Fellow lamenter for liberalism
: When I wrote my Lament for Liberals, I quoted from a Guardian excerpt of piece by John Lloyd, who resigned as a columnist on the New Statesman and explained why. The entire piece wasn’t online but blogger Harry Hatchett contacted Lloyd and asked for permission and, thus, here it is. It brings the argument about the left and war down to one clear equation: Human rights trumps national sovereignty. [via reader Jeff Blehar]
11 responses to “Fellow lamenter for liberalism”
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The irony is that, during most of the 1990s, it was primarily conservatives who were arguing against intervention in Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, Kosovo, etc. on the basis that the internal affairs of those places were none of our business and clinging to Westphalian notions of sovereignty. Certainly, there were a number of conservatives/Republicans who supported some or all of those campaigns, but they were in a minority whereas it seemed like virtually all Democrats supported those interventions. I wonder what has changed? Surely, it isn’t entirely a matter of partisan politics–supporting the president of your party when he’s in office and reflexively opposing a president of the other party?
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Encapsulated James, and well within a nutshell.
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I’m British so this is a genuine, rather than rhetorical, question.
Do you think Bush would be following such an interventionist policy in Iraq if it were not for 9/11?
The impression he gave the world during his election campaign and straight after (with Kyoto and the Steel tarrifs issue) was that he was instinctively drawn to a protectionist/isolationist position.
Now we have US troops stationed across the globe. Was it just 9/11 or were their other factors (factions within the Republican Party etc)?
Oh, and thanks for the link Jeff, much appreciated.
Cheers -
Harry:
And thanks for getting the whole piece up. Good work!
I think you’re right with the direction of your question: Bush’s inclination is not to intervene or certainly not to (pardon my English) nation-build. On the other hand, it is his inclination to fight (and I don’t discount the impact of his father’s history on this; yes, he did defeat the guy Dad didn’t; he finished the job).
I’m certainly no Bush fan and don’t pretend to understand him.
What confuses me here is that the right is turning interventionist in behalf of not only our security but “their” (whoever they are this time around) human rights while liberals are turning isolationist and are not considering “their” human rights.
I’m not switching sides, just trying to reclaim what I think are the proper roots and concerns of this side.
jeff -
As a minor point of information, I think the Lloyd item Harry posted is not the Guardian excerpt of Lloyd’s resignation from the Statesman, but a different article written for an Italian newspaper. It’s obviously similar, though.
Re Harry’s question: no, he wouldn’t. Bush’s nation-building, liberating ways are newly acquired tastes. The steel tariff (and similar textile tariff) missteps, btw, were made *after* 9/11. The textile one blew me away because it directly undermined Pakistan, at a time when Musharraf was possibly the Muslim Most Reviled By Islamist Muslims. -
As you are obviously aware if you are reading John Lloyd articles, the same issue is under review on the left in the UK and to a (sadly) lesser extent in Europe.
The big difference, as I can see, is that in the UK we have a centre-left leader in Blair who has been forced to tackle this issue and forcing the left to deal head-on with the contradictions you outline. That transformed the war debate in the UK. If we had a right-wing conservative leader I am not at all sure we would be having the same discourse.
Blair was able to frame the case for action in Iraqi in the language of the liberal left, which at least gave people on the left an easy route into the discussion. The language, style and overall politics of Bush must make it much easier for people on the US left to swiftly reject the idea.
Thanks to weblogs, we are able to check in on each others debates though and exchange ideas. We must do more of it.
All the best -
You are right Thomas – the Lloyd article is taken from the centre-left Italian newspaper Il Riformista. I saw the Italian version and I liked it so much I asked John if he would provide the original English to the blog community – he was kind enough to agree.
Thanks for the correction on the tariff issue. -
I’m no Bush fan either, but he did mention dealing with countries possessing WMD in his inauguration speech, and he talked specifically about Iraq less than a month into his presidency. That says to me that he was at least mulling over what might come to pass with regard to, at the very least, Iraq. Not surprising, considering his family’s history with that nation, but just FYI.
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I agree that Bush’s stance totally changed from his campaign, and Harry hits it on the head, it was 9/11 that changed him.
To Jeff’s puzzlement tho where he says…
“What confuses me here is that the right is turning interventionist in behalf of not only our security but “their” (whoever they are this time around) human rights”
I think, or would like to think, I know it is true in my case, that this arguement (as much as it ever was one) has been won by the left. It no longer is a solitary position held by one side only of the political spectrum, and is hopefully going to be fully adopted and pursued by both sides as a universal. It is troubling tho to see members of the left backtrack from that position on the basis that their hated opponent happens to agree with them about it, and is actually doing something about it. Their main horror is, I think, that it is Bush that gets the credit for it, and not their current political leader. (I can’t figure out who that is yet) -
Jackie D,
you see, though, that Bush mentioning WMD in connection with Iraq is precisely not what John Lloyd or Jeff are talking about. But you’re right, the thing to do is to go back in the http://www.whitehouse.gov archives and see for ourselves. -
I think there were rational grounds to be skeptical of, say, Kosovo and of Iraq; in either case, the danger to the US was arguably small, although the moral case in both cases was strong. These rational grounds were seized on for political purposes by some, and were honestly stated by others.
The problem those of us who supported both wars must face is that “liberation” as a sufficient basis for war has a few tacit assumptions: that the overall short- plus long-term costs will be low enough, and that we will correctly estimate those costs. We will inevitably find there is a price we will not pay to extend democracy (eg, China), and will inevitably find “gray areas” where it’s just enough of a “bargain” that we’ll go ahead — only to find we’ve underestimated the costs.
It seems to require that we all become military, foreign policy, and regional affairs experts in a way that simpler rules, like self-defense against aggression, do not, and it allows us to roll the dice on others behalf. We need to be clear about how often we presume that right.
To name a few examples, Myanmar, Cuba, or Zimbabwe might all be relatively easy military pickings, and they all might very well benefit from regime change. Do we therefore “go for it”? So far, I’d say not, with regrets for those left under oppression in those countries.
To repeat, I supported both the Kosovo and Iraq wars. The Kosovo crisis was one of a known genocidist (or ethnic cleanser, to avoid getting bogged down in definitions) in the process of committing another one in the “transatlantic back yard”. Re Iraq, I estimated that it was sufficiently threatening, and that the legal basis was sufficiently strong, to offset our more isolated diplomatic position and the larger scope and cost of the task. Thus, the failure to find Iraqi WMDs is a problem for me that it apparently isn’t for Jeff.
I’m struggling with this; I find positions like John Lloyd’s or Paul Berman’s (“Terror and Liberalism”) attractive and almost compelling. I don’t know how far I’m willing to follow them.
