How the Left Sees the Antiwar Right
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Interesting post on the Daily Kos, “What If the Right Becomes the Antiwar Party,” inspired in part by Chase Madar’s TAC essay on the “humanitarian” hawkery of Samatha Power. (I don’t think Madar considers himself a conservative, by the way, he just wrote an outstanding criticism of Power.)
At the outset of the Iraq War, Neil Clark proposed (in TAC) a grand Left-Right alliance against the war, and there was — still is — some healthy cross-pollination. The stumbling blocks to an enduring alliance along the lines of the old Anti-Imperial League proved to be the dearth of antiwar conservatives and the tendency of antiwar leftists to mix other issues into their protests. A great many left-wing antiwar protestors were really just left-wing protestors, with the Republicans’ war being only the cause du jour. But that just goes to show what most TAC readers already know, that the groupthink of Left and Right works well for the warfare-welfare state establishment but doesn’t make much sense for people who just want to live in peace.
Filed under: Conservatism, Politics, War
“The stumbling blocks to an enduring alliance along the lines of the old Anti-Imperial League proved to be the dearth of antiwar conservatives”
I think you have your answer right there. It’s sad, but that’s your modern conservative movement.
I remember the ’40s, and the business-Republican party, which tended to be isolationist after the War. Robert Taft, for example.
All of them who were in Congress voted for the war against Japan (Germany declared war on us, thereby taking the pressure of Roosevelt). Peace is very pro-business, especially if we can keep out and build up our economy for the great selling after the war.
Conservatism does not need aggressive nationalism to make it whole. All it needs as some sort of resistance to adventure. With a truly conservative administration after Regan, there would be no adventure in Iraq, and our adventure in Afghanistan would be limited to looking for bin Laden. We would likely have made a deal with the Taliban by now.
I notice that the Daily Kos piece says “Doubtless, the [Madar American Conservative] article was published mainly because it attacked an Obama Administration official….” He obviously isn’t a longtime reader of AC — if he were, he’d know that it was at least as critical of Bush’s regime as it is of Obama’s, especially on the antiwar front.
Dennis Tuchler, why “since Reagan?” That administration was committed to interventionism, too. It mostly confined itself to silly but winnable wars such as Grenada, and knew enough to get out when it had gotten itself in over its head, as in Lebanon. Nevertheless, it drank the Kool-Aid of the global imperium. If an American administration, whether of the noninterventionist right or left, had pulled our aid and guns out of the Mideast and become neutral parties rather than active supporters of Israel and various Arab despots in the 1980s or 1990s, 9/11 almost certainly never would have happened, and there would have been no need to poke around in the graveyard of empires seeking bin Laden or the far more elusive “stable, democratic Afghanistan” the reality-challenged neocons and interventionist liberals keep talking about.
Daniel McCarthy says,
“I don’t think (insert TAC Contributor) considers himself a conservative…” – …so, The American Conservative has “non-conservative” adherents, some of which are almost certainly “anti-conservative”, and almost as certainly anti-GOP? (That would be the signal for “anti-elitist conservatives” to stand and shout, “No Duh!”)
Daniel McCarthy says,
“A great many (insert cause-du jour) antiwar protestors were really just (insert cause-du jour) protestors…” …so, The American Conservative can be “co-opted”? Maybe by people who hate what we stand for?
Daniel McCarthy says,
“…the Republicans’ war…”
Barney says,
Your caracatures are hurting you. Grow a Reagan spine. Grow a Rush Limbaugh spine.
Americans feel towards war the way they feel towards taxes. And they are susceptible to lying politicians, who convinced them that this was a “short-term” necessary evil.
Now start being a force the American public can rally around. And you won’t get there by “smearing snark” all over their icons.
Instead of saying, “Sarah Palin is fat and stupid”, you should be saying, “Here is what we expect of our politicians, and here is what Sarah would have to do to be acceptable to us…”
(Then watch out for the saboteurs among you, who will be muttering, “No, no. I Insist, Sarah fat and stupid…” “Oh, and that Hillary. Boy is she young and lovely. And did I mention, ‘brilliant’?”)
Obama let his guard down, and revealed a racist jerk. But he loves power more than he loves him some racism. (I make fun, not of blacks, but of the “race-peddlers”, like Henry Gates, who have helped destroy minority communities in our country for personal gain.)
Now is the perfect storm for the anti-war crowd. Grow a spine, grow a brain, quit pissing on your friends. Quit assuming that decent Americans everywhere don’t want much of the same things you want.
And learn to identify the voices that will tear you down, if you begin to appear successful…