Interesting article re: the blind spots in the left's reaction to Iraq, the War on Terror

[pegkerr]

Gacked from Arts & Letters Daily:

Much of the left’s opposition to the Iraq war and the Bush administration’s anti-terror campaigns – voiced by figures like Tariq Ali, Robert Fisk, George Galloway, Naomi Klein, and John Pilger – has blinded it to the need to engage with real problems and threats, says Sasha Abramsky.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I have been uneasy about the knee-jerk reactions of progressive thinkers to much of what Bush is doing, and I don't think we have much of a chance of winning elections until we suss out a more useful approach to Iraq than "Declare it's all the West's fault because we're screw ups and go home." This article has helped focus much of my inchoate thoughts on the nature of the problem. It is disappointingly short, though, on solutions.

Comments

[darkthirty.livejournal.com]

I guess the real question is whether this regime is in the process of creating future, potentially even more destructive, enemies and wars, over some very questionable "policies". Besides, at the heart of the article is a singular reluctance to find malice anywhere aside from radical islam. Also, the left in the US, from what I see, wants deep, fundamental change in the structure of the country. This is something that cannot be talked about without sidelining everything else - unfortunately.

The "kneejerk" reaction identifies the case that the present regime IS creating new enemies and future wars. The article sadly misses this point, in my opinion.

[em-h.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem, I think, is that the media love simple ideas and quick soundbites. So they tend to look for people, right or left, who will deliver these. There are progressive thinkers who have analyses far more subtle and complex than Klein and Galloway and Pilger (all of whom make me sick and tired a lot of the time), but they don't make good TV. Even print media strongly tend to prefer the oversimplified, easily characterized positions, with the exception of a few limited-circulation magazines like, say, the New York Review of Books (which is a very good place to find nuanced and informed progressive opinion).

I'm sure there are thinkers on the right who have relatively more subtle positions than the ones who get all the air-time. Not saying I'd agree with them even so, but the media process does tend to produce caricatures on both sides.

My husband actually believes that the media prominence of Klein, Galloway et al is a semi-deliberate conspiracy to make the left look stupid, but he's more inclined to conspiracy thinking than I am.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I'm not impressed with the essay. He puts up a strawman progessive argument to knock down, but it's not a progressive argument that I see much of.

B