{"id":79333,"date":"2020-07-07T16:55:58","date_gmt":"2020-07-07T16:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2020\/07\/07\/quest-donc-la-gauche-antiwardevenue\/"},"modified":"2020-07-07T16:55:58","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T16:55:58","slug":"quest-donc-la-gauche-antiwardevenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2020\/07\/07\/quest-donc-la-gauche-antiwardevenue\/","title":{"rendered":"Qu&rsquo;est donc la gauche-<em>antiwar<\/em>\u00a0devenue\u00a0?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><h2 class=\"titleset_a.deepgreen\" style=\"color:#75714d; font-size:2em\">Qu&rsquo;est donc la gauche-<em>antiwar<\/em> devenue ?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Dans nos jeunes ann\u00e9es (celles de ce site, moins de son capitaine), qui furent celles notamment de l&rsquo;encha&icirc;nement 9\/11-Afghanistan-IrakII apr\u00e8s l&rsquo;annonce de la s\u00e9quence par le signal que constitua l&rsquo;inf\u00e2me guerre du Kosovo, nous avions pris l&rsquo;habitude sympathique de nous retrouver aux c\u00f4t\u00e9s de nombre de \u00ab\u00a0lib\u00e9raux\u00a0\u00bb (en fait, politiquement des \u00ab\u00a0progressistes\u00a0\u00bb) am\u00e9ricains. Cela impliquait des alliances inattendues sur le terrain politique. Effectivement, des libertariens, isolationnistes de la droite populiste comme Justin Raimondo, travaillaient dans le m\u00eame sens qu&rsquo;un Tom Engelhardt ou un Glenn Greenwald. C&rsquo;\u00e9tait une perspective immense et intense, comme l&rsquo;\u00e9taient les foules de millions de gens oppos\u00e9s \u00e0 l&rsquo;assaut contre l&rsquo;Irak, en janvier-f\u00e9vrier 2003, dans les rues des grandes villes du monde. Nous pensions que cette alliance multiple et diverse \u00e9tait promise \u00e0 durer pare que nous prenions toute cette cohorte pour des antiSyst\u00e8me, m\u00eame si le mot dans cette si particuli\u00e8re orthographe n&rsquo;\u00e9tait pas encore dans notre arsenal s\u00e9mantique. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>(Pour cette raison que nous croyions alors antiSyst\u00e8me ces gens qui sont ici le sujet de notre int\u00e9r\u00eat, nous ne les qualifions pas, selon le sentiment de l&rsquo;\u00e9poque, d\u00a0\u00bbam\u00e9ricanistes&rsquo; mais bien d\u00a0\u00bbam\u00e9ricains&rsquo;. Aujourd&rsquo;hui, c&rsquo;est &lsquo;am\u00e9ricanistes&rsquo; qu&rsquo;il faut \u00e9crire. Tout est d\u00e9j\u00e0 dit dans cette nuance.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Cela dura sans une ride, sans un tr\u00e9buchement, tout au long des mandats de GW Bush, qui virent, &ndash; c&rsquo;est l&rsquo;essentiel pour notre compte, &ndash; se d\u00e9ployer les premiers signes puissants de la folie destructrice de la \u00ab\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dedefensa.org\/article\/glossairedde-politiquesysteme-ii\">politiqueSyst\u00e8me<\/a>\u00ab\u00a0, &ndash; les guillemets s&rsquo;imposaient alors. Puis Obama, c&rsquo;est-\u00e0-dire Saint-Barack comme r\u00eave de le canoniser (ou dirait-on &lsquo;le droniser&rsquo; ?) le Vatican mis aux normes modernistes, descendit de son Olympe pour consentir \u00e0 nous diriger. Alors et subrepticement, mais tr\u00e8s vite par contre, les choses commenc\u00e8rent \u00e0 changer avec l&rsquo;esprit nouveau, \u00e0 la mesure de ce miracle v\u00e9ritablement divin d&rsquo;un semi-Africain-Am\u00e9ricain \u00e0 la Maison-Blanche, &ndash; c&rsquo;est-\u00e0-dire la pure-Vertu et l&rsquo;Innocence-n\u00e9e s&rsquo;installant dans le bureau ovale. BHO et sa &lsquo;<em>cool<\/em>titude&rsquo; (selon le jugement d&rsquo;Antoine de Caunes) semblaient repr\u00e9senter l&rsquo;accomplissement des caract\u00e8res fondamentaux de la modernit\u00e9 ; au reste, on jugera que c&rsquo;est doute vrai puisqu&rsquo;il poursuivit la politiqueSyst\u00e8me, mais plut\u00f4t <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dedefensa.org\/article\/bho-cest-gw-turbo\">en mode-<em>turbo<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>L&rsquo;essentiel de la cohorte le suivit, les yeux ferm\u00e9s et le sourire aux l\u00e8vres, embrassant les causes sacr\u00e9es des djihadistes en Syrie et des groupes n\u00e9o-nazis pay\u00e9s par les oligarques corrompus en Ukraine-Maidan, lib\u00e9r\u00e9e comme l&rsquo;on sait. Le reste gronde depuis ces temps novateurs comme un torrent, aliment\u00e9 par une haine de Trump survenu sur la grande sc\u00e8ne de l&rsquo;Effondrement du Syst\u00e8me et une adoration du progressisme-soci\u00e9tal <em>New-Age <\/em>(LGTBQ, antiracisme, etc., avec tous les gri-gris de la nouvelle-religion) ; au reste, cette haine et cette adoration mesurent finalement ce que cette \u00e9volution a accumul\u00e9 de frustration et de tension-torsion psychologique pour en arriver, pour cette gauche-<em>antiwar<\/em>, \u00e0 soutenir tout ce qu&rsquo;il y a de belliciste, d&rsquo;imp\u00e9rialiste, &ndash; et, pour notre compte, d&rsquo;absolument d\u00e9structurant. Finalement, nous sugg\u00e9rerions pour le cas de cette gauche<em>-antiwar<\/em> devenue &lsquo;<em>Anti-Antiwar Left<\/em>&lsquo;, un diagnostic de l&rsquo;ordre de la pathologie de la psychologie bien plus qu&rsquo;une posture id\u00e9ologique.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Mais certes, ils n&rsquo;ont pas tous disparu dans ce trou noir de l&rsquo;inversion. C&rsquo;est \u00e0 propos du livre de m\u00e9moires de l&rsquo;une des rares fid\u00e8les \u00e0 ses engagements et furieuse d\u00e9nonciatrice de cette \u00ab\u00a0gauche postmoderniste\u00a0\u00bb invertie, l&rsquo;une que nous avons d\u00e9j\u00e0 cit\u00e9e \u00e0 plus d&rsquo;une reprise (ici, la <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dedefensa.org\/article\/populisme-et-ue-1989-2018\">plus r\u00e9cente citation<\/a>), Diana Johnstone, qu&rsquo;a \u00e9t\u00e9 con\u00e7u le texte ci-dessous de James W. Carden. Johnstone a \u00e9crit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1949762130\/counterpunchmaga\">Circle in the Darkness<\/a>, pour d\u00e9crire cette pi\u00e8tre odyss\u00e9e de la trahison et de la transformation de la gauche-<em>antiwar<\/em> en une &lsquo;<em>Anti-Antiwar Left<\/em>&lsquo;. Carden cite parmi ces fid\u00e8les qui n&rsquo;ont jamais c\u00e9d\u00e9, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dedefensa.org\/article\/salut-a-un-gaulliste-americain\">notre ami<\/a> William Pfaff, \u00e0 qui il est ainsi rendu un juste honneur, &ndash; et il dit d&rsquo;eux, exprimant sans doute justement combien le fait d&rsquo;\u00eatre expatri\u00e9 leur a permis de garder un jugement aussi ferme que n\u00e9cessaire sur les \u00e9pouvantables turpitudes de leur pays sous l&#8217;empire du Syst\u00e8me :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"normal\" style=\"font-size:1.05em;\">\n<p><p>&laquo; <em>Johnstone fait partie d&rsquo;une lign\u00e9e d&rsquo;\u00e9crivains am\u00e9ricains expatri\u00e9s qui, peut-\u00eatre en raison d&rsquo;une objectivit\u00e9 conf\u00e9r\u00e9e par la distance, ont observ\u00e9 la conduite et l&rsquo;\u00e9volution de leur pays plus clairement que nombre de leurs contemporains demeur\u00e9s aux &Eacute;tats-Unis. Parmi les membres du club figurent William Pfaff, qui a \u00e9crit pendant de nombreuses ann\u00e9es depuis Paris, et le correspondant de longue date en Asie, Patrick Lawrence. Le livre de Johnstone, bas\u00e9e \u00e0 Paris, apporte un \u00e9clairage moral des questions de la guerre et de la paix qui sont, h\u00e9las, trop souvent absente de la plupart des \u00e9crits contemporains sur les affaires \u00e9trang\u00e8res. L&rsquo;absence quasi totale \u00e0 gauche <\/em>[des questions de la guerre et de la paix] <em>pendant les ann\u00e9es Trump devrait susciter la r\u00e9flexion et l&rsquo;inqui\u00e9tude. <\/em>&raquo;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><p>Carden passe en revue, bien entendu, un certain nombre de cas de personnalit\u00e9s de la gauche<em>-antiwar <\/em>devenues &lsquo;<em>Anti-Antiwar<\/em>&lsquo; tout en pr\u00e9tendant rester \u00ab\u00a0de gauche\u00a0\u00bb. Il prend notamment le cas du projet <em>The Intercept<\/em>, un site extr\u00eamement actif et puissant install\u00e9 en 2014-2015 et en d\u00e9crit rapidement certains aspects prompts \u00e0 la rendre suspect, et illustratif de cette &lsquo;<em>Anti-Antiwar Left<\/em>&lsquo;&hellip;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>(Mais il n&rsquo;aborde pas le cas de Glenn Greenwald, l&rsquo;un des fondateurs \u00e9ditoriaux d&rsquo;<em>Intercept<\/em>, homme fameux de la gauche-<em>antiwar<\/em> qui assura quasiment \u00e0 lui seul l&rsquo;odyss\u00e9e d&rsquo;Edward Snowden, qui est toujours en poste \u00e0 <em>Intercept<\/em>, qui \u00e9crit toujours dans un sens qui ne trahit pas ses engagements anciens [voir son <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2020\/06\/25\/should-the-populist-left-work-with-the-populist-right-where-they-have-common-ground-or-shun-them\/\">dernier travail<\/a>, tr\u00e8s int\u00e9ressant, sur la question des rapports des populismes de gauche et de droite]&hellip; <em>Intercept <\/em>reste une entreprise assez \u00e9nigmatique et la question de l&rsquo;\u00e9volution des antiSyst\u00e8me de gauche des ann\u00e9es 2000 tr\u00e8s compliqu\u00e9e.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Voici ce que Carden \u00e9crit sur <em>The Intercept <\/em>:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"normal\" style=\"font-size:1.05em;\">\n<p><p>&laquo; <em>Et puis il y a The Intercept, financ\u00e9 par un obscur milliardaire ayant des liens avec l&rsquo;Agence am\u00e9ricaine pour le d\u00e9veloppement international<\/em> [USAID]<em>, Pierre Omyidar. Sous la direction de Betsy Reed, ancienne r\u00e9dactrice en chef de Nation, The Intercept a donn\u00e9 la parole \u00e0 certaines des voix <\/em>[&lsquo;anti-Antiguerre&rsquo;] <em>les plus stridentes, notamment celles de James Risen, Robert McKay et du Britannique Mehdi Hasan. L&rsquo;enthousiasme de Mehdi Hasan pour une victoire du jihad sur l&rsquo;&Eacute;tat socialiste et multiconfessionnel syrien n&rsquo;est peut-\u00eatre pas surprenant compte tenu de ses opinions pass\u00e9es dans lesquelles il comparait les non-croyants \u00e0 des \u00ab\u00a0animaux\u00a0\u00bb.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>&raquo; <em>Dans une chronique d&rsquo;avril 2018 pour The Intercept, Hasan a \u00e9crit une lettre ouverte hyst\u00e9rique \u00e0 ceux qu&rsquo;il consid\u00e8re comme des \u00ab\u00a0apologistes d&rsquo;al-Assad\u00a0\u00bb pour le crime d&rsquo;avoir exprim\u00e9 du scepticisme concernant une s\u00e9rie d&rsquo;accusations d&rsquo;utilisation d&rsquo;armes chimiques par le r\u00e9gime syrien. \u00ab\u00a0A ceux d&rsquo;entre vous, \u00e0 l&rsquo;extr\u00eame gauche de l&rsquo;antiguerre, qui ont un faible pour le dictateur de Damas, je demande : Avez-vous perdu l&rsquo;esprit ? Ou n&rsquo;avez-vous pas honte ?\u00a0\u00bb, a fulmin\u00e9 Hasan. Ce qui a suivi a \u00e9t\u00e9 une litanie des crimes d&rsquo;Assad<\/em> [selon Hasan]<em> et ensuite, bizarrement, des assurances de Hasan que lui aussi s&rsquo;oppose aux zones d&rsquo;exclusion a\u00e9rienne, armant les rebelles et les actions de regime change<\/em>. &raquo;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><p>Il est vrai que Carden d\u00e9crit, relayant en cela Johnstone, un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne tr\u00e8s caract\u00e9ristique de notre temps, concernant \u00e0 la fois le groupe sujet du commentaire (la &lsquo;cohorte&rsquo; des &lsquo;<em>Anti-Antiwar Left<\/em>&lsquo;), \u00e0 la fois le comportement g\u00e9n\u00e9ral dans le champ de la politique au sens le plus large possible du mot, &ndash; embrassant notre fa\u00e7on de vivre, de penser et d&rsquo;agir. Le probl\u00e8me essentiel que nous identifions est le fait de voir \u00e9voluer des personnes et des groupes, &ndash; et cela vaut pour nous-m\u00eames, &ndash; selon des perceptions subjectives presqu&rsquo;exclusivement et non plus en partie seulement ; donc \u00e9voluant hors de logiques communes n\u00e9es de r\u00e9f\u00e9rences objectives, justement parce que ces r\u00e9f\u00e9rences objectives ont disparu.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><p>Il s&rsquo;agit bien entendu toujours du m\u00eame ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne, qui est \u00e0 notre sens le caract\u00e8re essentiel qui fait que notre \u00e9poque, notre \u00e8re de temps historique \u00e9lev\u00e9 au m\u00e9tahistorique, est \u00e0 nulle autre pareille. La puissance du syst\u00e8me de la communication a assur\u00e9 et maintient la destruction de ces r\u00e9f\u00e9rences objectives, participant essentiellement \u00e0 la d\u00e9sint\u00e9gration de la r\u00e9alit\u00e9, et nous place effectivement devant des ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes d&rsquo;\u00e9volution des esprits et des jugements que nous ne pouvions ni ne pouvons objectivement pr\u00e9voir.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><p>Ainsi, dans le cas de cette &lsquo;<em>Anti-Antiwar Left<\/em>&lsquo;, ce qui est surprenant n&rsquo;est pas le fait qu&rsquo;elle existe. (Il a toujours exist\u00e9 une gauche belliciste, et m\u00eame imp\u00e9rialiste, &ndash; et plus, beaucoup plus qu&rsquo;\u00e0 son tour !) Le plus surprenant est que des gens de la gauche-<em>antiwar <\/em>tels qu&rsquo;on les a connus soient devenus, sans sembler se trahir ni se corrompre, &ndash; c&rsquo;est notre hypoth\u00e8se et notre certitude, &ndash; des &lsquo;<em>Anti-Antiwar<\/em>&lsquo;. Le cas de Tom Engelhardt, que nous avons bien suivi dans les ann\u00e9es 2000 et tenons pour un commentateur d&rsquo;une honn\u00eatet\u00e9 exemplaire, est pour nous tr\u00e8s embl\u00e9matique de ce ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne o&ugrave; nul, dans cette cat\u00e9gorie morale, n&rsquo;est \u00e0 condamner m\u00eame si l&rsquo;on doit les combattre quand cela s&rsquo;impose.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Cette question des r\u00e9f\u00e9rences devenues des choix et des aventures personnelles par absence d&rsquo;existences objectives est compl\u00e8tement primordiale. Elle intervient sans doute, par exemple, dans le fait d\u00e9j\u00e0 signal\u00e9 plus haut que les commentateurs rest\u00e9s fid\u00e8les \u00e0 leur engagement initial sont souvent bas\u00e9s \u00e0 l&rsquo;\u00e9tranger, notamment \u00e0 Paris pour Pfaff et Johnstone, ce qui modifie notablement le jugement en suscitant une libert\u00e9 rare de choix des r\u00e9f\u00e9rences.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>(Paris et la France, quelles que soient leur situation, ont toujours \u00e9t\u00e9 b\u00e9n\u00e9fique aux &lsquo;exil\u00e9s&rsquo; venus des USA, comme des journalistes dans ce cas, et souvent comme les artistes et des \u00e9crivains de la litt\u00e9rature : l&rsquo;air de France semble plus propice au bon jugement de l&rsquo;Am\u00e9rique par les citoyens de ce pays, m\u00eame lorsque les Fran\u00e7ais\/les Parisiens sont dans un \u00e9pisode d&rsquo;abrutissement remarquable.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Ci-dessous, le texte de James W. Carden, publi\u00e9 le <a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2020\/07\/01\/the-return-of-the-anti-antiwar-left\/\">1<sup>er<\/sup> juillet 2020<\/a> sur <em><a href=\"http:\/\/CounterPunch.org\">CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><h4><em>dedefensa.org<\/em><\/h4>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>_________________________<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><h2 class=\"titleset_b.deepgreen\" style=\"color:#75714d; font-size:1.65em; font-variant:small-caps\">The Return of the Anti-Antiwar Left<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>In her recently published memoir, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1949762130\/counterpunchmaga\">Circle in the Darkness<\/a>, the author and journalist Diana Johnstone recalls that only \u00ab\u00a0a few decades ago, \u00ab\u00a0the Left\u00a0\u00bb was considered the center of opposition to imperialism, and champion of the right of peoples to self-determination.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Johnstone is part of a distinguished line of American expatriate writers, who, perhaps because of an objectivity conferred by distance, saw their country more clearly than many of their stateside contemporaries. Members of the club include <a href=\"https:\/\/harpers.org\/archive\/2014\/08\/armed-and-dangerous\/\">William Pfaff<\/a> who for many years wrote from Paris and the longtime Asia correspondent <a href=\"http:\/\/patricklawrence.us\/about\/\">Patrick Lawrence<\/a>. The Paris based Johnstone brings a moral clarity to matters of war and peace that is, alas, too often absent from most contemporary foreign affairs writing. Its near total absence on the Left during the Trump years should be cause for reflection, and concern.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>As Johnstone recounts, after the Cold War liberals became bewitched by the prospect of waging wars for humanitarian ends. A generation of journalists and foreign policy experts including Samantha Power, Christiane Amanpour, Jamie Rubin, and Christopher Hitchens, would make the Balkans a proving ground for their liberal theories of preventative war, in the process throwing the ancient and venerable tradition of St. Augustine&rsquo;s Just War theory on the trash heap and paving the way for what was to follow in the coming decades, including Iraq II, Libya, Syria and a global drone war and a \u00ab\u00a0targeted\u00a0\u00bb assassination program.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>At the time, Johnstone was one of the few who saw through the ruse, but, as she recalled, she couldn&rsquo;t get her articles published in the liberal press. According to Johnstone, Hitchens and Company saw to that. The wisdom of bombing Serbian civilians for 78 days in order to carve out a Muslim enclave in the middle of Europe (which in short order would be overrun by the Saudis, Albanian organized crime and human organ traffickers) was rarely questioned.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Indeed, among the bien-pensants, it was impermissible.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Today, skepticism of the mainstream narrative regarding both Russia and the war in Syria is likewise deemed out of bounds by the Left. It is fair to say that a 3 year non-scandal, Russiagate, ignited a cold war fever among liberals and self-styled progressives. Indeed, liberals who once took principled stands against the Iraq war, such as Tom Dispatch and Nation regular <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2003\/03\/thirty-year-itch\/\">Bob Dreyfuss<\/a>, transmogrified, after Trump&rsquo;s election, into frothing-at-the-mouth conspiracy theorists.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>By my count, during the course of the three year Russiagate ordeal, Dreyfuss wrote at least <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/authors\/bob-dreyfuss\/3\/\">30 articles<\/a> promoting the most ludicrous of the Russiagate conspiracies, among them that Russia was \u00ab\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/archive\/are-russias-friends-hiding-on-your-facebook-page\/\">hiding in your Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0\u00bb and that, variously, Paul Manafort, Felix Slater and\/or General Michael Flynn would, somehow, bring down Trump. That Dreyfuss would prove so credulous in the face of what was so clearly an absurd distraction is perhaps not surprising given his <a href=\"https:\/\/larouchepub.com\/eiw\/public\/1980\/eirv07n19-19800520\/eirv07n19-19800520_043-a_close_encounter_with_robert_mo.pdf\">past ties to Lyndon Larouche<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Others, even less discerning than Dreyfuss, but far, far hungrier for attention, have claimed that skeptics of the now discredited collusion conspiracy theory were themselves guilty of indulging in, you guessed it, conspiracy theories of their own.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>And so, if in the writings of Dreyfuss, The New York Times&rsquo; Michelle Goldberg, Mother Jones&rsquo; David Corn, The Atlantic&rsquo;s Franklin Foer, New York magazine&rsquo;s resident dolt Jonathan Chait, and many more besides, we can see the emergence of the anti-anti-Cold War Left, there has also reemerged alongside it the very vocal and ravenously unscrupulous anti-antiwar Left. And it is on the issue of the Syrian war on which the anti-antiwar Left has coalesced, inexplicably arguing for the wholesale takeover of a secular police state by the very same Islamist radicals who, if given the chance, would turn around and immediately kill them on the grounds of apostasy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>In Syria, the protests that began in 2011 were quickly overtaken by armed jihadists whose motto was \u00ab\u00a0Christians to Beirut, Alawis to the grave.\u00a0\u00bb Before he was murdered by Syrian rebels, the Jesuit missionary Father Frans vans der Lugt observed that \u00ab\u00a0From the start the protest movements were not purely peaceful. From the start I saw armed demonstrators marching along in the protests, who began to shoot at the police first. Very often the violence of the security forces has been a reaction to the brutal violence of the armed rebels.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>But many prominent voices in mainstream liberal media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and VICE turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the Islamist opposition in their hunger for a US-led regime change operation against Bashar al-Assad. And the war fever extended from the mainstream to the progressive Left.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>On the pages and website of the New York Review of Books one searches for genuine antiwar voices in vain. Instead what you most likely will come across are screeds such as the one issued by Janine di Giovanni. In her rage for another US-led war in the Middle East, di Giovanni <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/daily\/2018\/10\/16\/why-assad-and-russia-target-the-white-helmets\/\">channelled the ghost of Joseph McCarthy<\/a> and baselessly accused the antiwar journalist Max Blumenthal of, you guessed it, being in league with (who else?) the Russian government.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>And then there is The Intercept, funded by a shadowy billionaire with ties to the US Agency for International Development, Pierre Omyidar. Under the editorship of former Nation managing editor Betsy Reed, The Intercept has given space to some of the most strident anti-antiwar voices including those of James Risen, Robert McKay and the British-born Mehdi Hasan. Hasan&rsquo;s enthusiasm for a jihadi victory over the socialist, multi-confessional Syrian state is perhaps not surprising given <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/MehdiHasan_201601\">his past views<\/a> in which he compared non-believers to \u00ab\u00a0animals.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>In an April 2018 <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/04\/19\/dear-bashar-al-assad-apologists-your-hero-is-a-war-criminal-even-if-he-didnt-gas-syrians\/\">column<\/a> for The Intercept, Hasan penned a hysterical open letter to those he deemed \u00ab\u00a0al-Assad apologists\u00a0\u00bb for the crime of expressing skepticism regarding the latest round of accusations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime. \u00ab\u00a0To those of you on the anti-war far left who have a soft spot for the dictator in Damascus: Have you lost your minds? Or have you no shame?,\u00a0\u00bb cried Hasan. What followed was a lengthy iteration of Assad&rsquo;s crimes and then, oddly, reassurances from Hasan that he too stands against no fly zones, arming the rebels and regime change wars.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>So what, we might be forgiven to ask, was the point? It was simply a tedious exercise in moral preening. A speciality of the anti-antiwar Left.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Hasan&rsquo;s, example is instructive because, in his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spectator.co.uk\/article\/mehdi-hasan-please-please-please-can-i-work-for-the-daily-mail-\">obvious opportunism<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Jy9tNyp03M0\">sly fanaticism<\/a>, he exemplifies everything that a writer like Diana Johnstone is not and, by extension, much that is seriously wrong with the anti-antiwar Left.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Worryingly, the anti-antiwar Left is not going away. Indeed, it has some powerful allies-in-waiting should Joseph R. Biden win in November. In a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/transcript-joe-biden-foreign-policy-adviser-antony-blinken-on-covid-shortfalls-failures-in-syria\/\">interview with CBS<\/a>, Biden protege and former deputy secretary of state Antony Blinken bemoaned the fact that the Obama administration&rsquo;s regime change efforts in Syria didn&rsquo;t go nearly far enough.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Indeed, Biden&rsquo;s foreign policy team is stacked from one end to the other with regime change and new cold war enthusiasts who, alas, will find plenty of support from the growing ranks of the anti-antiwar Left. Those who find this development more than mildly depressing might do worse than to take refuge in the work of genuine antiwar voices such as Diana Johnstone&rsquo;s.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><h4>James W. Carden<\/h4><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Qu&rsquo;est donc la gauche-antiwar devenue ? Dans nos jeunes ann\u00e9es (celles de ce site, moins de son capitaine), qui furent celles notamment de l&rsquo;encha&icirc;nement 9\/11-Afghanistan-IrakII apr\u00e8s l&rsquo;annonce de la s\u00e9quence par le signal que constitua l&rsquo;inf\u00e2me guerre du Kosovo, nous avions pris l&rsquo;habitude sympathique de nous retrouver aux c\u00f4t\u00e9s de nombre de \u00ab\u00a0lib\u00e9raux\u00a0\u00bb (en fait,&hellip;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20013,16496,20012,9691,1381,3186,6944,857,3966,9692,3085,1131,5899,12013,3867,2639],"class_list":["post-79333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ouverture-libre","tag-anti-antiwar","tag-carden","tag-desintegree","tag-diana","tag-engelhardt","tag-gauche","tag-greenwald","tag-irak","tag-james","tag-johnstone","tag-kosovo","tag-pfaff","tag-realite","tag-references","tag-syrie","tag-trump"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}