October 22, 2001 — 12 AM

What’s Left?

Christopher Hitchens pulls his ‘I’m a Recovering Marxist’ routine in Reason magazine. He has cold words for the left-wing in the era of Clinton and Blair.

But there is no such thing as a radical left anymore. Ça n’existe pas. The world of Gloria Steinem and Jesse Jackson, let’s say, has all been, though it doesn’t realize it, hopelessly compromised by selling out to Clintonism. It became, under no pressure at all, and with no excuse, and in no danger, a voluntary apologist for abuse of power.

It couldn’t wait to sell out. It didn’t even read the small print or ask how much or act as if it were forced under pressure to do so. I don’t think they’ve realized how that’s changed everything for them. They’re not a left. They’re just another self-interested faction with an attitude toward government and a hope that it can get some of its people in there. That makes it the same as everyone else — only slightly more hypocritical and slightly more self-righteous.

What to make of it?

* * *

I’ve been a bit self-analytical lately. I think of myself as someone with left-wing attitudes. I see a cold lack of compassion in the reasoning of those who tirelessly defend capitalism unbound, and I distrust the insatiable need for profit and the idea that such a motive could cohabit with more altruistic goals.

Despite that, I find myself distant from today’s Left. To quote Hitchens again, “I hear the word globalization and it sounds to me like a very good idea. I like the sound of it. It sounds innovative and internationalist. To many people it’s a word of almost diabolic significance — as if there could be a non-global response to something.” What would happen if we changed the name of the United Nations to the Global Nations? Because I listen around me and I hear people on the left saying the West’s response to terrorism should go through the U.N. — essentially that international politics should not be left in the hands of sovereign states. How can you advocate both lowering political borders and raising economic ones when twenty-first century politics is so clearly dominated by economics?

I’m not naïve; I know that the influence of economic theory, which by its nature these days is inherently pro-capitalist, on politics is precisely the thing that concerns anti-globalists. But hindering international trade is not going to lessen that influence. If all trade with corrupt, poverty-stricken nations were to cease tomorrow, American corporations would still lobby incessantly members of the American Congress and continue to influence legislative aims. I am all too eager to agree that democracy and the well-being of citizens are threatened by economic narrow-mindedness. But the threat is in our own backyard, not in some snoringly dull prose concocted by trade lawyers.

What restricted trade will do is restrict the degree to which stronger economic and political entities can influence weaker ones. It will be more difficult for American and British governments (and their various friends) to assert themselves on others. This, according to many anti-globalists is a Good Thing. And fair enough; the American government interfered in world affairs too often in the twentieth century, often much to the detriment of people who had no say in the matter. But the Americans get targeted by critics because they have the most money and are the most effective (since foreign governments have the most to lose by angering the U.S.). In point of fact though, I would add that the British, the French, the Russians and the Chinese have all been nefariously involved in world affairs. It was the Russians after all, stirring up so much trouble in Afghanistan, that indirectly led to today’s conditions there. Strikingly, these are the same five countries who occupy the veto-waving permanent-member seats on the U.N. Security Council, making demands for U.N. involvement in the mess in Afghanistan seem a trifle odd. Is it somehow morally superior if five great powers interfere in a political regime instead of just one?

This is not a defense of the war in Afghanistan. As civilian casualties mount — and it appears they do just — I see less and less evidence that the American attacks will serve any purpose beyond boosting domestic morale and causing the fall of an unsavoury politcal regime, the Taliban. Which as some of you might recall, is exactly what George W. Bush said the Americans did not intend to do, back before we started hearing again terms like “collateral damage.” In fact it appears that this is precisely what the Americans will do, and they’re doing it the fast, messy way, by levelling government ‘strongholds’ (we call them buildings and neighbourhoods in the democratic world) and making it possible for rebel forces in Afghanistan to advance. In fact, since the Bush administration has realized that Osama bin Laden was winning the propaganda war, we’ve heard less and less of his name at all, even though if the Taliban had decided to hand him over, the Americans ostensibly would have called off the attack. One wonders now if there will actually be an Afghanistan left to govern, or anywhere from which to govern it, once the Americans finish creating new martyrs and fresh fuel for the Islamic world’s frustration and anger.

A friend of mine asked me recently, after we agreed that this war was not The Answer, if I knew what the answer was. I don’t, of course. Maybe I would regain some respect for left-wing politics if it had some course of action that sounded at all useful. I strongly feel that killing terrorists and their collaborators will solve nothing and may make things worse, as any cursory glance at Israel and Palestine would suggest. If Bin Laden is, among others, responsible for the events of September 11, punish him, by all means. But look too at why terrorism exists and how it might be prevented.

Unfortunately, I don’t see such prevention being simple at all. The convolution starts when you consider that the Taliban received indirect funding from the U.S. through Pakistan when the Taliban were fighting the Soviets. It’s when the Americans pulled out that things started to get really messy, much like the American withdrawal from Vietnam, another senseless war, helped create the vacuum that allowed the horrific regime of the Khmer Rouge to arise in Cambodia.

It’s very easy to criticize American foreign policy because they’ve made so many mistakes. But it’s also not so easy to change it all. The American presence in Saudi Arabia is cited by many, including Bin Laden himself, as a source of anti-American sentiment within the Islamic world. If the U.S. pulled out their military and their funding tomorrow, however, Saudi Arabia would probably fall apart, either into civil war or into the clutches of Iraq, neither of which seems particularly savoury for the people of the country. As odious as it may be to have American soldiers and greenbacks breathing down one’s neck, I do not believe that people in the world can always solve their own problems. Not when military arms are for sale at the earliest convenience to would-be political leaders. So at some point, foreign presence is necessary. And let’s be honest: no government will fail to look out for it’s own interests first. The Americans are just the people with the most to lose.

Previously: What’s In A Name?

Subsequently: Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink

October 2001
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