Iraq and left-wing political maturity. I missed this post from Marc Cooper a couple of days ago, in which Cooper praises Russ Feingold's call for an Iraq withdrawal timetable, and Juan Cole's detailed proposal for gradual disengagement.

Now that the dam of public opinion is bursting on the Bush Iraq policy, we opponents of the war have a greater burden than ever to pose viable – I repeat, viable - alternatives.

When there was still a strong majority support for the war, I suppose it was enough for some to just say they were against it. But with Bush policy on the ground in Iraq so dramatically faltering and with the administration unable to offer anything except a call to stay the course, Americans need a realistic, alternative policy.

The more activist wing of the anti-war movement doesn't seem much up to the job. Some of its more moderate factions risk their credibility by once again allying with fringe groups like ANSWER in supporting a joint September 24 rally in Washington. Someone once said, “But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao…”

The friend who sent me this link wasn't trying to raise my blood pressure—I don't think—but this just pisses me off. You know, for the life of me I just don't get this stuff—this "now's the time for maturity from the anti-war left" stuff. I can think of at least a few more important things to be concerned about when it comes to Iraq than whether the anti-war left is going to shed itself of the damn hippies.

I read the Juan Cole post Cooper links to, and I thought it represented a kind of policy fantasy, a pardonable effort at prophylaxis on the part of somebody who's been documenting just how relentlessly things are going to shit and must get tired of feeling completely hopeless most of the time. But I couldn't take it very seriously. A good detailed rebuttal, in terms of the ground realities in Iraq, comes from greenboy at Needlenose, for my money the best and most insightful Iraq war blog out there. More to the point (a point greenboy doesn't make)—who exactly is the audience for this sort of policy wanking supposed to be? Other than a tiny community of Beltway or Beltway-oriented intellectuals, or wannabes. The anti-war left is nowhere near the seat of power. Power is held, in fact, by a gang that regards opposition in general, and opposition to the war in particular, as tantamount to treason. We're supposed to have a nice, polite, national debate over an endgame strategy? Debate, with this crowd? Even if we had detailed, rational and realistic policy advice to give, they wouldn't listen to it. In fact, to the extent it was rational and realistic, and persuaded anybody, they'd likely run in exactly the opposite direction. We've had five years now, and people like Cooper still don't get the psychology of the Bush administration?

It's not "unserious" or "immature" or whatever other bullshit terms are favored by the Beltway types to advocate the simple message Out Now. On the contrary—advocating such messages is the only real political space within which we have to operate. Our job is not to pretend we're living under a different regime than we are, one that takes policy proposals seriously. Our job is to do the only thing we really can do, namely cause as much domestic pain as possible for Bush over the war. (Digby is entirely correct and on point about this.) You want to have a real effect on Iraq policy? Drive Bush's numbers down, drive the GOP's numbers down, take their Congressional majority away from them, take the White House back. That's not done with policy prescriptions—which (again, has Cooper been paying attention these last few years?) the vast majority of the American public will never hear, or hear an honest version of, anyway.

A statement like "Americans need a realistic, alternative policy"—much less the notion that the "burden" is on the left to produce it—shows just how far Cooper's self-congratulating "maturity" is from any actual political realism. Americans in general need no such thing, certainly not from the opposition. What they need is to have their attention focused on the disaster that's shaping up in Iraq, to the extent it's not focused there already, and to see a political representation of their own increasing worry and disaffection. Their worry and disaffection, to put it another way, need to be made political, a task only just beginning, a task made a great deal more difficult (and more vital) because of how far the corporate media have narrowed the space of the political in these last years. And that's the task undertaken by people like Cindy Sheehan and "fringe groups like ANSWER." By those hippies that Cooper's sort think are so grotty. Yeah, a big-ass anti-war march ain't policy-making—so the fuck what? It's a better and more salient response to the actual situation we find ourselves in than anything Cooper and his sort are going to come up with, for damn sure.

Check out the update Marc Cooper thoughtfully added to his post, if you want to see a more unmediated version of his real politics:

Some of the more delusional responses [to the Juan Cole essay] predictably enough come from the Idiot Right who accuse Cole of being a traitor. And, yes, also from those who want immediate, unconditional, un-thought-out withdrawal on the Unrepentant Idiot Left. One of the more prolific buffoons from that corner — Louis Proyect the self-described "Unrepentant Marxist"— can offer no better response than to compare Cole with Dick Nixon and then further suggest I undergo a lobotomy for having linked to Cole and to cure what he diagnoses as my incipient Hitchens Syndrome (Ahh.. for the good old days of the Show Trials when prosecutor Vishinsky would end his feverish closing statements with a call to "Shoot these mad dogs!"). Oh well... I suppose every day that political Neanderthals like this have their mitts far, far, far from any levers of power is, at least, an OK day. For that I give thanks.

Still fighting the anti-Communist battles of the fifties, I see. And how are those "Neanderthals" (I make no endorsement of Proyect, by the way) any closer to power than you yourself are, Marc? And how close to power do you really think gloating over their lack of it is going to get you, or the people you endorse?

When you boil it all down, Cooper's just indulging himself in some easy left bashing—a favorite sport of certain moderate/moderate-left types, and I'm sick of it. It's contemptible, it gives aid and comfort to rightists, and JUST STOP IT. Somehow, Cooper actually seems to think opponents of the war are more responsible for getting us out of it than, you know, the shits who got us into it, and are keeping us in it. (The urgent thing is that the lefties are supposed to wake up and listen to Juan Cole's policy proposals? Fuck off.) Finding examples of "buffoons" on the "unrepentant idiot left" to take to task makes Cooper not very much different from, or better than, assholes like Instapundit. Ward Churchill, anybody?

posted by michael  9:18:42 AM  
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