Left v. Liberal
I was at a talk tonight on the consequences of the "war on terror," the extreme violations of human rights being committed by the U.S. government in the name of freedom and safety. The speaker was David Cole, who is a constitutional lawyer who has been working with the ACLU for years.
While I agreed with most of his talk, I was bothered by his unquestioning assumption of the rhetoric of the war on terror. He assumed that Iraqis who resist U.S. occupation are indeed terrorists, rather than opting for a more sophisticated reading of the unrelated invasion of Iraq, the fabrication of the war on terror, and the subsequent elision of terrorist and enemy combatant that has enabled the U.S. to illegally imprison tens of thousands of people without charging them or giving them fair trials.
The other unsettling element of the talk came when a woman asked (in a way that was a provocation; that is she intended it to be a challenge) the speaker why he did not address the theory that 9/11 was orchestrated by the U.S. government. The audience reacted immediately, with several people booing or otherwise indicating their disbelief. Cole himself answered the question well, by arguing that focusing on conspiracy theories side tracks people from the larger issue of human rights violations that have been occurring since the WTC attack.
But this question clearly split the room; people who had seemed fairly united in their interest in the political question Cole raised and in their political identities became hostile to each other. Liberals who celebrate the founding fathers and the U.S. system of government as the best in the world would not tolerate any question about government-sponsored terrorism against its own people; torturing, illegally detaining, and killings foreigners, its seems, are acts that Americans can understand and even expect its government to commit, as long as they're committed against Other people. But a government that kills its own people cannot be conceived, and if it were it could have the power to undo the great American exceptionalism. The gap between the two sides was filled with the ringing of cognitive dissonance.
Talking this over later with my partner, we came to the realization that no matter what Cole believes happened on 9/11, to remain a credible, and to continue to straddle the gap between left and liberal, he can never give any credence to the theory. In fact, he must actively disavow it to emphasize that he is not fringe. The inability to publicly entertain a theory without the risk of being defamed and discredited seems to belie the delicate fiction on which this democracy is based.
While I agreed with most of his talk, I was bothered by his unquestioning assumption of the rhetoric of the war on terror. He assumed that Iraqis who resist U.S. occupation are indeed terrorists, rather than opting for a more sophisticated reading of the unrelated invasion of Iraq, the fabrication of the war on terror, and the subsequent elision of terrorist and enemy combatant that has enabled the U.S. to illegally imprison tens of thousands of people without charging them or giving them fair trials.
The other unsettling element of the talk came when a woman asked (in a way that was a provocation; that is she intended it to be a challenge) the speaker why he did not address the theory that 9/11 was orchestrated by the U.S. government. The audience reacted immediately, with several people booing or otherwise indicating their disbelief. Cole himself answered the question well, by arguing that focusing on conspiracy theories side tracks people from the larger issue of human rights violations that have been occurring since the WTC attack.
But this question clearly split the room; people who had seemed fairly united in their interest in the political question Cole raised and in their political identities became hostile to each other. Liberals who celebrate the founding fathers and the U.S. system of government as the best in the world would not tolerate any question about government-sponsored terrorism against its own people; torturing, illegally detaining, and killings foreigners, its seems, are acts that Americans can understand and even expect its government to commit, as long as they're committed against Other people. But a government that kills its own people cannot be conceived, and if it were it could have the power to undo the great American exceptionalism. The gap between the two sides was filled with the ringing of cognitive dissonance.
Talking this over later with my partner, we came to the realization that no matter what Cole believes happened on 9/11, to remain a credible, and to continue to straddle the gap between left and liberal, he can never give any credence to the theory. In fact, he must actively disavow it to emphasize that he is not fringe. The inability to publicly entertain a theory without the risk of being defamed and discredited seems to belie the delicate fiction on which this democracy is based.
posted by Ms. at 11:38 PM
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