From: word_chemist@hotmail.com   
      
   'The third reason, not quite so well laid out by the rather 10th-rate   
   theoreticians of today's left, is that once you decide that American-led   
   "globalisation" is the main enemy, then any revolt against it is better than   
   none at all. In some way yet to be determined, Al-Qaeda might be able to   
   help to stave off global warming. (I have not yet checked to see how this is   
   squared with Bin Laden's diatribe of last weekend, summoning all holy   
   warrior aid to the genocidal rulers of Sudan as they complete the murder of   
   African Muslims, and as they sell all their oil to China to create a whole   
   new system of carbon emissions in Asia. At first sight, it looks like blood   
   for oil to me.)   
   This hectic collapse in the face of brutish irrationality and the most   
   cynical realpolitik has taken far too long to produce antibodies on the   
   left. However, a few old hands and some sharp and promising new ones have   
   got together and produced a statement that is named after the especially   
   unappealing (to me) area of London in which it was discussed and written.'   
      
   The Sunday TimesApril 30, 2006   
      
      
   At last our lefties see the light   
   Misguided support for dictators destroyed the left's credibility.   
   Christopher Hitchens welcomes a volte-face   
      
      
   One can stare at a simple sign or banner or placard for a long time before   
   its true meaning discloses itself. The late John Sparrow, warden of All   
   Souls College, Oxford, was once struck motionless by a notice at the foot of   
   the escalator at Oxford Circus Tube station. "Dogs," it read, "must be   
   carried." What to do then, wondered this celebrated pedant, if you hadn't   
   got a dog with you?   
      
      
   And then there came a day, well evoked by Ian McEwan in his novel Saturday,   
   when hundreds of people I knew were prepared to traipse through the streets   
   of London behind a huge banner that read "No war on Iraq. Freedom for   
   Palestine". This was in fact the official slogan of the organisers. Let us   
   gaze at these two simple injunctions for a second.   
   Nobody had actually ever proposed a war "on" Iraq. It had been argued,   
   whether persuasively or not, that Iraq and the world would be improved by   
   the advent of the post-Saddam Hussein era. There was already a war in Iraq,   
   with Kurdish guerrillas battling the Ba'athist regime and Anglo-American   
   airborne patrols enforcing a "no-fly zone" in order to prevent the renewal   
   of the 1991 attempted genocide in the Kurdish north and the Shi'ite south.   
   I certainly heard arguments in favour of a war for Iraq. A few months before   
   the intervention, Dr Barham Salih - one of the leaders of the autonomous   
   Kurdish region - flew to Rome to speak at a conference of the Socialist   
   International (of which his party is a member). The place of the left, he   
   said, was on the side of those battling against fascism. I went to Blackpool   
   at about the same time to make a similar point at the annual Tribune rally   
   at the Labour party conference.   
   The war "for" and "over" and "in" Iraq, in other words, had been going on   
   for some time and I, for one, had taken a side in it.   
   What is then left of the word "on"? Should it not really have read "No   
   quarrel with Saddam Hussein"? That would have been more accurate but perhaps   
   less catchy. You keep hearing leaders of the anti-war crowd protesting that   
   they don't "really" act as apologists for Saddam. But this, if true, could   
   easily have been demonstrated. "Hands off Iraq - but freedom for Kurdistan",   
   say. (This was, in fact, the position taken by many Arab leftists.)   
   "Freedom for Palestine", though. What exactly is that doing there? Why not   
   freedom for Lebanon, or Syria, which are just as far away? Or Darfur? No, it   
   had to be Palestine, because the subject had to be changed. This was indeed   
   the favourite tactic of Saddam himself. He never mentioned the Palestinians   
   on the day he invaded and annexed Kuwait (and incidentally ruined, as Edward   
   Said pointed out, the lives of the thriving Palestinian diaspora in that   
   small country).   
   But as soon as he had exhausted the patience of the United Nations, Saddam   
   began to yell that he would never surrender the territory he had stolen   
   unless the Israelis ended their occupation, too. (An amusing subconscious   
   equation between the two offences, incidentally, even if Saddam does share,   
   with his hated Iranian foes, the desire to see Israel obliterated entirely.)   
   In the waning years of the Ba'ath regime, Baghdad radio and television kept   
   up a ceaseless rant of jihad, calling on all true Muslims to rally to the   
   side of Saddam as part of the battle for Jerusalem.   
   So that was what was actually happening on that celebrated "Saturday". A   
   vast crowd of people reiterating the identical mantras of Ba'athism - one of   
   the most depraved and reactionary ideologies of the past century. How on   
   earth, or how the hell, did we arrive at this sordid terminus? How is it   
   that the anti-war movement's favourite MP, George Galloway, has a warm if   
   not slightly sickly relationship with dictators in Baghdad and Damascus?   
   How comes it that Ramsey Clark, the equivalent public face in America, is   
   one of Saddam's legal team and has argued that he was justified in   
   committing the hideous crimes of which he stands accused? Why is the left's   
   beloved cultural icon, Michael Moore, saying that the "insurgents" in Iraq   
   are the equivalent of the American revolutionaries of 1776?   
   I believe there are three explanations for this horrid mutation of the left   
   into a reactionary and nihilistic force. The first is nostalgia for the   
   vanished "People's Democracies" of the state socialist era. This has been   
   stated plainly by Galloway and by Clark, whose political sect in the United   
   States also defends Castro and Kim Jong-il.   
   The bulk of the anti-war movement also opposed the removal of the   
   Muslim-slayer Slobodan Milosevic, which incidentally proves that their   
   professed sympathy with oppressed Muslims is mainly a pose.   
   However, that professed sympathy does help us to understand the second   
   motive. To many callow leftists, the turbulent masses of the Islamic world   
   are at once a reminder of the glory days of "Third World" revolution, and a   
   hasty substitute for the vanished proletariat of yore. Galloway has said as   
   much in so many words and my old publishers at New Left Review have produced   
   a book of Osama Bin Laden's speeches in which he is compared with Che   
   Guevara.   
   The third reason, not quite so well laid out by the rather 10th-rate   
   theoreticians of today's left, is that once you decide that American-led   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)