Posted on 03/30/2003 10:01:03 PM PST by Pyro7480
Every movement has its moment of truth. At an "anti-war" teach-in at Columbia last week, Anthropology professor Nicholas De Genova told 3,000 students and faculty, "Peace is not patriotic. Peace is subversive, because peace anticipates a very different world than the one in which we live--a world where the U.S. would have no place."
De Genova continued: "The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military. I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus."1 This was a reference to the ambush of U.S. forces by an al-Qaeda warlord in Somalia in 1993. The Americans were there on a humanitarian mission to feed starving Somali Muslims. The al-Qaeda warlord was stealing the food and selling it on the black market. His forces killed 18 American soldiers and dragged their bodies through the streets in an act designed to humiliate their country. In short, America can do no good, and nothing that is done to America can be worse than it deserves.
The best that could be said of the crowd of Columbia faculty and students is that they did not react to Mogadishu remark (perhaps they did not know what "Mogadishu" referred to). But they "applauded loudly," when the same professor said, "If we really [believe] that this war is criminal ... then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine."2
In other words, the American left as represented by faculty and students at one of the nation’s most elite universities wants America to lose the war with the terrorist and fascist regime in Baghdad. In shorts, the crowd might just have well applauded the professor’s first statement as well.
The phrase "a million Mogadishus," has a resonance for those of us who participated in an earlier leftist "peace" movement, during the war in Indochina. In 1967, at the height of the conflict, the Cuban Communist leader, Che Guevara (still an icon among radicals today) called on revolutionaries all over the world "to create…two, three, many Vietnams," to defeat the American enemy. It was the Sixties version of a call for jihad.
In the late Sixties, I was the editor of Ramparts, the largest magazine of the New Left and I edited a book of anti-American essays with the same title, Two, Three, Many Vietnams. Tom Hayden a leader of the New Left (later a Democratic State Senator and activist against the war in Iraq) used the same slogan as he called for armed uprisings inside the United States. In 1962, as a Marxist radical, I myself had helped to organize the first protest against the war in Vietnam at the University of California, Berkeley. At the time, America had only 300 "advisers" in Vietnam, who were seeking to prevent the Communist gulag that was to come. John F. Kennedy was President and had been invited to speak on the campus. We picketed his appearance. Our slogan was, "Kennedy’s Three R’s: Radiation, Reaction and Repression." We didn’t want peace in Vietnam. We wanted a revolution in America.
But we were clever. Or rather, we got smarter. We realized we couldn’t attract large numbers of people by revealing our deranged fantasies about America (although that of course is not how we would have looked at them). We realized that we needed the support of a lot of Americans who would never agree with our real agendas if we were going to influence the course of the war. So we changed our slogan to "Bring the Troops Home." That seemed to express care for Americans while accomplishing the same goal. If America brought her troops home in the middle of the war, the Communists would win. Which is exactly what happened.
The nature of the movement that revealed itself at Columbia is the same. When the Mogadishu remark was made, it was as if the devil had inadvertently exposed his horns, and someone needed to put a hat over them before others realized it. That someone was the demonstration organizer, Professor Eric Foner, the prestigious head of Columbia’s history department. Actually, when Foner spoke after De Genova at the teach-in, he failed to find the Mogadishu remark offensive. Instead Foner dissociated himself from another De Genova comment to the effect that all Americans who described themselves as "patriotic," were actually "white supremacists."
But the next day when a reporter from New York NewsDay called Foner, the professor realized that the Mogadishu remark had caused some trouble. When asked now about the statement he said it was "idiotic." He told the reporter, "I thought that was completely uncalled for. We do not desire the deaths of American soldiers." Foner did not say (and was not asked) how he thought organizing an anti-American demonstration to protest America’s war in Iraq and express the hope that we lose would not encourage the enemy and possibly lead to American deaths.
Eric Foner is the scion of a family of American Communists (and American Communist leaders) at that. In the Sixties he was an anti-American Stalinist. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, he wrote a piece in the London Review of Books saying, "I’m not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." After receiving much adverse reaction, he wrote a self-exculpatory piece for The New York Times explaining that his uncertainty was actually patriotic.
Eric Foner’s cover-up reflects a powerful tactical current in the movement to derail America’s war in Iraq. Until now, the largest organization behind this movement has been "International ANSWER," which thanks in part to the efforts of the War Room and www.frontpagemag.com has been revealed as front for a Marxist-Leninist party with ties to the Communist regime in North Korea. According to a comprehensive (but partisan and sympathetic) report in The New York Times,3 some factions of the left became disturbed that the overtly radical slogans of the International ANSWER protests were "counter-productive." Last fall, they met in the offices of People For The American Way to create a new umbrella organization called United for Peace and Justice that would present a more palatable face to the American public.
As it happens, the name of the new organization was similar to that of one of the two main groups behind the national protests of the anti-Vietnam movement. It was called the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice and it was a run by the American Communist Party. (As it happens, the other organizer of the national demonstrations was the MOBE, which was run by the Trotskyist Communist Party.)
The groups that People for the American Way assembled to create the new Iraq protest organization picked Leslie Cagan to be its leader. Cagan is a veteran of the old Vietnam left -- a pro-Castro radical who was still a member of the Communist Party after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ms. Cagan’s politics were no less radical and anti-American than International ANSWER's. But Leslie Cagan understood the problem of too much candor. "If we’re going to be a force that needs to be listened to by our elected officials, by the media," Ms. Cagan told the Times, "our movement needs to reflect the population." In other words, we have to keep our horns hidden. According to the Times, since that meeting, the left has been hiring Madison Avenue firms to shape its messages and has been putting up billboards with the slogan "Peace Is Patriotic" to make its point.
At the Columbia teach-in, Professor Foner had this to say about patriotism. "I refuse to cede the definition of American patriotism to George W. Bush," Foner said, drawing a cheer from the audience. "I have a different definition of patriotism, which comes from Paul Robeson: The patriot is the person who is never satisfied with his country." It’s true that Paul Robeson was never satisfied with his country. He was an icon (and member) of the American Communist Party, who received a Stalin Peace Prize from the dictator himself. 4
Plus ca change,…plus c’est la meme chose.
The war in America’s streets is not about "peace" or "more time for inspections." It is about which side should lose the war we are now in. The left has made crystal clear its desire that the loser should be us. Even if the left had not made this explicit, a "peace" movement directed at one side makes sense only as an effort to force that side to retreat from the battle and lose the war. Which is exactly what the Columbia professor said. If this is patriotism, what is treason?
Endnotes:
1. Ron Howell, "Radicals Speak Out At Columbia ‘Teach-In,’" NewsDay, March 27, 2003.
2. Ibid.
3. Kate Zernike and Dean E. Murphy, "Antiwar Movement Morphs From Wild-Eyed to Civil," NYT, March 29, 2003, B1.
Actually, the change of government between Clinton and Bush was a dramatic test for our nation's rule of law. I find it most fascinating that people on the left now are claiming that the Bush administration has an invalid mandate. Those on the right mostly shared their ideas and raised money during the Clinton years. But now that Bush is in office, the left is talking revolution.
Those on the left who failed to acknowledge the victory for our democratic republic with the Supreme court ruling on vote counting and the invocation of the Electoral college in the 2000 election couldn't be more unamerican. It is those very institutions that could bring them back to power legitimately.
Upholding constitutional rule of law is non-partisan and anyone who wants to usurp those hallowed tenets without due process just because he disagrees with their outcome is a traitor, especially during wartime.
I wonder if African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Asian-Americans who describe themselves as "patriotic" are also considered "white supremacists".
Remember, FOX is the #1 cable news network.
My wife believes, like David Horowitz, that the left is going to get more violent before the day is done.
You know... before this war started, I would have agreed with you.
But now Bush has drawn a line in the sand, and stood on one side of it - and the entire *world* has had to choose sides. Not only are the fence-sitters getting exposed, but the demonic moles like this wretched excuse for a "Professor" are getting smoked out of their holes.
Now, there's no middle ground left for them, no way for them to equivocate and sidestep... and they've bet the farm on our losing this war, on it "Turning Into Another Vietnam", on Saddam turning out to be a poor injured mistreated head of state. As events progress, the Left, and the Demoncrats, and the French, and the mainstream media, and all the rest of the morally bankrupt all continue to lose ground and lose credibility.
And for the first time in years, I find myself actually indulging in some optimism, about our chances for really turning this mess around - for our really being able to inflict a fatal "Dolchstoss" to the heart of the Left - all because Bush just... wouldn't... back... down.....
I shall NEVER forgive David Horowitz, for what he did , back then ; however, what he is doing NOW is priceless. He exposes the stinking COMMIES and their dupes, for what they are, explains how their minds work, and shows exactly what their words and actions mean. Yet, YOU have the gall to trash and bash im, heap calumny on him and those whom you calle neocons, as though that word was an explative.
What's " revealing ", is just how wrong, ill informed, and uneducated you are. Specious , ill conceived , illogical statements, such as the ones you post, are worthless, bandwasting drivel !
BTW, Ronald Reagan is a NEOCON !
Just which fringe party are you alligned with, dear ?
Rubbish. The original "neo-conservatives" (e.g. Peggy Noonan, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Richard Pearle, Jean Kirkpatrick, Charles Krauthammer, Norm Podheretz, and many others) were driven out of the Democrat Party when the "New Left" rushed in the 60's and 70's. Many were liberals, but never leftists. Their hatred for the anti-American left is exactly what drove them to the right (and to the light).
This will be very handy later.
It is illegal to incite homicidal violence, though the left gets away with it all the time. It is legal to advocate changes in the law or the Constitution that would make this form of action legal, however unlikely that might be, just as it is legal for the Communist Party USA to advocate making "capitalist propaganda" a punishable offense, or for the Greens to seek Constitutional changes that would allow the forcible suppression of "pro-nuclear propaganda."
A socialist and longtime activist who, during the past thirty years, has mobilized millions of demonstrators in rallies denouncing our nation’s foreign policies; its military-related spending; and its purportedly virulent racism, sexism, and homophobia.
She is a die-hard, pro-Communist radical who proudly aligns her politics with those of Communist Cuba.
She was a national co-chair of NNOC in 1996.
In February 1996 at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), of which Cagan was a national co-chair, sponsored a public forum that featured an address by Angela Sanbrano of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), which was affiliated with the Communist guerrilla movement in that country. Another guest speaker was the Cuban revolutionary José Luis Ponce, who appeared on stage with an admiring Cagan. Ponce extolled the enormous social gains that Castro’s revolution had brought to Cuba. As the socialist publication The Militant paraphrased it, Ponce lauded the revolution for its opposition to "the legacy of US domination - a legacy of unemployment, absence of health care for millions especially in the countryside, illiteracy, racism and the super-exploitation of women." He further predicted, quite happily, that "a fight for socialism" would re-emerge in Russia. To all these assertions, Cagan nodded with approval.
In short, Leslie Cagan candidly sides with Castro’s Communist regime rather than with the United States, which she deems the world’s foremost terrorist nation. The Venceremos Brigades with which she proudly associated were in fact organized by Castro’s Cuban intelligence agency, which went so far as to train some "brigadistas" in guerrilla warfare techniques, including the use of arms and explosives.
Cagan’s pro-Castro rallies were supported by such socialist organizations as Casa de las Americas, the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Venceremos Brigades, the Workers World Party, and the Young Socialists.
Cagan herself was an original founder of the Committees of Correspondence, a splinter group rooted in the Communist Party USA. Joining the chorus of her fellow leaders in the "peace" movement, she condemns what she calls America’s "daily assaults and attacks on poor and working people, on women, people of color, lesbians/gays and other sexual minorities, the disabled and so many others, [and] such foreign policy matters as . . . military actions and economic sanctions."
Not surprisingly, Leslie Cagan firmly opposes our government’s contemplated war against Iraq, which she characterizes as nothing more than a thinly veiled oil grab. "Oil is not worth war!" screams Cagan’s UFPJ Website. "How much is the Bush administration’s push for war with Iraq motivated by its desire to gain control of Iraq’s oil fields?"
On February 4 in Charlotte, North Carolina, UFPJ sponsored a "No War For Oil" protest held symbolically in front of a Texaco location. In attributing nefarious motives to US military ventures, Cagan continues a long Leftist tradition.
In the 1960s, for example, it was commonplace for the Left to assert that the US was sending troops to Southeast Asia merely to secure mineral rights in South Vietnam for American corporations. As Stokely Carmichael put it at the time, our 58,000 dead soldiers were sacrificed merely "to serve the economic interests of American businessmen who are in Vietnam solely to exploit the tungsten, tin, and oil."
Following President Bush’s recent State of the Union address, Cagan said, "George Bush again tried to make his case against Iraq and he failed." "Such a war [in Iraq]," she contends, "undoubtedly threatens to unleash an escalating and uncontrollable cycle of violence, death and destruction." Of course, she does not express the barest hint of concern that Saddam’s regime, which has blatantly defied the conditions of UN Resolution 1441, poses a threat to American security. In the eyes of Cagan and her ilk, the principal enemy of world peace is the United States.
She is the co-chair of United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ), which on Feb 15, 2003 organized many thousands of protesters to protest within sight of the United Nations building in New York to express their opposition to a war in Iraq. Their efforts will be duplicated in some 300 additional cities throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
In the summer of 2002 , signed the infamous "Not In Our Name" (NION) statement denouncing America’s declared war against terror, which began in Afghanistan. "Let it not be said," read the NION (Not In Our Name) document, "that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression. The signers of this statement call on the people of the US to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11 and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world."
1969 - 1970 winter : (CUBA : VENCEREMOS BRIGADES : LEFTIES / BRIGADISTAS : CAGAN, BLACK PANTHERS) "In the winter of 1969-70," Leslie Cagan fondly recalls, "I spent over two months with the First Venceremos Brigade in Cuba. Just ten years into their revolution, the Cubans had taken control of their history. . . . While we were in Cuba, Fred Hampton and other Chicago Black Panthers were murdered. It was a shocking reminder of the brutality and power of the US government, and there we were in Cuba, a whole nation under attack from the US. As Brigadistas we were taking a risk traveling in defiance of Washington’s travel ban, but we knew the risk was small compared to what Cubans and so many others around the world faced every day."
Good observation.
The left's fundamental hostility to law based democracy is showing, and has spread to many 'Rats that would not normally consider themselves left-radicals.
As much as conservative Republicans came to hate Wm. Jefferson Clinton, as much as they were ashamed to have The Rapist as President, I could count on the fingers of one hand (and have fingers left over) the number of times I heard Republicans say of Clinton, "he's not my President." Conservatives understand that such a declaration is an implicit repudiation of the Republic's constitution, and of the core principles of representative government.
As to the number of Democrats who said of Bush, "he is not my President," I lost count within weeks of his election.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.