I am European. I am liberal. I am a supporter of the U.S.-led
intervention in Iraq.
Sometimes it feels like a meeting attended by every person who
shares those traits could be held in a closet.
But that feeling, it has transpired, is wrong. Late last month,
a group of left-of-center academics, journalists, and bloggers in
Britain published “The Euston Manifesto.”
The manifesto — which I played no part in formulating, but to
which I am a signatory — displays clear-sightedness, realism and
moral consistency. Those are precisely the values that I believe
large swathes of the Left, in the U.S., the UK, and elsewhere in
Europe including my native Ireland, have abandoned.
The Euston Manifesto is not officially a “pro-war” document. The
group that drew it up included some people who disagreed with the
invasion. But the signatories are united in their recognition that
the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s “reactionary, semi-fascist and
murderous” regime was “a liberation of the Iraqi people.”
They also correctly insist that, whatever one’s view of the
invasion, the chief concern of people on the liberal-left should
now be to see the establishment of “a democratic political
order.”
The manifesto is concerned with other issues beyond Iraq. It is
a declaration of unambiguous allegiance to pluralist democracy and
its constituent parts, including free elections, freedom of
expression, and the separation of Church (or Mosque) and State.
It is especially strong in its condemnation of the
anti-Americanism which, it notes, is “now infecting so much
left-liberal (and some conservative) thinking.”
The Manifesto also blasts some liberals for “the excuse-making
for suicide terrorism [and] the disgraceful alliances lately set up
inside the ‘anti-war’ movement with illiberal theocrats.”
The manifesto may sound like a lengthy statement of the obvious.
But, in a way, that’s the point.
Much of the European Left, having long ago leapt recklessly into
the embrace of anyone opposed to the U.S. in general and President
George W. Bush in particular, has drifted very far from the
sensible position articulated by the Euston group.
British Member of Parliament George Galloway — who delighted
American leftists with his boorish performance in front of a Senate
committee last year — is the chief figurehead of the leftwing
RESPECT coalition.
This is what RESPECT has to say about Iraq:
The defeat of the U.S.-led occupation is critical if
the global economic and political offensive begun by the U.S. state
and its allies at the time of the First Gulf War is to be defeated.
The resistance in Iraq is engaged in a battle to liberate the
country. The Iraqi resistance deserves the support of the
international anti-war movement.
The Euston Manifesto’s liberal critics insist that RESPECT’s
position is a minority one. In fact, RESPECT is candid in its
desire for an outcome that many others on the anti-war Left hanker
after in more subtle ways.
Whether one takes the temperature of the European Left from the
opinion columns of leading newspapers or the chattering of polite
society, it is all too evident that a humiliating defeat for the
U.S. in Iraq is widely sought.
But who would be the agents of such an American defeat? The
answer, self-evidently, is theocratic thugs like Abu Musab
Al-Zarqawi.
Zarqawi released a message just before Iraqi elections last
year. “We have declared a bitter war against democracy and all who
seek to enact it,” he said. “The voters are also part of this and
are considered the enemies of God.”
How can any liberal reconcile their avowed principles with de
facto support for Islamic fascists like him?
Muddy thinking on this issue is, of course, not confined to
Europe. The heroes of the American Left include the likes of Gore
Vidal, who, when asked whether he accepted that the Iraqi people
could not have overthrown Saddam on their own, responded:
“Don’t you think that’s their problem? That’s not your problem
and it’s not my problem. There are many bad regimes on Earth, we
can list several hundred. At the moment, I would put the Bush
regime as one of them.”
Vidal’s comment is a concise illustration of everything that
leaves me and, I imagine, the other signatories of the Euston
Manifesto, utterly alienated from the anti-war Left.
I cannot contemplate supporting any movement that equates a
conservative-led democracy with an authoritarian dictatorship, that
regards egregious oppression as someone else’s problem, and that
refuses to acknowledge that threats incubated on other continents
can manifest themselves on our streets.
The Euston Manifesto illuminates a different path. It shows that
an internationalist Left still exists, still holds freedom’s
promises dear, and has not been deformed by virulent
anti-Americanism.
It is also a reminder that the most important division in
contemporary politics is not that which separates liberals from
conservatives but that which separates democrats from fascists.
Such a reminder should not be necessary. But it is.
The beliefs expressed in the Euston Manifesto seem to only hold
sway among a minority of liberals on both sides of the
Atlantic.
I am proud to be among them.
