Leftists Embroiled in Never-Ending War

By MATT KENNARD, Columnist

During the Cold War the political left split in spectacular and rancorous fashion and like Humpty Dumpty they’ve never really put themselves back together again.

Back then, one side consisted of those who stayed blind to the crimes of Lenin and Stalin, atrocities culminating in the Gulag prison camps and the Moscow Trials. They stayed in the Communist Party (CP) through it all, arguing that Stalinism was preferable to the victory of predatory capitalism, or that all these atrocities were a means to a better end ― that dangerous ideology so beautifully rendered by Arthur Koestler in “Darkness at Noon.” Eric Hobsbawm, the famous Marxist historian, was one case of someone who refused to leave the CP even as the atrocities were coming to light, especially under Leonid Brezhnev.

On the other extreme, leftists and liberals embraced the U.S. and their putative war against communism, even when it was destroying democratically elected governments all over the world. They argued that the Popperian “open society” was in danger and anything went, from Pinochet to Suharto. Here you could find erstwhile lefties like Sidney Hook.

Then there were the Trostkyists who sat somewhere in the middle. They argued against the crimes of Stalin, snidely calling Stalinism “state capitalism,” and holding that it would have all been different if Leon Trotsky had succeeded Lenin instead of that autocratic sadist, Stalin. Near to them were the New Left who boasted minds like E.P. Thompson and Perry Anderson and Tariq Ali. They tried to cut a course with a new program which railed against both superpowers.

These debates on the left all crumbled at the same time as the Berlin Wall. There was the “End of History,” the final victory of so-called “liberal” “capitalist” “democracy.” It was a lazy consensus on the left, with only a few thinkers on the marginalized wing still railing against so-called neoliberal economics (traditional liberal economics didn’t argue for a completely unfettered private sphere, so it’s a misnomer), but they were an ever-marginalized faction; on a grand scale we all took a breather.

The general feeling is that this happy leftie consensus ended on 9/11 and when the “war on terror” began, but the rancor started in earnest before then, as the bombing of Yugoslavia commenced in 1999. NATO (which was set up as a bulwark against the Soviet Union) flexed its muscle against the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. Well, first off, why did NATO still exist after the Cold War ended? If it was meant to solidify the military alliance against the Soviet Union, what was the purpose afterward? Mull over that.

Anyway, with the war on Yugoslavia by NATO came the gleaming centerpiece of a new movement called “humanitarian intervention” led by the poster kids of 1990s liberalism, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
In fact, it wasn’t that new: Every war through history has been fought for justice and altruism if you take the leaders of the countries that started them at their word. Anyway, the media went into overdrive with beautiful elegies to Western benevolence, the end of wars for economic or geopolitical objectives. Here we were coming to the aid of oppressed Kosovans against the brutal dictator (he was actually democratically elected) Slobodan Milosevic. Large parts of the left, from Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London, to Paul Berman, the New York Renaissance man, cheered on this necessary war of altruism.

If you talk to your average Joe the Plumber on the street, or corporate journalist, they will tell you that we averted a holocaust there. In fact, the International War Crimes Tribunal came to a conclusion that 2,788 had been killed in Kosovo. That’s a serious crime, but compare that to contemporaneous crimes happening inside NATO, like Turkey’s atrocities against the Kurds, and you start to wonder what prompted Clinton and Blair into action.

The averting of genocide became an orthodoxy of the mainstream left and any demurral would be greeted with outbursts of hysteria about holocaust denial, etc. But in 2007 even the International Court of Justice found that the Serbian leadership was not guilty of genocide in Bosnia, where they carried out their most obscene atrocities, murdering 8,000 souls at Srebrenica.

But in the West, you would be forgiven for thinking this was a one-sided conflict as that is the uninterrupted presentation, but the wars that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia have seen atrocities on all sides. In fact, the Kosovo Liberation Army, a violent fundamentalist Islamic group, were agents of the West when they were carrying out atrocities against Kosovan Serbs and Gypsies. Many believe they were used to illicit a response (which would come in the crackdown starting in 1998) that served as a pretext for a NATO intervention. In the Croatian War of Independence in 1995, their Operation Storm offensive to retake Serbian parts of Croatia resulted in pogroms and ethnic cleansing that rivals Serbian crimes for barbarity. Some of those involved have been on trial for war crimes.

Because it was such a small sample of principled individuals that dared to stand up to the propaganda, this split in the left was merely a blip on the radar; it was an orthodoxy with every bad connotation of that word. But this same mind-set didn’t die and was transported wholeheartedly into the new “war on terror” after 9/11. The war in Iraq ― which had nothing to do with 9/11, which had no weapons of mass destruction ― was now framed as a “humanitarian intervention” against the barbarism of Saddam Hussein who gassed his own people (with our support), used chemical warfare against the Iranians (with our support) and committed genocide against the Kurds in the al-Anfal campaign (with our support). But this didn’t matter. Now, Paul Wolfowitz was the new Madeleine Albright, Saddam Hussein was Slobodan Milosevic, the Kurds were now the Kosovan Albanians and on we went, to a war supported by a significant portion of the intellectual “left.” A war by a Christian fundamentalist, far-right oil-industry Republican, to be fought for democracy. Yeah, right.

The “pro-war left” or the “anti-totalitarianism left” ballooned at this stage and took over the blogosphere in a huge way. From Harry’s Place to Nick Cohen to Oliver Kamm to Paul Berman, they were everywhere, talking about the democratic future for Iraq (with the minor detour of a bloody war). Tons of books followed, backing them up, from the compilation, “A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for the War in Iraq,” to “Anti-Totalitarianism: the Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy,” “Terror and Liberalism,” blah, blah. When the war turned bad, when the U.S. used chemical weapons on a major Iraqi city, when they sold off all the oil, and built the biggest base in the world, they had to change the subject. So now they attacked the left that had been against the invasion of Iraq as “anti-Semites”, “fascists” and supporters of “Islamofascists.” This also gave birth to a load of books that lit up the media firmament but will soon be forgotten, from Nick Cohen’s dreary “What’s Left?”, to the recent “Left in Dark Times” from the ridiculous French poseur, Bernard-Henri Levi.

Until now, the part of the left that was principled and realistic about the war in Iraq has been reticent to fight back in book form. There was the prolix and dense offering from Scott Lucas early on, “The Betrayal of Dissent: Beyond Orwell, Hitchens and the New American Century,” which didn’t really land the hefty punch it should have. But in recent weeks, we’ve had “The Liberal Defense of Murder” by blogger Richard Seymour, which charts the historical course of this so-called “humanitarian intervention” up to its current incarnation. And then there is Conor Foley, a former aid worker, who recently released “The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War,” which argues that humanitarian NGOs are becoming so powerful that they are affecting Western governments and pressuring them into military actions for which there is no legal basis in international law.

This is the latest stage in the long, stuttering fight-back of the anti-war left against the louder but cheap warmongering left. Let the battle commence.

Matt Kennard can be reached at MattKennard@gmail.com.

Obama’s Election Brings Joy to…White Supremacists?!

By MATT KENNARD, Columnist

Aside from Republicans, you might expect the American community most piqued by the election of Barack Obama would be white supremacists. There is surely no harsher blow to a single-issue political program of racism than the ascension of a black man to the highest office of the land. It’s like a hardened communist watching Milton Friedman elected Dear Leader in the Soviet Union, or Ariel Sharon taking over the Palestinian Liberation Organization. There is no way back for a movement so harshly served; it’s merely time to pack up, accept it’s over and move on.

Or so you would think.

In the increasingly surreal U.S. political landscape, white supremacists have actually greeted the election of the first black president not as the death knell of their cause, but a historic leap forward. “I don’t see anything but very positive things coming out of it,” says Tom Metzger, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who now runs an outfit called White Aryan Resistance (or W.A.R., for short). “We don’t have to do much, everything is going sour; the economy is getting worse and worse,” he tells TakingBackPolitics.com. “I don’t think we have to do much more than sit in and be aware of what is going on and train because the government is eating itself.”

And not only is the American Nazi happy about his first black president, but he believes it occasions the way for dialogue with, of all things, the left. “We are becoming more like leftists, and leftists are coming more into agreement with us on race,” he says. “I actually agree with Ralph Nader on economics. Though he’s not a racist, I think politics is going to change a lot over the next few years, dumping of old left and old right.”

But for unbridled joy at Obama’s win you can’t beat August Kreis III, the fiery leader of the Aryan Nations, a Hitler-worshipping outfit out of South Carolina. “I can actually tell you it was the best thing that happened to our movement in the United States ever,” he says breathlessly. In fact, he even wants this new wave of pinko tolerance to spread overseas. “I’d like to see it happen in the UK, but in your case, a Muslim should be elected, because that will do something to get people off their fat asses.”

But it’s not just getting people off their fat asses (less of those in the UK) that has emboldened the American neo-Nazi movement; now white supremacists finally feel that one of their own is the president. “Obama is a racist down deep and his wife is even more,” says Metzger. “It would be better for him if he now said, ‘Hey guys! Fooled you! I’m a racist!’ and I would respect that.”

Erich Gliebe, who runs the biggest neo-Nazi group in the U.S., National Alliance, agrees. “As far as I know, John McCain is not a racist,” he says. “But Obama, he is an outright racist. He was part of a racist church, he had a racist pastor. At least he has that.”

Whether Obama is a racist or not, doesn’t this election render white supremacists in the U.S. irrelevant?

“No, actually it shakes people out of their slumber,” says Gliebe. “I think a majority of Americans still want racial segregation. There are tens of millions of people who would prefer only to marry other whites, and to send their kids to white-only schools.”

I have to remind myself that the first black president has just been elected with a large percentage of white voters. Gliebe pauses when I remind him, too. “Well, people voted for Obama because of white guilt,” he says after an awkward hiatus. “They were made to feel guilty! People were afraid of voting for McCain because they feared being called a racist!”

I refrain from mentioning that the U.S. has a secret ballot because, by now, appeals to logic are futile. Barack Obama, first black president the toast of the white supremacists. Unlikely, but true. Only in America.

Matt Kennard can be reached at MattKennard@gmail.com.

Veterans’ Health Care Under Bush a Disgrace

By MATT KENNARD, Columnist

It’s hard to think of a more nauseating spectacle than George W. Bush – draft dodging, chicken hawk extraordinaire – turning on his lachrymal glands for U.S. veterans. But as the country drew together on Nov. 11 for the annual national holiday to honor their fighting men and women, there was the commander in chief waxing unlyrically about the “inspiration” he has gotten from the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, his wide-eyes and rictus smile belying his solemn tone.

The media reported his words conscientiously but failed to add the apposite context, which as usual is important. Because not only did Bush and his cronies do the obvious and send the young men and women into harm’s way for a completely pointless war that has cost 4,192 American and over a million Iraqi souls to date, this “War President” has also overseen the calculated destruction of the thin safety net that helps veterans as they cope with the health problems brought on by war.

In 2005, only two years into the war in Iraq, Bush was widely condemned for his budget for veterans’ health care that fell well short of maintaining the levels of the years before, bearing in mind the huge numbers of new soldiers that were returning from war. In that year not only did Bush try to double the co-payment that veterans would pay for prescription drugs, he also proposed a flat $250 new fee for some veterans to use the health care. Even Republican Sen. Daniel K. Akaka warned at the time that this could put 192,000 people out of the veterans’ health care system because of the price hike. Later in 2005 it was revealed that the Bush administration had left a $1 billion shortage for veterans’ health care that had to be plugged by emergency supplemental funds voted for by Congress again.

In 2006, with discretionary spending apparently needing to be cut to deal with the massive deficit, the White House predicted a 16 percent cut in veterans’ health care, despite the increasing numbers of veterans needing the services. In that budget year Congress had to add another $2.7 billion to emergency funding to the Veterans Association on top of Bush’s budget.

Under the current Bush plan being touted, even though the number of soldiers needing treatment in veterans’ health care has been rising about 5 percent per year, in 2009 the budget would be cut again and kept at this smaller number until 2012. The hope is Obama will find a way around these disgraceful estimates and reevaluate the priorities of an administration that has lost any bearings they once had.

The effect of turning veterans’ health care from the most important of government responsibilities into an expendable superfluity has had painful consequences for the veterans of the U.S. Vast numbers of soldiers are returning with mental health problems ranging from schizophrenia to post-traumatic stress disorder, but a study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that in 2004, 1.8 million veterans were without health insurance, constituting 12 percent of all uninsured people in the U.S. The number of uninsured grew by 290,000 from 2000, Bush’s first year, to 2004, two years into his “war on terror.”

This year the Bush administration was even employing lawyers to fight a case that insists that mental health should be included in health care provisions for veterans. You did read that right: The Bush administration somehow doesn’t think mental health qualifies as a health issue.

On Veterans Day, Bush unsurprisingly didn’t mention his squalid record on looking after the veterans of his wars of ideology:

“I am committed to making sure that today’s veterans get all the health care and support they need from the federal government for agreeing to serve in a time of danger,” he said.

And the headlines read: “Bush praises veterans on Veterans Day,” when they should have been, “Bush praises veterans on Veterans Day, while destroying their health care.”

There are many ironies to Bush’s tenure: some, like his IQ, are comical; some, like this one, are just tragic. Despite the Republican Party’s insistence that they are the party of patriotism and strength and “country first,” over the last eight years they have treated the veterans of their wars like every other group that infringes on their ability to stuff cash into the pockets of their rich friends. McCain’s plan was even worse than Bush’s: he wanted to privatize veterans’ health care, turn it into a market-oriented trust. Just imagine what would have happened during the financial crisis if this had happened. It’s time to fight the Republicans on their own turf and say the patent truth: they just really don’t care about vets or anyone else who isn’t rolling in money.

Matt Kennard can be reached at MattKennard@gmail.com.

Hollywood’s F-U

By EUGENE MULERO, Correspondent

I don’t know why I keep forgetting what a liberal bastion Hollywood is. But I do.

Next week, one of the big studios is releasing, “W,” a biopic on none other than Good Ol’ President Bush. And the only director desperate (and stupid) enough to take on the project: Oliver Stone.

So let’s see – the same director who cemented the JFK conspiracy, depicted Wall Street as a two-dimensional good-versus-evil jungle and offered us the last passion of Tricky Dick.

The only thing that comes to mind is, WHY?

Why do we need this movie that now we all have to go see? Why? Doesn’t Hollywood learn anything from the past?

The average voter hates Hollywood’s elite – the 1 percent richest son-of-a-guns live and work around there. Remember what happened after “Fahrenheit 9/11”?—well, I do. Bush got re-elected. Yes. After that Oscar-winning “masterpiece” dismantling the empire, W still won.

So, from what I’ve read and the previews I’ve seen, “W” exposes the Bush Administration’s tumultuous disagreements about Iraq, reveals Karl Rove’s genius and chronicles Bush’s journey from college fuck-up to president. TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW!

What “W” is going to do is reinforce the notion to middle America that Hollywood is full of Bentley-driving assholes, while preaching to the choir of W haters.

And as far as Oliver Stone – the guy can make a good film, don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed “U-Turn” – but, really, the “W” project is such an obvious fuck-you to President Bush that it’s a pathetic undertaking.

What would’ve been daring on the part of Stone and Hollywood, would’ve been to greenlight an investigative documentary on Hollywood Studios’ stranglehold on American culture and ties to defense contractors (but, that won’t happen, since movies about war are profitable).

Eugene Mulero may be reached at Eugene.Mulero@gmail.com.