When opinion polls show overwhelming support for the war against Iraq, how does the New York Times find a sample in which only one person out of dozens feels that way? The only conceivable answer is that the reporter was simply told to find opponents of war and write his story on those lines. Wouldn’t a story like that need some context about what the polls are telling us? Not in the Times’ universe. And the critical goal of the anti-war left is to sever any connection between September 11 and the war against Iraq. Here’s the Times’ editorial today insisting that this dimension – the most important background for any war against Iraq – be ruled out of discussion:
One argument for war often floated by officials ought to be disposed of quickly. Military action against Iraq may be justified, but not in response to the terrorism of Sept. 11 or Al Qaeda. To date there is no reliable evidence that Baghdad had any serious connection to either. The dangers posed by Iraq have more to do with protecting American interests in the Middle East than with warding off fresh terrorist attacks on American cities.
This is preposterous. The only reason invading Iraq is being discussed at all is because of September 11 and what it taught us. It taught us that we are extremely vulnerable to terrorist assault, that these murderous fanatics are capable of anything, that they would use weapons of mass destruction in a heartbeat if they could get them. It is no secret that Iraq is the prime potential source of such weapons, and it is headed by a despot who has used them himself, and would dearly love to deliver them to America. What more do we need to know? The far-left notion that this is a cynical war for “protecting American interests in the Middle East” is absurd. Such a war might indeed make the Middle East a safer place, but the war is about protecting America and the West, as well as liberating the Iraqi people from one of the most evil tyrants in history. That the Times cannot or will not see this shows that they have learned nothing from the catastrophe of last year. (They’re even running puff-pieces on war-resisters, for Pete’s sake.) In fact, in the Times’ world, that catastrophe must be elided, ignored, bracketed, divorced from anything that now happens. The hard left knows that this event changed the American discourse profoundly and they know that if they are to prevail in the months ahead, they must do all they can to minimize its importance. They must be exposed and stopped. And the administration should not wait too long to counter.
POOR MARXIST: Richard Goldstein uses his latest Village Voice column to argue that he’s being persecuted because he’s been called a Marxist. He cites my alleged “repeated references to [him] as a Marxist and a Communist.” He then claims with no evidence that I have removed such repeated references from my archive. This is untrue. I have made no amendments to the archive of this blog ever. If he cannot find such references to him in my archive, then they aren’t there and never were. But why on earth would Goldstein object to being called a Marxist in the first place? Isn’t that, according to him, a badge of honor? In his little tract, “The Attack Queers,” he includes, for example, the following passage about the alleged emergence of a gay community in the past:
[T]he community that emerged was a deliberate creation, based on the premise that people with a common experience of stigma are a people. This was not a widely held belief in postwar America. It was a Marxist idea, as was the concept that oppression can be overcome only through the creation of an alternative identity … Harry Hay was a member of the Communist Party USA in 1948, when he thought of organizaing homosexuals … Hay began by forming a small organization on the Communist model, complete with semi-secret cells.
Now all this is written supportively. And the Marxist idea of “community” is a central part of Goldstein’s view that dissidents (like me) be exposed and expunged from a community to which we do not really belong. So how on earth is it red-baiting to describe Goldstein as a Marxist? He is. It’s simply a statement of fact. He and others, like Tony Kushner, even respect those Americans who once betrayed their own country to advance the cause of one of the most evil despotisms in world history. (Kushner’s dreadful play, “Angels in America,” was in part devoted to lionizing these fanatics.) The real question is: why is Goldstein ashamed of this? Is he worried that if most gay men and lesbians found out that their political representatives borrow from political traditions that are connected to vile totalitarianism, they might question the premises of those leaders?
The Dish 