Mutiny on the Manifesto

The Euston Manifesto is one of the most historically and politically realistic documents to come from the Left in, well, ever really.  For decades public intellectuals like Chomsky and Hobsbawn sided with failed ideologies and many a despot while the people with most to lose - true liberals - said little.  The Euston signers (or at least those who continue to stand by its content) applied a fairness to political ideology seldom seen among contemporary intellectuals.  I hope their commitment to the rule of reason and to consistency gets more adherents in the academic world, where it is most needed.  I am glad that all of you at Jewcy maintain a commitment to the free exchange of ideas, because if intellectuals refuse to stand with this, what's left, really?

Just another refuge for Jewish neo-cons who want to engulf the Middle-East in war to keep Israel safe. Let's call a spade a spade.

this seems to be yet another iteration of a trend on this website to trumpet itself as a haven for jewish leftists, but in truth to be peddling a warmed-over old-liberal platform. the very line "The manifesto was a seemingly uncontroversial document aiming to reassert classic liberal values" betrays a nostalgic and outdated craving for the old-left, perhaps even libertarianism.
cohen's book is poorly researched and reactionary to a fault. it dismisses out of hand some important contributions of the new left - multiculturalism, post-liberal theory and more.
i am also very uncomfortable with so-called leftist politicians and activists who get in bed with oppressive regimes and dictators for a narrow-minded political gain, but that is no reason to defend why he thought the war was right. IT WASN'T, AND IT CONTINUES NOT TO BE. yes, saddam was horrible. yes, it's good he is not in power anymore. that does not mean any means of getting to that point are justified. cohen's readings of dr. said are poor and knee-jerk.
if you are looking for a "better left," then this book is not it.

"Just another refuge for Jewish neo-cons who want to engulf the Middle-East in war to keep Israel safe"

Craig...how long will it take you to change the tagline at the top of the page??

Haven't you read Michael's continuing justifications for the Iraq war. Do you sill agree with him?

I'm a big believer in remaining open to the possibility that one's basic assumptions are wrong, so I certainly never exclude the possibility that over time I'll change my approach to a particular issue. But if someone told me that between, say, Richard Perle and myself, one would go to his deathbed believing that his support for the Iraq War was right, whereas the other would eventually conclude that he had made a mistake, I'd actually put my money on Richard Perle being the latter. I mean that as no insult to Richard Perle or compliment to myself, or vice versa.

I get called a "socialist" at Reason, a "neocon" at Jewcy, a Norman Finkelstein apologist at Commentary, and "cookie" at home.

I think I like "cookie" the best.

Thanks for admitting that you are more pro-war than Richard Perle.

BTW, Weiss, the definition of a neo-con is a liberal who is hawkish on war in the Middle-East. So you an be both a socialist and a neo-con.

"I get called a "socialist" at Reason, a "neocon" at Jewcy, a Norman Finkelstein apologist at Commentary, and "cookie" at home." Michael, you're sure you're not Jewish...??

BTW, Weiss, the definition of a neo-con is a liberal who is hawkish on war in the Middle-East. So you an be both a socialist and a neo-con.

Sorry, you can't be. I could write 10 more essays on trying to uncover the essence of neoconservatism, but your definition isn't even close. For starters, as a school of political philosophy, it was consolidated long before regime change in the Middle East was a consideration. Recall that Jeanne Kirkpatrick's "Dictatorships and Double Standards," which suggested that right-wing dictatorships -- in Iran and Latin America, mainly -- were more "stable" and preferable to U.S. interests than leftist revolutionary regimes, was the rosetta stone of neoconservatism up until 1986. What happened then? Paul Wolfowitz and Eliott Abrams and George Schultz convinced the Reagan administration to allow democracy to take hold in the Philippines. It was Ferdinand Marcos, meanwhile, who was feting Kirkpatrick and citing back to her from memory whole passages of her notorious Commentary essay! The crisis in the Balkans was the fitting sequel in which the interventionist neocons gained credibility. For a good, readable history, check out James Mann's Rise of the Vulcans, a collective biography of Bush's war cabinet.

Anyway, it's hard to pin down an ideological outcropping broad enough to encompass both Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Norman Podhoretz. Liberals "mugged by reality" was Irving Kirstol's famous definition, or as I would allegorize it: picture Bellow's Augie March slowly becoming Moses Herzog and there you go.

Whether you try to locate the germ of neoconservatism in the Schachtmanite line of American Trotskyism, Scoop Jackson cold war liberalism, Straussianism, or some Frankenstein hybrid of all three, the Middle East is only a very recent factor effecting neoconservatism's modern transformation. (It is true that Wolfowitz commissioned a study when he was in the Carter administration that predicted Saddam Hussein would invade a neighboring country, and that the Soviet Union would likely avert its hegemonic gaze from Europe to the Middle East. What an idiot, I know. But it took a while for his groupuscule's verdict to bubble to the surface at the American Enterprise Institute and the Defense Policy Review Board.)

Most of today's banner neocons are not even liberals, let alone socialists. That's actually my major complaint with the movement and why I'd only describe myself as a wary fellow traveler, up to a point. My reasons for supporting the war were, like Cohen's and Joey's, humanitarian wedded to the larger strategy of altering, for the better, U.S. policy in the Middle East. Also, I do think Saddam posed both an active and latent threat to the region and to the West, as I've tried to evidence in the blog and elsewhere. (I'm rarely challenged on these points, by the way. It's enough to just expectorate the n-word -- "neocon," that is -- and have done with it.)

I feel a greater moral responsibility, and thus a greater impinging shame, for my position than I'd expect those who opposed the war to feel. But I stress the importance of not confusing a noble cause with the incompetent realization of it. It's like watching a doctor commit malpractice and then deny he's at fault, to watch the spite and arrogance with which the current administration defends its war policies.

My only problem with segments of the antiwar crowd was and continues to be their apparent lack of concern for what happens to Iraq going forward. I'll entertain any debate about troop withdrawal, benchmarks, whether or not the surge is working, etc. (For instance, I got more out of Peter Galbraith's latest essay in the New York Review of Books than I did out of any hawkish white paper in recent memory.) But I haven't got patience for those who couldn't care less about the democratic and secular elements trying to repair a broken country. If you approach the subject this way because you're a committed isolationalist, sorry, beg to differ. If you approach it because you're covertly rooting for fascists and head-chopping religious fanatics to win, sorry, go to hell. Many on the left show their hands by rendering a catastrophic bombing or a particularly bloody day in Baghdad in terms of a dip in the president's approval rating. Go to hell. Sincerely, from the left.

As I tried to argue above, Iraq is much more important that a semi-literate scion who, through some macabre accident of history, found himself in the position of most important human being alive.

A new motto: Any Argument But Bush. Like it or not, it's on its way.

I have to shake my head in wonder.

As a Jew in the Diaspora, I have to shake my head and wonder at what is going on in Israel today.

Moving on to events in Jerusalem, I found that four International Solidarity Movement leaders from abroad were in the Holy City last Wednesday broadcasting live on radio in Berkeley, California (where else) that Israel has a purposeful plan to murder Palestinian children.

These four could remind one of the opening scene with the witches around the cauldron from Shakespeare's MacBeth.

Alison Weir runs an Arab front in the US called If Americans Knew where she dispenses propaganda that Israel indiscriminately murders Palestinians. Her website is filled with graphs and charts containing made up statistics skewing the number of Palestinians killed, as suicide bombers or terrorists are "civilians" who were "murdered" by the Israeli government. She tours colleges in America and has even spoken at law schools. She also has written columns for Nazis in America like David Duke and, until I exposed her doing so at ISM conferences, used to dispense literature claiming the Jews fomented the Holocaust to create Israel.

Greta Berlin, another American and Los Angeles-based ISM activist from Women in Black in the US, was also there. She was just in France trying to arrange an ISM flotilla from Crete to break the Israeli Navy's control of Gaza and to facilitate the transfer of weapons to Hamas. Berlin, a big blonde in her 60s, once had a Palestinian husband and says her "Palestinian" children own the land of Israel. She runs around with all the ISMers in America striving to destroy Israel through boycotts, funding for the fedayeen, and letters to the editor in the local newspapers accusing Israel of unspeakable atrocities that did not occur.

Then we have Mary Hughes, a British-American writer also affiliated with Women in Black from LA, and an acolyte of Norman Finkelstein, who claims the Jews use the Holocaust to make money. Mary put together a letter to the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra during a visit to LA that was signed by every anti-Semite and Israeli radical leftist in the world. While she's in Israel, it seems, when Arabs tell Mary and her ISM buddies that olives legally grown on deeded land belonging to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are Palestinian property, this 63-year-old phony "peace activist" assists the Arabs in stealing the produce, Mary acting as a human shield. Besides, when she and her ISM buddies are forced off property not belonging to them, she can then write in America about how the settlers are attacking "innocent" Arabs, instead of the other way around. Mary refers to the IDF as the IOF - Israeli Occupation Force.

Hedy Epstein is the only Jewess in the bunch. Hedy, who spent the Second World War in complete safety from the ravages of the Holocaust, claims she is a Holocaust survivor. She says she came from a family that was anti-Zionist in Germany before the war and that perished in the camps after Hedy was whisked off to England for protection. Of course, many of those Jews against a Jewish homeland before the Holocaust grew up after that awful event and now support a Jewish state. That is, all but the likes of a Hedy Epstein, who makes a living running around supporting the Arabs in their goal to dismantle Israel. I think the word is kapo.

All of these harpies are associates of Paul LaRudee, from the Northern California ISM. He was deported from Israel for suspected connections to Hamas a little over a year ago while trying to enter Israel under a false identification and passport. After fighting deportation, Paul went to Lebanon and became a human shield for Hizbullah. LaRudee claims he is "nonviolent," but he openly supports terrorism against Jews as "legitimate
These are internationals out to destroy Israel, not citizens practicing "free speech."
resistance." He should have joined his friends in Jerusalem, because no doubt the GSS and border control would probably have let him in this time.

Not one of these women is any less dangerous to Israel's existence and worldwide image than LaRudee, but they all got into the country. A police source told me that it's the price of democracy, but these are internationals out to destroy Israel, not citizens practicing "free speech" in their own land.

Using the logic of the Israeli authorities, I could expect to hear next on American radio:

"Live from Jerusalem! Ahmadinejhad and Nasrallah - speaking from Jerusalem Square and the Kotel! Reporting to you on their next Holocaust Tour! Sponsored by the Israeli security services and the Israeli government."

I bet that show would get high ratings in Berkeley.

Two intelligent posts in a row, from Michael and Lee.

I believe thats sets a Jewcy record.

Michael - I agree completely.  The argument about Bush is so tired as to redefine triteness.  I would add a second argument that really needs to be off the table - "the American empire." The powers (economic and to some degree military) wielded by the U.S. over much (but certainly not all) of the world, argue in favor of a moral obligation to Iraq, particularly to its Kurdish population, at this point in history. We cannot leave the mess to stew, and comparisons to various other moments in history (IE Vietnam, the Athenian expedition to Syracuse) miss the point, at least at this stage of things.  Isolationism repackaged as a concern with Western (=American) involvement in the Middle East is still isolationism.

Also, it is important to point out that neither the disengaged, largely academic "Neocons" (if one must use that word), many of whom are Straussians to some degree or other, and the much larger contingent of intellectual refugees from radicalism in goverment, academia, and other aspects of public life, were concerned with Middle Eastern policy (other than a normal and cautious support of Israel) until very recently.  Support of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq conflict and the support of assorted mujahadeen in Afghanistan were not neoconservative decisions, but broadly based American policy ideas, however ill-founded they were...

If this thread proves anything, it is the fact that most of the people vomiting up condemnatory nonsense about neoconservatism haven't got a clue as to what it actually is. Which is not mention the obvious antisemitic connotations.

Any argument that the occupation of Iraq was good but only the execution was flawed, so therefore the occupation must continue because our intentions were good--despite the horrific results--reminds me of the novel "Madame Bovary." Her husband is a humble country physician and in order to advance herself in life she convinces him to perform an operation to repair a boy's clubfoot. The problem is that the procedure is new and her husband lacks the experience to perform it. But she nags him into it. But as anyone could predict, it goes horribly wrong and another surgeon ends up amputating the boy's leg to save his life. He makes no bones about the husband being a "bloody fool" to even have attempted such an unnecessary operation.

The end result of this is that NOONE gets what they had wanted. Bovary herself feels guilty for having talked the boy into it, the husband is discredited as a physician, and the boy must hobble around on an artifical leg for the rest of his life. If you had written the novel, of course, the husband would have simply waited a few Friedman Units until the gangrene magically disappeared and the boy commenced leaping around on a newly sound foot. Whatever it took to give the lie to the operation's foolhardiness in the first place. Sorry, it doesn't work that way in real life.

Anonymous, believe what you will about the U.S. and our intentions and ends, but the idea that Saddam Hussein's Iraq (bellicose, genocidal, totalitarian, corrupt) can in any reasonable way be compared to the club-footed Hippolyte in Madame Bovary (an innocent victim) is just plain nuts. Really.

Sorry, anon. 11:21, but the Jewcy record for consecutive intelligent posts has not been set. Michael is wrong, but intelligent. Lee , on the other hand, is a garden-variety ideologue, trafficking the same tired inanities we've heard from Zionist apologists for years.

Best to ignore such zombies, but in the interest of education....

1. Alison Weir's work is quite sound, statistically speaking. Does Lee have a source for his contention that she makes up her numbers? Or that her site is an Arab front?

2. Greta Berlin writes letters to the editor in support of her beliefs? Hang the witch! And she's trying to break the criminal blockade of Gaza? Urging the respectable and peaceful means of boycotting to bring the metastasizing Zionist project to heel? Unthinkable!

3. It took Lee until #3, Mary Hughes, to fire off the Finkelstein grenade. Lee, AIPAC called. They insist that Finkelstein must be referenced in any discussion of Israel no later than point #2. You've been warned.
For those interested in accuracy, Finkelstein never said, as Lee would have it, that "the Jews use the holocaust to make money". What he said is that some Jewish organizations and their attorneys, charged with seeking compensation for the victims, acted malodorously. He documents this charge quite convincingly in "The Holocaust Industry" (have you read it? Or does your info come directly from Dershowitz's shrivelled teat?) and is joined in his opinion by Raul Hilberg and, most recently, numerous holocaust survivors in Israel, who claim the Germans are doing better than their own gov't, whose funds for this purpose come from those Finkelstein accuses.

4. Regarding Hedy Epstein, I haven't heard "Jewess" used in the recent past except in the most pomo and ironic fashion or by superannuated bigots. I don't think you're particularly pomo. And are you saying that those unfortunates who, while managing to themselves escape to safety, lost their entire families to the vicious crimes of the Nazis ought not be considered holocaust survivors? Is Epstein to be condemned because she lived?

Anyway, what does your post have to do with the fact that some wise folks are waking up to the problems of the Euston manifesto?

AKA Trotskyite liberal pretending to have given up lib'ism (converts are TEH WURST!) to get what he wants.

Weiss, keep trying to turn politics into politicography (like history into historiography). Have a nice day.

What the hey is a "garden variety ideologue"? Anyway, I won't answer for Mr. Kaplan, but I am compelled to write this much:

1. If you are genuinely curious, I invite you to visit this link, where you will find a handy list of the numerous abominable distortions on Alison Weir's website.

2. I've never heard of Greta Berlin, but Mr. Kaplan's charge was not that she merely expresses her opinion, and your insinuation to the contrary is plainly false.

3. It is fairly obvious from your vile reference to Israel as "the metastasizing Zionist project" that you are no friend to that country, but if you would for some reason like to read some legitimate criticism of Norman Finkelstein, please go here.

4. You exhibited astounding chutzpah by ranting for as long as you did about something unrelated to the topic (aside from the perfunctory and childish "Michael is intelligent, but wrong" remark), and then accusing someone else of threadjacking.

As for the Euston Manifesto - it rocks. Yes, that's perfunctory and childish, but at this point it's intentional, self-aware dramatic irony. Thank you, thank you.

If this article were a joke, it might be funny. But apparently Mikey is actually serious about this stuff. The Euston Manifesto is about as relevant Super Mario Cart, Nintendo 2. "Did you sign the Euston Manifesto yet?" Mikey asks, "If you have any self-respect at all or any intellectual credibility whatsover then you gotta sign it, man."

Well, I happen to think that until Touchy (formerly known as Squeaky) volunteers himself for the war that he advocates, there's absolutely no reason to take any of his arguments on anything seriously.

Because mutiny on the bounty's what we're all about
I'm gonna board your ship and turn it on out
No soft sucker with a parrot on his shoulder
'Cause I'm bad gettin' bolder - cold getting colder
Terrorizing suckers on the seven seas
And if you've got beef - you'll get capped in the knees
We got sixteen men on a dead man's chest
And I shot those suckers and I'll shoot the rest

(chorus) Most illingest b-boy - I got that feeling
Cause I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'...

Mateo-

To take your points in order:

1. I went to the website you supplied, Discover the Networks, which appears to be an ejaculation from the loins of the raving imbeciles at Frontpagemag.
I found no evidence that Alison Weir cooked her figures (though lots of assertions to that effect), nor that her site is an Arab front. Since these were my two questions, your reply is unresponsive.
Point:me

2. Here's you:
"I've never heard of Greta Berlin, but Mr. Kaplan's charge was not that she merely expresses her opinion, and your insinuation to the contrary is plainly false."
Here's your homeboy Kaplan:
"She runs around with all the ISMers in America striving to destroy Israel through boycotts, funding for the fedayeen, and letters to the editor in the local newspapers accusing Israel of unspeakable atrocities that did not occur."

Disregarding the ridiculous and unsourced claim that she and the ISM fund the fedayeen, supporting boycotts and writing letters sound like expressing one's opinon to me.
To be fair, Kaplan did also accuse her of attempting to smuggle arms to Hamas and challenging the Israeli armed forces with rafts, but I ignored these psychotic and unsourced charges to spare Kaplan more embarrassment than his drooling screed already provided.
Point: me

3. Finally, you're getting close to accuracy: I am no friend of the Zionist regime in Israel, although I know some lovely Israelis and I protest the murder of blameless Israeli civilians as much as the murder of Palestinian innocents.
As for your notion of "legitimate" criticism of Finkelstein (the renowned Discover the Networks again-your favorite source, I gather), anyone who claims that Finkelstein is a "disciple" of David Irving has instantly teleported him or herself from the planet of consensual reality. Finkelstein did, of course, comment favorably on Irving's scholarship regarding the politics of Germany before and during WWll, but in this he is no different from most mainstream historians, who recognize that Irving's work in this area was original and useful, despite his encapsulated derangement regarding the holocaust. Finkelstein's appreciation of Irving's work, like that of most historians, does not include Irving's crazed holocaust denial, regarded by most scholars as analogous to Linus Pauling's wacky nutritional beliefs, which co-existed with his solid scientific work.
Point:me

4. You got me; I'll cop to having chutzpah.
Point: Mateo

Game: me

Some chutzpah, huh?

Don't quit your day job.

You can give yourself as many "points" as you like; you're the only one playing a game.

Understand that your retorts rely primarily on ad hominem attacks, playground language, and opinions presented as fact.  If you would like to supply your credentials as an historian, a statistician, an analyst, etc. - i.e., if you would like to provide any relevant bona fides at all - then please go for it.  Otherwise, you're just a loquacious guy/gal with an opinion and a thesaurus, and in all honesty you express yourself in a manner nearly identical to that of the "raving imbeciles" who you say run FrontPageMag.

You're either here to listen to yourself type, or to persuade others who believe differently from yourself.  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter, so here's some friendly advice: As long as you throw out churlish ad hominems instead of reasoned arguments, those people whose minds you're presumably trying to change will not take you seriously.

More friendly advice: If you're going to be hanging out here, get yourself a profile name, at least, lest you get confused for all the other Anonymouses running around.

Mateo-

1. I don't use a thesaurus. All those lovely words live in my head.

2. What in the world would my (or anyone's) credentials have to do with anything? Are you saying that if I supplied you with a satisfactory pedigree you'd find my comments more acceptable?

3. You're on to something in suggesting that I was enjoying myself more than I was attempting to change your mind. I figured I'd be unlikely to persuade anyone who relied on Discover The Networks for intellectual cover anyway and its a slow Saturday.

4. "Churlish ad hominems" Yeah, I'm addicted to 'em when describing FrontPage and people like Kaplan. There are serious opponents of my views with whom I'm happy to carry on civilly, but guys like the aforementioned are unlettered and simple-minded ideologues (by the way, you didn't really wonder what "garden-variety ideologue" meant, did you?). One either derides them or leaves them alone entirely.

5. Way to ignore any of my substantive remarks. There were a few, you know, nestled among the ad hominems. In a related matter, "playground language" puzzled me. What playgrounds did you hang out at?

6. Thanks for your other friendly advice. Yeah, I think you're right about the profile name.

1. Glad to hear it.

2. Credentials are important. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but if you want to be taken seriously, it helps to have some legitimate experience in the field you're discussing. You stated earlier: "Alison Weir's work is quite sound, statistically speaking." If you have experience working in statistics, a degree in statistics, or even took a statistics class at one point in your life, that counts as a "credential" that might support your claim. Also, if you have experience with the relevant raw data, that'd help too. If you have no experience with statistics, there's no reason to place special weight on the statement of yours that I just quoted.

3. I do not rely on Discover the Networks for "intellectual cover." It's a useful research tool, but it's not "intellectual cover." But thanks for the false accusation.

4. Please give examples of "serious opponents" of your views, as distinct from those whom you would deride via ad hominem. My gut feeling is that anyone who disagrees with you is subject to verbose derision, but I invite you to prove me wrong.

5. I suggested a few prerequisites for having your substantive remarks treated seriously, such as not calling people names (such as "unlettered and simple-minded ideologues"). In case you don't know, name-calling = playground.

6. Go for it.

My last comment concerning the mabifesto on Harry's Place was that it was dead. This brought absolutey no responce. I had been a signer of the manifesto, but had reservations about its relivance as a charter document for American Liberalism. I believed that the Manifesto has serious short comings, not the least of it, is its ties to the war in Iraq. My criticism of that war are as follows. The Bush administration failed to listen to the military concerning undertaking a war with out sufficient military resources, and even when it was apparent that success in Iraq was going to be dependent on an enlarged military, the Bush administration refused to enlarge the Army. The Bush administration refused to raise taxes to pay for the war, the main reason for the failure to enlarge the army was that ir required a tax raise, and that would undercut the Bush administration's domestic tax cut policy. The administration of the war itself, as opposed to the actually military campaign, was very sloppy. An enormous amount of captured Iraqi explosive and munitions, now being used by Iraqi terrorists was left behind unguarded as the Army invaded Iraq. The future Iraqi terrorists simply walked in and took the unguarded explosives.

The Bush administration screwed up royally, by lying about the reasons for the war before the invasion of Iraq, thus as the war unraveled, public confidence was lost. Considering the monumental mistakes of the Bush administration in launching and fighting the war, and the continued refusal of the Bush administration to generate enough military power to win the war, Liberals would be well served to wash their hands of it. The fact that the manifesto did not acknowledge the Iraa problems is a significant weakness.

There are several significant gaps in the Manifesto as a charter for 21st century liberalism. Most significant is the failure to address the problem of Global climate change. Norm Geras is a brilliant thinker who owes as much to John Stuart Mill as he does to Karl Marx. But Geras appears to have not thought about the implications of global climate change for liberal democracy. I believe that this issue will be the most significant confronting democratic societies in the 21st century, and any pereported charter for liberalism in the 21st century out to look at ways for liberals to address climate issues.

Really? Global climate change will be the #1 problem facing democratic societies in the 21st century? Not the spread of Islamic fundamentalism? Please, get your head out of the sand.

"Really? Global climate change will be the #1 problem facing democratic societies in the 21st century? Not the spread of Islamic fundamentalism? Please, get your head out of the sand." - Balrog

Laughing! Surely you must be joking. Tak a look at what NASA scientist James Janson has to say about global warming and sea level rise:

http://www.xanga.com/bartoncii/593390088/hanson-on-ice.html

Must chime in to express my gratitude to Mateo for that Weir link, so I could see who actually knew what he was talking about.

"Israeli forces launched a highly successful, Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack on Egypt [and thereafter] occupied the additional 22 percent of Palestine that had eluded it in 1948"

Jews did Pearl Harbor!!!1 But seriously, you just can't pretend you're being honest anymore, after "Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack". That's game over. Alison Weir loses.