1848+: Last and First Men

Unimagining the Left
Edward S. Herman
While she has a number of useful things to say about left history and problems in her article “Why the US Left Is Weak — and What to Do About It ” (Reimagining Society, ZNet, July 14, 2009), in the end Barbara Epstein’s analysis and recommendations themselves illustrate why the left is weak and weakening, as I will describe below.

Epstein writes her article in the context of the dispute on the left about the proper treatment of Iran and its election, and the essence of her stance, and criticism of the left she doesn’t like, is laid out in this key paragraph:

The term US imperialism has come to be widely used though with a somewhat different meaning than in the sixties. Many people, not only in the left, recognize that the US has sought to impose its will on the rest of the world, and that this is not good for those whom the US seeks to dominate or for the US itself. But it has become glaringly obvious that movements and states that oppose the US are as likely to be reactionary as progressive. Those who twist themselves into knots trying to find reasons to support Ahmadinejad, or Al Queda, only discredit themselves and the left. It has also become obvious that the world is too complex to fit into a simple opposition between the US, or the West generally, and everyone else. There are dictatorships that are opposed to the US, and there are liberation movements that identify with the West. The US continues to do a great deal of damage in the world, as in the case of the US occupation of Iraq. But as the ability of the US to determine world events declines, it becomes less and less convincing to portray US imperialism as the source of all evil.

This tendentious set of remarks is dubious at a number of levels, and its tone is clearly apologetic as regards the threat of US imperialism. The US is “not the source of all evil,” but who said it was? But a genuine US left would recognize that it is the source of a great deal of evil and not just “in the case of the US occupation of Iraq.” It would recognize that even in decline it is immensely dangerous, its huge military budget still growing, Obama asking for $6 billion more for nuclear arms improvement, escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, still supporting Israeli ethnic cleansing, still threatening Iran, expanding military bases in Colombia (see Miguel Tinker-Salas, “On the Current Right-Wing Backlash in Latin America ,” Mostly Water, August 5, 2009), and with NATO, under strong U.S. influence, still expanding despite the fall of the Soviet Union, stimulating an arms race, and continuing to encircle and threaten Russia (to follow the NATO expansion process, see Rick Rozoff’s valuable StopNato web site: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages). What kind of left, in this context, would explicitly downplay the threat of imperialism?

With U.S. influence–“ability to determine world events”—supposedly declining, Epstein tells us we have to focus more on our “core principles,” listed later in her article, which include “anti-militarism” among other matters, but not “anti-imperialism.” In short, any focus on the U.S. and its power projection must give way to other matters, including the need to recognize that there are “dictatorships that are opposed to the US, and there are liberation movements that identify with the West.”

Epstein’s stress on the fact that some dictatorships are “opposed” to the United States is deceptive, ignoring that a great many of them love and are supported by the US and failing to note that those that are opposed may be in opposition because the United States threatens them although they don’t threaten the United States (e.g., Cuba, Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam). Equally dubious is the implication that it may be our business and that of the “left” to support intervention in those “dictatorships” that are opposed to the US. There is a strand of the left, or ex-left, that goes in for “democracy promotion” in distant places. And how often those democracy promoters latch on to dictatorships or alleged dictatorships that are targets of U.S. foreign policy! With imperialism in a supposed decline and many dictatorships “opposed to the US,” what a goldmine of opportunities for doing good by aligning with US foreign policy in bringing democracy to the benighted! And what a tremendous basis for a further splintering of the left.

Barbara Epstein says that “Those who twist themselves into knots trying to find reasons to support Ahmadinejad, or Al Queda, only discredit themselves and the left.” But those who combine Ahmadinejad and Al Qaeda are doing a bit of twisting, and what leftists support Al Qaeda? Those who oppose expanding the war on Afghanistan and Pakistan? Isn’t it a bit of a twister to fail to distinguish between those who “support Ahmadinejad” and those who oppose focusing all their “left” energies on discrediting the Iran election, or are simply worried about its use, even if unintended, in the ongoing destabilization of another US target? Isn’t it a bit devious to deny any link between the huge focus on the Iran election and the longstanding U.S.-Israeli campaign for regime change in Iran? Don’t the democracy promoters who are so engaged and passionate about the Iran election but pay little or no attention to the closer events in Honduras, also discredit themselves and the left?

Epstein mentions the great left surge in opposition to the Vietnam war, but she ignores the fact that at that time a segment of the left assailed the peace movement and its support of the Vietcong “terrorists” and Ho Chi Minh’s “dictatorship,” and that in each subsequent case of U.S. aggression a segment of the left peeled off to denounce the extremist left’s support of some demonized dictator or another. The moderates could never understand or acknowledge the difference between opposing aggression and supporting a demonized villain under attack.

Epstein’s “reimagining” of the left does a creditable job in helping along the realignment of the left to a world of supposedly declining US influence and dictatorships needing constructive intervention, but God save the left!