Best of the Web Today notes some interesting paragraphs from an AlterNet interview with Canadian writer and leftist Naomi Klein, best known for her anti-corporate book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Klein, an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq, has some uncomfortable words for her fellow antiwar acolytes, although the interview introduction makes no mention of her Sister Souljah moment:
Quite frankly, there’s a lot of skepticism in Iraq . . . about the international anti-war movement. In part, it’s because anti-war forces were not critical enough of Saddam. But it’s also because we haven’t proposed this kind of practical solidarity that has to do with improving people’s lives, and not just absolving our conscience. Or saying "Not in our name," and then going home. . . .
The progressives in the U.S. are fairly self-loathing, in that, basically we allow ourselves to oppose a specific policy, but we completely internalize the values and the principles of the right — ideas such as Americans can only care about selfish demands; they can’t really care about people in another country; to talk about international law in the United States is to be seen as giving up U.S. power to foreigners.
We basically accept all of this instead of making passionate arguments in favor of international law that would actually convince people. In a lot of cases, the policies are there but we don’t have the strength of our convictions to make them. We buy far too easily the belief that these are too far outside the mainstream, too far outside the box, and Americans will never go for it. So we’re too cowardly to put forward real policy alternatives and we only allow ourselves to critique, and therefore, become not credible.
That’s Best of the Web’s excerpt, just to be clear – it’s omitting a lot of over-the-top rhetoric about the real American intentions in Iraq. I suppose it’s better that Klein and her cohorts think they’re actually protesting American policy to help Iraq, not grudgingly admitting that they were late to the game. Here’s a section I think is noteworthy:
I was talking to a journalist a few weeks ago and I was saying that
I believe our responsibility is to hold Bush to his lie. They promised
democracy, sovereignty and liberation. They haven’t delivered [spoken on the eve of Iraq’s election!], but our
job should be to demand that these become realities. His response was,
"So what you’re saying is that something good could come from the war,
right?" He was trying to trap me. I realized when he did this that this
was a big reason why anti-war forces have refused to have positive
demands — precisely because it will be used against us. It will seem as
if something good could come from this war. My response to this is: Who
the hell cares? Who cares about our anti-war egos? Which is really what
this is about.Because this war was never about bringing
democracy to Iraq — at every turn democracy has been suppressed — we
have a very clear role to play here. Our role is to support the demands
for democracy that are coming from Iraq, where Iraqis are being
violently repressed for making those demands. [my emphasis]
I’m trying to think of the last time I heard someone opposed to the war call for immediate elections, rather than endless delays because the security isn’t stable. Only one comes to mind, Slate’s Mickey Kaus, who has promoted early elections for Iraq since last spring. If this election is considered a success, I have no doubt that several Naomi Kleins will claim paternity for its birth. Better late than never!
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.