By Russell A. Berman · Tuesday, September 5, 2006 Despite the approaching mid-term elections and the criticism of the Bush administration’s conduct of foreign policy, the left—domestically and internationally—has had a hard time in articulating an alternative positive vision. “Not Bush” only gets you so far: sooner or later a substantive alternative is needed to give opposition credibility. Facing turmoil (to say the least) in the Arab and Islamic world, what foreign policy would be preferable? Evidence demonstrates that neither “UN” nor “EU” is a believable response. But the problem is deeper than the pragmatics of current diplomacy.
The left (and liberal) imagination would prefer to cast the confrontation with Islamic extremism or, yes, Islamic fascism, as a matter of imperialism and “anti-imperialism.” The terminology constitutes a treasured legacy of the left, not only from Lenin’s account of imperialism and capitalism (which then permitted him and his successors to mask Soviet Russian expansionism as somehow “anti-imperialist”) but also from a more honorable resistance in the US and Europe to imperial expansion of the late nineteenth century.
In the meantime, anti-imperialism is today’s last hurrah of the traditional left. Having given up nearly all of its other principles, especially in the phase of multiculturalism and post-modernism, it drapes itself in the anti-imperialist flag as a way to remember its glory days. Hence the grotesque sight of the (extreme) left celebrating the reactionary forces of Hezbollah (ask about the role of women or the status of free unions).
The problem however is that the theory of anti-imperialism—probably insufficient already a century ago—is simply irrelevant today. Exactly which natural resources are being fought for in Afghanistan, that fabled land of plenty? Which advanced capitalist company really needs to export its “surplus capital” to the Sunni triangle? And which is the national liberation movement that leads Sunni to kill Shi’a in Pakistan?
None of these conceptualizations of empire and anti-imperialism is adequate to the current situation, which is very explicitly being driven by something else: either an ideological-religious fanaticism or, on a deeper cultural level, a desire for death. Let us consider the account most recently televised by our compatriot and now Al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn, otherwise known affectionately as “Azzam the American.” Gadahn, who has been sought by the FBI for several years aired an address on tajed.net on September 2. In it he articulates aspects of the Islamic-fascist critique of the West and, as has been widely reported, called for conversion to Islam. . . .
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By Russell A. Berman · Monday, September 4, 2006 Arguments against the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo have generally focused on the problem of establishing a zone that appeared to be outside commonly accepted rules of law. The captives were treated neither as prisoners of war, subject to treaties and international law, nor were they seen as vested with the constitutional rights applicable within the US. To some extent, this ambiguous outcome resulted from the anomalous nature of the war in Afghanistan but generally characterizes the wider war on terror: the enemy, not made up of regular soldiers, is also not a composed simply of criminals in the normal sense of the term. To date, the conflict between the liberal approach to view terrorists as criminals and respond with police action and the administration’s view of them as enemies, justifying a war footing, leaves an unresolved categorical problem, which—to say the least—has become an enormous political problem.
As a problem for political theory, Guantanamo points to concerns about a “state of exception,” as formulated by thinkers as diverse as Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben. To what extent do political systems depend on exceptions? That sort of argument, evidently, could lead to an apologetic claim of the necessity of extralegality. Others may wish to comment on that line of thought. Of additional interest however is the duplication of processes of extralegality in the recent experience with special prosecution. In terms of the political spectrum, if Guantanamo was a problem for “the right,” special prosecution—especially Fitzgerald’s—is a problem for the “the left.”
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By Russell A. Berman · Sunday, September 3, 2006 One of the features of the historical totalitarian regimes was the refusal to concede losses or defeats. In part this reflects ideological blinders, a refusal to recognize reality—or to test one’s views against reality—as was the case with the last Minister of Propaganda under Saddam, who claimed the American forces had been repelled, even as they were entering the capital. In addition, this inability to admit to defeat functions as ideology, a way to coerce support to movements or regimes, which promote themselves as victors in order to cement loyalty. Finally, the insistence on maintaining the appearance of victory despite losses reflects a willingness to sacrifice both resources and people: no matter how many have been killed, the totalitarian PR apparatus calls it a win. It is callousness in the face of suffering.
Hezbollah’s declaration of victory follows these patterns. While it is true that the Israelis were not able to oust Hezbollah, neither did Hezbollah achieve its goals—which is only a “victory” if the standard is dumbed down far enough. Journalistic echoing the credo of a victory amplifies Hezbollah ideology, but the claim just does not match reality. Sober and moderate voices in the Arab world are beginning to point that out. To the extent that this blog has made the argument regarding “Islamic fascism,” it is equally important to take note of the critical analyses within the Arab world itself. . . .
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By Russell A. Berman · Saturday, September 2, 2006 With so much to criticize in the character of public discussion, it is welcome to run into a rare moment of journalistic integrity. A Washington Post editorial of September 1 brings an end to the ridiculous obsession—a good example of Heidegger’s “chatter”—with the non-story about Valerie Plame, the minor CIA functionary whose “cover” was allegedly blown. Her media-hungry husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, claimed that the higher ups in the Bush administration had leaked her identity to the press in order to punish him (and, no doubt, it was all about him, as far as he is concerned). In fact however, this was not a matter of cloak-and-dagger or subterfuge or conspiratorial betrayal. A much more mundane human rhetoric was at stake:
“Unaware that Ms. Plame’s identity was classified information, [former Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak ‘in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip,’ according to a story this week by the Post’s R. Jeffrey Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.”
Gossip? This was a big story as long as the press tried to pursue a trail that would bring down Rove or Cheney; now that it turns out only to have been Armitage, “one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly . . . a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war,” the presumably criminal activity of revealing the CIA operative’s identity ceases to be of interest. If you have the right politics, breaking the law doesn’t matter.
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By Russell A. Berman · Saturday, September 2, 2006 In the debates during and after the recent war in Lebanon, supporters of Hezbollah have tried to represent it as a deliverer of social welfare and not as a terrorist organization. Let us leave aside the question as to why a social welfare organization would be armed to the teeth and dwell for a moment in order to consider the claim itself and its theoretical/political implications. The utopia of the social welfare state has been phrased for a more than a century in terms of providing benefits to its client-citizens “from cradle to grave.” In other words, the whole life course would become an object of state administrative practices. This bureaucratic apparatus logically necessitates some level of intrusion by the state into the private sphere of family life: care-taking, starting with the cradle, means a politicization of the nursery, and so forth. Hence Hayek’s anxieties that even a modest social state would not stay modest for long and set out on a “road to serfdom.”
To talk about Hezbollah as only a welfare state is an apologistic misrepresentation, akin to discussing Hitler in terms of managing unemployment and building the Autobahn (the way the press praises Hezbollah for its Iran-bankrolled big-spending in the Lebanese reconstruction). Hezbollah is however like a “welfare state” in the Hayekian sense: leveraging its resources and political clout to extend a tyrannical control over the private sphere. This is nowhere more evident than in the fate of the Hezbollah children.
 
The intrusion of Nazi ideology into nascent pan-Arabism in the 1930s in fact included the establishment of youth movements modeled on the Hitlerjugend, and the lynchpin in this connection was none other than Baldur von Schirach, the leader of the Nazi youth program. This sort of fascist politicization of youth therefore has a long history, but Hezbollah has taken it to new heights. Its message to the Lebanese is evidently this: the price for the social welfare benefits is sacrificing your children. The content of Hezbollah’s welfare state practice is to accelerate the itinerary from cradle to grave: straight from the cradle, into the grave.
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By Russell A. Berman · Friday, September 1, 2006 Of course, it was Imperial Japan, not Nazi Germany, that attacked Hawaii. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the day of infamy, the United States entered a war both in Europe and in the Pacific. Although the political structures and ideologies of Japan and Germany were hardly identical and their geopolitical ambitions were not at all thoroughly aligned (who would replace the British in India?), President Roosevelt was able to articulate a clear opposition between the democracies and the fascist powers. Differences among the various fascist regimes could still leave room for nuanced policies and strategic decisions: there was no allied invasion of Franco’s Spain. Yet the fact that Mussolini was not Hitler did not prohibit the invasion of Sicily, a crucial link in the chain that would lead to victory in both theaters.
Such was the ability of American society then and its political leadership to resist and defeat the dictatorships of the Second World War, followed decades later by the successful conclusion of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union. That capacity for such political and military resolve is however of a completely different nature than academic inquiry which, characteristically, has developed a rich insight into the specific features and differences among the dictatorships. Scholars distinguish and differentiate, and this variegated knowledge can, at times, inform policy decisions, but, in the end, academics have the professional luxury of never having to act and certainly not to take action to contribute to national security.
Some intellectuals nonetheless have the ability to see the big picture. Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism of 1951 draws primarily on the examples of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, between which she describes important similarities. Aside from the left, which has always resented the impugning of Communism, academic objections to Arendt’s study have pointed out the undeniable differences between Hitler and Stalin, and their respective regimes. Within scholarly research, such criticisms should not be discounted, but there is a point, particularly when one moves from the university into the political arena, where this quibbling becomes a debilitating fixation: insistence on the specificity of each tree, while refusing to take note of the forest.
This is a problem with categories as such. Individual phenomena retain an irreducible particularity, which makes up the texture of lived life, the Lebenswelt; at the same time, we cannot do without a conceptual vocabulary to describe commonalities and to enable action in the world. Action is a defining condition of humanity, the ability to build on reflection to transform the world through creative innovation. Without the conceptual tools of thought, action becomes blind; but without an active pursuit of human goals—telos—thought diminishes.
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