12.14.2004

Catching up

Now to address an issue that was played out in the blogosphere about a week ago, but due to my academic sequestration, was unable to take part in: Peter Beinart's call for a explicitly and uniquely anti-terrorist Democratic party: A Fighting Faith. (sorry, subscription only...ask me and I'll email it to you, it's worth it) Michael Phillips, tough on terrorism in his own way, responded with a three part essay (1 2 3) which contains good points, but he himself does not endorse it. In his response to Beinart, Jon Cipriani (Dec. 3 and 8 posts) revels in Beinart's evocation of a 50 year-old example of a model Democratic party, and himself offers a counterterrorist view that involves growing Muslim populations in Western Europe.

I wish I wasn't so behind on this, but I just now got to read the Beinart piece. Anyway, here's my take.

First of all, I wholeheartedly agree with Beinart's central thesis that a liberal vision for counterterrorism is long overdue. Throughout the article, he's really singing my song, so I don't feel a need to take issue with any of his main suggestions. The need for an anti-terrorist approach that employs economic development and foreign aid, as well as setting a domestic example for the democratic values we wish to spread, are things that I've written about myself in the past, here and here.

However, the way Beinart evokes the Cold War example is a little off. The nature of the Cold War conflict is similar to the conflict against Islamic fundamentalist terror, but the difference in content precludes some of what Beinart calls for. He declares Michael Moore and the leadership of MoveOn to be akin to the communist-sympathizing labor and civil rights organizations of the late 40's, but he exaggerates their passivity towards terrorism, as well as their role in the party. As a whole, the Democratic Party does not need to be told to be anti-terrorism in the same way it needed to be told to be anti-communist. No one sympathizes with terrorism today, while those people did genuinely see communism as an ally in the pursuit of civil rights and economic equality.

Therefore, the intra-party purging and coercion of communist sympathizers in the late 40's, cited by Beinart, does not apply today since we do not have terrorist sympathizers. Rather, the problem today is that the Democratic party takes anti-terrorism as a given, so puts it behind more contentious domestic issues. The solution is to make anti-terrorism primary, and not only by having a well-coifed Boston Brahmin mutter "find and kill all the terrorists," but by having an anti-terror policy that embraces our own values and works hand-in-hand with our domestic agenda.

Also, the need for a liberal alternate to President Bush's approach to the War on Terror is cited by Beinart as something needed for political purposes, and he's right. However, I think he could have spent more time discussing how it is simply a better policy. President Bush's counterterrorism policy, despite it's rhetoric, is ineffective in both means and scope. It is sloppy and purely militaristic, garnering more enemies than it kills, and is applied according to domestic political needs. Meanwhile, his democracy-promoting "Greater Middle East Initiative" is merely a hodgepodge of programs that existed before 9-11 and are continuously underfunded. In general, the Republican view of terrorism does not take account of the roots of anti-Americanism. "They hate us because we love freedom" doesn't quite cut it.

A distinctly liberal anti-terrorist policy will arise, but it will not be a political ploy. It will come about as the War on Terror reaches a degree of maturity wherein people begin to realize that it is not simply a matter of killing the terrorists that are already out there, but making sure they are not replaced. This will involve a far-thinking approach that builds societies up rather than tearing them down, promoting rights rather than suspending them, and ensuring security and justice not only for ourselves but for the world. Beinart is right when he says that liberalism can defeat terrorism, but what he failed to say is that only liberalism can defeat terrorism.

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