The Left and War

Writing in New York magazine, Kurt Andersen confronts the "major intellectual-moral-political problem" the successful Iraqi elections pose for New York liberals:

"Liberal guilt" once meant feeling discomfort over one's good fortune in an unjust world. As this last U.S. election cycle began, however, a new subspecies of liberal guilt arose--over the pleasure liberals took in bad news from Iraq, which seemed sure to hurt the administration. But with Bush reelected, any shred of tacit moral rationale is gone. In other words, feel the guilt, and let it be a pang that leads to moral clarity.

Each of us has a Hobbesian choice concerning Iraq; either we hope for the vindication of Bush's risky, very possibly reckless policy, or we are in a de facto alliance with the killers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. We can be angry with Bush for bringing us to this nasty ethical crossroads, but here we are nonetheless"

Andersen's piece is a remarkably blunt assessment of his fellow liberals' attitudes toward Iraq--and toward Vietnam:

At a certain point during the Vietnam War, a majority of Americans--those of us who were in favor of unilateral U.S. withdrawal--were in a de facto alliance with the North Vietnamese, the Vietcong, and the Soviets. Unpleasant but true. . . .

With liberals, Vietnam redux is all too conscious: It is irresistible to them (and to almost anyone over 40) to fit the war in Iraq into the template of Indochina, even if the parallels are only superficial. This Groundhog Day, as we all looked forward to watching a Beatle perform on TV (and on a Sunday evening in early February, just like in 1964), a fiftyish antiwar friend of mine in Park Slope dismissed the election in Iraq as "just like the election in Vietnam in 1967."

I didn't know what she meant, because I had not yet read the posting by Kos, the lefty star Markos Moulitsas's nom de blog, of a certain Times clip from 1967--about how "United States officials were surprised and heartened . . . at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting." Kos commented, "January was the third bloodiest month for U.S. and allied troops. Will that cease now that Iraqis have voted? Nope . . . The war will continue unabated." One senses a wish for further war. One of Kos's regulars then wrote, "I hope I'm wrong on this," and my disingenuousness alarm went off. When people are deeply invested in any set of analyses and predictions, do they ever sincerely hope they're wrong?

The lesson the left learned from Vietnam is that it is acceptable to root against America during wartime. Will others follow Andersen's lead and begin unlearning it?