LOOK FOR THE CAUSE

After reading Lance Tapley’s article last week, I could not help but feel like I was being lectured by a self-appointed voice of reason. As I understand it, shortly after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Tapley started circulating email amongst the Maine Global Action Network, suggesting that activists not react with public criticism of US foreign policy. A fact I think Tapley should have noted in his article to reflect his predisposition, it would seem, for less debate, and more order.

Tapley reports that he went to the New Chautauqua conference in Unity where some activists made very pointed remarks about US foreign policy and hence concludes, rather outrageously, that “. . . there was virtual unanimity that their big task was to turn public attention to how the US was to blame for the attack.” Wow. Where is the evidence for this? Did he ask anyone at the conference if they agreed with this particular characterization? What adds injury to the insult is that he then identifies this (mis)characterization as the left position in general. You do not have to do much searching to find crackpot conspiracy theories of every political stripe, and the fact that Tapley has encountered some with the left should surprise no one. Why he wants to portray this as the left perspective right now is beyond me, given all of the evidence to the contrary.

Phoenix readers should be aware, if they are not already, that numerous individuals and organizations associated with the left in the United States have routinely spoken and written in condemnation of the atrocities committed on September 11 and mourned the loss of innocent life.

Nevertheless, if the left is worth anything at all it must continue to do everything it can to discuss these attacks with the context of the United States’ imperial role in the world and its double standards. If people on the left do not speak to this issue, who will? We cannot gloss over the sources of where this type of brutal rage comes from, as though it emanates from some irrational void. As just one example, there are credible estimates that 500,000 children have perished as a result of the US war and subsequent sanctions against Iraq. Is this not relevant? Isn’t it reasonable to believe that this type of despair within the Muslim world has fueled those seeking vengeance with the innocent lives of New Yorkers? Perhaps Tapley would agree with this statement given his stated sympathy for the left, but I am afraid he thinks it’s besides the point, that we should now put our post-Vietnam skepticism aside and come to the realization that the first duty of government is to protect its citizens. Fine. The best way it can do just that is to lift the sanctions on Iraq, suspend US political and financial support for Israel until it ends its illegal occupation, maintain adherence to the ABM Treaty, and work in a truly multilateral manner to bring all suspects of the attacks before an international court of justice, based on evidence — without killing or harming innocent civilians or destroying the infrastructure by which they live.

The benefits of this approach would not only lead to a safer world, but a more just one as well.

Marc Larrivee

Portland

 

LEFTIST NIHILISM

Kudos to Lance Tapley for his recent excellent article, “More Terrorist Casualties (Oct. 5-12).” I am a replacement instructor of history at Bates College, and since 11 September have been shocked, bewildered, and dismayed by the general reaction among faculty and students here which replicates what Tapley so well describes.

I should make my position known from the beginning: I initially tried to imagine various possible responses to the attacks, yet within a few days concluded that if other options proved untenable, our government needed to respond militarily. With each new refusal by the Taliban to turn over a mass murderer and his henchmen, and with each new case of biological terrorism, it is becoming clearer that all along our only viable option was a military one. Despite momentary descents into rhetoric (descents entirely understandable given the extraordinary pressures of the moment), President Bush and his Administration have so far been responding absolutely correctly and deserve the extraordinary support most citizens have shown them. But those on the leftist fringe would rather capitalize upon this nation’s collective grief to lambaste in their hysterical and tiresome manner the officials and rank-and-file soldiers now working so hard to protect us.

Tapley elucidates some of the reasons for radical leftists’ unyielding and blind hatred, yet even before I read his article, I had reached similar conclusions after having participated in several organized meetings with other members of the so-called Bates community. As at the New Chautauqua meeting, radical leftists at Bates continue to reveal an unsettling lack of humanity in their efforts to point to the attacks as proof positive of US failures. While I would be the first to agree that American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, has been predominantly mistaken, the sanctimonious insinuation that this and other problems somehow justified the actions of 11 September is beneath contempt.

Tapley points to the radical left’s alienation from general society and its resultant paranoia as prime reasons for making such insinuations. I think he is spot on, yet would add that another explanation is the nihilism animating the far left. For the past couple of decades this nihilism has manifested itself within academia through the promotion of a kind of pseudo-intellectual relativism which ultimately reduces reality itself to a semantic conundrum. Thus, with regard to 11 September, I’ve heard voiced the disingenuous query: “Well, what is ‘terrorism’?” If your response to the murder and dismemberment of 6000 innocents has been to propose word games, then reevaluate your values, for you’ve just as well proposed that nothing matters.

This nihilism reflects in part a collective guilt complex by those unable to reconcile the fact that the very system which economically exploits others around the world and for which they are so quick to proclaim their hatred also allows them to lead lives filled with leisure time and material goods aplenty — lives which, in other words, are indistinguishable from those of most other Americans. Yet radical leftists certainly attempt to distinguish themselves. Late model Volvos bumper-stickered with holier-than-thou platitudes are therefore intended to make others feel as guilty as their drivers do, yet instead function as almost painful reminders that these drivers and other similarly pharisaic ideologues have lapsed into an unselfconscious projecting of their own self-loathing, as if they themselves were somehow above being American. “I’m not an American. I’m a citizen of the world!” Tell that to the Russian official who’s examining your visa at Sheremetyevo Airport and see where it gets you.

Clearly, many on the left, despite mouthing the rhetoric of class war, of universal brother- and/or sisterhood, and of a fuzzy notion of world peace, actually believe in nothing, in the sense that there is not one thing into which they have invested their faith. As such, they fail to recognize the 11 September attacks for what they are: an absolute evil which must be defeated. Ultimately, the fringe’s public displays of wrath reveal a motley crew of lost individuals unable to confront their own personal tragedies. To this end, they have become not just unlistenable, but pathetic.

Andrew Gentes

Instructor, Bates College

PhD designate, Brown University

---