[Marxism] Eric Alterman (and Roger Cohen) on George Galloway

[Eli Stephens]

In light of all the discussion recently about George Galloway and Respect (about 
which I take no position, knowing nothing), comrades might find interesting this 
article from the most recent issue of The Nation, and my (no doubt to be 
unpublished) letter to the editor in response:

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071112/alterman

the liberal media by Eric Alterman
The Liberal Hawks' Lament

[from the November 12, 2007 issue]

When lamenting the loss of endangered species, consider the plight of the 
embattled "liberal hawks." Back in their salad days, when George W. Bush's 
approval ratings were sky-high and "Mission Accomplished" was not yet a poignant 
punch line, they spread their talons wide, leveling accusations left and left. 
According to the editors of The New Republic, for instance, those liberals who 
refused to get aboard Bush's friendship train to Baghdad were motivated by 
"abject pacifism" characterized by "intellectual incoherence," with views all 
but indistinguishable from "pierced-tongued demonstrators." Today, amid the vast 
wreckage in Iraq that is the direct result of the policies they promoted, some 
members of this marvelously adaptable species have successfully reinvented 
themselves. They're older and wiser but still victims of the same pacifistic, 
incoherent, pierce-tongued liberals who sometimes go so far as to liken them to 
neoconservatives. Roger Cohen, writing recently on the New York Times op-ed 
page, complained, "As America bumped down to earth, 'liberal' lost the mantle of 
political insult most foul. Its place was taken by the pervasive, glib 
'neocon.'" You thought the Iraqis had it bad, what with a destroyed, 
dysfunctional country and massive amounts of mindless murder and the like. But 
look at what Cohen & Co. have had to endure:

Christopher Hitchens, columnist for Slate and Vanity Fair and bestselling 
author; Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times and bestselling 
author; Peter Beinart, contributor to Time, senior fellow at the Council on 
Foreign Relations and celebrated author; Paul Berman, distinguished writer in 
residence at NYU and celebrated author; George Packer, correspondent for The New 
Yorker and celebrated author; Jeffrey Goldberg, correspondent for The Atlantic, 
formerly of The New Yorker and celebrated author; Jacob Weisberg, editor of 
Slate and future celebrated author; Michael Ignatieff? Leon Wieseltier? Well, 
don't cry for them, Hillary Clinton.

Now examine the case of the complainant himself. Roger Cohen is the former 
foreign editor of the New York Times, now editor at large of the International 
Herald Tribune, author of its "Globalist" column, international writer at large 
for the Times and frequent guest columnist for its op-ed page. In these various 
capacities, he unleashed a double-barreled barrage of personal insults last 
December against what he called "hyperventilating left-liberals [whose] hatred 
of Bush is so intense that rational argument usually goes out the window." The 
column, which contained an avalanche of abuse, offered exactly one example: the 
nutty Scottish MP George Galloway, who had long ago been kicked out of the 
British Labour Party.

Cohen's more recent screed is, in some ways, even more nakedly dishonest. He 
attacks an essay by "leftist commentator" Matthew Yglesias for allegedly arguing 
that neoconservatives "believe that America should coercively dominate the world 
through military force" and "believe in a dogmatic form of American 
exceptionalism" and "favor the creation of a U.S.-dominated 'universal empire'" 
before asserting that "in these Walt-Mearsheimered days.... Neocon, for many, 
has become shorthand for neocon-Zionist conspiracy, whatever that may be, 
although probably involving some combination of plans to exploit Iraqi oil, bomb 
Iran and apply U.S. power to Israel's benefit."

But young Yglesias, a recovering liberal hawk himself, made no mention in his 
essay of Israel or Zionism, much less any alleged "conspiracy." Rather, he 
addressed Robert Kagan and William Kristol's argument for greater American 
belligerence toward China (among other places). And note Cohen's sly employment 
of the intellectually incoherent phrase "Walt-Mearsheimered days," which he uses 
to tar his opponents by association. (Later in the column, Cohen complains of 
something he calls the "Petraeus-insulting face of never-set-foot-in-a-war-zone 
liberalism.")

Cohen does not demonstrate much interest in evidence. As I was researching a 
previous column, I inquired in an e-mail if he might have any examples other 
than the discredited Galloway to support his indictment of "hyperventilating 
left-liberals," and he replied, "What makes you think you can express an 
informed opinion...?"

Faced with Michael Tomasky's evidence-filled reply to his recent column on the 
Guardian's Comment Is Free website, Cohen responded with a personal attack on 
the "intolerable" fashion in which "a smug left personified by Michael 
Tomasky...can drone on about Iraq for 25 paragraphs or so without ever 
mentioning what Saddam's murder-central was like." He then suggested, "perhaps 
Tomasky should think a little more about how the Soviet Gulag slipped out of the 
awareness of wide swathes of the European and American left."

Note again how Cohen's insults are unburdened by evidence. Tomasky has never 
uttered a single sympathetic syllable about Saddam. Yet Cohen moves from 
Tomasky's opposition to the war to an implied complicity with the Soviet gulag. 
Cohen further weakens his argument by deploying the dishonest debating 
tactic--all too frequently used by neocons--of attributing sentiments gleaned 
from anonymous web postings to his intellectual adversaries: "Anyone who doubts 
that neocon is often shorthand for 'neo-con Zionist conspiracy,'" he writes, 
"should have his or her doubts laid to rest by reading the hundreds of comments 
[on Cohen's blog], some of them ugly."

It is unfortunate--though perhaps unavoidable--that those who love their country 
enough to persist in trying to rescue it from the myriad catastrophes caused by 
Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, etc., must endure such calumny. That this 
kind of McCarthyite missive should be published with the imprimatur of America's 
most important newspaper, and one whose editorial board gave eloquent voice to 
exactly the position so slandered, is not merely a shame but also a scandal.

TO THE EDITOR:

Presumably eager to show that he's not one of those "hyperventilating
left-liberals," Eric Alterman tars George Galloway as "nutty" and "discredited."
Galloway was indeed expelled from the Labour Party (though hardly "long ago" as
Alterman claims), but it was for his vehement opposition to the rightward shift
of the Labour Party and its eager participation in the invasion of Iraq, not for
his "hatred of Bush" and lack of "rational argument." And while Galloway may be
discredited in the eyes of Alterman, his constituents evidently feel otherwise,
having re-elected him to Parliament as the standard bearer of the new Respect
Party, no easy feat even in multiparty England.

Those of us who remember Galloway's testimony before the U.S. Congress can only
wish that American politicians had half the courage, speaking ability, and
"rational arguments" that Galloway manifested on that and many other occasions.

Eli Stephens
Left I on the News
    http://lefti.blogspot.com


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