"Liberal" Hawks and the "Naivete" of the Antiwar Movement

[BurtWorm]

A very interesting piece of Gary Kamiya's generally positive review of George Packer's "The Assassin's Gate" (day pass or subscription required to read the full review:

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/10/07/packer/print.html

Packer's support for the war is inseparable from his critique of the antiwar movement, and contemporary liberalism in general. He dismisses antiwar protests as naive: "The protesters saw themselves as defending Iraqis from the terrible fate that the United States was prepared to inflict on them. Why would Iraqis want war? The movement's assumptions were based on moral innocence -- on an inability to imagine the horror in which Iraqis lived, and a desire for all good things to go together, for total vindication. War is evil; therefore, the prevention of war must be good."

Packer is not completely wrong about the moral innocence, and political naiveté, of much of the antiwar movement. But his characterization of it is surprisingly reductive. In his haste to reject liberal realist arguments as "cautious" and "soft-headed," Packer never engages with the robust body of morally engaged liberals and leftists who opposed both Saddam and the war on powerful realist grounds. He fails to address the arguments made by thinkers like Mark Danner, Tony Judt, Brian Urquhart and many others, hardheaded arguments that were made immediately after 9/11 and that found their home in the New York Review of Books, the pages of this journal and many other places. A corollary is that he fails to grasp the importance of historical context. About Arab or Muslim grievances, in particular the U.S. support for despotic Arab regimes and the crucial Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he has almost nothing to say.

The truth is that many opponents of the war knew perfectly well how dreadful Saddam was, but opposed the war not out of moral innocence but because it was too risky for both the United States and for the Iraqi people, because it was illegal, and because it was being waged by George W. Bush.

And also because war is evil. Yes, sometimes wars must be fought. The battle for the freedom of humankind against the Axis, the humanitarian interventions in Kosovo and Bosnia, the self-defensive strike against the Taliban -- those were all justified wars. But Kosovo is not Iraq, and Saddam Hussein was no Hitler. The pages of the newspapers for the last two and a half years prove it: War itself is a terrible thing, and making war is almost always a sign of total failure, the ultimate defeat of the human spirit. Good intentions do not matter. William S. Burroughs' cautionary words to those contemplating shooting heroin -- "Look down LOOK DOWN along that junk road before you travel there" -- also apply to those who would make war. Packer and his fellow liberal hawks did not look far enough.

[Guaranteed]

1. Very, very nice.

That's it, right there.

[BurtWorm]

2. kick

[BurtWorm]

3. kick