Weissman writes: "Hillary Clinton can do what neo-conservatives and
paleo-conservatives and theological conservatives never could. She can sell
imperialism as a liberal, humanitarian imperative."
Hillary Clinton at the Democratic Debate. (photo: Travis Dove/NYT)
Hillary's No Neo-Con. She's Far More Dangerous
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
18 January 16
Back in September 2013, well before Bernie Sanders decided to run for
president, the liberal journalist Peter Beinart called attention to the
leftward swing among Democratic Party voters, marked by Elizabeth Warren's
popularity and Bill de Blasio's victory in the Democratic primary for mayor
of New York City. More to the point, Beinart explicitly challenged Hillary
Clinton to move left and ride the new wave to power - or risk getting
overwhelmed by what he called "The Rise of the New, New Left." The following
month, I responded with "Don't Let Hillary Housebreak the New New Left."
Beinart's choice of labels was wildly misleading. For those who missed his
reference, the original New Left of the 1960s - best embodied by Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS) - initially looked toward the kind of
Democratic Socialism that Bernie Sanders now proclaims. We gave radical,
mostly white support to the civil rights movement, usually leaning toward
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). We opposed both sides
in the Cold War, seeing both as promoting nuclear disaster. We broke with
the mainstream refusal to cooperate with Communists, an ideological
prohibition that encouraged witch hunts, red-baiting, and the stifling of
thoroughgoing social and economic reform.
And perhaps best known, we played a leading role in organizing the
campus-based opposition to the War in Vietnam, which Beinart's liberal
heroes - former vice president Hubert Humphrey, labor leaders Walter Reuther
and David Dubinsky, civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, and theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr - condemned us for doing.
Though Hillary and Bill opposed the war at the time, Beinart correctly
places her in the same political tradition as his liberal heroes, who forged
"the dominant ideology in American public life" long before the neo-cons
emerged. These liberals believed with FDR "that government should intervene
in society to solve problems that individuals cannot solve alone." And they
zealously insisted that the US should have, as I put it, "a muscular,
hyper-activist foreign policy, one with all the multilateral trappings of UN
resolutions and NATO-led coalitions, but still decidedly neo-colonial and
inescapably in the service of Big Oil and the merchants of death."
Hillary embodies this liberal imperialism and will do her best to groom the
new political generation that sees itself as liberal to follow her into
endless war, especially in the Middle East. That is why she is so dangerous.
She can do what neo-conservatives and paleo-conservatives and theological
conservatives never could. She can sell imperialism as a liberal,
humanitarian imperative.
Domestically, before Obamacare, Hillary fought for something approaching
universal health care, no matter how corporate and inadequate it was. By
contrast, America's number one neo-con, William Kristol, made his bones as a
hard-ass Republican right-winger by leading the fight to destroy what she
was trying to create. Which of them do you think will do better selling
self-identified liberals on war?
No doubt, many neo-cons will support Hillary. Some will serve as her
advisers, and one of their top leaders, Robert Kagan, has already started
calling himself a liberal interventionist. He sees the future if Hillary
becomes president, and he realizes she will build that future by drawing on
what the Democrats did in the past, not on what the neo-cons said and did
under George W. Bush.
Support for Israel? Woodrow Wilson, who preached "the self-determination of
nations," went along with Britain's Balfour Declaration, offering Palestine
as a homeland for the Jewish people. Harry Truman quickly recognized the new
Jewish State, and whenever it counted, the Democratic Party has sided with
Israel against the Palestinians.
Support for the Saudis? FDR forged Washington's initial alliance with the
Saudi monarchy to secure a supply of oil for the coming world war. Jimmy
Carter funded the mujahideen, the holy warriors, months before Soviet troops
invaded Afghanistan, and pledged to defend the Saudis in case the Soviets
extended their activism. His "Carter Doctrine" also committed the US to use
military force if needed to ensure the flow of oil and natural gas from the
entire region.
The Cold War? Harry Truman certainly pumped it up in Greece in 1947, though
historians have traced the conflict's origins back through decisions made
during FDR's alliance with the Soviets in World War II and Woodrow Wilson's
decision to join allied troops to fight against the Bolshevik Revolution in
1918.
And Vietnam? The American Friends of Vietnam, the loudest cheerleader for
interfering in the former French colony, was headed by a New Deal Democrat,
Leo Cherne, who also ran the International Rescue Committee and served as
Chairman of the Executive Committee of Freedom House. Two of his strongest
backers were Democratic senators John F. Kennedy and Mike Mansfield, who
joined with New York's right-wing Cardinal Spellman to help impose the
Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem to rule over the largely Buddhist South Vietnam.
These are just snapshots of the Democratic Party's past, which we all need
to understand in much greater breadth and depth. But trying to make the
neo-cons our number-one bogeyman is to make them far more important than
they were. It absolves the mainstream Democratic Party from the blame it so
richly deserves. And it makes it so much easier for Hillary Clinton to shape
a new generation of Democratic voters in her own imperialist image.
________________________________________
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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Hillary Clinton at the Democratic Debate. (photo: Travis Dove/NYT)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Hillary's No Neo-Con. She's Far More Dangerous
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
18 January 16
ack in September 2013, well before Bernie Sanders decided to run for
president, the liberal journalist Peter Beinart called attention to the
leftward swing among Democratic Party voters, marked by Elizabeth Warren's
popularity and Bill de Blasio's victory in the Democratic primary for mayor
of New York City. More to the point, Beinart explicitly challenged Hillary
Clinton to move left and ride the new wave to power - or risk getting
overwhelmed by what he called "The Rise of the New, New Left." The following
month, I responded with "Don't Let Hillary Housebreak the New New Left."
Beinart's choice of labels was wildly misleading. For those who missed his
reference, the original New Left of the 1960s - best embodied by Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS) - initially looked toward the kind of
Democratic Socialism that Bernie Sanders now proclaims. We gave radical,
mostly white support to the civil rights movement, usually leaning toward
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). We opposed both sides
in the Cold War, seeing both as promoting nuclear disaster. We broke with
the mainstream refusal to cooperate with Communists, an ideological
prohibition that encouraged witch hunts, red-baiting, and the stifling of
thoroughgoing social and economic reform.
And perhaps best known, we played a leading role in organizing the
campus-based opposition to the War in Vietnam, which Beinart's liberal
heroes - former vice president Hubert Humphrey, labor leaders Walter Reuther
and David Dubinsky, civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, and theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr - condemned us for doing.
Though Hillary and Bill opposed the war at the time, Beinart correctly
places her in the same political tradition as his liberal heroes, who forged
"the dominant ideology in American public life" long before the neo-cons
emerged. These liberals believed with FDR "that government should intervene
in society to solve problems that individuals cannot solve alone." And they
zealously insisted that the US should have, as I put it, "a muscular,
hyper-activist foreign policy, one with all the multilateral trappings of UN
resolutions and NATO-led coalitions, but still decidedly neo-colonial and
inescapably in the service of Big Oil and the merchants of death."
Hillary embodies this liberal imperialism and will do her best to groom the
new political generation that sees itself as liberal to follow her into
endless war, especially in the Middle East. That is why she is so dangerous.
She can do what neo-conservatives and paleo-conservatives and theological
conservatives never could. She can sell imperialism as a liberal,
humanitarian imperative.
Domestically, before Obamacare, Hillary fought for something approaching
universal health care, no matter how corporate and inadequate it was. By
contrast, America's number one neo-con, William Kristol, made his bones as a
hard-ass Republican right-winger by leading the fight to destroy what she
was trying to create. Which of them do you think will do better selling
self-identified liberals on war?
No doubt, many neo-cons will support Hillary. Some will serve as her
advisers, and one of their top leaders, Robert Kagan, has already started
calling himself a liberal interventionist. He sees the future if Hillary
becomes president, and he realizes she will build that future by drawing on
what the Democrats did in the past, not on what the neo-cons said and did
under George W. Bush.
Support for Israel? Woodrow Wilson, who preached "the self-determination of
nations," went along with Britain's Balfour Declaration, offering Palestine
as a homeland for the Jewish people. Harry Truman quickly recognized the new
Jewish State, and whenever it counted, the Democratic Party has sided with
Israel against the Palestinians.
Support for the Saudis? FDR forged Washington's initial alliance with the
Saudi monarchy to secure a supply of oil for the coming world war. Jimmy
Carter funded the mujahideen, the holy warriors, months before Soviet troops
invaded Afghanistan, and pledged to defend the Saudis in case the Soviets
extended their activism. His "Carter Doctrine" also committed the US to use
military force if needed to ensure the flow of oil and natural gas from the
entire region.
The Cold War? Harry Truman certainly pumped it up in Greece in 1947, though
historians have traced the conflict's origins back through decisions made
during FDR's alliance with the Soviets in World War II and Woodrow Wilson's
decision to join allied troops to fight against the Bolshevik Revolution in
1918.
And Vietnam? The American Friends of Vietnam, the loudest cheerleader for
interfering in the former French colony, was headed by a New Deal Democrat,
Leo Cherne, who also ran the International Rescue Committee and served as
Chairman of the Executive Committee of Freedom House. Two of his strongest
backers were Democratic senators John F. Kennedy and Mike Mansfield, who
joined with New York's right-wing Cardinal Spellman to help impose the
Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem to rule over the largely Buddhist South Vietnam.
These are just snapshots of the Democratic Party's past, which we all need
to understand in much greater breadth and depth. But trying to make the
neo-cons our number-one bogeyman is to make them far more important than
they were. It absolves the mainstream Democratic Party from the blame it so
richly deserves. And it makes it so much easier for Hillary Clinton to shape
a new generation of Democratic voters in her own imperialist image.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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