|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By a contributor, March 7, 2004
At least a few individuals have sent in criticisms to the World Socialist Web Site regarding David Walsh's February 11, 2005, article "The new McCarthyism: the witch-hunting of Ward Churchill."(1) Walsh's February 11 article describes the witch-hunt against Churchill as an "ultra-right" conspiracy against critics of the Bush government's foreign policy, but Walsh himself characterizes parts of Churchill's "Some People Push Back" essay as being "wrongheaded and deeply reactionary."(2) The main idea expressed in the WSWS' selection of critical replies to David Walsh's article is that Walsh was wrong to give the Amerikan population an alibi during the united $tates-backed sanctions against Iraq. Even one of David Walsh's fans disagreed with Walsh's claim that the American people, and even the tiny minority working in the World Trade Center, could not have known anything substantial "about the consequences of the Persian Gulf War and sanctions."(3)
In response to the critical replies, Walsh builds a straw man and tries unsuccessfully to tear it down. Walsh says: "the American people knew everything and supported every crime of US imperialism; they are entirely willing accomplices" (my emphasis).(4) But the most that the replies said was that the consequences of the Persian Gulf War and the sanctions against Iraq were not secrets " especially within the cadre of Mutant Elite housed in the WTC" (my emphasis).
Walsh charges his critics' with subjectivism, but himself makes a subjectivist argument about how "wide layers of the population have little access to significant historical and political knowledge about the Middle East and the US role in the area" without specifying whom these "wide layers" consist of, their numbers, and so on. In defense of the Amerikan population, Walsh says that the media portrayed Hussein as a Hitler figure. Walsh also claims that few Amerikans knew that bin Laden was a CIA asset in Afghanistan. In order to prove that the media misleads Americans, Walsh trots out a poll (whose source he does not specify) allegedly showing that a majority of Americans still believe that the Hussein government was involved in the WTC attack.
In actual fact, an October 18, 2004, CBS News telephone poll shows that only 30% of Americans thought "Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." An October 2, 2004, Newsweek telephone poll shows that only 36% of Americans thought "Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001." An April 2, 2004, CBS News telephone poll shows that only 36% of Americans thought "Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." But let's not quibble about details. What Walsh says here about polls is true for the time before and shortly after the March 2003 invasion, but not now.
Even the interpretation of the fact that many say Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 is not straight-forward in the united $tates. Some may be saying that to support Vice-President Cheney. Others may say so just to have a justification for seizing oil. Widespread polls have shown vast anti-Arab sentiment as well and blaming Iraq for 9/11 could stand just on that combination of chauvinism and racism alone. It would be interesting to know the portion of the u.$. public that blames any independent Arab politician for 9/11. In other words, perhaps we could fill in Saddam Hussein's name with someone else who is not an open u.$. lackey and get the same result. Among the truly ignorant remainder of people who think Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, we can also say a large portion is willfully ignorant. Sources of information are not expensive relative to u.$. incomes.
Nothing Walsh says refutes the critics' letters. Thinking himself clever, Walsh says: "Our letter writers fail to mention that the American population has expressed broad opposition to the Iraq war" in the form of disagreeing with Bu$h's reasons for the war. What Walsh "fails to mention" is that this is true only long after March 2003. "What could AmeriKKKans have known about the Iraq sanctions?: Part II" ( http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/agitation/iraq/iraqsanctions02202005.html ) points out that there is a pattern of Amerikans' "denying and then feigning ignorance about the consequences of Amerikan imperialist militarism and genocide generally." "Feigning ignorance" recognizes that some Amerikans currently acknowledge the consequences of the Iraq sanctions, but still give themselves an alibi for when the Iraq sanctions were actually being carried out. It is so convenient for Amerikans to back militarism and genocide to the hilt and then disagree about fine points of evidence and strategy after the fact. It's called guilt. It's also called covering your ass.
David Walsh says that "polls indicate now that an absolute majority believe the invasion was a mistake, and Bush's approval rating on Iraq is now at 40 percent." Currently and for most polls taken thus far, Walsh is mistaken. For instance, a February 8, 2005, CNN / USA Today / Gallup Poll telephone poll (conducted on February 4-6, days after the Iraq elections) shows that only 45% of Amerikans thought "the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq." 55% said the united $tates did not make a mistake in sending the troops.
In all fairness, an earlier January 18, 2005, CNN / USA Today / Gallup Poll telephone poll does show that 52%, a slight majority, of Amerikans thought "in view of the developments since we first sent our troops to Iraq . . . the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq." So, let's just concede this one to Walsh.
Still, many different united $tates-wide telephone polls from December 17, 2003 (long after the March invasion), to October 31, 2004 (that is, just before the 2004 Presidential Election), show that a majority of Amerikans thought that the united $tates' going to war against Iraq was not a mistake. For example, an April 4, 2003, CBS News poll (conducted about a couple weeks after the March 19 invasion) shows that only 24% of Amerikans thought that "the United States made a mistake getting involved in the current war with Iraq." Getting even closer, a March 23, 2003, CBS News / New York Times poll (field date: March 22) shows that only 24% of Amerikans thought "the United States made a mistake getting involved in the current war against Iraq." An April 10, 2003, Washington Post / ABC News poll (field date: April 9) shows that only 16% of Amerikans thought it was a mistake for the united $tates to go to war with Iraq "considering everything." Even a December 20, 2003, Ipsos-Public Affairs poll (field date: December 15-17; days after Saddam Hussein was captured) shows that only 29% of Amerikans thought that "all in all, thinking about how things have gone since the United States went to war there in March . . . the Bush administration made . . . a mistake in going to war in Iraq."
Contrary to certain individuals' forgetfulness, the majority of the Amerikan population did indeed support even the latest war against Iraq. After the 2004 Presidential Election, Bu$h's particular reasons for going to war against Iraq lost some support. There are indications that DemoKKKrat/RepubliKKKan party allegiance contributes to recent poll results showing that about half of Amerikans think that the united $tates' sending to troops to Iraq was a "mistake." In other words, many of those who now "oppose" the war (verbally) still do not disagree with u.$. imperialist militarism in general and may not even really disagree, other than out of Demokrat and "independent" hatred for Bu$h, with the united $tates' sending troops to Iraq.
The notion of a "mistake" in Vietnam or Iraq allows for those who believe the goals of the war are unachievable to lump themselves in with those who oppose the war on firmer principle. The "mistake" crowd includes some "shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later" people who are learning that u.$. soldiers die continuously in Iraq. The most important factor in any trend in u.$. public opinion against an invasion is the number of fatalities suffered by u.$. troops, not an upsurge in principles. The proof is in more lop-sided struggles where there is hardly any widespread opposition to the wars-- as in Afghanistan today or Grenada in 1983. The people of Iraq are not making this war more unpopular in the united $tates by treating u.$. soldiers as some kind of young proletarians.
Apparently in response to critic "PK," who seems to come from the "anybody but Bush" crowd and who is the only one who even mentions voting against Bu$h as a show of disagreement with the Iraq war, Walsh says: "By implication, our critics suggest that a vote for John Kerry would have been a legitimate expression of opposition to the war. If so, they fail to understand the key to the 2004 election." The gist of Walsh's argument is that the Demokrats were no alternative to Bu$h and Cheney. MIM would agree with this particular point, but Walsh neglects to mention Libertarian anti-war Presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, for example. Also, Walsh fails to mention that Amerikans could have voted for "none of the above" (in other words, not voted). The larger issue, of course, is that David Walsh supports voting for the Socialist Equality Party, which ran a candidate for President in 2004. The point is that Amerikans had the option of voting for anti-war candidates with traditional Amerikan civil liberties or parasitic values, and they chose not to.
Walsh defends even those who voted for Bu$h, saying: "our critics fail to see this ["the impact of the deepening crisis of American and world capitalism" as a basis for Amerikans to become progressive] because they remain entirely in the realm of subjective attitudes. Apparently, anyone working in the World Trade Center, anyone who voted for Bush, is a vital cog in the machinery of imperialist war."
This is getting really old. Once again, nobody has ever said that "anyone" in the World Trade Center was part of the "technocratic corps." What Ward Churchill and David Walsh's critics did say is that the majority of Amerikans were not ignorant, especially those in the World Trade Center. This is not inaccurate.
The rest of Walsh's reply can be dismissed out of hand for present purposes. In typical Trotskyist fashion, Walsh focuses on objective/social "positions" and "objective, historical laws" in a formalist way, without referring to labor value theory, in order to suggest that the working class of the united $tates, and even the working class of the white nation, is exploited. Walsh purports to oppose subjectivism and calls for an examination of objective reality, but practices subjectivism himself.
Not only does Walsh say that "tens of billions of [Amerikan tax] dollars are drained off by the American global war drive," as if much of this money weren't going right back to the incomes of imperialist-country parasites, Walsh makes a strange distinction between scientific mistakes and "political mistakes." He asks: "In any event, if our critics were right about the American people, what political perspective would flow from it?" Walsh goes on to argue that only a pro-Demokrat perspective would flow from the truth.
This is identity politics almost as a matter of definition. It can't get much clearer than this. It is the notion that only reactionary perspectives can "flow" from the view that the majority of the Amerikan population is reactionary-- even if this view is correct . We aren't even talking about the majority being parasitic here, just being (at least potentially) knowledgeable and complicit; yet, Walsh stills says: "One would either have to throw in the towel or, in the face of the reactionary character of the broad layers of the population, seek out within the political establishment 'less ugly' faces, i.e., support a Dean, a Kennedy, a Boxer, the supposed 'lesser of two evils.' In fact, the arguments presented, despite their 'radical' coloration, inevitably lead their adherents back to the orbit of the Democratic Party." The underlying issue is that Walsh is of the liquidationist opinion that there can be no revolution in a country without the majority of its population being among the revolutionary forces--although the downfall of imperialist Germany in World War II and its occupation by the Red Army is an obvious counter-example.
Walsh persists in misrepresenting Churchill's essay, saying that Churchill "accept[s] the argument that the bombings, even if horrific, were somehow a legitimate 'payback' delivered by representatives of Third World peoples to American imperialist oppression." In reality, Churchill does not say that the attacks were carried out by "representatives of Third World peoples," only that they may have been more like "soldiers," rather than "fanatics"; Churchill even suggests that they may have been taking orders from clerics and not really themselves motivated "by a set of religious beliefs." Talking about the negative consequences of the WTC attack, Walsh also suggests that Churchill upholds the WTC attack strategically, but Churchill has said no such things. In fact, Churchill has repeatedly, in his controversial essay and elsewhere, criticized the adventurist nature of the attack and said that the attack reflected the u.$. government's own standards regarding legitimate targets and "collateral damage."
Walsh goes as far as suggesting that the "upper-middle-class social layers or even individual capitalists" were not complicit either in imperialist militarism and genocide. But even at bookstores, libraries and newsstands in the united $tates, one can easily find publications that are highly critical of contemporary and historical u.$. foreign policy. This was true in the early 1990s and before, and it is true today, and it is true whether we are talking about Columbus, Ohio, or f*ing Charleston, West Virginia. Obtaining better information is a matter of a few dollars spent on a magazine or newspaper (even if only a Kanadian mainstream paper), instead of on yet another beer, Big Mac, or sports game; there is no excuse for ignorance, especially in this time of widespread Internet access. If the parasites repeatedly choose to stick with newspapers and news programs that "mislead" them, then that is an indication that it is in their objective interests to do so. (The objective interests have to be analyzed using the approaches of Marxist political economy, not just in terms of the parasites' TV watching and newspaper reading habits, but the habits are, like polls, secondary proof of the parasites' objective interests.) It is even possible that the ultra-right--to the left of which everyone is supposedly "innocent"--believes in their own lies. Exploiter consciousness is not about consciously spreading lies. That is an extremely simplistic way to view the media and ideology more generally.
In actuality, the media both reflects and produces consciousness in complicated ways. Even confining oneself to the mainstream media, it is possible to see inconsistencies in the reporting and develop alternative views. If the ruling class repeats a lie ninety-nine times and repeats the truth only one time, the numerical predominance of the lie does not in and of itself preclude alternatives to the dominant view(s). In part, this is why revolutionary struggle is possible even where the means of mental production are almost completely owned by the oppressors.
At the same time, however, there is not really any question of the ruling class imposing false consciousness on the majority of the Amerikan population; the majority of the Amerikan population, the Euro-Amerikan oppressor nation in particular, is parasitic and exploitive. Actually, this argument about material interests is one Churchill did not make in "Some People Push Back," except perhaps for the tiny minority that is the "technocratic corps" who worked in the World Trade Center, but it is relevant if Walsh wants to talk about Amerikans' alleged objective interests in opposing their country's imperialist militarism.
Walsh has made it amply clear that he is not really interested in looking at objective reality. By his standards, either the u.$. working class has a major part to play in the revolution, driven in part by the "democratic ideals" and "traditions" of AmeriKKKa, or there cannot possibly be revolution anywhere in the world.(5) Completely ignored are "the ordinary American citizen "'s (my emphasis) reactionary practices toward exploited and oppressed people both outside and inside u.$. borders, and there is just this counter-revolutionary line which says in practice that the world revolution deserves no support unless Jane and John Doe in AmeriKKKa are counted as being progressive.
Even as the majority currently appears to verbally oppose the idea that it was worth going to war against Iraq, most of their reasons are selfish, reactionary nationalist reasons having to do with such things as Amerikan casualties and the expense in terms of Amerikan taxes. The gripe among a pivotal group of whites is not the imperialist war in principle, as even George Washington would say. The gripe is that Bu$h did not pick on a country more defenseless than Iraq. Walsh himself admits, by focusing on the war's impact on some of the Amerikan population, that Amerikans' reasons for opposing the war have little to do with Iraqi self-determination, for example. And while the majority may oppose having gone to war against Iraq, the majority of Amerikans do not oppose the continuance of this war; Walsh is confusing things. In fact, a February 11, 2005, CNN / USA Today / Gallup telephone poll (field date: January 27, 2005 - February 8, 2005) shows that even among the Democratic National Committee, only 23% of "current members of the Democratic National Committee" said "the US should withdraw all of its troops from Iraq." Only 37% said "the US should withdraw some troops from Iraq." 17% said "the US should keep the number of troops as it is now." 15% said the US should send more troops to Iraq. Among the broader population, a January 18, 2005, CNN / USA Today / Gallup poll (field date: January 14-16) shows that only 25% said "the US should withdraw all of its troops from Iraq" (my emphasis). 21% said some troops. 26"% said "the US should keep the number of troops as it is now." 24% said "the US should send more troops to Iraq." 4% indicated "no opinion." Walsh doesn't seem to be able to do the math, so here it is: 46% (far from an "absolute majority"), 50%, and 4%.
46% is (less than the 50% who supported keeping u.$. troops in Iraq at the current levels and even increasing them) important, but it is just too easy to refer to such figures after the fact, when the Iraq War is supposedly over. The truth is that an overwhelming majority supported the invasion when it was happening. This seeming flip-flop, from supporting to "opposing" the war as a "mistake," has happened before. This is just the same sh*t, different day, and it will continue to happen as long as "socialists" disorient readers by covering up for those Amerikans who are reactionary in both words and deed, while undermining the credibility of anti-imperialists, such as Ward Churchill. Walsh utterly fails to address the issue of why he chose to characterize, openly before March, Churchill's argument as reactionary when it wasn't a necessary part of Walsh's argument about a conspiracy to silence critics of Bu$h's foreign policy. Walsh almost goes as far as saying that Churchill brought it on himself: "The University of Colorado professor's empty-headed excesses and insensitivity provided the excuse for the onslaught, but no more than that."(3)
Walsh: "Does he pay taxes? Then, according to his own logic, he is an accomplice in the crimes of the US government. Does he drive an automobile, use an electric appliance or fly on an airplane? In that case, he is most likely helping to line the coffers of one or another firm that is profiting from the Iraq war and the worldwide thrust of American militarism."(4)
The real question (for MIM, which has written extensively on imperialist-country parasitism) is how the Amerikan economy is put together to sustain such privileges. Churchill raises the superstructural question of why Amerikans are too content to oppose Amerikan militarism. Churchill's argument is not that everyone who buys goods in the united $tates is complicit, but that if they choose to do nothing to resist Amerikan militarism, and were able to be informed, then they are complicit. Technically speaking, they may be more distant than the "technocratic corps" in the World Trade Center from Amerikan militarism. But as "Support Ward Churchill; don't slander him all over again" points out, there are, among parasites, hardly degrees of action in the first place.(2) As complicity goes, one exploiter's doing absolutely nothing to resist is equal to another exploiter's doing absolutely nothing. The most powerful exploiters cannot be relied on to act. All exploiters must take responsibility to stop their governments' murderous militarism, if only to save their own asses. Even being a consistent pacifist is better than nothing.(6)
Notes:
1. "Readers' letters on 'The New McCarthyism: the witch-hunting of Ward Churchill'," February 28, 2005, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/feb2005/lett-f28.shtml
2. "Support Ward Churchill; don't slander him all over again," February 17, 2005, http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/sept112001/wardchurchill021705.html
3. David Walsh, "The new McCarthyism: the witch-hunting of Ward Churchill," February 11, 2005, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/feb2005/chur-f11.shtml
4. David Walsh, "A reply to readers' letters on 'The New McCarthyism: the witch-hunting of Ward Churchill'," February 28, 2005, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/feb2005/chur-f28.shtml
5. David Walsh, "Anti-Americanism: The 'anti-imperialism' of fools," http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/sep2001/rads-s22.shtml
6. "Talking points for the Ward Churchill campaign: "Little Eichmanns" and the bombing of Dresden," February 23, 2005, http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/sept112001/wardchurchilldresden022205.html