Why do you hate America, fifth columnist?
So it turns out, if you scratch an Israeli conservative hardliner you find...an American conservative hardliner! Seriously, if you just replace statements like "Much of the Israeli far Left is essentially an anti-Semitic movement that seeks Israel’s destruction and automatically endorses the enemies of Israel in all things" with the phrases "American far Left," "anti-American," and "America's destruction" you get what conservative commentators like Horowitz, Hannity, Coulter, Goldberg, and their ilk have been saying for years. Even Andrew Sullivan (perhaps more appropriately, of course Andrew Sullivan) has employed the "fifth column" rhetoric in the past.
There's a big difference, though. Steven Plaut is a professor at the University of Haifa. As he writes, he is literally in danger of being hurt or even killed by a rocket. Moreover, his daily life involves a much higher chance of some sort of militant attack than we can imagine. I'm not excusing his fear-mongering, but at least there are social and psychological reasons why it is more likely for him to be employing such tactics than someone from, say, Sweden.
Or America. Of course 9/11 taught the U.S. to be on guard against another such attack, but 9/11 alone did not initiate conservative "with us or against us" logic. It's as old as McCarthyism and Vietnam protests, probably older. For many, 9/11 was simply an excuse to think up newer and better ways of accusing liberals (hell, anybody who disagreed with them) of treason. It certainly helped Republicans keep a Republican in power during "wartime."
All this makes me wary of American democracy. Israeli citizens are in far greater danger on a daily basis, yet there is a small but vocal Social Democratic peace party, and a newspaper like Haaretz prints dissenting views daily on their website. Yet in America, where citizens are genuinely divided about the use of force and cease-fire agreements in Lebanon, Republicans and Democrats are indistinguishable on the issue. The irony here is that even as Republicans become the most openly hostile towards Democrats they've ever been, there is little to suggest that a change in political leadership would pose a substantial threat to a more-or-less conservative agenda, because political debate has been shifted so far to the right as it is. Perhaps there is actually a correlation between the blending of political viewpoints and increased mudslinging, as conservatives experience an identity crisis.
There's a big difference, though. Steven Plaut is a professor at the University of Haifa. As he writes, he is literally in danger of being hurt or even killed by a rocket. Moreover, his daily life involves a much higher chance of some sort of militant attack than we can imagine. I'm not excusing his fear-mongering, but at least there are social and psychological reasons why it is more likely for him to be employing such tactics than someone from, say, Sweden.
Or America. Of course 9/11 taught the U.S. to be on guard against another such attack, but 9/11 alone did not initiate conservative "with us or against us" logic. It's as old as McCarthyism and Vietnam protests, probably older. For many, 9/11 was simply an excuse to think up newer and better ways of accusing liberals (hell, anybody who disagreed with them) of treason. It certainly helped Republicans keep a Republican in power during "wartime."
All this makes me wary of American democracy. Israeli citizens are in far greater danger on a daily basis, yet there is a small but vocal Social Democratic peace party, and a newspaper like Haaretz prints dissenting views daily on their website. Yet in America, where citizens are genuinely divided about the use of force and cease-fire agreements in Lebanon, Republicans and Democrats are indistinguishable on the issue. The irony here is that even as Republicans become the most openly hostile towards Democrats they've ever been, there is little to suggest that a change in political leadership would pose a substantial threat to a more-or-less conservative agenda, because political debate has been shifted so far to the right as it is. Perhaps there is actually a correlation between the blending of political viewpoints and increased mudslinging, as conservatives experience an identity crisis.
posted by to scranton at 6:46 PM
6 Comments:
Israel has always been a non-partisan, or bipartisan, issue in American politics. More generally, however, I'm curious what you mean by our current "conservative agenda," which I assume you are limiting to foreign policy. You say political debate on these foreign policy issues has been shifted to the right, which on the one hands seems to be correct. There is little doubt that a Democrat with dovish tendencies could win office. On the other hand, I'm curious as to when you think there was a time when this kind debate was seriously more to the left. Not during Reagan. Certainly not during Johnson or Kennedy, Truman or FDR. Are you thinking of Clinton here, or Jimmy Carter? When was this more liberal period and, more importantly, what did it look like?
I would also like to add that I liked the title to this post, and inreading about the Spanish Civil War, discovered the origins of the term "Fifth Column": there were four Nationalist military columns marching to Madrid in 1936. The fifth, it was boasted, would come from within Madrid itself. As Woodie Guthrie once said, however, "I'm going to tell you Fascists, you may be surprised ... you're bound to lose." And boy did they lose, before they eventually won, of course.
I think of all presidents at least, Eisenhower might have been the last one to actually disagree with Israel. However, I think that the scope of the shift to the right that we're discussing is a question (and this is what makes it sad) not in actual change in policy as much as it is an increase in US involvement without any accompanying sense to impose responsibility on Israel. What I mean to say here is that what was practiced before was probably more of a (un)salutary neglect. Now however, when we see the American presence asserting itself much more forcefully and violently (metaphorically and literally) and an increasingly vocal unilateralism (or support for Israeli unilateralism) we cannot help but think that this is a shift for the worse.
I agree with Sheriff about the Eisenhower thing, but I was not talking exclusively about "support for Israel" as being the criterion for determining how right or left US foreign policy is, nor am I talk only about foreign policy. I'm not surprised at the near unanimous support for Israel passed by the House--after all, Israel is our ally, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, and the bill was about "right to self-defense." We can argue about the semantics of this, whether such language conceals tacit support for excessive force, but I think when the dust clears on this and Democrats want to distance themselves from the crater that's left of Lebanon, they'll say they never supported such force, and they'll have at least some leeway there. But no such language has been forthcoming, and two weeks into the fighting Evan Bayh and George Allen are saying exactly the same things on Larry King. The conservatization of both sides is not support for Israel but a heightened militancy against the Middle East in general, since 9/11. The Democrats have been sucked into the trap of having to look tough in order to try to win that small sliver of the voting population that might potentially swing to them if they look more like Republicans on foreign policy. Thus you get totally cretinous episodes like the Dems condemning Naliki for speaking out against Israel and Republicans (rightly) shrugging it off as an instance of REALITY. Maliki is a member of the Dawa party, I don't know what the hell they expect. Perhaps I'm saying the same as the Sheriff in that America's increased unilateralism is the problem.
As I was saying, though, I'm not confining my thesis to foreign policy. America has always been a conservative country (certainly economically and socially, because of the persistence and even growth of rural communities and exurbs and the ideology of a solid middle class), so maybe I am employing too much wishful thinking in pining for a more progressive time. I think that since Reagan, though, and definitely through Clinton Americans have bought the twin ideas of (1) less welfare and tax redistribution and (2) the "menace" of politics and big government, even though the two don't necessarily have anything to do with each other.
I've been kicking these ideas around a lot, because as I was telling the Sheriff the other night I can't tell if America has always been like this, if it poised for a possible left-ward turn (rising inequality and static wages--this is "it's the economy, stupid" logic--and Bush doctrine failure), if it's getting worse, or what. My thoughts probably need their own post, so perhaps I'll start working on one.
Well said. By the way, I called some democratic senators and they say that if we want them to talk about the war on terror they'll need a 30 piece of silver engagement fee
A post over at Talking Points Memo sums up better than I can my thoughts about today's ME policy vs. yesterday's.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009225.php
Also, just so you know I'm competent, dude's name is Maliki, not Naliki. Typo.
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