Peter Berkowitz makes a point that I hope is not lost in the shouting. At some point the American Left will need to choose between multiculturalism of the sort that not long ago led President Obama to draw a strained equivalence between European Christians a millennium ago and DAESH today and the defense of freedom, justice, and victim peoples:
To March’s argument that as a leftist, Walzer should forthrightly oppose the massive state violence directed at the Islamists, Walzer responds that “the left-wing anti-communism of Dissent in its early years” was subject to analogous criticism. But many of those who apologized for or defended Stalin, Walzer trenchantly observes, “went on to defend or apologize for third-world dictators who call themselves anti-imperialists and for terrorists who call themselves liberators — and now for Islamist zealots.”
While March prefers to dwell on the crimes of the West and boasts of his belief in reform arising from within the Islamic world, Walzer counters with a hard fact: “the America he [March] excoriates is right now the only force effectively opposing or, at least, containing, the power of ISIS and therefore the beheadings and the mass executions and the enslavement of Yazidi girls.”
Which will it be? The lady or the tiger?
They are maddening because they can only survive in wealthy, affluent societies and communities. The reason why eggheads are never found in places like Somalia, Haiti, Libya, Chicago gangland, or New Orleans projects is because they wise up fast or get dead fast.
The noble savages were corrupted by the evil white man. Of course, the evil white men must have been noble savages at one time, and all noble savages evolved from lower animals. Therefore, all humans are animals that want to rip the face off of their fellow human beings.
Religion just brings a little order to the process.
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_69296.shtml
So the American Left should support the interventionist policy that
created space for ISIS, if not actually funded it and similar to go get Assad, and all because Israel considers the Moscow-Damascus-Tehran axis its most potent opponent now?
Is this guy another one of those “left” Zionist-lites?
Don’t see the dichotomy. I believe it is commonly phrased as we can either be ruled by Muslims or kill them all, and it doesn’t make any sense in its cruder form either.
Steve
There’s no need to go back a millenium, christians are as barbaric today as ever. How many tens of millions killed in overtly religious acts during the 20th Century? What about christian terrorists who have been executing Muslims in the Central African Republic in this century? Muslims are particularly violent because that’s what American media reports, not because it’s true.
I was unaware that billionaires in the United States and Europe were sending funds to the Army of God and that American Christians were flocking to its banner. You learn something every day.
I suspect that you are aware that American billionaires advocate for wars that have resulted in thousands killed. Head chopped off, blown to bits by a bomb from 20,000 feet. Dead is dead. That they advocate for even more war now. For politics/ideology and maybe even profit. Still, what does any of this have to do with the idea that it is possible for different peoples to live together?
Steve
Got it. There’s no difference between war and terrorism. Good to know.
As a reminder I thought the war in Afghanistan was just but foolish. I thought the war in Iraq was unjust and foolish. There is such a thing as a just war. There is no such thing as just terrorism.
Also, who are these billionaires? I don’t recall any American billionaires advocating for war. It’s possible that they did and I’m mistaken. Murdoch, maybe? I think that you’ll find that most American billionaires are anti-war. It’s bad for business.
Murdoch, Adelson, Paul Singer, Bernard Marcus. All have been reported as involved in funding efforts to put us at war with Iran. AS you know, there has been constant pressure to have us put troops into Syria since the conflict began. Pressure to have us re-invade Iraq. This sis largely form the neocon element of the GOP which overlaps broadly with the money branch of the GOP. Not perfectly, but its there. You certainly don’t see the money group making strong efforts to keep us out of wars. Besides, bad for business? What ill effects did they have from the Iraq War? The finance sector made a killing.
“Got it. There’s no difference between war and terrorism.”
If gave that impression I was wrong. Let me clarify. With terrorism, an occasional terrorist kills a few Americans with a bomb or cuts off a head. People who were, by and large, innocent of any wrongdoing. With war, our soldiers invade and directly or indirectly kill many thousands with bullets, shells and bombs. People who were, by and large, innocent of any wrongdoing. There is a very large difference.
Steve
At the Einsatzgruppen trial, the accused defended themselves on the grounds that the Allies had conceded that aerial bombing of cities was justified as a means to bring the war to the end, and there was no moral distinction with German efforts to remove the Jewish threat by means of death squads advancing behind the front line. This would now be considered a multi-cultural argument; neither the Allies nor the Germans knew for certain what chain of events would ultimately bring the war to a (victorious) end and to judge the Holocaust as distinctly immoral is a form of cultural imperialism where the powerful victors get to selectively impose their own value judgments on a subject people.
I think this is extremely wishful thinking:
“Leftists should attempt to understand the theological bases of Islamist morality and politics. This will enable them to distinguish between Islamic zealotry and Islam in all its contemporary complexity and historical richness. ”
I think the group he is identifying is completely wedded to anti-religious securalism, and at best incurious about all supernatural belief systems. The article also references the academic history forged by Edward Said that describes this very activity (understanding the other’s belief system on one’s own terms and for one’s own needs) as a form of imperialism.