Blaming America First


James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, can be ordered directly from Winepress Publishers — 1-877-421-READ (7323); $12.95, plus S&H. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at jkfitz42@aol.com.

(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)


It seemed as if they had no enemies to the left. Indeed, the late left-wing lawyer William Kunstler once made this sentiment specific when he admitted openly that he would never publicly criticize a socialist state.

But we ought not press this case too far. One can oppose our government’s war policies for patriotic reasons. There were those, for example, who thought the dangers of a Communist victory in Vietnam insufficient to warrant the loss of life of a single American soldier. Their anti-war protests were motivated by what they, correctly or not, believed to be the American national interest. Similarly, when Patrick Buchanan spoke out against the Gulf War in 1990, no reasonable person argued that he was a front man for Saddam Hussein.

The same can be said about the current conservative columnists who are questioning the wisdom of launching an attack against Iraq in the coming months. Whatever one thinks of the logic of Joseph Sobran, Pat Buchanan and Charley Russell, it is clear that they seek to avert a war with Iraq because they think it unnecessary and fraught with dangerous consequences for the United States, and not because they are promoting Iraqi interests. Their “anti-war” sentiments are motivated by love of country.

But that does not mean the “blame America first” crowd has left the stage. There are those who want us to stay out of Iraq for the same reasons that they wanted us out of West Berlin, South Korea and Vietnam; because they see the United States as a force for evil in the world. In September, the anti-war left published an ad in The New York Times that made that clear. It illustrated their belief that the United States is an imperialist power, determined to exploit the impoverished countries of the world for the benefit of American corporate interests. They have a new crusade: Iraq is their new Vietnam.

The ad in question, “A Statement of Conscience,” calls for “the people of the United States to resist” U.S. policy in Iraq, because of the “grave dangers to the people of the world.” It speaks of “the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration,” as well as the state of “repression” inside the United States, with free speech “repressed” and anti-war protestors falsely labeled as “terrorist” sympathizers. It recommends that Americans refuse orders, resist a draft if instituted and support all “resisters” until the “machinery of war” has been stopped.

The signatories of the ad? You probably guessed. Oliver Stone, Ed Asner, Ossie Davis, Susan Sarandon, Pete Seeger, Kurt Vonnegut, Gore Vidal, convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jumal, and the old Weather Underground member Bernadine Dohrn, among others. Even Saddam Hussein is not villainous enough to convince this group that the United States represents the side of righteousness in the world arena. They mock the notion of what George W. Bush called an “axis of evil.”

At about the same time that this “Statement of Conscience” was published, a group of American historians released a “Petition to Congress.” It also revealed the “blame America first” frame of mind. The goal of the signers was to “stop war with Iraq” because it would amount to an “unprovoked attack on another country.” Not an unwise or unnecessary attack, an “unprovoked” one. They argue that President Bush is acting “as though he were a king,” and that such behavior is “not what the Founding Fathers intended.” (Curious, isn’t it, how leftists can become strict constructionists when it serves their ideological ends.)

The case was pressed further by Joyce Appleby, past president of two of this country’s major historical associations, in a forum in Newsweek’s 9/11 issue. She fears that Bush is “returning us to a Cold War mentality,” in which the United States fought “quasi-wars and proxy wars and [ran] covert operations and [used] spies and [practiced] intimidation” of those who protested its policies.

Appleby complains that we are “moving right back into that Cold War mindset, in which we will have a black and white world of good versus evil and we’ll be part of suppressing dissent around the world,” as well as invading “American rights at home.”



Let’s be fair: The shock of the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 was enough to change the thinking of many of those who once routinely opposed American military intervention around the world. But it is also clear that the hard core left has not changed. They still view the United States as a repressive, imperialist, racist and oppressive power, the major source of evil in the modern world. They are convinced that an attack on Iraq will be a symptom of a new imperialism, motivated by our determination to control Iraq’s oil reserves. That is why they blame America first.

So am I saying that their anti-war sentiments are not motivated by a love of country, whereas Patrick Buchanan’s, for example, are? Well, yes. The anti-war left hates what this country stands for. They view our history as a long “contour” (New Left historian William Appleman William’s term) of capitalist greed, a determination to dominate world markets. The anti-war left will love this country only when it conforms to their Marxist ideological prescriptions. They love American the way Stalin loved Russia, the way Mao Tse-tung loved China, as land masses they “love” enough to bless with their revolutionary zeal. They place ideology first, country second. That is not patriotic dissent.

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