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Today's
Stories
October
20, 2003
John &
Eileen Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
October
20, 2003
The Dirty War of the
Tough-Minded Liberals
Democrats
Seek to Disappear Chomsky & Nader
By MARK HAND
About two weeks ago, I reviewed Diana Johnstone's
Fools'
Crusade, an excellent book that takes a critical look at
U.S. and European intervention in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Johnstone
explains how a large number of people on the political left fell
so deeply for the propaganda campaign to Hitlerize the regime
of Slobodan Milosevic that they were willing to support NATO's
brutal weeks-long aerial bombardment of Serbia.
Soon after writing the review, I came
across an op-ed piece in the Washington Post by E.J. Dionne that
proved Johnstone's thesis was not exclusively applicable to the
period of Yugoslavia's breakup. Certain left-of-center opinion-makers
are as feverish for U.S. wars of conquest in the 21st century
as they were for the military campaigns against Serbia in the
1990s. In the post-9/11 world, liberals have forgotten that,
as Johnstone explains, "humanitarian intervention was the
standard pretext for all the Western imperialist conquests of
the past."
In his column, Dionne confers high praise
on a new book edited by George Packer entitled "The Fight
Is For Democracy," which contains writings by what Dionne
calls a "gathering of tough-minded liberals." What
makes these liberals so tough-minded? In Dionne's mind, a tough-minded
liberal (TML) is someone who's not afraid to give the U.S. military
a green light to wage war under certain circumstances. In other
words, the TMLers support invading and pillaging countries as
long as the invading and pillaging is performed in the name of
American democracy.
Dionne locates rhetorical gems in Packer's
book that he believes prove certain liberals "are ready
to criticize their own side." Here, Dionne distorts the
debate over U.S. foreign policy occurring on the left. Since
when did Noam Chomsky and others of his libertarian socialist
bent switch to the Democratic Party's side? I would suggest that
Dionne's American empire-loving liberals are as far apart ideologically
from the legions of Chomskyites as members of Social Democrat
Friedrich Ebert's regime, who used the German Freikorps to kill
Rosa Luxembourg in 1919, were from the leftist revolutionaries
of post-World War I Germany.
In his paean to establishment liberalism,
Dionne drafts essayist Michael Tomasky into the TML brigade on
the merits of his contribution to the Packer book. Tomasky's
essay, "Between Cheney and Chomsky: Making a Domestic Case
for a New Liberal Foreign Policy," includes a passage that
could easily serve as the rallying cry for Dionne's TML brigade.
"There was a liberal case for invading Iraq which has nothing
to do with trumped-up arguments about Saddam's nuclear capability
and everything to do with the suffering of the Iraqi people -
that is, it has to do with free elections, freedom of assembly
and speech, equality under the law, everything we say we hold
dear and need to be willing to support, even militarily if it
becomes necessary," Tomasky writes.
Tomasky's belief in invading a country
for its own good represents American liberalism in its most classic
sense. Liberals are secular missionaries whose aim is to travel
the country and the world, sermonizing about the sanctity of
American culture and government. Tomasky's essay shows how establishment
liberals aren't far removed at all from the much-maligned neocons
running the Bush administration - both groups are committed to
a radically interventionist U.S. foreign policy.
Tomasky is the new executive editor of
American Prospect, the house organ for such tough-minded liberals
of the Democratic Party as Robert Kuttner, Paul Starr, Robert
Reich and Bill Moyers. Prior to taking over as executive editor
of TAP in September, Tomasky wrote an attention-grabbing treatise
in July on the proper methods for stamping out the voices of
political parties that might siphon votes away from the chosen
candidates of the Democratic Party.
Tomasky attacks the Green Party for daring
to consider running a candidate in the 2004 race, what Democrats
are promoting as the most important presidential election in
U.S. history - because the marketing message, "Vote for
the lesser of two evils," didn't work in 2000. The Democrats
want to scare those leftists who are disgruntled the two-party
system into voting for whomever is the nominee of the Democratic
Party. Unlike many people attracted to the democratic political
message of the Green Party, Tomasky takes pride in the fact that
he and his fellow TMLers have had the decency not to abandon
the Democratic Party.
In the TAP essay, Tomasky warns his readers
about how the Green Party might once again make Ralph Nader its
nominee, or how the Greens could turn to Cynthia McKinney. If
it fails to attract a candidate with name recognition, the Greens
are viewed as foolish enough to run someone else, an act that
Tomasky worries still would take away enough votes from the Democrats
to give G.W. Bush a sure victory at the polls next November.
"[S]hort of a megalomaniac whose tenuous purchase on present-day
reality threatens to cancel out every good thing he's done in
his life, or a discredited anti-Semite, they'll settle for someone
less distinguished," Tomasky writes of Nader, McKinney and
the Greens.
Unlike the 2000 election, Tomasky says
Democrats this time around should play hardball with Ralph Nader
who still hasn't ruled out accepting a Green Party invitation
to run for president. Attack him right now, "with lupine
ferocity," Tomasky says. "Say he's a madman for thinking
of running again. Blast him especially hard on foreign policy,
saying that if it were up to the Greens, America would give no
aid to Israel and it would cease to exist, and if it were up
to the Greens, America would not have even defended itself against
a barbarous attack by going into Afghanistan."
Tomasky does his Democratic Party colleagues
a disservice with this attack list because it once again shows
how closely the Democrats are aligned with the Republicans on
many issues, especially those related to foreign policy. Democrats
are as fond of giving aid to the apartheid regime in power in
Israel as Republicans. Bombing and occupying Afghanistan was
an overwhelmingly bipartisan endeavor as was giving John Ashcroft
a blank check to wage war on civil liberties in the United States
through the passage of the USA Patriot Act.
The fact that the Democrats voted in
lockstep with the Republicans to take away some of our freedoms
here at home immediately after 9/11 seems to have escaped Tomasky.
He writes that had a Democrat been selected for the Oval Office
in 2000, the United States would not have had the Patriot Act.
Really? Does Tomasky have information about the 9/11 attacks
that he isn't sharing? The implication is the twin towers of
the World Trade Center would not have collapsed under the leadership
of a President Gore.
But the only way we could have avoided
the Patriot Act with Al Gore as president was to have prevented
the 9/11 attacks. Because had those attacks occurred under the
watch of a Gore/Lieberman administration, Gore and his spineless
Democratic colleagues in Congress certainly would have sprinted
to draft a liberty-eroding bill to "fight terrorism"
at home to prove to the establishment media that they could be
as tough-minded as Republicans.
Democrats had plenty of practice with
riding roughshod over the Bill of Rights during Clinton's two
terms. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair wrote in a November
2001 article entitled "The Press and the USA Patriot Act
Where Were They When It Counted?" that the contents of the
terrorism bill that the Bush administration sent to Congress
on Sept. 19, 2001 surely were very familiar to Democrats because
"in large part they had been offered by the Clinton administration
as portions of the Counter-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty
Act of 1996."
In the 1960s, Democrats also were firmly
supportive of the U.S. military's slaughter in Southeast Asia
as well as the FBI's war against dissent here at home. But in
his essay contribution to "The Fight Is For Democracy,"
Tomasky argues that the war in Vietnam was not the work of liberals
in Washington and that President Johnson was forced into escalating
U.S. involvement because he was worried about the political cost
of withdrawal. Tomasky cites a statement Johnson made to his
friend, Georgia Democratic Senator Richard B. Russell, during
Johnson's presidential campaign against Barry Goldwater. "They
would impeach a president that would run out, wouldn't they?"
Johnson asked Russell.
Tomasky reveals that he believes the
U.S. war in Vietnam was wrong. If you combine this claim with
his allegiance to the Democratic Party, then it's not surprising
that Tomasky blames the escalation of U.S. military involvement
in Vietnam under both Kennedy and Johnson on "conservatives"
in Congress. The conservative arguments in 1964-65 were "dead
wrong," Tomasky writes. "They forced us into a war
we shouldn't have fought."
In 1968, at the height of U.S. intervention
in Vietnam, Tomasky argues that public opinion shifted toward
a "liberal foreign policy," a trend that lasted through
1978. Since then, the general public has returned to a mood of
allowing Washington as much leeway as it needs to place its stamp
- militarily, if necessary - on the rest of the world. The Chomskyites
and others on the left have failed to recognize this shift in
U.S. public opinion, Tomasky argues.
In this new world, Tomasky says that
liberals must have something "to be for" with regard
to foreign policy in order to counter the competitive advantage
held by the Republicans in taking credit for expanding the global
U.S. empire. Tomasky explains: "While doing the above to
contend against Cheneyism, liberals must make a clear break with
Chomskyism as well."
Tomasky urges liberals to "separate
themselves explicitly and conclusively from the Left, and from
those vestiges of the liberal foreign-policy argument that suggest
equivocation about America's capacity as a moral force."
Clearly, Tomasky's vision of something
"to be for" doesn't include a foreign policy that softens
the sting felt by many countries who come into contact with the
endless tentacles of U.S. government and corporate interests.
On the contrary, Tomasky's current vision for U.S. foreign policy
is based on maintaining U.S. primacy around the world.
This liberal interpretation is grounded
in the simplistic narratives included in U.S. history textbooks.
America's policy of isolationism of the 1920s and 30s turned
a blind eye to the fascism that was taking hold in Europe and
Asia, or so the story goes. After defeating the original Axis
of Evil, America then found itself confronted by the menace of
communist totalitarianism, which provoked successive U.S. presidential
administrations into committing many mistakes, the Vietnam War
being the biggest. The disappearance of the Iron Curtain in 1990,
however, gave the United States a new lease on life to make up
for its sins of the past by spreading its style of democracy
around the world with impunity.
Since nuclear war with the Soviet Union
is no longer a possibility, the liberal missionaries now realize
they must use this window of opportunity to forge ahead with
purpose and fortitude to transform the undemocratic world into
the image of America. As ambassadors for what is good about America,
the liberal missionaries are taken aback when pundits on "their
own side" criticize their efforts to galvanize world opinion
behind U.S.-style democracy, especially now that the countervailing
force that existed during the Cold War has crumbled.
The anger against the likes of Noam Chomsky
and Gore Vidal has been building among the liberal missionaries
since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Out of this anger emerged
the tough-minded liberals who now feel they must remove their
shackles in order to confront their enemies on the left. Friction
has always existed among the various shades on the left side
of the U.S. political spectrum, especially since the Russian
Revolution of 1917. These simmering hostilities have occasionally
boiled over into virtual war, with anger against Johnson's war
in Vietnam and the resulting 1968 Democratic presidential nomination
fiasco serving as clear examples.
Another showdown is brewing for 2004.
In his American Prospect essay, Tomasky lobs a grenade toward
his enemies on the left. "Nader is obviously out to kill
the Democrats," he writes. "The collateral damage,
to regular citizens whose lives are directly affected by which
party is in power, is not his concern. He has long since quit
caring about that. It's time a Democrat killed back."
It's apparent that anti-imperialist forces
on both the left and the right in America have nothing in common
with those tough-minded liberals and neocons who dominate foreign
policy in Washington. Although not a pure anti-imperialist, Dennis
Kucinich represents the closest thing the Democrats have to someone
who will roll back the dangerous empire-building policies of
the last 25 years. Kucinich isn't viewed as evil incarnate by
Tomasky because the Ohio congressman can be easily neutralized
through his decision to work inside the Democratic Party.
Political aspirants who dare to work
outside the Democratic Party and who continue to challenge the
radical foreign policy direction of the tough-minded liberals
are now public enemy number one. When George Packer refers to
a "fight for democracy" in his new book, he's not referring
to battles against Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. Instead,
Packer, Tomasky and their fellow TMLers have declared war on
Americans of all political stripes who oppose U.S. efforts to
flex its political, economic and military muscle around the world.
Mark Hand
is editor of Arlington, Va.-based Press
Action. He can be reached at mark@pressaction.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
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