SHARED INTERESTS WITH THE HEADSMEN: (via Danny Postel):

Left, right, the US is out of step in Iraq: Neither the resistance groups cheered on by the American left nor the parties championed by its right reflect the views of most Iraqi people: US control over Iraq's political future may already be waning. (Frank Smyth, 9/24/04, Foreign Policy in Focus)

Many American leftists seem to know little about their Iraqi counterparts, since understanding the role of the Iraqi left requires a nuanced approach. Unfortunately, the knee-jerk, anti-imperialist analysis of groups such as International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) has wormed its way into several progressive outlets. Dispatches and columns in The Nation magazine as well as reports and commentary on the independently syndicated radio program Democracy Now have all but ignored the role of Iraqi progressives, while highlighting, if not championing, the various factions of the Iraqi-based resistance against the US-led occupation without bothering to ask who these groups are and what they represent for Iraqis.

By now several things about the Iraq war seem clear. The US-led invasion was the most dangerous and reckless step taken by the US since the Vietnam War, and America is already paying dearly and is sure to pay an even steeper price for this imprudent action. More than 1,000 American soldiers have died in little more than a year in a campaign that has undermined US security more profoundly than even presidential candidate John Kerry has managed to articulate. Never has the US (according to international public opinion polls) been so resented, if not loathed, by so many people around the world. And this is exactly the kind of environment in which al-Qaeda terrorists - who represent a real and ongoing threat to the US and others - thrive.

US activists who demonstrated against the war in Iraq made an invaluable contribution by letting the rest of the world know that millions of Americans opposed the US-led invasion. But the enemy of one's enemy is not necessarily one's friend. To think otherwise is to embrace an Orwellian logic that makes anti-war Americans appear not only uninformed but also as cynical as the pro-war protagonists they oppose. The irony of the Iraq war is that the Bush administration made a unilateral decision to invade a nation in order to overthrow a leader who ranked among the most despised despots in the world but, in so doing, managed to turn countless people in many nations against the US.

The U.S., of course, does not seek to control Iraq's future, but to let Iraqis control it, confident that given the opportunity they'll lead it in a direction favorable to our interests, as every other democracy has done. But the author's brutal honesty with regard to the Left--and the fact that they have sided with the anti-democratic extremists just because they share a common enemy (George W. Bush)--is quite refreshing.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 23, 2004 9:46 AM