We tried this. Antiwar.com and libertarians WERE part of the anti-Iraq War movement. So much so that Ron Paul largely ran his campaigns by leaning hard on anti-interventionism, which attracted people across the spectrum. What did we get for this? Eventually he and others like him turned into the loons calling Obama a Socialist, and red-baiting everything left of center.
Simply put, the complete schism between public opinion and public policy has made antiwar organizing almost pointless. It is much easier to galvanize people to vote on what are considered "domestic" issues. And on those matters, there's no nexus for organizing with the right.
Murtaza, you wrote about US conservatives: "appealing to them on the basis of their national identity and interests is an obvious way to get them to support or oppose a given policy. "
What could be more a part of the national identity than "liberty and justice for all"? What could be more opposed to it than ethnic cleansing and apartheid? yet we have just seen full out support by our President for the slaughter in Gaza, putting Zionism first even at the risk of having Americans die to defend it.
Supporters of Israel appear at the current campus demonstrations waving, at the same time, American and Israeli flags. What could be more contradictory, particularly in view of the fact that Jews in America are fully accepted citizens with full rights but have the unique ability to go to Palestine and take land from people with no rights whatsoever? Jews in America have found success in every field and at all levels right up to the top and that is fine. What is not fine is demanding a place on the other side of the world exclusively for Jews with full on eviction and unlimited killing of the natives.
If this blatant, flagrant contradiction presents no problem to conservatives then what hope is there for your proposals? No less a champion for individual rights than Ben Shapiro, who has become wealthy promoting that, has completely capitulated in favor of going after Americans who are exercising those rights to oppose Israel, a foreign country.
Interesting argument, although I am not sure I agree with all it. I’m not convinced that it really is the crux of the issue as opposed to general apathy. However, as a non-American not living in America I have often thought that one of the problem with these protests is that they tend to be dominated by whichever particular group is more directly impacted and then your forever protesting Lenin-Trotskystes types. It’s why I make a point of dressing well, whether in my more business clothes or weekend wear.
I have similar memories and anguish of the 2003 failed antiwar movement (I was a grad student at Berkeley during 9/11, Iraq War, and 2nd intifada days) and see a lot of uncomfortable parallels to today’s youth movement and it’s inefficacy against the Gaza War.
I think the antiwar left should pragmatically look for alliances and embrace a range of arguments that are likely be persuasive to as large and diverse an audience as possible. However I am skeptical of this idea of embracing a kind of nationalistic framing of the antiwar position for a few reasons.
1. in this cynical age, sincerity matters. As a left-liberal dove, my anti-interventionist stance comes from a belief in justice, righteousness, against the moral hideousness of endless war, hatred of cynicism and corrupt power-concentrated militarist ideologies, and respect for the rule of law. I am likely to be more persuasive when I make my case accordingly rather than just adopting a contrived “peace is patriotic” stance.
2. Promoting endless wars, mega arms sales to Gulf oil tyrants, and catering to foreign lobbies is great for American defense contractors, security think tanks, and the American economy as a whole, at least in the short-term. You know, war actually still is a racket. This puts antiwar nationalism at a huge handicap.
3. Most pro-interventionist arguments by the foreign policy establishment today adopt the neo-con false and selective moralism of “good guys” vs “bad guys” and that “moral clarity” should override concern about international law or norms or long-term strategic interest: The good guys have a moral imperative to simply do what they must. This tends to resonate with Americans already. Why yield the moral high ground to the warmongers?
Paul, I think this time the demonstrators against war have a significant advantage in that the goal is BDS prompted by the Gaza slaughter and a good portion of the demonstrators are young American Jews who deny, correctly, that Zionism is Judaism. Since Oct 7, the ability of Israel to portray itself as a victim with benign intent has collapsed and can never be recovered. Bloodlust was exposed when Gaza was entered and the false claims by Israel that innocent civilians were being spared shown to be a complete lie, topped off with the systematic execution of the World Food Kitchen employees.
Americans who knew nothing of the history of Zionism beyond the pure propaganda of the movie "Exodus" and nonsense such as Israel being a villa in a jungle and the only democracy in the Middle East, are seeing the genocidal comments from the Israeli government, fully publicized by the South African submission on apartheid to the ICJ available online for anyone to read.
We have the unprecedented presence of a Palestinian in Congress and 36 house members who would not go along with the latest tranche of billions to Israel. In 76 years, Israel has never seen such a break in lockstep support in Congress. AIPAC is fully exposed and now openly discussed as it pledges millions to defeat anyone who doesn't support Israel. The lobby-driven corruption by wealth of our political system in on full display and cannot escape attention from now on.
In closing, I have to mention the desire of Israel to use the US to defeat Iran. This long held dream of Netanyahu is by no means at an end and can be invoked with unilateral action by Israel at any time. Showing its corruption Congress, should Israel start a war, would immediately do what it has refused to do for the US: reclaim its right to declare war - for a foreign country! It's one thing to see money and weapons sent without limit, quite another to see Americans coming home in body bags for the sake of ethnic cleansing. This would be, above all, be a wake-up for conservatives.
Clif, I’m not sure it’s feasible (or desirable) to push US public opinion en masse to an anti-Zionist position. The US recognized Israel in 1949 and is not going to reconsider it nor is Israel going to dissolve its military and go away.
I think Americans who generally associate with the Christian European West traditionally have seen support for a Jewish state as historical compensation for two-millennia of persecution (especially if it’s someone else giving up rights and territory to accommodate it) There’s also the American self-flattering narrative of being the world’s “good guys” in stopping the Nazis in WWII and supporting a homeland for Europe’s persecuted Jews is an extension of that.
I can’t say how strong those sentiments are but I suspect strong headwinds against establishing the case for anti-Zionism among Americans, the events of the Gaza war notwithstanding.
You say it’s been 76 years of lockstep support for Israel in the US, but I don’t think that’s true. Americans generally paid little attention to Israel before 1967, when its war with Arab states started to have Cold War ramifications and impacts on global oil markets. Conservatives in the US still thought of Israel as a left-wing socialist country and were inclined to hold it at arms length through the 1970’s.
In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that conservative Presidents Reagan and George HW Bush were applying conditions on military aid to Israel , demanding ceasefires, and voting in assent for UNSC resolutions condemning Israel for, for example, annexing East Jerusalem, attacking a Iraqi nuclear reactor, or expanding settlements in the West Bank. Those werent considered left-wing positions as they are now, but US policy on Israel has moved markedly to the right in the last 30 years since Bush-41 left office.
There’s a centrist case to make that a natural correction in a more Israel-critical direction is in order to bring our “special” relationship back within historical norms and create some visible daylight between Israel and the US in the eyes of friends and foes in the Middle East.
I don't dispute anything in your comment, Paul, except I see only danger ahead with the lockstep support of Israel no matter what it does. Both countries have moved to the right, but at least in the US there has been at the same time a loosening up of attitudes toward gays, blacks and even Muslims. Israel has marched hard and fast toward open intolerance to the point of unlimited killing of Palestinians as shown in Gaza.
If Lincoln's thought that a house divided cannot stand, how much more true is it to say that a tiny land of 8 million people can continue to thumb its nose at the entire world, lashing out freely and often under the direction of a government dedicated to expulsion if not outright elimination of an equal number of people, particularly as at long last there are many now openly opposing Israel here. Israel truly has no future. Something is going to pop and Israel might well be the party to make it pop.
With unlimited support from the US, we have in a real sense created a monster because there has been no significant restraint from the one and only country that has the ability to restrain Israel. I give this as evidence that fear of Trump being bad for US democracy is strange when it is exercised by supporting Biden, a war criminal beyond doubt along with Netanyahu but doubly guilty in not supporting international law that used to be claimed as foundational in politics by the US. The US is truly a captive nation no longer looking out for its own interest and that is terrifying.
I see a great irony. It is only US Jews that can save the US from itself and they can do this by what many are doing - calling out the distinction between Zionism (ethnic cleansing from the start with no stopping in sight) and Judaism. It is clear that all of the freedoms we declare are the foundation of our country have nothing to do with the goal of Zionism which is one people alone, all others out, a concept that brought Europe to ruin.
I believe Netanyahu is speaking his mind with his absurd talk of the US now being a duplication of Germany in the 1930's and campus protesters being terrorists. He is a fanatic leading fanatics, who dares to mention 1930's Germany with no self-awareness. The Allies in WW2 were terrified that Hitler might get atomic weapons. Netanyahu actually has atomic weapons at the same time that he believes his country to be the eternal victim that must at all costs stop a "second holocaust". A mighty power that sees itself as victim? Yes, something is going to pop.
I am frightened that nobody and I mean nobody in the US MSM is talking about this capability of Israel to bring down the whole world if it thinks it is in mortal danger, as it always does. And there is no way of talking down this fanaticism. Chamberlain is reviled for appeasing the fanatic with a scarcely concealed agenda: Hitler. Biden has done nothing but appease another fanatic with an open agenda previewed in Gaza: Netanyahu.
At the core of the problem is the refusal to see beyond the fact that Israelis are Jewish to the more basic fact that they are human beings. Human beings are capable of anything and this is true of every subgroup of human beings, including Jews. The best and the worst are on display right now within the group that defines itself as Jewish. The best is on display in the US with the many Jews who say "not in our name" and "never again for anyone" showing the lesson of the holocaust has been learned. The worst is on display in Israel where the IDF is behaving no differently from the Wehrmacht in wiping clean an area of both people and property. To say "not in our name" shows an open mind willing to resist Zionists who are out to appropriate the religion. "Palestinians are animals" is no different from the awful idea of Judenrein and shows a closed mind, unable to see the other as oneself, building in intensity over time with full US backing. Israelis are so indoctrinated as eternal victims whose every action on the international state is righteous and any criticism is ipso facto antisemitism that it is impossible to see change. The Zionist mind is closed tight.
The worst thing the US can do is keep feeding the beast and defending it even as Israel has a twitchy finger on the nuclear trigger. Starting a reduction in support of Israel immediately and continuing it into the future, along with a pledge that the US will not join Israel in a war on Iran are necessities. The US may be too far gone as that isn't about to happen, but at least there is a voice calling for it that is growing and facing absurd reaction (listen to Jonathan Greenblatt) for all to see. A contest is on. It may be too late, but the very fact it is on is reason for hope, and support.
Per your earlier comment, Clif, the "paleocons" within the GOP have been further estranged today than they were 20 years ago. Murtaza's piece sounds great on paper, but, at least within the GOP, there's fewer to ally with. At the same time, within the left hand of the duopoly, there's fewer to be allies.
Excellent overview, Hussain.
We tried this. Antiwar.com and libertarians WERE part of the anti-Iraq War movement. So much so that Ron Paul largely ran his campaigns by leaning hard on anti-interventionism, which attracted people across the spectrum. What did we get for this? Eventually he and others like him turned into the loons calling Obama a Socialist, and red-baiting everything left of center.
Simply put, the complete schism between public opinion and public policy has made antiwar organizing almost pointless. It is much easier to galvanize people to vote on what are considered "domestic" issues. And on those matters, there's no nexus for organizing with the right.
Murtaza, you wrote about US conservatives: "appealing to them on the basis of their national identity and interests is an obvious way to get them to support or oppose a given policy. "
What could be more a part of the national identity than "liberty and justice for all"? What could be more opposed to it than ethnic cleansing and apartheid? yet we have just seen full out support by our President for the slaughter in Gaza, putting Zionism first even at the risk of having Americans die to defend it.
Supporters of Israel appear at the current campus demonstrations waving, at the same time, American and Israeli flags. What could be more contradictory, particularly in view of the fact that Jews in America are fully accepted citizens with full rights but have the unique ability to go to Palestine and take land from people with no rights whatsoever? Jews in America have found success in every field and at all levels right up to the top and that is fine. What is not fine is demanding a place on the other side of the world exclusively for Jews with full on eviction and unlimited killing of the natives.
If this blatant, flagrant contradiction presents no problem to conservatives then what hope is there for your proposals? No less a champion for individual rights than Ben Shapiro, who has become wealthy promoting that, has completely capitulated in favor of going after Americans who are exercising those rights to oppose Israel, a foreign country.
Interesting argument, although I am not sure I agree with all it. I’m not convinced that it really is the crux of the issue as opposed to general apathy. However, as a non-American not living in America I have often thought that one of the problem with these protests is that they tend to be dominated by whichever particular group is more directly impacted and then your forever protesting Lenin-Trotskystes types. It’s why I make a point of dressing well, whether in my more business clothes or weekend wear.
I have similar memories and anguish of the 2003 failed antiwar movement (I was a grad student at Berkeley during 9/11, Iraq War, and 2nd intifada days) and see a lot of uncomfortable parallels to today’s youth movement and it’s inefficacy against the Gaza War.
I think the antiwar left should pragmatically look for alliances and embrace a range of arguments that are likely be persuasive to as large and diverse an audience as possible. However I am skeptical of this idea of embracing a kind of nationalistic framing of the antiwar position for a few reasons.
1. in this cynical age, sincerity matters. As a left-liberal dove, my anti-interventionist stance comes from a belief in justice, righteousness, against the moral hideousness of endless war, hatred of cynicism and corrupt power-concentrated militarist ideologies, and respect for the rule of law. I am likely to be more persuasive when I make my case accordingly rather than just adopting a contrived “peace is patriotic” stance.
2. Promoting endless wars, mega arms sales to Gulf oil tyrants, and catering to foreign lobbies is great for American defense contractors, security think tanks, and the American economy as a whole, at least in the short-term. You know, war actually still is a racket. This puts antiwar nationalism at a huge handicap.
3. Most pro-interventionist arguments by the foreign policy establishment today adopt the neo-con false and selective moralism of “good guys” vs “bad guys” and that “moral clarity” should override concern about international law or norms or long-term strategic interest: The good guys have a moral imperative to simply do what they must. This tends to resonate with Americans already. Why yield the moral high ground to the warmongers?
Paul, I think this time the demonstrators against war have a significant advantage in that the goal is BDS prompted by the Gaza slaughter and a good portion of the demonstrators are young American Jews who deny, correctly, that Zionism is Judaism. Since Oct 7, the ability of Israel to portray itself as a victim with benign intent has collapsed and can never be recovered. Bloodlust was exposed when Gaza was entered and the false claims by Israel that innocent civilians were being spared shown to be a complete lie, topped off with the systematic execution of the World Food Kitchen employees.
Americans who knew nothing of the history of Zionism beyond the pure propaganda of the movie "Exodus" and nonsense such as Israel being a villa in a jungle and the only democracy in the Middle East, are seeing the genocidal comments from the Israeli government, fully publicized by the South African submission on apartheid to the ICJ available online for anyone to read.
We have the unprecedented presence of a Palestinian in Congress and 36 house members who would not go along with the latest tranche of billions to Israel. In 76 years, Israel has never seen such a break in lockstep support in Congress. AIPAC is fully exposed and now openly discussed as it pledges millions to defeat anyone who doesn't support Israel. The lobby-driven corruption by wealth of our political system in on full display and cannot escape attention from now on.
In closing, I have to mention the desire of Israel to use the US to defeat Iran. This long held dream of Netanyahu is by no means at an end and can be invoked with unilateral action by Israel at any time. Showing its corruption Congress, should Israel start a war, would immediately do what it has refused to do for the US: reclaim its right to declare war - for a foreign country! It's one thing to see money and weapons sent without limit, quite another to see Americans coming home in body bags for the sake of ethnic cleansing. This would be, above all, be a wake-up for conservatives.
Clif, I’m not sure it’s feasible (or desirable) to push US public opinion en masse to an anti-Zionist position. The US recognized Israel in 1949 and is not going to reconsider it nor is Israel going to dissolve its military and go away.
I think Americans who generally associate with the Christian European West traditionally have seen support for a Jewish state as historical compensation for two-millennia of persecution (especially if it’s someone else giving up rights and territory to accommodate it) There’s also the American self-flattering narrative of being the world’s “good guys” in stopping the Nazis in WWII and supporting a homeland for Europe’s persecuted Jews is an extension of that.
I can’t say how strong those sentiments are but I suspect strong headwinds against establishing the case for anti-Zionism among Americans, the events of the Gaza war notwithstanding.
You say it’s been 76 years of lockstep support for Israel in the US, but I don’t think that’s true. Americans generally paid little attention to Israel before 1967, when its war with Arab states started to have Cold War ramifications and impacts on global oil markets. Conservatives in the US still thought of Israel as a left-wing socialist country and were inclined to hold it at arms length through the 1970’s.
In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that conservative Presidents Reagan and George HW Bush were applying conditions on military aid to Israel , demanding ceasefires, and voting in assent for UNSC resolutions condemning Israel for, for example, annexing East Jerusalem, attacking a Iraqi nuclear reactor, or expanding settlements in the West Bank. Those werent considered left-wing positions as they are now, but US policy on Israel has moved markedly to the right in the last 30 years since Bush-41 left office.
There’s a centrist case to make that a natural correction in a more Israel-critical direction is in order to bring our “special” relationship back within historical norms and create some visible daylight between Israel and the US in the eyes of friends and foes in the Middle East.
I don't dispute anything in your comment, Paul, except I see only danger ahead with the lockstep support of Israel no matter what it does. Both countries have moved to the right, but at least in the US there has been at the same time a loosening up of attitudes toward gays, blacks and even Muslims. Israel has marched hard and fast toward open intolerance to the point of unlimited killing of Palestinians as shown in Gaza.
If Lincoln's thought that a house divided cannot stand, how much more true is it to say that a tiny land of 8 million people can continue to thumb its nose at the entire world, lashing out freely and often under the direction of a government dedicated to expulsion if not outright elimination of an equal number of people, particularly as at long last there are many now openly opposing Israel here. Israel truly has no future. Something is going to pop and Israel might well be the party to make it pop.
With unlimited support from the US, we have in a real sense created a monster because there has been no significant restraint from the one and only country that has the ability to restrain Israel. I give this as evidence that fear of Trump being bad for US democracy is strange when it is exercised by supporting Biden, a war criminal beyond doubt along with Netanyahu but doubly guilty in not supporting international law that used to be claimed as foundational in politics by the US. The US is truly a captive nation no longer looking out for its own interest and that is terrifying.
I see a great irony. It is only US Jews that can save the US from itself and they can do this by what many are doing - calling out the distinction between Zionism (ethnic cleansing from the start with no stopping in sight) and Judaism. It is clear that all of the freedoms we declare are the foundation of our country have nothing to do with the goal of Zionism which is one people alone, all others out, a concept that brought Europe to ruin.
I believe Netanyahu is speaking his mind with his absurd talk of the US now being a duplication of Germany in the 1930's and campus protesters being terrorists. He is a fanatic leading fanatics, who dares to mention 1930's Germany with no self-awareness. The Allies in WW2 were terrified that Hitler might get atomic weapons. Netanyahu actually has atomic weapons at the same time that he believes his country to be the eternal victim that must at all costs stop a "second holocaust". A mighty power that sees itself as victim? Yes, something is going to pop.
I am frightened that nobody and I mean nobody in the US MSM is talking about this capability of Israel to bring down the whole world if it thinks it is in mortal danger, as it always does. And there is no way of talking down this fanaticism. Chamberlain is reviled for appeasing the fanatic with a scarcely concealed agenda: Hitler. Biden has done nothing but appease another fanatic with an open agenda previewed in Gaza: Netanyahu.
At the core of the problem is the refusal to see beyond the fact that Israelis are Jewish to the more basic fact that they are human beings. Human beings are capable of anything and this is true of every subgroup of human beings, including Jews. The best and the worst are on display right now within the group that defines itself as Jewish. The best is on display in the US with the many Jews who say "not in our name" and "never again for anyone" showing the lesson of the holocaust has been learned. The worst is on display in Israel where the IDF is behaving no differently from the Wehrmacht in wiping clean an area of both people and property. To say "not in our name" shows an open mind willing to resist Zionists who are out to appropriate the religion. "Palestinians are animals" is no different from the awful idea of Judenrein and shows a closed mind, unable to see the other as oneself, building in intensity over time with full US backing. Israelis are so indoctrinated as eternal victims whose every action on the international state is righteous and any criticism is ipso facto antisemitism that it is impossible to see change. The Zionist mind is closed tight.
The worst thing the US can do is keep feeding the beast and defending it even as Israel has a twitchy finger on the nuclear trigger. Starting a reduction in support of Israel immediately and continuing it into the future, along with a pledge that the US will not join Israel in a war on Iran are necessities. The US may be too far gone as that isn't about to happen, but at least there is a voice calling for it that is growing and facing absurd reaction (listen to Jonathan Greenblatt) for all to see. A contest is on. It may be too late, but the very fact it is on is reason for hope, and support.
Per your earlier comment, Clif, the "paleocons" within the GOP have been further estranged today than they were 20 years ago. Murtaza's piece sounds great on paper, but, at least within the GOP, there's fewer to ally with. At the same time, within the left hand of the duopoly, there's fewer to be allies.