Is A Leftist Necessarily Anti-War?

One of the interesting revelations in the recently published memoir of former Obama Administration Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama opposed the 2007 troop surge in Iraq for political reasons.  The two were then contesting their party’s presidential nomination for 2008.  Each plainly recognized that a pro-war stance would be harmful to his or her candidacy among the liberals who constitute the bulk of the Democratic Party.

My how things have changed.

Historically, the American left was not hostile to U.S. military action.  The Progressive Movement, the progenitor of modern liberalism, first gained significant influence under President Theodore Roosevelt of “speak softly – carry a big stick” fame.  He was hardly leery of using U.S. military forces around the globe.

In 1917, President Wilson, another domestic liberal, joined World War I promising to “make the world safe for democracy”.

[An ironic twist – nearly a century later, President Bush cemented his bête noire reputation on the left by waging war in Iraq to “bring democracy to the Middle East”.]

Liberal icon FDR aided the war efforts of England and the USSR prior to Pearl Harbor despite promises that he would keep America out of World War II.  [Interestingly, in light of present alignments on questions of which party is inclined to use military force, GOP members tended to be isolationists prior to Dec. 7, 1941.]

Harry Truman, another man of the left, sent U.S. forces to Korea to counter the North Korean invasion of the South.

 

JFK, liberalism’s darling, promoted U.S. participation in Vietnam.  And LBJ, the father of the massive governmental expansion embodied in the Great Society, increased U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. 

This history of the left and the employment of military power should not be a surprise.  If anything, one would expect liberalism and support for force overseas to go hand in hand.  The left favors the expansion of government at home; the military is a tool for exercising the power of the U.S. government abroad.

Political philosophy,therefore, does not explain the aversion of modern day liberals to asserting U.S. authority overseas.  So why, as a practical matter, are they opposed to the use of military force?

Do liberals like America?  I don’t mean to suggest that most are anti-American.  But maybe the U.S. position in the world, still pre-eminent, generates feelings of embarrassment and guilt on the left, as if that dominance is undeserved.  Do they lack pride in the country of their birth?

Remember the President’s response in 2009 when questioned in Europe about America’s sense of exceptionalism?  “I’m sure others think their countries are exceptional, too.”

One could explain that response as merely a display of good manners (not wanting to give offense) in a foreign land.  But President Obama’s broad  record suggests that he was merely being candid.  He doesn’t believe the U.S. should consider itself to be exceptional.  The President views our standing in the world as a matter of luck and geography and is not the result of national character and moral superiority as most Americans prefer to believe.  His fellow leftists agree.

Naturally, therefore, today’s liberals challenge the assertion of U.S. authority:  we have no right to do so.

 

How did the left come to take a view of America’s purported goodness so different from that of fellow liberals 50 years ago and earlier?  Was it the turmoil of the 1960s which saw sharp hostilities over Vietnam and, among many, a desire for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese enemies to win?  Was the frequent burning of U.S. flags by leftists an expression of their hatred for their country?

Actress Jane Fonda traveled to Hanoi to lend her support to her hosts.  Later she was wildly applauded by the Hollywood crowd at the Academy Awards.  At the time, she was married to hard core-leftist Tom Hayden.  Was she expressing a hatred for America echoed by many others on the left?

 

Did Vietnam “cause” a sea change in the left’s attitude toward what had been viewed previously across ideological boundaries as America’s destiny to provide a beacon for the rest of the world?

 

The history of the past fifty years would say so.

Consequently, one can predict today the left’s reaction to future involvement overseas.  If efforts are seen to advance America’s interests, the left will be opposed.  Consider the recent past.  Name the area:  Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran.  The response was always the same.  The negative reaction was paramount despite genuine human rights’ concerns that the left highlights.  (Does anyone believe that recent advances for women in Afghanistan – school attendance, for instance – will survive the return of the Taliban which will almost surely follow our withdrawal?) 

Why Care What the Public Thinks About Foreign Affairs?

The media are fascinated by polls of the general public ranging from America’s views of presidential candidates to evaluations of U.S. policy in Syria and Yemen.

 

I want to suggest that the public’s choices among candidates are appropriate topics for media discourse; foreign policy warrants a very different verdict.

It is hard to underestimate the general public’s ignorance of foreign affairs.  And this absence of knowledge is not a new development.

 

Fifty years ago, in the midst of the Cold War, over 50% either did not know or thought that the USSR was a member of NATO (an organization established after World War II to oppose the communist empire)!

[Public ignorance is not confined to areas beyond our borders.  Recently 60% of poll respondents were unable to name all three branches of the Federal government and 70% did not know the names of their senators.]

It’s easy for those of us who follow politics and national affairs to feel smug.  But such an attitude of superiority is usually unwarranted.

Why should the office worker in New Jersey or the farmer in Nebraska bother with the details of U.S. policy in Syria?  Most Americans have a need to keep abreast only of events that directly impact them, whether it’s the state of schools in the neighborhood or the price of wheat on the local commodities exchange.  Unless people have a special interest in the subject, foreign affairs will rarely pique their interest absent some disaster affecting Americans (9/11, for instance).

 

Fair enough.  But recognizing this reality should cause one to question the value of the opinions of people who essentially know nothing about the subject.

So be sure to keep this truth in mind the next time you read a poll expressing the public’s opinion of this or that overseas problem.

Economic Ignorance and the Minimum Wage

An interesting fact of economics is that ignorance about it cuts across partisan and ideological lines.

Take efforts to raise the minimum wage from the current level of $7.25 to $9.00 an hour: unsurprisingly, Democrats overwhelmingly (87%) back it. Independents (68%) and GOP voters (50-47%) approve. Unexpectedly, one third of Tea Party supporters, self-proclaimed backers of economic sanity and public fiscal responsibility, want a hike in the minimum wage, too.

 Economics by fiat obviously has a great deal of appeal. Who can be opposed to people making more money? What a simple solution –just pass a law.

 Of course it’s too good to be true. If economic fiats worked, why stop at $9.00? Why not $50.00 or whatever?

 But people, even those on the left, intuitively understand that wouldn’t work. That’s why most politicians favoring an increase focus on a hike to the ten dollar range instead of, for instance, $15.00 (as chosen by the very liberal Washington D.C. City Council). Their thinking is that a “modest” rise of about 25% would be OK while doubling would be too much.

 The economic reality, however, is effected by any fiat, no matter how minor the raise is supposed to be.

Businesses are operated – and should be – with the profit motive as the primary impetus. As Adam Smith persuasively argued two and a half centuries ago, a pursuit of one’s self-interest in the economic sphere is the engine of success for the businessman and his customers.

 Increasing business labor costs have consequences. The more competitive the business environment, the narrower is the profit margin and the greater the impact of a minimum wage hike. The businessman can increase the price of his product (which may not be feasible in a particular marketplace due to the pricing of competitors) or he can reduce the number of employees and/or substitute machines for workers. (Do you not think there’s a labor saving motivation for the substitution of ATMs for bank tellers? Or grocery store self-checkout aisles for cashiers?)

Considered from this perspective, any minimum wage set by the government can have consequences that are actually harmful – certainly not helpful – to those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

[It’s worth noting that the minimum wage question affects only about 5% of the workforce, but as its wide support suggests, it has broad appeal beyond that number.]

Terrorism – Is that America’s Enemy?

George Bush’s Administration coined the phrase “war on terrorism” post 9/11.  Everyone knew what it meant.  The terrorists were Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and its adherents world-wide.

But there was a lack of precision in that label that has led to confusion in identifying America’s enemies.

President Obama has been notoriously hesitant to use the word “terror”.

So when an Army major, who had previously professed his sympathy for Al Qaeda, killed 13 of his fellow soldiers in 2009, the Administration called the event “workplace violence” instead of a terrorist act.

Leave aside whether the characterization was accurate, was it terrorism?

No.  Terror is a tactic meant to intimidate.  It is used to frighten one’s foes into ceasing resistance or acquiescing to one’s objectives.

 

As such, terrorists usually target civilians.  The purpose is to weaken their support for their military and government.

Some examples:  Nazi Germany’s London bombing campaign in the early stages of World War II.  Later, Britain’s fire-bombing Dresden and America’s nuclear explosion over Hiroshima.  [Yes, the U.S. has resorted to terror, too.  It broke the Japanese will to resist further and ended the Pacific war.]

In reality, then, the fight against Al Qaeda is miscast as a war on terror.  Of course, the demolition of New York’s twin towers fits but does the attack on the Pentagon the same day?

Was Major Hassan trying to affect American policy or kill as many Fort Hood soldiers as possible?

Were the Boston bombers making a political statement or trying to murder or maim the maximum number of people?

 

Take the radical Islamists at their word.  They want to kill westerners and Americans in particular.  Violence can be a tactic; it can also be an end in itself.  For our enemies, “death to infidels” is not merely a chant.  It’s their motivation. 

So what difference does the label make?  Is it mere semantics?

 

I suggest not.  To fight effectively, we must know who the enemy is.  It is not a tactic.