Think About It
So, watching Faux News, where the phrase "anti-war Left" is being used. Now that folks like Chuck Hagel are speaking out, and George Voinovich has stopped dreaming the dream, I'm not sure how "Left" the anti-war opposition is, at this point.
But I don't want to comment further on the "surge." I want to talk about the word "anti-war." In a sane, rational world, of course, this would be the default position, and "pro-war" would be a synonym for crazy. Because I don't really need to argue that war is a really bad thing, do I? (I will, if I must. But seriously, people?) So every sane, rational person should be anti-war. That doesn't mean that there might not be situations where war is necessary, as a last resort. Actually, I describe my position as last resort plus. By that, I mean that a nation should resort to war in cases of self-defense only, only when all options short of war have been exhausted and when exhausting those options has actually imposed costs on the nation. So I'm not a pacifist. But I'm decidedly, definitely, defiantly anti-war.
Maybe the term is used more specifically--the folks on Faux only mean anti-Iraq war. Of course, a majority of Americans are now opposed to the Iraq war, so this isn't special to "the Left." But my sense is that "anti-war" is used to smear opponents of this particular war as loopy pacifists. My point, if I have one, is that pacifists are less loopy than warmongering War hawks, including those on "the Left," who think that the systematic use of highly mechanized violence by the United States against other human beings is often a positive force for good in the world. At times, it's a necessary evil, but no more.
The problem is that we don't live in a sane world. And "anti-war" can be used as a term of derision in the world we live in.
posted by Number Three @ 6:46 AM
4 Comments:
Nice analysis. It speaks volumes that they can continue to use 'anti-war' as a pejorative when a large majority now opposes the war (and that's just a large majority of Americans; outside the US almost everone is anti Iraq war).
I think there's one other thing that mobilises this rhetoric, and that's the small number of folks on the left who are so eager to join hands and 'oppose government action' whatever its forms. I'm talking about that group (again, a very small group) who really does want to return to the 60s. In the early days post 9/11, with the plans to go into Afghanistan, there was a loud group of folks who wanted to oppose all war on all grounds, and declare it all a big conspiratorial grab for oil, etc. Faux news could very successfully label those people 'the anti-war left'. Now, in trying to support the war that noone favours any longer, they hang on to that old term, hoping it will help them out in a rather pathetic cause.
Although I agree with your rhetorical analysis of Faux's use of "anti-war," I was amused by your line denigrating, "those on 'the Left,' who think that the systematic use of highly mechanized violence by the United States against other human beings is often a positive force for good in the world."
Since I think that sobriquet includes not just the bleating Liebermans of the world, but also people like me, who believe that while war is terrible the US often has a moral obligation to deploy its forces abroad in the name of either democratic or humanitarian ends, let me just say that the failure of the Iraq War does not and should not imply, in and of itself, that all interventions are unjust unless mandated by self-defense. Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Darfur come to mind.
It seems to me the relevant considerations are less the deontological ones (e.g., your "prime directive"-like injunction against military interventions) than practical ones involving the feasibility of occupation and reconstruction. Iraq was wrong, not because we violated some abstract moral principle requiring clean-hands, but rather because we were woefully unprepared to fulfill the stated purposes of the mission, indeed preparing for and fighting in such a way as to make that mission unwinnable (if it ever had been in the first place).
The "anti-war" label is quite amusing, leaving out as it does the significant fact that we are "Anti-the-Iraq-War." Some on the right have tried to make the argument that those who are against the Iraq War are "emboldening the terrorists", but naturally they can't get much traction by calling us "terrorists" or "jihadists" or "islamicists", which we manifestly are not. This doesn't stop some of them from trying though. So "anti-war" is the best they can apparently muster, and the irony of this label, as #3 points out, would be funny were it not deadly serious. Perhaps "pacifist" would work better for them, although as #3's post makes clear, many of us who are against the specific Iraq War aren't really pacifists against all wars, we just think war should be defensive and a last resort, and that wars of aggression with "imperial" goals, such as protecting and controlling our energy supplies or not letting our adversaries have control over those resources (even if those resources are in their own territories and when our using those resources is really optional), are a bad idea.
While the label of "communist" is irrelevant to the current debate on Iraq given that the Soviet Empire mostly collapsed and our current war is against so -called Islamist radicals and not communists, it is interesting to note how "communist" still pops out as a default smear against those who are against the Iraq War (in fact, I was once called a communist on this very blog and recently I heard an academic say that "all peace movements of the last 60 years have been manipulated by communist ideology" and he was including the peace movement against the Iraq War). The fact that those who are against the Iraq War could still be labeled as communists or be lumped in with them, when commumist ideology in the US is practically moribund and our war isn't against the communists, demonstrates that labels such "anti-war" or "pacifist" or "communist" are really inter-changeable; they function in the same linguistic and rhetorical space of discrediting those who are not for every war the leadership of this country decides to wage.
TMcD positions himself against my non-Hawkishness, pointing to possible and potential interventions that would have been justified, in his view, but not based in self-defense. I won't engage on the merits of any particular intervention, or would-be intervention. But I will re-state Walzer's point, in Just and Unjust Wars, that there has never been a genuine, 100% humanitarian interention in human affairs.
If that's the case, then at least a little skepticism is needed here. It's all well and good to think that focused violence can solve humanitarian crises. But if it's rarely, if ever, used for that purpose, but instead used for other purposes, much more commonly, then insisting that the dogs of war be muzzled, if not put to sleep, seems like a prudent choice.
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