{"id":2196,"date":"2003-02-17T03:12:50","date_gmt":"2003-02-17T10:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2003\/02\/blasting-the-left\/"},"modified":"2003-02-17T03:12:50","modified_gmt":"2003-02-17T10:12:50","slug":"blasting-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2003\/02\/17\/blasting-the-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Blasting the left"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tAlso writing in the Observer, Nick Cohen<\/a> is also sharply critical of the anti-liberation forces of the left for the damage they’re doing to Iraq with their protests:<\/p>\n

\n…The democrats are struggling without the support of Western liberals and socialists because they don’t fit into a pat world view.<\/p>\n

The conclusion the Iraqi opposition has reluctantly reached is that there is no way other than war to remove a tyrant whose five secret police forces make a palace coup or popular uprising impossible. As the only military force on offer is provided by America, they will accept an American invasion. <\/p>\n

This is their first mistake. American and British power is always bad in the eyes of muddle-headed Left, the recent liberations of East Timor, Sierra Leone and Kosovo notwithstanding. <\/p>\n

Then the uppity wogs compound their offence and tell their European betters to think about the political complexities. The British and American governments aren’t monoliths, they argue. The State Department and the CIA have always been the foes of Iraqi freedom. But they are countered by the Pentagon and a US Congress which passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 – a law which instructs the American government to support democracy. Not one Iraqi I have met trusts the Foreign Office. However, they have had a grudging admiration for Tony Blair ever since he met the Kurdish leaders and gave them a fair hearing – a courteous gesture which hasn’t been matched by the Pinters, Trotskyists, bishops, actresses and chorus girls on yesterday’s march. <\/p>\n

The Iraqis must now accept that they will have to fight for democracy without the support of the British Left. Disgraceful though our failure to hear them has been, I can’t help thinking that they’ll be better off without us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Observer also carries a harsh Op-Ed by one Kanan Makiya<\/a> on the battle between the CIA and the Pentagon over the shape of the post-liberation government. This is an important struggle, and only those who support liberation have a voice in it.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Also writing in the Observer, Nick Cohen is also sharply critical of the anti-liberation forces of the left for the damage they’re doing to Iraq with their protests: …The democrats are struggling without the support of Western liberals and socialists because they don’t fit into a pat world view. The conclusion the Iraqi opposition has … Continue reading “Blasting the left”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-zq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}