Three years into the Iraq crime, very few things appear to have changed. American polls are touted as saying the American public is now firmly against the war. Contrary to the obvious assumption underlying the reveling in the poll results the only thing revealed is that American sentiment is roughly the same now as it was before the start of the war. If we can remember that far back, the US public was against the war by more than two to one. It was only after the US govt initiated the attack did the public pick up on the 'now that we're there' byline. Even more the white press' staid analysis of it all defiantly insists, on one hand, that the neoconservatives were right or, on the other hand, that although it started off as a plausible idea, most now agree that we made a mistake. This thought trap is the most current recycling of the American exceptionalism marking all US military crimes.
No matter how hard we try to do good, we so often seem to do bad.
And that's the Left, not the Right. Or at least what passes for the Left in America. More accurately, I should say, that's the white Left. The opinions of the true core of the American Left, black America, are ignored by the white press as well as the white Left, in general. Instead preferring the swing vote model where the most conservative voices of the US Left, usually 100% white, are given the megaphone and are considered relevant or serious. Black opinion reflected in black press is, as usual, light years away from US govt policy and only slightly less further away from the white American Left. The white Left maintains what little credibility remains for it among the white American masses by doing it's best, aided and abetted by the corporate media they claim to deplore, to disguise this fact. The white press in England plays the same game, constraining thought to narrow parameters, reserving the right to bring democracy to the next perceived threat. Maybe Iran. Some may read this and say that it isn't black and white, it's rich and poor. That is the preferred analysis of the white Left, class not race. That analysis, while demonstrably wrong, remains the favorite of the white Left because it continues to delay an examination of whiteness and instead pretends that black and white opinion are basically the same when viewed through the prism of class. Of course viewing it as only incidental that so many of the people in a certain class are black. Class, not race. Remember that.
But Iraq. Yes, Iraq. The current administration and the Congress is full of war criminals who, if held to the standards declared acceptable at Nuremberg, would be subject to the death penalty. But that's another essay. First we have to be able to agree on the very basic tenet that the Iraq war was not a mistake but a premeditated crime. I wish I could report that there was agreement within the American Left on that point. It would be an improvement if I could report that a raging debate was going on around that point. However, the point is virtually conceded that, like other US foreign misadventures, Iraq was a blunder. A mistake made based on bad information. Forget that the US never attacks countries that actually have arsenals, that actually might be a threat to their neighbors, no less the American island of power. Forget that. And while you're at it, forget all of history and lay aside all common sense and power of reason. Forget IraqGate '91. Forget Panama. Forget Haiti. Forget Iran in '53. Forget Vietnam. Forget everything. These are the prerequisites to adopting the white arguments regarding Iraq. Deal only with the 'bad intelligence' of the present and forget everything else, history, common sense, everything. Only from that perspective does the analysis of the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, ABCNNBCBS and FOX make any sense at all.
Even as I write this, the current drama unfolding within the white Left is how to deal with Senator Feingold from Wisconsin, who is suggesting a resolution to censure Bush for illegal wiretapping. First, is not suggesting that Bush should be censured for killing Iraqis, but for spying on Americans. See the racism? But even in making this meager suggestion, the story becomes, instantly, not about what Bush has done but about why Feingold is doing this and Feingold's '08 presidential aspirations and whether or not Feingold is going too far. I know right wing media have a part to play in this but if we are to be honest, white Dems and a few black Dems, are right wing so the characterizations of them, while disgusting, are, as in this case, too often accurate.
What Should And Could Be Happening
There are representatives on the political Left that could move the debate forward if they weren't hamstrung by the white moderates posing as the American Left.
Barbara Lee
Cynthia McKinney
John Conyers
John Lewis
Dennis Kucinich
And there are others who are undermined by white moderates and thus rendered ineffective in Congress and in the media. Instead of being lifted up, they are undercut by the Democratic Party and other institutions fronting as the Left. While not the first, I would like to appeal to whites of conscience to avoid the racist dynamic of waiting for blacks on the Left to speak up about the racism on the Left (only to of course be labeled a disruption by other whites). Do the right thing. The racism of the Left makes change impossible. Point it out! And go a step further and call the hypocrisy what it is. Racism! Don't wait for the minority of blacks in the room, that are barely keeping their lunch down, to say something. On Iraq, on electronic voting, on Katrina, on immigrant rights, on most of the issues of the day, there is a racial component at the core that must be addressed by both black folks and whites of good conscience. Together, and only together, the hypocritical gatekeeper of US empire, the American Left, can be toppled.
