Why the Left Loves Osama [and Saddam] - @MidEastTruth
 
MidEastTruth Forum Index
  Home | Cartoons | Videos | Presentation | Flyers | Forum | UN vs ISRAEL | Links | Update List  

MidEastTruth Forum Index  

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube/Diller distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. His bi-weekly column appears regularly in newspapers around the globe. His website, DanielPipes.org, is one of the most accessed internet sources of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam.


Help us stay online!
donate

Jump to:  
RSSTwitterFacebookYoutube

Post new topic   Reply to topic    MidEastTruth Forum Index -> Daniel Pipes
Reply to topic View previous topic  •  View next topic Reply to topic 

Posted by editor

  
Subscribe to our mailing list
Subscribe to our mailing list

MidEastTruth.com - the first 13 yearsMidEastTruth.com
How it all started

 

What is Palestine? Who are the Palestinians?
What is Palestine?
Who are the Palestinians?


See Also:

 


PostWed Mar 19, 2003 4:31 pm     Why the Left Loves Osama [and Saddam]    


Reply with quote

 
Why the Left Loves Osama [and Saddam]

By Daniel Pipes
New York Post
March 19, 2003

Has anyone noticed an indifference in the precincts of the far Left to the fatalities of 9/11 and the horrors of Saddam Hussein?

Right after the 9/11 attack, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen called it "the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos." Eric Foner, an ornament of Columbia University's Marxist firmament, trivialized it by announcing himself unsure "which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." Norman Mailer called the suicide hijackers "brilliant."

More recently, it appears that none of the millions of antiwar demonstrators have a bad word to say about Saddam Hussein nor an iota of sympathy for those oppressed, tortured and murdered by his regime. Instead, they vent fury against the American president and British prime minister.

Why is the Left nonchalant about the outrages committed by al Qaeda and Baghdad?

Lee Harris, an Atlanta writer, offers an explanation in a recent issue of the Hoover Institution's journal, Policy Review. He does so by stepping way back and recalling Karl Marx's central thesis about the demise of capitalism resulting from an inevitable sequence of events:

* Business profits decline in the industrial countries;

* Bosses squeeze their workers;

* Workers become impoverished;

* Workers rebel against their bosses, and

* Workers establish a socialist order.

Everything here hangs on workers growing poorer over time - which, of course, did not happen. In fact, Western workers became richer (and increasingly un-revolutionary). By the roaring 1950s, most of the Left realized that Marx got it wrong.

But rather than give up on cherished expectations of socialist revolution, Harris notes, Marxists tweaked their theory. Abandoning the workers of advanced industrial countries, they looked instead to the entire populations of poor countries to carry out the revolution. Class analysis went out the window, replaced by geography.

This new approach, known as "dependencia theory," holds that the First World (and the United States above all) profits by forcefully exploiting the Third Word. The Left theorizes that the United States oppresses poor countries; thus Noam Chomsky's formulation that America is a "leading terrorist state."

For vindication of this claim, Marxists impatiently await the Third World's rising up against the West. Sadly for them, the only true revolution since the 1950s was Iran's in 1978-79. It ended with militant Islam in power and the Left in hiding.

Then came 9/11, which Marxists interpreted as the Third World (finally!) striking back at its American oppressor. In the Left's imagination, Harris explains, this attack was nothing less than "world-historical in its significance: the dawn of a new revolutionary era."

Only a pedant would point out that the suicide hijackers hardly represented the wretched of the earth; and that their objectives had nothing at all to do with socialism and everything to do with - no, not again! - militant Islam.

So desperate is the Left for some sign of true socialism, it overlooks such pesky details. Instead, it warily admires al Qaeda, the Taliban and militant Islam in general for doing battle with the United States. The Left tries to overlook militant Islam's slightly un-socialist practices - such as its imposing religious law, excluding women from the workplace, banning the payment of interest, encouraging private property and persecuting atheists.

This admiring spirit explains the Left's nonchalant response to 9/11. Sure, it rued the loss of life, but not too much. Dario Fo, the Italian Marxist who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for literature, explains: "The great [Wall Street] speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty, so what is 20,000 dead in New York?"

The same goes for Saddam Hussein, whose gruesome qualities matter less to the Left than the fact of his confronting and defying the United States. In its view, anyone who does that can't be too bad - never mind that he brutalizes his subjects and invades his neighbors. The Left takes to the streets to assure his survival, indifferent both to the fate of Iraqis and even to their own safety, clutching instead at the hope that this monster will somehow bring socialism closer.

In sum: 9/11 and the prospect of war against Saddam Hussein have exposed the Left's political self-delusion, intellectual bankruptcy and moral turpitude.

From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1040


Facebook

 

Back to top  




Dear friends, we need your help!

If you find our work meaningful and useful,
please consider making a small donation
and help us stay online and grow.
Thank you for your support!



Posted by Mike Spindell

  
Subscribe to our mailing list
Subscribe to our mailing list

MidEastTruth.com - the first 13 yearsMidEastTruth.com
How it all started

 

What is Palestine? Who are the Palestinians?
What is Palestine?
Who are the Palestinians?


See Also:

 


PostWed Mar 26, 2003 8:44 pm     Why the Left Supports.....etc.    


Reply with quote

 
Mr. Pipes, I g you and your views immensely. However, as someone with pretty good Leftist credentials and yet an admirer and supporter of your MidEast views, I think you are missing the point in tarring as us liberals with your wide brush. It is true that a small percentage of the Left, maybe 5%, are not only loonies but also are vociferous in their denigration of Israel. That 5% influences possibly another 10 to 15% of the Left inordinately. That makes up 20%. The other 80% tend more to think for themselves, or are iconoclasts like me. In general that 80% is a lot more supportive of the views that you have and I share. By the way I also admit to you that the 20% minority are also generally anti-American and probably too are anti-semitic.

If you could be non-judgemental enough to look at the Right as they are, you would find a mirror image 5% & 20%. This group of crazies is also vociferous and influential beyond their numbers and support. They are also in their way just as anti-American (i.e. the Militia Movement, Posse Commatitus, Ku Klux Klan, White Citizen's Councils, etc.) as their Leftist counterparts and they certainly are as anti-semitic (Pat Buchanan).

I love the US, believe it's the best country that has ever existed on this planet. By the same token I would like to see more social justice here, more economic fairness and less bigotry in all its' forms. In addition though, I strongly support Israel, the war in Iraq and the concept that we in the West need to wake up and see the threat that militant Islam poses.
Stereotyping people in their political views degrades the coalition of like minded people that needs to be built, if our countrymen are to be awakened to the duplicity of Arab/Islamic polemic.


Facebook

_________________
Don't follow leaders, watch your parking meters

 

Back to top  



Posted by Mike Spindell

  
Subscribe to our mailing list
Subscribe to our mailing list

MidEastTruth.com - the first 13 yearsMidEastTruth.com
How it all started

 

What is Palestine? Who are the Palestinians?
What is Palestine?
Who are the Palestinians?


See Also:

 


PostWed Mar 26, 2003 8:49 pm        


Reply with quote

 
Mr. Pipes the word that got garbled in the beginning of my last post was "respect" and indeed I do respect your views. Unfortunately I still haven't figured out how to edit my spelling errors on this board.


Facebook

 

Back to top  



Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    MidEastTruth Forum Index -> Daniel Pipes All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 



RSSTwitterFacebookYoutube






The MidEastTruth.com Forum | Powered by phpBB