Re: Why the left cannot cheer this liberation
I have a few problems with this text, and they start really as soon as the author begins providing the first of his two answers.
Quote:First, a true liberation struggle comes from within a country, not from invasion; and unless it does come from within, "liberation" is unlikely to do more than substitute one tyrant for another or, perhaps worse, lead to anarchy, as seems all too likely in Iraq.
Though it is true that a true liberation
struggle comes from within, that doesnt mean true liberations, period, can not take on the form of an outside army as well as of an inside guerrilla achieving it. The liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi German occupation was no less real for its lack of self-achievedness.
It is also untrue to suggest that any liberation at the hands of an outside army is per definition "unlikely to do more than substitute one tyrant for another or, perhaps worse, lead to anarchy". To skip over the obvious example of WW2 this time, why not pick one of the three names from the introduction: Pristina.
For sure, an examplary civil society it is not. But both tyranny and anarchy have been succesfully avoided by the co-operation of OSCE, foreign armies
and Kosovar politicians. The worst mark on the score card would be on ethnic relations, but even on that score the improvement on the preceding tyranny in the province is notable. Many Serbs have left, but many have stayed. Though there is nothing better than a state of tension between them and the Kosovar majority, there isnt anarchy - and the Serbs are actually numerically overrepresented in parliament and government. To cut my argument short: no anarchy; no tyranny. A change for the better apparently
can be achieved by a liberation at someone else's hands.
I find it surprising that the leftist countercase suggested so often in the anti-war discourse involves so much emphasis on national sovereignty. Though anti-colonialism has been a staple of leftist tradition, a great attachment to the sacrosanct status of borders hasn't. The principle of applying pressure - whether it is from the grassroots level or by governments - to dictatorships elsewhere has been prolific in leftist political action - remember the boycots of South Africa. There has never been a conviction that change needed to come from within only as a matter of principle. What the disagreement then is about, when defining what backup from abroad to accord for the native opposition against a dictatorship, is merely what
means are legitimate, not the principle itself.
The author seems to suggest that fighting a war on behalf of a country's repressed opposition is out, per se. Yet leftist governments have themselves rarely hesitated in offering military support to oppressed 'brethren'. The Nicaraguan government supported the El Salvadorian guerrillas with arms and trainings. Angola did the same with the Namibian freedom fighters, way back when. It can be said that they at least supported already existing native opposition - but the same can be said about the US supporting the cause of the Afghani Northern Alliance, or the Kosovar KLA.
The disagreement then, thus, would be merely about the motivations with which the US do it; or the extent to which it goes - marching into the other country's capitol for the opposition in question. (Though, again, the Vietnamese army did exactly that when it drove away the Red Khmer - and though here the argument about one tyranny replacing another does hold, it was still for the better. And much more than being for the better is not claimed by the moderate proponents of the wars the author mentions - Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq). Again - by this time we are no longer talking fundamental principles anymore, merely disagreements on strategy and distrust of motivations. Additionally, though it's obviously true that non-violent, native-effected change yields better results than its counterparts, that line of argument leaves the question open of what to do in cases where such avenues are not available - in dictatorships as totalitarian as Iraq's, for example.
That the disagreement isn't as principled as the author suggests is no surprise because the anti-imperialist argument only holds water to an extent. I already noted that I am surprised by the left's current concern with national sovereignty. But self-determination has been a traditional cause, it's true. The author uses the cause to argue that the Arabs have an overriding right to "determine their own future", whatever it is they may determine about it. But here we enter the minefield. For whose self-determination are we talking of? Why suddenly a pan-Arabic one, instead of that of this or that people? What if the "Arab street" is furious at an invasion, but - should this be true - the Iraqi dissidents and oppositionists are glad?
Regarding Kosova we knew this to be true. The invasion of NATO troops into the Balkans to safeguard the Kosovars' liberation may well have seemed like a "humiliation" to Slavs and Greeks in the Balkans. But they came at the explicit invitation of Kosovar leaders - and it was the Kosovar-inhabited territory they entered. So whose sef-determination are we talking about? Should "the Arabs", collectively, have a natural right in a leftist's eyes to override a potential wish of one or the other Arabic people to "be liberated"? Not necessarily making the case for "Iraqi liberation" here, just suggesting that the proposed opposition between neo-colonialist "liberation" and Arab self-determination isn't as clear-cut and easy to define in a case like this as he makes it out to be.
Don't misunderstand me - I agree with most of the arguments of the author. Of course we should target non-violent, native change over hegemonical redrawing of political maps. And all the arguments of his second point are beyond doubt, to me. But being a leftist doesnt
necessarily mean one should at all times reject the option of liberation-from-outside, and many leftists have, in fact, "happily joined the euphoria over" Kosovo's liberation with pride. That makes the author's attempt at finding a global leftist argument against such ventures perhaps redundant. More practical would be to take his points in the second part of his article, and use them as benchmarks to evaluate case by case whether we are seeing a "true liberation" or not. They would show clear differences between the cases of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.