Ronald Radosh's Blog, page 10

The Situation We Face in Iraq: Who is Responsible, and What Can the U.S. Do?

America has no good options in Iraq. The real possibility that the Maliki government could collapse reflects an epic failure of our foreign policy and will pose a severe national security threat to the United States.

Liberals and leftists put the blame for this dire situation on the administration of George W. Bush and his key officials, especially Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Some conservatives agree, arguing that it was foolish and wrong for the United States ever to have intervened to remove Saddam Hussein from power. But most argue that the truth is that real gains were made in Iraq to create stability and the chance for a representative Iraqi government to emerge, after the military surge put into place by Bush — against the advice of many of his own team — proved effective.

There is truth in all sides. As Daniel Pipes put it, U.S. intentions were over-ambitious, and it was “George W. Bush [who] made the commitment to remake Iraq and … signed the “Status of Forces Agreement” in 2008 that terminated the American military presence in Iraq at the close of 2011. For the Republican Party to progress in foreign policy, it must acknowledge these errors and learn from them, not avoid them by heaping blame on Obama.”

While the Bush administration may have made a call that turned out to cost far too many lives, both Iraqi and American, our intervention was based on false intelligence that was taken to heart by a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans. While Democrats attack the previous administration for its entry into Iraq, most prefer to forget that they too supported that intervention. At best, like Hillary Clinton, they acknowledge that they did, but say that they long since have publicly stated that they were wrong.

I think Dan Pipes is wrong, however, on one major point. A must-read article is out from the correspondent Dexter Filkins, a man widely acknowledged to be the best reporter and analyst on the region. Writing in The New Yorker blog yesterday, Filkins writes that when the U.S. first went into Iraq in 2003, “they destroyed the Iraqi state — its military, its bureaucracy, its police force, and most everything else that might hold a country together.” After many years of sacrifice, we worked to help the Iraqis reconstitute the state and maintain some stability. The failure of the Obama administration was not to keep a strong residual force in Iraq which would have provided a “crucial stabilizing factor,” training Iraq’s army, providing intelligence against Sunni insurgents, and curbing Maliki’s sectarian impulses. With our departure, Filkins concludes, we removed “the last restraints on Maliki’s sectarian and authoritarian influences.”

Most important, however, is the fact that the surge was successful, as was the military policy pursued by General David Petraeus. Ironically, the city of Mosul, which has now fallen to the Sunni extremist Islamic radicals, was in 2003 won by the classic counterinsurgency tactics initiated by the general. There — as his Wikipedia entry notes — his troops acted to “build security and stability, including conducting targeted kinetic operations and using force judiciously, jump-starting the economy, building local security forces, staging elections for the city council within weeks of their arrival, overseeing a program of public works, reinvigorating the political process, and launching 4,500 reconstruction projects in Iraq.”

These were substantial achievements, all of which have now gone down the drain.

The Questions about Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s Desertion, and the American Left’s Answer to Them.

Perhaps the President’s handling of the Bergdahl-Taliban swap may be the one action that will turn the tide, pushing even his most stalwart supporters to become fed up.  I say this from a phone call my wife received last night from a relative, one of those perennial liberals who up to now, has supported virtually every Obama policy and act. True, this is hardly a scientific poll or sampling. But we were stunned to hear this relative tell us how angry she was with the President. The deal, she said was unconscionable and dangerous.

There is legitimate debate to be had about whether or not the Administration should have moved to get Bowe Bergdahl back. Charles Krauthammer in his much discussed column argued that Bergdahl should be freed and then tried by the military. In NRO, Andy McCarthy wrote a strong critique of Krauthammer’s argument, arguing that in the midst of a war that is not as yet over, giving five top jihadists at Gitmo for one possible deserter is more than counter-productive. Moreover, it is problematic whether he will ever be court-martialed. Michelle Malkin reminds us that ten years ago this very month, a Muslim Marine deserted and although he was supposed to be court-martialed, a trial never took place.  This particular soldier was known to be supporting jihadists and regularly listened to their propaganda tapes.

As yet, we do not have all the facts about Bergdahl’s  desertion. Was he simply unbalanced and naïve? Was he an actual sympathizer seeking the Taliban  out? Or was his conversion to Islam and documented training with Taliban members done to save his life and prevent them killing him, or did it arise from a case of Stockholm syndrome?

Despite administration denials, especially Susan Rice’s now famous claim last Sunday that he served with “honor and distinction,” we know that the desertion took place. And there is good reason why the military treats deserters harshly. An armed force cannot survive, ensure that dangerous missions are carried out, and that discipline is maintained if any soldier decides that for even the best of personal reasons, they cannot fight and walk away.

It is also an insult to those who go into battle knowing that they may never come back. We were reminded of that when we paused to honor the sacrifice and heroism of those who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, where thousands were cut down especially in the first group who left the boats and faced a barrage of German fire without any defenses to protect them.

The filmmaker Ron Maxwell reminds us in a Facebook post, that during our Civil War in the extremely cold winter of 1862-1863, Stonewell Jackson’s aide-de-camp reported that three soldiers from the Stonewall Brigade had deserted. He  hoped that because of their age and that they had fought honorably with the unit for two years, they would be spared. Jackson replied  that it was a plea he could not accept. In a scene from his movie Gods and Generals, Maxwell writes what he thinks is likely Jackson said when he denied this appeal.  “Desertion is not a solitary crime,” Stonewall Jackson tells his aide-de-camp. “It is a crime against the tens of thousands of veterans who are huddled together in the harsh cold of this winter.” And so the deserters are tried in a court-martial and then hanged.

In World War II, Private Eddie Slovick was sentenced to death by firing squad for desertion. Many now believe he was unfairly singled out as an example. Out of the 50,000 deserters in the war, many of whom wreceived long sentences of jail time at hard labor, he was the only soldier executed. As WW II veteran Nick Gozick, who observed his execution by firing squad has noted, Slovick was a brave man. He was given two chances to rip up his letter of intent to desert by officers, and rejected them. Slovick believed he was not constitutionally fit to engage in warfare, and he went to his death bravely without even flinching. But his execution- fair or not- indicates how seriously the U.S. Army dealt with deserters in World War II.

Some years ago, the former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, historian Michael Oren, wrote a prescient article about whether it is right to honor those who deserted in past wars, as has been the case when the British government erected an actual monument to those who had been shot for desertion in WW I, and then retroactively pardoned them. Oren worries that excuses for desertion might spread, and that Europe’s views “are symptoms of European attitudes toward not just World War I soldiers but toward all soldiers, even those who fight in just causes. And, if that is true, one might well ask: Can a society that valorizes its deserters long survive?” Oren believes that an attitude is developing that since many now believe all wars are immoral,  deserters can be viewed as honorable. Would, he asks, Americans honor a soldier who deserted from the Union Army when its task became liberating slaves? Indeed, he notes that the Union Army actually had far more deserters than did the Confederacy. Oren writes:

For some Europeans, the aversion to military force is insufficient; they want Americans to lay down their arms as well. The Wall Street Journal recently profiled U.S. Army Specialist Andre Shepherd, a deserter living in Germany. Shepherd, with assistance from German peace activists, is seeking to stay in the country under an EU directive offering asylum to soldiers who refuse to fight in illegal wars. The German government has been paying for Shepherd’s room and board. “It’s just amazing here,” he told the Journal.

Today, the American left-wing deals with the issue of Berghdahl’s desertion in two ways. The first is the growing chorus of those who blame his own unit for lax security, and imply that his fellow soldiers themselves were an undisciplined and carefree bunch. This is the editorial position of The New York Times, whose editors write that “the army’s lack of security and discipline was as much to blame for the disappearance, given the sergeant’s history.” The editors believe that Berghdal is simply “a free-spirited man” who is unfairly being demonized by those who call him a “turncoat.”

What Michael Oren called “the eagerness to immortalize deserters” has already been taken up by some on the left, who justify Oren’s fear that some Americans might follow the European attitude. This time, it comes from The Nation magazine, the flagship publication of the American Left.  Writer Richard Kreitner’s article is titled “The Honorable History of War Deserters.”

Kreitner refers back to an article appearing in the publication in 1973, which attacked “the denigration of deserters” during the Vietnam War. Then, and now, both writers conflate opposing a war on the grounds of conscience with desertion, which they see as one and the same thing. For Kreitner, a deserter is nothing more than a soldier who out of opposition to war- which of course is never just when carried out by the United States- rightfully deserts and leaves his comrades in the lurch.

What Kreitner calls “vicious commentary” about Bergdahl, whom he writes was only guilty of having “served on the front lines of the American imperial machine with the unenviable misfortune of doing so with eyes wide open.” Let us put this another way. What he is saying is that because he thinks Bergdahl rightfully opposed the U.S. mission, he was a hero for deserting. Bergdahl wrote his parents an e-mail before deserting, in which he famously said “I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools. I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.” To The Nation, that position makes him a hero.

That e-mail by Bergdahl others is most revealing of his disdain for his country. Kreitner , however, sees it as candid and true . As he puts it, Berghdal only “saw reality too clearly.” He was doing nothing more than “struggling with issues of conscience.” The Army, he writes, was wrong to not inform Bergdahl that he could be let out of duty for issues of conscience, thus forcing him to desert. Get that? It’s the U.S. Army that put him in this position. Of course, Kreitner confuses what this sergeant did- deserting- with an act of conscience. Hatred of the U.S. and disdain for his comrades, which he made clear in his e-mail, is definitely not a grounds of leaving the U.S. Army because of conscience. If it were, anyone could leave the armed forces for which he or she volunteered because they changed their mind about their mission.

Kreitner ends by writing that putting “slugs into human flesh” is not the “promotion of democracy.” Only a Nation author could think there is something immoral about fighting America’s sworn enemies on the battlefield.

 

 

 

Two Anniversaries and Their Meaning

This week, two major anniversaries will take place. On June 6, Americans will observe the 70th anniversary of the landing of U.S. and Allied forces on the beaches of Normandy, the largest land invasion in military history. Three hundred thousand soldiers and 54,000 warships took part in the landing — and as most of us know from Tom Hanks’ movie Saving Private Ryan – their effort was carried out at a momentous price, and was truly heroic.

It is most likely, as Time magazine notes in a poignant article, that this will be the last observation held in Normandy at Omaha beach (they occur every five years) with D-Day veterans in attendance. Those still living are in their 80s and 90s. “The reason why World War II has such a powerful influence on our imagination,” the British military historian Antony Beevor told Time, “is because the moral choices were so great and important. That’s the most important lesson for younger generations.”

Today, it seems that there are not many  heroes (outside of those in the armed forces)  the equivalent of those young men who now are referred to as “the greatest generation.” One has to pause and wonder: if America was under attack now as it was in Pearl Harbor, would so many rush to Army recruiting stations to voluntarily enlist to defend our nation?

We are reminded of how lucky we are to be living in the United States of America when we reflect on the meaning of the other anniversary that takes place only two days later after the conclusion of the Normandy landing. This one, also on June 6, will sadly not be remembered publicly in the country in which it took place.

I’m referring, of course, to the forthcoming 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in The People’s Republic of China, in which thousands of democracy protestors were forced to end their non-violent demonstration in an orgy of spilled blood. The so-called “People’s Army” shot young Chinese protestors on the orders of the Communist Party leadership.

The New York Times reports that we are now learning more about what happened on that day. It seems that one army general, chief of the powerful and large 38th Group Army, bravely told the Party leaders when summoned to headquarters that he believed the demonstrations could only be resolved by the political process, and not by military force. Major General Xu Qinxian told a historian: “I’d rather be beheaded than be a criminal in the eyes of history.”

History is precisely what the Chinese government fears, to this day. Since Tiananmen, hundreds of Chinese have moved into the middle class, others have joined the world’s super-rich, and yet the bulk of farmers still live in rural poverty or flee to the cities to try and find work. What the Chinese do not have is any semblance of political freedom.  Dissenters are arrested and thrown into jail, the internet is heavily controlled, and accurate memory of past repression — especially that undertaken at the ruler’s command on June 4 twenty-five years ago at Tiananmen Square — is prohibited.

The Importance of the New ‘Reform Conservatism’: A Challenge to Conservatives and Liberals

You may not have heard of reform conservatism, but you should. For those who want conservative ideas to be taken seriously and to gain adherents of market-based reforms addressing the plight of the working middle class and the remains of the blue-collar class, the movement is imperative. It is simply not enough to yell “repeal Obamacare.” The conservative movement desperately needs new thinking that shakes things up and provides the kind of reforms that will address the problems our nation faces.

I view it as a most encouraging development that American Enterprise Institute, along with the Young Guns Network and National Affairs, hosted a major event last week to present leading reform conservatives, who spoke alongside both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Other prominent speakers included Ramesh Ponnuru, Reihan Salam, Ross Douthat, Peter Wehner, and Yuval Levin.

To understand precisely their approach, you can download their new e-book, Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class. The book has important essays by some of the most important and talented of serious conservative thinkers, who present new ideas on health care, tax reform, K-12 education, what kind of safety net conservatives should support, and almost every major policy issue. The thrust of their approach is what Peter Wehner notes to be the importance of developing policies that will “assist and empower working families — those who are, and those who want to be, in the middle class.”

Without the kind of effort these reform-conservative intellectuals have put forth, conservatives will always be vulnerable to the charge constantly made by left/liberal and social-democratic Democrats: Republicans don’t care about those who work, or about the poor and minorities. In his essay, Yuval Levin builds upon that task, and writes that conservatives have until now failed to put the call for limited government within the context of taking on what he calls the Left’s “technocratic approach to American society,” as well as its demands for an ever-expanding and limitless welfare state that avoids dealing with “the decentralized vitality of American life” while proposing programs that undermine its moral and economic foundations.

What these writers and thinkers are doing is taking on the ideology and assumptions of the Left’s vision of the world, both by challenging it head-on as well as offering alternative proposals that address the issues the Left always claims conservatives do not care about.

Already, only a scant few days from its unveiling, the left-wing is responding, realizing that this new effort is not just more of the same politicking. First came New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, arguing that a great gap exists between the group’s ambition and its actual ability to influence any Republican politicians. Chait goes back to what the Republican journalist Josh Barro told him last June, which is that “Republicans lack the imagination to come up with ideas to get higher wages, more jobs and affordable health care to the middle class. It is that there is no set of policies that is both acceptable to conservatives and likely to achieve these goals.”

Of course, the new effort precisely addresses Barro’s previous concerns. Of course, the skeptics are like E. J. Dionne, who has evolved over the years from a sharp centrist liberal to an apologist for the Obama administration, and who argues that whatever their intent, they will not succeed. He writes: “they are also limited by an increasingly conservative Republican primary electorate, the shift in the GOP’s geographical center of gravity toward the South, and a rightward drift within the business community.” In essence, his advice is give up — it won’t work, no one will listen, and everyone should accept the inevitable triumph of the Democratic Party and a forthcoming social-democratic European-style welfare state. Dionne, in other words, does not want the reform conservatives to succeed. As he puts it, “reform conservatism is better than the conservatism we have had. … But the conservatism we have had — and the politics it entails — will make it very hard for members of this movement to be as bold or as creative as our national moment requires.”

The Left, as Ross Douthat told Chait, believes that “American conservatism in its very essence is intent on soaking, punishing and immiserating the poor.” The goal of these reformers is to show that this is indeed not what conservatives want. One might ask Chait what he makes of the failures of LBJ’s “Great Society” program, which turned out to be an abysmal failure on many levels, and which they are now celebrating on its 50th anniversary, proclaiming the need to return to and finish Lyndon Johnson’s programs.

One positive sign that goes against the grain is Danny Vinik’s article in TNR, in which he admonishes liberals to take reform conservatism seriously. He suggests that the approach of Dionne and Chait is a cop-out, since instead of taking their ideas seriously and debating them, they respond by simply arguing that Republicans won’t act on any of their proposals. He has one point: there is a tension between trying to get politicians to listen while at the same time critiquing what they have come up with so far. Josh Barro, who is now with the New York Times, comments on what some of the problems are and argues that conservatives do address the deficit, but have not come up with ways to implement the tax cuts they propose.

At least Vinik is honest enough to write that “responding to valid conservative ideas like increasing the child tax credit or converting antipoverty programs into a universal credit is more intellectually challenging. Many liberals are concerned that after eight years of Barack Obama and potentially eight more of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s agenda will grow stale. Without a contested primary, how will the party continue to improve and adapt? Democrats can start by evaluating their policies in comparison to those of reform conservatives.”

I don’t think many on the Left will listen to someone who actually uses the words “valid conservative ideas.” Instead, they will continue to push for a shift further to the left, arguing that their party of choice should follow the lead of either Elizabeth Warren or, God forbid, Bernie Sanders. But, if they have their dithers, the Left should instead take Vinik’s advice: “Liberals should not dismiss [the reform conservatives] because reformers may have underestimated the gap between their ideas and the Republican Party’s current platform.”

If that happens, then we can have a real and meaningful and honest debate between those of us who hold a conservative vision and others who adhere to a leftist and social-democratic one. In the meantime, the smart group of reform conservatives have made a challenge to all conservatives and Republicans to come up with new ways of thinking. It’s about time.

The Importance of the new “Reform Conservatism.” A Challenge to both Conservatives and Liberals

You may not have heard about Reform Conservatism, but you should. For those who want conservative ideas to be taken seriously, and to allow conservatives to gain adherents for market based reforms that address the plight of the working middle-class and the remains of the blue collar class, it is imperative.  It is simply not enough to yell “Repeal ObamaCare” and think that loudly shouting out that slogan will do the trick. The conservative movement desperately needs new thinking that shakes things up, and provides the kind of reforms that will address the problems our nation faces.

Therefore, I view it as a most encouraging development that AEI, along with the YG Network and the journal National Affairs, hosted a major event last week to present leading Reform Conservatives, who spoke alongside both Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority leader Rep. Eric Cantor. Other prominent speakers included Ramesh Ponnuru, Reihan Salam, Ross Douthat, Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin.

To understand precisely their approach, you can download their new e-book, Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class. The book has important essays by some of the most important and talented of serious conservative thinkers, who present new ideas on health care, tax reform, K-12 education, what kind of safety net should conservatives support, and almost every major policy issue. The thrust of their approach is what Peter Wehner notes is the importance of developing policies that will “assist and empower working families- those who are, and those who want to be, in the middle class.”

Without the kind of effort these Reform Conservative intellectuals have put forth, conservatives will always be vulnerable to the charge constantly made by left/liberal and social-democratic Democrats, that Republicans don’t care about those who work, or about the poor and minorities. In his essay, Yuval Levin builds upon that task, and writes that conservatives have until now failed to put the call for limited government within the context of taking on what he calls the Left’s  “technocratic approach to American society” as well as its demands for an ever expanding and limitless welfare state, and that avoids dealing with “the decentralized vitality of American life,” while proposing programs that undermine its moral and economic foundations.

What these writers and thinkers are doing is taking on the ideology and assumptions of the Left’s vision of the world, both by challenging it head on as well as offering alternative proposals that address the issues the Left always claims conservatives do not care about.

Already, only a scant few days from its unveiling, the left-wing is responding, realizing that this new effort is not just more of the same politicking. First came New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, arguing that a great gap exists between the group’s ambition and its actual ability to influence any Republican politicians. Chait goes back to what the Republican journalist Josh Barro told him last June, which is that “Republicans lack the imagination to come up with ideas to get higher wages, more jobs and affordable health care to the middle class. It is that there is no set of policies that is both acceptable to conservatives and likely to achieve these goals.”

Of course, the new effort precisely addresses Barro’s previous concerns. Of course, the skeptics like E. J. Dionne, who has evolved over the years from a sharp centrist liberal to an apologist for the Obama administration, and who argues that whatever their intent, they will not succeed. He writes: “they are also limited by an increasingly conservative Republican primary electorate, the shift in the GOP’s geographical center of gravity toward the South, and a rightward drift within the business community.” In essence, his advice is give up- it won’t work, no one will listen, and everyone should accept the inevitable triumph of the Democratic Party and a forthcoming social-democratic European style welfare state. Dionne, in other words, does not want the Reform Conservatives to succeed. As he puts it, “ Reform conservatism is better than the conservatism we have had…. But the conservatism we have had—and the politics it entails—will make it very hard for members of this movement to be as bold or as creative as our national moment requires.”

The Left, as Ross Douthat told Chait,  is that “American conservatism in its very essence is intent on soaking, punishing and immiserating the poor.” The goal of these Reformers is to show that this is indeed not what conservatives want. One might ask Chait what he makes of the failures of LBJ’s “Great Society” program, which turned out to be an abysmal failure on many levels, and which they are now celebrating on its 50th anniversary and proclaiming the need to return and finish Lyndon Johnson’s programs.

One positive sign that goes against the grain is Danny Vinik’s article in TNR, in which he admonishes liberals to take Reform Conservatism seriously. He suggests that the approach of Dionne and Chait is a cop-out, since instead of taking their ideas seriously and debating them, they respond by simply arguing that Republicans won’t act on any of their proposals. He has one point. There is a tension between trying to get politicians to listen while at the same time critiquing what they have come up with so far.  Josh Barro, who is now with The New York Times ,  comments on what some of the problems are, and argues that conservatives do address the deficit, but have not come up with ways to implement the tax cuts they propose.

At least Vinik is honest enough to write that “responding to valid conservative ideas like increasing the child tax credit or converting antipoverty programs into a universal credit is more intellectually challenging. Many liberals are concerned that after eight years of Barack Obama and potentially eight more of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s agenda will grow stale. Without a contested primary, how will the party continue to improve and adapt? Democrats can start by evaluating their policies in comparison to those of reform conservatives.”

I don’t think many on the Left will listen to someone who actually uses the words “valid conservative ideas.” Instead, they will continue to push for a shift further to the left, arguing that their party of choice should follow the lead of either Elizabeth Warren or, God forbid, Bernie Sanders. But, if they have their dithers, the Left should instead take Vinik’s advice: “Liberals should not dismiss [the Reform Conservatives] because reformers may have underestimated the gap between their ideas and the Republican Party’s current platform.”,

If that happens, then we can have a real and meaningful and honest debate between those of us who hold a conservative vision and others who adhere to a leftist and social-democratic one.  In the meantime, the smart group of Reform Conservatives have made a challenge to all conservatives and Republicans to come up with new ways of thinking. It’s about time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 [RR1]

The Case for a New Conservative/Old-Fashioned ‘Cold War Liberal’ Alliance, and a Critique of Those Who Oppose It

The Soviet Union and the United States were involved in an ideological, political, and military fight almost as soon as World War II came to an end. The United States took the leadership of the fight for freedom against the forces of totalitarianism, then under the control of Joseph Stalin. The situation has some similarities with the one existing today, especially with the emerging differences over Ukraine and Putin’s attempt to revive the Soviet empire in a new form.

With the new deal between Russia and China, Putin has managed to gain the funds he needs to feed his ambition, just when the economy of Russia was beginning to tank. During the Cold War, the Nixon administration managed to play Mao’s China against the Soviet Union, thereby weakening Russia’s grip on the world and its desire for hegemony. That option does not exist today.

There are, however, other major similarities that are pointed out today in a very important speech by Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic. Together with Yale historian Timothy Snyder, who has been writing some of the most insightful articles about Ukraine (such as this one, and this blog in the New York Review of Books), they put together a major conference of Western and Ukrainian intellectuals in Kiev, which was held a few days ago.

Wieseltier, in his introductory remarks, makes a telling analogy. He argues that the events in Russia bring to mind the historic Congress for Cultural Freedom, held in Berlin in the early days of the Cold War, in which anti-Communist liberals and conservatives put aside their differences. They sought to work together to let those in the West understand why it was imperative that the Soviet Union — then still run by Joseph Stalin — not be allowed to succeed in its goals of building a Communist world. The Congress, as Peter Coleman subtitled his book, was a “struggle for the mind of postwar Europe.” Wieseltier writes:

All historical analogies are imperfect, but they are not for that reason false. The analogy between 2014 and 1950 is in some ways imprecise and hyperbolic: Putin is not Stalin, for example. But Putin is bad enough. Putin is very bad. It is not only evil in its worst form that we must resist. The discontinuities of recent histories must not blind us to the continuities. It is also the case — here is another discontinuity — that the United States and its European allies are not inclined now toward a geopolitical struggle that would in any way resemble the Cold War, which many Westerners regard as a dark and cautionary tale. I am not one of those Westerners: Unlike many American liberals, among whom I otherwise count myself, I regard the Cold War as a mottled tale of glory, because it ended in the defeat and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, which was indeed (for American liberals this is a heretical prooftext) what Ronald Reagan said it was — an evil empire.

Wieseltier considers the condition of Ukraine as one of “the proving grounds of principle in our time,” and it is a “modern struggle for democracy” akin to that which took place in the 1950s against Stalinism. So he and Snyder sought, in creating this event, to show the solidarity of Western European and American intellectuals with their Ukrainian counterparts. He argues that the Ukrainians were fighting for principles Americans endorse: liberty, truth, and pluralism. He marvels at the arrogance of Putin, whose propaganda proclaims the Ukrainian activists fascist, when it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black — “a fascist regime [which] has the temerity to call you fascist.”

Wieseltier, one must stress, is indeed a man whose position is similar to that of a once-large group, but now a dying breed: the so-called “Cold War liberals.” This was a favorite term of hatred used by the Left to describe those who fought the Popular Front initiated by the Communists in the days of World War II and the U.S.- Soviet alliance, and which they sought to maintain in the early days of the Cold War.

Nevertheless, today’s liberals — really those who take the positions of the far Left — have already sought to attack Wieseltier’s speech. The first culprit, and I am sure more will follow, is well-known liberal writer Jim Sleeper, whose response appears at the Huffington Post. He titles his article “Ukraine’s Neo-con Champions Champion Mainly Themselves,” a title meant to show his leftist readers that he has nothing but disdain for their efforts at solidarity. In so doing, he ironically shows that his position is analogous to that of the fellow-travelers and Communists who attacked the Congress of Cultural Freedom in similar terms in the 1950s.

The Case for a new Conservative and Old Fashioned “Cold War liberal” Alliance, and a Critique of Those who Oppose it.

 

The Soviet Union and the United States were involved in an ideological, political and military fight almost as soon as World War II came to an end. The United States took the leadership of the fight for freedom against the forces of totalitarianism, then under the control of Joseph Stalin. The situation has some similarities with that existing today, especially because of the emerging differences with the United States and Russia over Ukraine and Putin’s attempt to revive the old Soviet empire in a new form.

With the new deal between Russia and China, Putin has managed to gain the funds he needed to feed his ambition, just when the economy of Russia was beginning to tank. During the Cold War, the Nixon administration managed to play off Mao’s China against the Soviet Union, thereby weakening Russia’s grip on the world and on its desire for hegemony. That option does not exist today.

There are, however, other major similarities, that are pointed out today in a very important speech by Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic. Together with Yale historian Timothy Snyder, who has been writing some of the most insightful articles about Ukraine, (such as this one and this blog in the NYRB) they have put together a major conference of Western and Ukrainian intellectuals in Kiev, held a few days ago.

Wieseltier, in his introductory remarks, makes a telling analogy. He argues that the events in Russia brought to his mind the historic Congress for Cultural Freedom, held in Berlin in the early days of the Cold War, in which anti-Communist liberals and conservatives put aside their differences, and sought to work together to let those in the West understand why it was imperative that the Soviet Union, then still run by Joseph Stalin, not be allowed to succeed in its goals of building a Communist world. The Congress, as Peter Coleman subtitled his book, was a “struggle for the mind of postwar Europe.” Wieseltier writes:

All historical analogies are imperfect, but they are not for that reason false. The analogy between 2014 and 1950 is in some ways imprecise and hyperbolic: Putin is not Stalin, for example. But Putin is bad enough. Putin is very bad. It is not only evil in its worst form that we must resist. The discontinuities of recent histories must not blind us to the continuities. It is also the case—here is another discontinuity—that the United States and its European allies are not inclined now toward a geopolitical struggle that would in any way resemble the Cold War, which many Westerners regard as a dark and cautionary tale. I am not one of those Westerners: Unlike many American liberals, among whom I otherwise count myself, I regard the Cold War as a mottled tale of glory, because it ended in the defeat and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, which was indeed (for American liberals this is a heretical prooftext) what Ronald Reagan said it was—an evil empire.

Wieseltier considers the condition of Ukraine as one of “the proving grounds of principle in our time,” and it is a “modern struggle for democracy” akin to that which took place in the 1950s against Stalinism. So he and Snyder sought in creating this event to show the solidarity of Western European and American intellectuals to their Ukrainian counterparts. He argues that the Ukrainians were fighting for principles Americans endorse; Liberty, truth and pluralism. He marvels at the arrogance of Putin whose propaganda proclaims the Ukrainian activists fascist, when, as he puts it, is a case of the pot calling the kettle black- since it is that of “a fascist regime [which] has the temerity to call you fascist.”

Wieseltier, one must stress, is indeed a man whose position indeed is similar to that of a once large group, but  in our day a dying breed- that of the  so called “Cold War liberals,” a favorite term of hatred used by the Left to describe those who fought the Popular Front initiated by the Communists in the days of World War II and the U.S.- Soviet alliance, and which they sought to maintain in the early days of the Cold War.

Nevertheless, today’s liberals- really more who take the positions of the far Left- have already sought to attack Wieseltier’s speech, as soon as it was published in TNR. The first culprit (and I am sure more will follow) is a well-known liberal writer, Jim Sleeper, whose response appears in The Huffington Post. He titles his article “Ukraine’s Neo-con Champions Champion Mainly Themselves,” a title meant to show his leftist readers that he has nothing but disdain for their effort of solidarity. In so doing, he ironically shows that his position is analogous to that of the fellow-travelers and Communists who attacked the Congress of Cultural Freedom in similar terms in the 1950s.

Sleeper, who obviously is content to do nothing to help Ukraine, condemns Wieseltier and the conference organizers as engaging in “a politics of self-affirmation through moral posturing.” Rather than address the argument and analogy Wieseltier makes, he condemns him for arguing in a previous article that President Barack Obama is weak—a truth if there ever was one—while failing to engage in the usual litany of proceeding to attack the foreign policy of George W. Bush. Moreover, clearly, Sleeper is probably furious that Wieseltier dared to say that Ronald Reagan was correct in dubbing the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Nothing infuriates his type of liberal more than saying anything positive about Reagan.

Next he brings up the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s famous essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” the thesis of which has nothing at all to do with the situation the conference participates are addressing. I cannot recall any instance in which Snyder or Wieseltier are supporting or have supported “fascistically inclined anti-Communist dictatorships.” Bringing up the Kirkpatrick essay is mainly yet another easy to smear those he disagrees with.

Finally, Sleeper cannot refrain from using the old canard- made public already decades ago- that the CIA financed the Congress for Cultural Freedom and many of its European journals of opinion, like Encounter in Britain. I have long argued, as does Coleman in his own book I mentioned before, that the CIA was only giving intellectuals who said what thought on their own the ability to have others hear their arguments; they did not dictate what they should write. The Agency allowed liberal Western opinion- as well as that of conservatives- to be heard by those who were reading the slew of publications financed in Europe by the KGB, and in the United States as well. In our own country, Soviet financing sustained the left-wing weekly The National Guardian, as well as a book club and publishing house run by the American Italian born KGB agent, Carl Marzani.

Whether or not Sleeper approves of Wieseltier’s earlier support for regime change in Iraq when it was run by Saddam Hussein, and that horrors, he once sat on a board of a group championing a free Iraq along with Bill Kristol and Karl Rove, is also irrelevant.  He does not mention, of course, that Wieseltier has long since said publicly he thought he was wrong about his early support for the Iraq war. That is more than many Democrats have done, who pretend that they too did not support it, and instead join the crowd attacking Bush and Cheney.

Strangely, Sleeper ends by writing that he too thinks that “Ukrainian democrats deserve ardent support, and Putin’s Russia deserves condemnation.” So why is he so up in arms about Snyder,  whom he sneeringly refers to as “comrade Snyder,” and so angry at Wieseltier? The answer is simple: Unlike the pure Sleeper, Wieseltier is to be condemned for his serious effort because “working in concert with people whose politics and purposes contravene one repeatedly proclaims are antithetical to one’s own is disgusting, and one needn’t charge guilt by association to note that for an insistently self-described liberal, Wieseltier works frequently and cozily with vulcan neoconservatives whose follies have weakened America.”

So that’s it. What Sleeper is warning people against, despite his phony assurances that he too stands with Ukraine, is that one of the people who did something has at times worked with conservatives. He did not add that next week, Wieseltier is joining Robert Kagan and David Brooks in a discussion of foreign policy and President Obama’s role in it at The Brookings Institution.  Perhaps he fears that were he to mention it, some of his readers in the DC area might register to attend, and perhaps learn something.

Finally, Sleeper should reflect on what it says that some conservatives and some liberals are willing to ally with those with whom they have differences, in an area in which they agree and believe that pressure must be put on the Obama administration’s foreign policy. Certainly, these principled liberals cannot join together with those supportive of the administration, whose disastrous policies they oppose. The reasons for that is something Jim Sleeper should think about. 

 

 

 

 

From the Free Speech Movement to the No Speech Movement

At the very start of the early New Left- circa the 1964-65 academic year- students at Berkley California started what was called The Free Speech Movement. (FSM) Back in those days, university administrators did not allow early supporters of the Civil Rights movement to try and gather support on campus or solicit donations to various civil rights organizations. The police were called in to arrest the offenders, mass arrests were made, and giant rallies surrounding the Sproul Hall steps had nationwide repercussions, including a backlash to the protests from California residents who backed Governor Ronald Reagan’s measures to reign in the protests.

It also led to a speech by a young student named Mario Savio, whose following words sound today like a clarion call by a libertarian:

But we’re a bunch of raw materials that don’t mean to be — have any process upon us. Don’t mean to be made into any product! Don’t mean — Don’t mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We’re human beings! … There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious — makes you so sick at heart — that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

How times have changed. The very New Left students of that era- so many of whom now run the Universities against which they once protested- have moved from support of free speech to what might be termed the “No Speech Movement.” Or, perhaps more accurately, speech for which only those whom they approve should be allowed. Nowhere has this been clearer than in the various incidents surrounding invited graduation speakers at some of the most well-known private liberal arts colleges as well as one state university.

Last week, Smith College announced that Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, Lagarde announced that she would not appear in order “to preserve the celebratory spirit” of graduation ceremonies at the College. One must wonder what anyone objected to in the choice of Ms. Lagarde, a woman who by any standards ranks as highly accomplished. The answer came in an online petition signed by 480 students and 120 faculty members, all of whom believe that Lagarde works for an institution that is part of “imperialistic and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.” Even the public statement by Smith’s president, who wrote students that an invitation to speak did not mean an “endorsement of all views or policies” of the IMF or Lagarde, but that their petition was “anathema to our core values of free thought and diversity of opinion,” did not succeed in stopping Lagarde’s decision to step down.

Then, following Lagarde’s withdrawal by one day, Haverford College made known their strong opposition of scheduled commencement speaker Robert J. Birgeneau. Ironically, he was the former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley- the very university in which the FSM was born. Moreover, Birgeneau was a man of the political Left. Indeed, he was well known as an advocate for LGBT rights, the rights of undocumented immigrants, (that is, illegal aliens)  and “faculty diversity,” which many of us would call hiring by racial and gender classifications. What indeed, could the student activists find objectionable in his scheduled commence appearance?

One might find his forced withdrawal as a case of irony, as the chickens came home to roost, except for the fact  it revealed only how far the collapse of free speech has taken place. 50 students—50, mind you—hardly a huge number, revealed that Birgeneau could appear, if only he accepted nine conditions they then laid out. First, they objected that in 2011, he had supported police being called to campus to deal with “Occupy Wall Street” protestors demonstrating at the infamous Sproul Hall. Their demands included his admission that he played a role in police arrests and actions at the site, that he “support reparations for the victims of the November 9th beatings and arrests,” and publicly admit in a letter to Haverford students that his own “actions have not been in line with the values of peace, non-violence, and political participation.” Like China’s Red Guards in the era of the 60’s “Cultural Revolution,” the guilty had to confess their sins in a ceremony of humiliation. Birgeneau simply responded that “First, I have never and and will never respond to lists of demands. Second, as a long time civil rights activist and firm supporter of non-violence, I do not respond to untruthful, violent verbal attacks.”

Thankfully, Harverford’s president told students in a letter that they sounded “like a jury issuing a verdict than” inviting Birgeneau to discuss the issue or as a group willing to listen to what he has to say. And as Daniel Henninger put it in a superb column in The Wall Street Journal, “No one could possibly count the compromises of intellectual honesty made on American campuses to reach this point. It is fantastic that the liberal former head of Berkeley should have to sign a Maoist self-criticism to be able to speak at Haverford. Meet America’s Red Guards.”

All this followed the already much discussed withdrawal of Aayan Hirsi Ali as commencement speaker at Rutgers University and the withdrawal of Condoleezza Rice as Rutgers University’s commence speaker—all because of the public protest of a numerically small number of student and faculty leftists.

Under what guidelines of academic freedom, one wonders, are these faculty and student protesters operating? My answer is that the faculty elders grew up when Herbert Marcuse, dean of the Frankfurt School Marxists in the America of the 1960s, was a household name to them. Marcuse, as I have pointed out in this column some time ago, believed in the theory he dubbed “repressive tolerance,” which coincided with the original FSM at Berkeley, and to which he dedicated his essay to his Brandeis students. According to the great sage of the New Left, “reactionary” and Right-wing ideas should be suppressed. As he argued, the American state precluded true ideas – those of the Marxism he espoused—from being heard; therefore, the only chance of “liberation” was to free the people from being dominated by the ruling ideas. America, he believed, was “a totalitarian democracy.” His argument boiled down to this: “ Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.”

Having learned from the likes of Marcuse, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, the contemporary Left, which only cares about creating institutions that emphasize gender, class and race above all as the factor on which universities should be based, do their part to prevent their classmates and the student’s parents from hearing any thoughts that might actually open their minds to other beliefs than leftist dogma. I wonder how many genuine liberals who supported The Free Speech Movement feel about the fruits of their early rebellion. Oh, and Marcuse—he left Brandeis and ended his career teaching at—The University of California, Berkeley.

 

 

 

The Holocaust Revisited—An Open Thank You Note to Ed Schultz

Dear Ed,

May I call you Ed? You can certainly call me Roger.

I know you’ve been taking a lot of flak for that Tweet you made the other day — “Gay people were really the ones being persecuted in Hitler’s Germany” — some calling you about as sensitive as Attila the Hun and wondering why NBC Universal would allow such a bizarre personality to represent them in public, sort of like asking Donald Sterling to host their morning show.

And I realize too that you quickly deleted the Tweet after a deluge of responses from normal human beings.

But, even with all that, I just wanted to say thank you, sir, for my family and for myself!

You see you have solved the mystery of why my grandmother’s Uncle Lennie, “the bachelor,” was incinerated at Auschwitz.  Unfortunately, his sexual preference did not appear on ancestor.com.  But now we know.

It’s clear from your writing that Lennie’s Jewish identity would not have been enough, even though, as I’m sure you are aware as a prestigious political commentator at MSNBC, some recent investigators, including a French priest, have asserted that the stratospheric number of Jewish dead could actually be revised upwards.

And then, as you also must know, there are many groups besides Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, among them Poles, Slavs, Serbs, gypsies, Soviet POWs, some leftists (although the Nazis began as a left-wing party), the mentally and physically disabled and, of course, gays.  Hitler was, in his way, an equal opportunity genocidal maniac.

Global Anti-Semitism Poll Finds Shocking Rate of Holocaust Denial

The Anti-Defamation League released a sobering worldwide study of anti-Semitic attitudes today that found only 54 percent of people around the globe have heard of the Holocaust and nearly a third believe the World War II systematic slaughter is a myth or overblown.

Unprecedented in its size and scope, the ADL Global 100 survey gathered information in 102 countries and territories through 53,000 interviews.

“We are here to try to measure the level of anti-Semitism to go beyond the anecdote,” ADL president Abe Foxman said at a press conference releasing the study. “…Our findings are sobering but, sadly, not surprising.”

Worldwide, anti-Semitic attitudes were found in 26 percent of those polled.

Respondents were asked their feelings about Jewish stereotypes: Jews are more loyal to Israel than their country of residency, have too much power in international financial markets, have too much control over global affairs, think they are better than other people, have too much control over the global media, are responsible for most of the world’s wars, have too much power in the business world, don’t care what happens to anyone but Jews, talk too much about happened to them in the Holocaust, and have too much control over the United States government. They were also asked if “people hate Jews because of the way Jews behave.”

Answering “probably true” to six of the 11 statements was considered an anti-Semitic attitude in the survey. Twenty-eight percent of those polled worldwide said none of the stereotypes are true.

Foxman said the survey didn’t directly ask people “are you anti-Semitic” because “anti-Semitism can mean different things in different places” — and “we also find that bigots don’t believe they are bigots.”

He added that, in his opinion, if a person answers three of those questions in the affirmative, “he has views against Jews.” The threshold used to be five questions, but Foxman stressed they want to “make sure we’re labeling bad someone who is really bad.”

If the threshold was five questions, the number of people harboring anti-Semitic attitudes worldwide would go up to 34 percent — more than a third of the adult population.

The number in the U.S. was comparatively low at 9 percent. Crossing the border into Mexico hiked the number up to 24 percent, with numbers consistently in the 30 percent or higher range across Latin America. Brazil was the lowest in Central and South America with 16 percent, while Panama was the highest with 52 percent.

Argentina, site of the 1994 Jewish community center bombing in Buenos Aires, scored 24 percent.

In sub-Saharan Africa, anti-Semitic attitudes ranged from a high of 53 percent in Senegal to a low of 12 percent in Tanzania. Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda were also in the teens, with Kenya jumping to 35 percent and South Africa at 38 percent.

North Africa is a very different picture, with a high of 87 percent in Algeria and Libya and a low of 75 percent in Egypt.

Crossing over into the Middle East, 93 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza rated as anti-Semitic, with 92 percent in Iraq. The lowest countries in the region were Oman at 76 percent, Saudi Arabia at 74 percent, and Iran with 56 percent.

Foxman said region turned out to be a greater factor than religion in determining anti-Semitic attitudes — except when measuring the rate of Muslim feelings about Jews.