What's Left? - How the left lost its way.

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nomadologist

Guest
matt b said:
have we started bombing pakistan and burma then? what have i been missing?
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Yes, it was certainly imperative that we start with Iraq rather than Darfur. We might best beef up military spending rather than fund research into and widescale distribution of AIDS preventative microbial gels (which have had considerable success in clinical trials and are compatible with existing cultural codes of sexual conduct).
 
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nomadologist

Guest
I wasn't sure what you were saying.

Kosovo was a tricky situation, I don't think intervention was necessarily *bad* or that a conservative strategy didn't help alleviate the issues there--I do think it could've been handled better, but it seems clear in hindsight that some military presence (if not *action*) was warranted.

This is about as centrist as you'll ever hear me get.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Should we have a "political/military interventionism" thread?
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
nomadologist said:
Kosovo was a tricky situation, I don't think intervention was necessarily *bad* or that a conservative strategy didn't help alleviate the issues there--I do think it could've been handled better, but it seems clear in hindsight that some military presence (if not *action*) was warranted.
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Well I'm glad we can agree on that at least, even if it does seem to contradict what you wrote above.
 
Gavin

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
It's not JUST humanitarian intervention though, it never is. It's incorporation into the expanding capitalist empire through the installation of client regimes at great cost to the people of those countries. It's imperialism. That's why I have trouble labeling Kouchner a leftist or a socialist (though I know little about his other politics -- Doctors w/o Frontiers) -- he is supporting capitalist empire, he's on board with Sarkozy's dive into French neoimperialism as foreign minister. Maybe he says he's leftist but he is not showing it.

Anyway, it's just labels. Useful as shorthand, perhaps, but otherwise they say more about the person using those labels. Cohen supports George W. Bush, and is a confessed fan of Paul Wolfowitz, quivering with ecstacy to be in the presence of such power. It's hilarious to me that he criticized Blair endlessly for being all image while trusting and supporting (even now) one of the lying-est most cheating-est, least transparent U.S. regimes ever. He is interesting to me only in that he symbolizes a certain wedge going on in the left, where capitalist co-optations of left rhetoric like identity politics and tolerance trump traditional leftist issues like class and imperialism. He is uninteresting to me as an actual politico because he is ludicrously black-and-white: once he picks a side he doesn't deviate, even now refusing to condemn British and U.S. abuses -- indeed, he accuses everyone else of deviating BUT him!
 
Gavin

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
Also, for what it's worth, in the U.S. gay rights is still the litmus test for being liberal (no one uses 'leftist' except Bill O'Reilly against the Democrats) -- Iraq, none of the other shit matters really. I like to use leftist to distinguish between people against imperial adventures and people who think gays are cool and want universal health care but don't see the need to criticize "free" trade or the U.S. occupation. My use may be idiosyncratic, but it's useful shorthand.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
crackerjack said:
Well I'm glad we can agree on that at least, even if it does seem to contradict what you wrote above.
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It doesn't contradict what I said--I said interventionism is not in line with contemporary (past 25 years or so) leftist foreign policy strategy. (Checked what I said, and what I meant by saying you can't be a leftist and support interventionism, of course I meant it is NOT a popular or feasible strategy among leftists for America to rule with a "big stick" as they say) Any objections to that?
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Gavin said:
Also, for what it's worth, in the U.S. gay rights is still the litmus test for being liberal (no one uses 'leftist' except Bill O'Reilly against the Democrats) -- Iraq, none of the other shit matters really. I like to use leftist to distinguish between people against imperial adventures and people who think gays are cool and want universal health care but don't see the need to criticize "free" trade or the U.S. occupation. My use may be idiosyncratic, but it's useful shorthand.
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These are good points.

I would agree with your use of leftist--important distinctions to make.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Personally I have a huge problem with centrists who call themselves liberals, tho.
 
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trouc

trouc
Gavin said:
Also, for what it's worth, in the U.S. gay rights is still the litmus test for being liberal (no one uses 'leftist' except Bill O'Reilly against the Democrats) -- Iraq, none of the other shit matters really. I like to use leftist to distinguish between people against imperial adventures and people who think gays are cool and want universal health care but don't see the need to criticize "free" trade or the U.S. occupation. My use may be idiosyncratic, but it's useful shorthand.
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By this criteria, I think you'd find way more leftists in the US than liberals. The war is hugely unpopular right now; I'd bet immediate withdrawal would get more votes in a referendum than the legalization of gay marriage. Maybe this was your point though.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
I don't know, though, Trouc--the people who are against the war now see it more as a simple waste of time and money, I'm not sure they object on the grounds of American imperialism.
 
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trouc

trouc
nomadologist said:
I don't know, though, Trouc--the people who are against the war now see it more as a simple waste of time and money, I'm not sure they object on the grounds of American imperialism.
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Hmm, good point, but anti-imperialism in the US has always had isolationist undertones. And, part of the problem with (hard) imperialism is that it ultimately just doesn't work very well (this is also a feature), so maybe we should be looking at this as an educational moment. Convincing people that imperialism's bad will be more effective if it hurts them, either through their kids or their pocketbook.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Gavin said:
It's not JUST humanitarian intervention though, it never is. It's incorporation into the expanding capitalist empire through the installation of client regimes at great cost to the people of those countries. It's imperialism.
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Two questions:
- Do you apply this to other forms of intervention, eg economic sanctions as well?
- Assuming for the moment that military intervention would genuinely make a situation better (and I think it can, although the bar for how fucked up the situation has to be before that happens is extremely high - anyone saying this applies to Iraq at this stage is pretty clearly deluding themselves), aren't the commentators still supporting that intervention for the right reasons, even if the people making those decisions are making them for the wrong reasons? Can't they say that if the country was run how it should be run, we would be intervening in these situations where it would genuinely improve things and not in those situations where the only possible motive is self interest?
 
Gavin

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
trouc said:
By this criteria, I think you'd find way more leftists in the US than liberals. The war is hugely unpopular right now; I'd bet immediate withdrawal would get more votes in a referendum than the legalization of gay marriage. Maybe this was your point though.
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Well, the right successfully divorced gay rights from gay marriage.

I should clarify, my distinction has more to do with the initial invasion which liberals supported at the time. They've only backtracked because it's going badly (and all their criticism is about the "mishandling" of the war, not the principle of the invasion).

Plenty of people on the right are against the invasion now for a variety of reasons (conspiracy theories for one). Opposition to the war is not the sole determinant of leftism in my mind.

Two questions:
- Do you apply this to other forms of intervention, eg economic sanctions as well?
- Assuming for the moment that military intervention would genuinely make a situation better (and I think it can, although the bar for how fucked up the situation has to be before that happens is extremely high - anyone saying this applies to Iraq at this stage is pretty clearly deluding themselves), aren't the commentators still supporting that intervention for the right reasons, even if the people making those decisions are making them for the wrong reasons? Can't they say that if the country was run how it should be run, we would be intervening in these situations where it would genuinely improve things and not in those situations where the only possible motive is self interest?
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1. I am for the cessation of the U.S. selling weapons. I am against using food&medicine as a weapon. Ultimately sanctions never work. I don't know what other interventions you might suggest... meddling in elections? I'm against that.

2. I would not make your assumption... but... I could give a fuck how people justify the invasion with all sorts of good intentions. The U.S. does not invade countries because of good intentions. It does it for money and power. I think it's a sad commentary on the West's militaristic cognitive dissonance that we have so many well meaning people going crazy trying to figure out how our army occupying other countries could possibly improve them.

Would Saddam have used chemicals on the Kurds if the military hadn't sold them to him? Would other countries be "less fucked up" if corporations weren't raping them and calling on Western governments' militaries to apply the lube? These are far more relevant and important hypotheticals in my mind.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Gavin said:
2. I would not make your assumption... but... I could give a fuck how people justify the invasion with all sorts of good intentions. The U.S. does not invade countries because of good intentions. It does it for money and power.
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So even if an armed intervention would avert a major humanitarian fuckup you'd oppose it because if it did happen it wouldn't be happening for the right reasons? You can't talk about what should be happening - what would be happening if you ran the world, whatever - independently of what is happening?
 
Gavin

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
Slothrop said:
So even if an armed intervention would avert a major humanitarian fuckup you'd oppose it because if it did happen it wouldn't be happening for the right reasons? You can't talk about what should be happening - what would be happening if you ran the world, whatever - independently of what is happening?
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I guess you would have to show me the humanitarian fuckup that a bunch of heavily armed troops could avert without causing more fuckups.

As I've said before, the burden of proof that humanitarian interventions work is on those calling for them. Real proof, not hypotheticals... the hypotheticals already take interventionists at their word.

Man I sound like such a realist when it comes to foreign policy....
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
nomadologist said:
It doesn't contradict what I said--I said interventionism is not in line with contemporary (past 25 years or so) leftist foreign policy strategy. (Checked what I said, and what I meant by saying you can't be a leftist and support interventionism, of course I meant it is NOT a popular or feasible strategy among leftists for America to rule with a "big stick" as they say) Any objections to that?
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No, what you actually said was

YES supporting intervention makes Kamm a centrist. YES it is true for anyone, even people who believed in the intervention in Kosovo. NO you can't support military "intervention" and be a leftist. Absolutely NOT.
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Now it you want to clarify to that to exclude one case where you yourself think intervention might have been justified, and to exclude leftists outside of America and to apply it only to some philosophy of "interventionism" rather than specific cases of intervention...then that's fine by me.
 
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