ON
MORAL EQUIVALENCE
The
author writes in response to my column, "The
Peaceniks," in which I take the leftist-dominated peace
movement to task for its apparent inability to come up with
some real answers to the questions bedeviling Americans, such
as: how do we defend ourselves against terrorism? Alan took
particular umbrage at my point that it is a moral outrage
to put the US on the same moral plane as Osama bin Laden &
Co. "Ah," writes my correspondent, "but the issue of putative
'moral equivalence', as you well know, has not to do with
the current action in Afghanistan, but rather the cumulative
actions of the U.S. over decades, as well as of policies leading
up to 9/11 (and of course still in existence). And on that
score said equivalence is debatable – in no way clearcut or
a matter of one side being 'grossly immoral' and the other
benign."
AMERICA'S
ORIGINAL SIN
This
is very interesting because the whole concept of "cumulative"
guilt is rather like a leftist interpretation of the concept
of Original Sin: in this version, the US bears the burden
of its guilt, like a cross, from the eradication of Native
Americans to the slaughterhouse of Vietnam. According to this
doctrine, America, as a nation, is inherently guilty,
and thus any action it takes is bound to result in
unmitigated evil.
TAKING
SIDES
The
unacknowledged premise behind this argument is that we have
no right to defend ourselves – no, not even when we are attacked
on our own soil. Some, I fear, would take this idea to its
logical conclusion, and hold that we were attacked because
we deserved it – a view that is not openly expressed
in America, but is commonplace throughout the Third World
(and also pandemic, I suspect, in Europe). In any case, the
idea that neither "side" is either grossly immoral or benign
is a)
not true (Bin Laden's grossness is indisputable), and b) utterly
beside the point. For there is one "side" wholly and
entirely benign, and that is the side of all the Americans
grossly murdered that day in September.
THE
MONSTER MUST DIE
To
put the events of that horrific day in an historical context
is not to shift blame from the actual perpetrators of the
deed, but is necessary in order to prevent a reoccurrence.
For, as we are learning, the US and its allies – particularly
the Saudis – certainly enabled Bin Laden and his gang to gain
access to arms, money, and power. Al Qaeda bears a "Made in
USA" stamp just as clearly as the weapons used by Israel to
keep their Palestinian helots in subjection. Far from getting
Bin Laden off the hook, however, this only makes his destruction
all the more urgent: the sooner this Frankenstein is destroyed
by angry pitchfork-wielding villagers, the better. For the
monster has already tasted blood, and having clearly developed
a taste for it, is sure to kill again.
UNDER
A LIBERTARIAN LENS
The
leftist theory of "cumulative" collective guilt does not hold
up when looked at under a microscope fitted with a libertarian
lens. What it evades is that the 6000-plus victims of the
9/11 atrocity were not soldiers in an invading army, but ordinary
Americans going about their business on what they thought
was an ordinary day. While my correspondent would no doubt
be properly horrified by the suggestion that the death and
destruction visited on the twin towers was in any way deserved,
neither does he seem all that concerned with administering
justice to the likely perpetrators. I am taken to task for
complaining that we get no answers from the official antiwar
movement to the vital question of what to do about Bin Laden.
My correspondent sees no need for answers, however:
"And
indeed why should we? Virtually 100% of the population, as
well as our political leaders, are brimming with variously-aggressive
military 'answers'; it is not a question of whether someone
is going to get their asses kicked, only when, how, for how
long, with what total force, and involving how much 'collateral
damage' (quite possibly extending to the greater part of central
Asia and the Middle East, or even beyond, before this is over).
And at this moment I am not saying that military answers are
a bad thing; only that they are inevitable and, as such, the
need for more such 'answers' from the ANSWER people is not
very great, wouldn't you say? Yes, of course whoever is guilty
of this heinous crime (bin Laden or other) should be hung
up by their toenails; do you really need to hear another voice
saying that?"
NOT
JUST ANOTHER VOICE
We
don't need just another voice, we need the voice of the peace
movement to ring out loud and clear that justice, in this
case, is the prerequisite for peace, and that for all practical
purposes there will be none until this is accomplished. If,
by the standards of the antiwar movement, 6,000 American lives
are not worth the trouble of finding and punishing the perpetrators,
then why would the same people object to the wanton killing
of Afghan civilians – unless, of course, it's okay to kill
Americans, but not anyone else. To fail to emphasize this
concept of justice is to lose all moral credibility and surrender
to the War Party the very important task of deciding just
what this justice shall consist of. Failing that, we have
no standing to properly criticize the war as unjust if and
when Bush takes it to Iraq, or Syria, or wherever.
A
MORAL COURSE
It
is precisely because of the possibility – or likelihood –
that the conflict will spread that anti-interventionists must
separate themselves out from the few pure pacifists by working
to limit the war – now that it has actually begun – as much
as possible. By absenting ourselves from the debate about
what action to take, we open the road to the superhawks, who
would love to take it all the way to Baghdad and beyond. And
the so-called "peace movement" is helping them by failing
to argue for a limited response, and instead sticking
to a sectarian pacifist position of no response. It
is one thing to rail against the moral obscenity of "collateral
damage" – but it would be immoral to pass up the opportunity
to mitigate the extent and suffering of a war my correspondent
characterizes as "inevitable."
TWO
SIDES OF THE SAME COIN
Many
of Antiwar.com's writers have criticized past conflicts in
which America was engaged on the grounds that they did not
fit the criteria for a just war. But the clear implication
of the view taken by my correspondent is that there can be
no such thing as a just war, at least where America is concerned
– or, at least, we must not say so in public. By dissolving
and denying the difference between the justum bellum
and a war of aggression, anti-interventionists cut out the
ground from under their own feet: they cede the victory to
the utilitarians and the consequentialists who claim that
war exists outside of morality – and therefore any
action during wartime is justified as long as it results in
victory. The quasi-pacifism of the no response crowd is just
the other side of the same coin: they too believe that war
is entirely outside the province of ethics, although from
this they draw the opposite conclusion.
A
RABID ASSAULT? MOI?
"For
God's sake," writes my correspondent, by now clearly frustrated
and even a little angry, "why not give some benefit of the
doubt to the utterly marginalized few who would offer any
resistance at all to the rampant jingoism?" My unwillingness
to cut my fellow peaceniks any slack is chalked up to, in
the writer's words, "a latent right-wing revulsion for all
things left," which "suddenly got activated – bigtime." This,
I am told, is my real motive for firing off "a gratuitous,
rabid assault."
REMEMBER
YOUR LENIN
I
wouldn't
say revulsion so much as horrified fascination, and certainly
even my semi-regular readers know there's nothing latent about
it. On the contrary, I rather like leftists, really, on a
personal level, and often find them far more interesting than
right-wingers whose views are far closer to mine. The reason
is that, until very recently, libertarians have tended to
live in a world of abstract ideas and floating concepts not
moored any actualizing institutions or strategies. Leftists,
on the other hand, have always been passionately interested
in strategic questions, and indeed have spent most of their
time arguing about it with one another in a kind of perpetual
civil war. But the moment the twin towers collapsed, so, it
seems, did their political sense, and with it the tactical
flexibility that Lenin saw as the indispensable tool of revolutionaries
– successful ones, that is.
A
HIGH PRICE
The
reason only the "marginalized few" are rallying 'round the
antiwar banner is due to the marginalizing arguments employed
by that movement and its spokesmen to date. Many people fear
the prospect of a wider war, and would be prepared to oppose
a protracted military conflict in the Middle East – but not
at the price of appearing to support America's avowed enemies,
even implicitly.
A
CHARMING MISSIVE
Speaking
of the marginalized few: Here is one charming missive, sent
by a certain Steve from Seattle, that embodies anti-American
know-nothing-ism to a tee. In response to my column on "The
Peaceniks," Steve wrote:
"Down,
down, down the toilet goes Justin, straight into the pit of
the State Department. You may as well resign from the staff
of Antiwar.com, Justin baby. You've finally come home to your
Uncle Sam."
BETTER
UNCLE SAM THAN UNCLE JOE
Hey,
I got news for you, buddy: I never abandoned Uncle
Sam for Uncle Joe Stalin, Uncle Ho, or Uncle Fidel. And as
far as a force for restraint in this conflict, I would place
my bets with Colin Powell and the US Department of State over
a gaggle of bourgeois Commies and aging hippies anytime. It
is well-known that Powell has used his considerable influence
and persuasive powers to push for a tightly focused and limited
mission, while defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy,
Paul Wolfowitz, have argued for widening the conflict into
a regional war. And Powell has – so far – won. No thanks,
I might add, to the so-called peace movement. To them, Powell
is just another "warmonger," a pawn of US imperialism, the
Enemy personified. Never mind that he has, almost single-handed,
held at bay the dogs of a much larger and more destructive
war.
YAHOOS,
LEFT & RIGHT
I
cite Steve's letter to not only demonstrate that there are
left-wing yahoos just as boorish and ignorant as the rightist
variety, but also to underscore the only possible strategic
orientation for the anti-interventionist movement. This requires
the immediate retraction of one remark made in my "peacenik"
column to the effect that the peace movement must discard
its "unusable past." I was wrong to say that because there
is an important sense in which this "new" war is rather like
the old war, the one we lost in Vietnam.
A
TROTSKYITE WITH A PLACARD
In
that war, too, a large section of the elites in the media,
business, and in the government itself never envisioned such
a long-term and costly commitment, in spite of John F. Kennedy's
pledge that we would "pay any price, bear any burden" in pursuit
of the cold war global crusade: as the war escalated, they
turned against it. Today we are starting out with an American
Secretary of State clearly taking a minimalist position at
the outset. The real peace party is headquartered not in the
"International Action Center," but in the US Department of
State. For if all that stands between the Middle East and
a decade or so of "collateral damage" is some Trotskyite waving
a placard, then may the immortal gods take pity on the peoples
of the region, for they are truly lost.
NARROW
THE TARGET
There
is much more to this very interesting letter, and more that
I could say in response, but I'll save that for the "Backtalk"
page, where you'll find the full text and a continuation of
my reply. But to get back to the question of strategy and
our usable (or unusable) past: once again, as in Vietnam,
we must seek to split the elites by taking advantage
of preexisting fissures. The peace movement should be arguing
for a narrowly targeted response – one that is proportionate,
strictly defensive, limited in time as well as intensity,
and aimed at the actual perpetrators of the original aggression.
I hadn't seen the the excellent statement issued by the national
committee of the Libertarian Party before I wrote this column,
and I am surprised – and very pleased – to see that it reflects
my own views so closely.
THE
FINAL BATTLE?
Much
of the left, of course, cannot buy into this, on account of
the theory of "cumulative" guilt, and also because they apparently
don't care about the vital issue of deterrence. Failure
to respond except by announcing that we deserved it, and we're
sorry, would incite yet more terrorism from Al Qaeda – and
so the famous "cycle of violence" that left-pacifists are
always talking about would not be broken by a US policy of
inaction. Far from ending the terrorist campaign, such passivity
would surely embolden Bin Laden, and invite more deaths, perhaps
on a scale similar to the twin towers catastrophe. In that
event, the pro-war backlash would sweep aside the peace movement
and anyone else who got in its way, and an all-out war would
quickly ensue. Such a war could well turn into a worldwide
conflagration, the Ragnarok (or Armageddon) of the West.
A
MAN WITH A PLAN
In
emergencies, one takes extraordinary measures – and certainly
these extraordinary times constitute an emergency for opponents
of global intervention. I think we have to take the position
that was amply spelled out by the "President" of Pakistan,
General Pervaiz Musharraf, who
toppled the elected radical Islamic government in 1999
with implicit US support. In
a conversation with reporters from CBS Radio and USA
Today that
he later denied, Musharraf said the Americans have to
"take out" Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Afghan head of state,
and then go after Bin Laden:
"Get
Mullah Omar and Osama won't be able to operate. He'll be on
the run. You must take out the center of gravity. That's what
I would do if I were running this campaign."
GOOD
LUCK AND GODSPEED
There's
no doubt that he would do a lot better job of it. The Telegraph
reports "Pakistan's impatience was underlined by a statement
from the foreign ministry that the length of the US offensive
would be high on the agenda for talks" between Powell and
Musharraf. With his strategy of taking out the bad guys, and
then getting the Americans out of there as quickly as possible,
the General looks like a winner to me: then we can turn the
war over to him, and wish him good luck and Godspeed. Musharraf
put it well, last week, when he said that he hoped the US
military campaign would be "short and sharp." He was echoed
by his foreign minister, Abdul Sattar:
"I
think the longer this operation lasts, the greater the damage
– collateral damage. And the larger the number of Afghan refugees
that enter Pakistan, the greater will be the worry and concern
in Pakistan."
REPUBLIC
INTO EMPIRE
World
War III hasn't started – but we're getting perilously closer
with each passing day. Either the "peace movement" wakes up
from its sectarian slumber, or else all – and I do mean all
– is lost. Not only many thousands of lives, but the
last remnants of the our old Republic, which will give way,
at last, to a full-fledged Empire. But it isn't too late to
stop the militarist juggernaut, save what is left of our civil
liberties, and live to fight another day: this "new war" is
not yet a massive military intervention on the scale of the
Gulf War, the Kosovo war, or any of Clinton's other numerous
military adventures. It is still essentially a police action
– one that could cross the line at any moment. And that suggests
the only real and morally useful function of a peace movement
worthy of the name: to draw a line in the sand and make sure
the War Party doesn't cross it. Thousands, perhaps tens of
thousands of lives would be saved – and that's the central
idea of a peace movement, isn't it?
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