country, joined by hundreds of thousands of
"boat people" escaping the Communists, with perhaps as many more dead in
flight.
Yet, Sontag pronounced the Communist North "an ethical society." But during
the Kosovo war-reflecting the views of the pro-war progressives-she
denounced as "genocidal" the Serbian regime (the number of whose victims
pales in comparison to Hanoi's). She demanded "a forceful response." Sontag
and the other progressive hawks of her generation suggest that Kosovo is a
model for the kind of righteous wars to which America should commit itself.
But Sontag and her crowd are obviously in no position to speak seriously
about the moral dimensions of American military intervention.
Their crusading zeal no doubt flatters their image of themselves. But before
other members of the left and the rest of us embrace their new notion of
"virtuous power," we should heed America's homegrown progressive (and
conservative) tradition.
For more than a century, that tradition-comprising such heterogenous figures
as Mark Twain, Eugene Debs, Edmund Wilson and Gore Vidal-has emphasized the
limits of American power, been wary of a universalist conception of American
security interests and held to the convictions that democracy can't be
imposed by war and that the United States cannot and should not remake the
world in its image.
1 Posted on 04/29/2000 21:12:07 PDT by Miss Antiwar
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To: Miss Antiwar
Their crusading zeal no doubt flatters their image of themselves
Could have skipped most of the article with this sentence. Why do one thing
with regard to Vietnam and something different over Kosovo? Because it's
them doing it now, so it must be good. It was someone they didn't like then,
so it must have been bad.
2 Posted on 04/29/2000 22:01:14 PDT by irv
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To: Miss Antiwar
Leftists such as the writer Susan Sontag-perhaps the most vocal and
persistent progressive hawk during the Kosovo war-have compared Serbia to
"Nazi Germany." But North Vietnam's totalitarian, Communist Party state,
which she lauded in 1968 as "a place that deserves to be idealized" was
indisputably a much more oppressive regime than is Slobodan Milosevic's
indisputably thuggish one.
anybody have an idea what makes these american "intellectuals" tic?
they have no shame when it comes to collecting their book royalties from our
evil capitalist system.
3 Posted on 04/29/2000 22:06:26 PDT by ken21
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To: Miss Antiwar
The war galvanized a pro-war left that embraces Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright's foreign policy doctrine of "virtuous power".
The left is not competent to define "virtuous"...
4 Posted on 04/29/2000 22:11:10 PDT by okie01
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To: ken21
anybody have an idea what makes these american "intellectuals" tic?
Yep. They have a romatizised and idealistic view of Communism and are not at
all bothered by the contradictions between the actions and the words of the
Communists. Brutality to achieve compassion - fine! Murder to save lives -
fine. Take everyones money to achieve prosperity - fine. Kill people to save
people - fine. Descriminate to stop descrimination - fine.
That is why they are so maddingly hypocritical, their whole world view is
conflicted. They think they are fighting some gallant, romantic battle to
save mankind. Gulags and killing fields don't bother them nor diminish their
illusion that Communism is good.
That is a good description of many of them. Others just want to have the
power to make everyone do as they think should be done. It is a combination
of a desire for power and foolish illusion.
5 Posted on 04/29/2000 23:42:16 PDT by Mind-numbed Robot
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To: Miss Antiwar
Susan Sontag wants YOU in Kosovo
6 Posted on 04/30/2000 16:15:47 PDT by sjy
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To: sjy
good article
7 Posted on 05/01/2000 23:20:45 PDT by I_Had_Enough
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To: Miss Antiwar
Americans often talk about "learning the lessons of Vietnam". The truth of
the matter is, most Americans have learned the WRONG lessons from Vietnam.
What our politicians tell us about Vietnam is not that it was an immoral
war, and we were wrong for getting involved in the first place, but rather
that the only thing we did wrong was not to use more firepower and achieve a
quick victory. Therefore, by their definition, Iraq and Kosovo represent
"successful" wars, because the US used overwhelming military force to
achieve a quick victory with very little loss of American lives. This is why
George Bush bragged about "overcoming the Vietnam syndrome" after US forces
had driven the Iraqis out of Kuwait. The deaths of sufferings of "the enemy"
even if they are mainly civilians, is of no concern to our politicians, nor
is the issue of whether we had any right in the first place to interfere in
another nation's regional affairs.
25 years after the end of the Vietnam War, it's time for Americans to
finally wake up and start learning the RIGHT lessons from that war - that
the US only causes suffering and resentment when we try to play Global
Policeman.
8 Posted on 05/02/2000 11:07:18 PDT by CattyNancy
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To: Miss Antiwar
The liberal forces in America (represented by the Democratic Party) have
almost always in this century been responsible for dragging the U.S. into
wars. With respect to the Vietnam war it was two successive Democratic
administrations which escalated America's involvment in Vietnam. All of a
sudden in 1968 the Republican Party was left 'holding the bag' as it were
for this escalation. The liberal movement then put on the cloak of pacifism
and peace while the conservative movement looked like warmongers during the
Nixon administration. We see again the Democrats and liberal forces
involving the U.S. in the Balkan quagmire. When will they ever learn?
9 Posted on 05/02/2000 15:38:21 PDT by Lent ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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To: CattyNancy
bump
10 Posted on 05/02/2000 21:22:44 PDT by Dobrozhelatel'
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To: Lent
"With respect to the Vietnam war it was two successive Democratic
administrations which escalated America's involvment in Vietnam"
Thanks for pointing that out, that's a historical fact that is often
overlooked.
Of course, the truth of the matter is both the Democratic and the Republican
parties are war parties. There is very little difference between them - they
both represent the interests of global capitalists, those who profit from
war.
11 Posted on 05/03/2000 07:15:39 PDT by CattyNancy
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