[Marxism] David Rieff's turnabout

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

antiwar.com, June 23, 2006
Readings in the Age of Empire
Doug Bandow

At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention
David Rieff
Simon & Schuster
270 pp.

It appears to be the season for second thoughts about American intervention
in Iraq. William F. Buckley says the war was a mistake. National Review's
John Derbyshire confesses the same error. Even Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.)
finally seems to oppose an endless occupation. Most important, the American
people have tired of the Bush administration's utopian fantasies. Periodic
PR offensives after endless "turning points" have failed to halt the
administration's long-term slide in popular support.

Presidential cheerleaders remain, of course, but most of them have been
forced to temper their optimism. "Despite all appearances, we're really
doing okay" has become the new mantra. "Just wait 10 or 20 years, and we
think we will be vindicated," is another common slogan. These claims
replace promises of transforming the world by spreading, truth, justice,
democracy, and whatever else happens to be on the neoconservative agenda
any particular day.

The misbegotten war in Iraq does more than discredit the Bush
administration's Mideast policy. It effectively destroys the case for
humanitarian intervention and nation-building. This administration might be
uniquely inept and foolish, but the basic problem is the policy, not the
implementation. An Iraq invasion and occupation conducted by a President
Kerry or a President Clinton would have been no more likely to deliver
Western-style democracy.

One of the most serious intervention apostates is writer David Rieff. Long
among the most avid advocates of humanitarian war-making, Rieff has been
clobbered by reality. Every additional day the U.S. stays in Iraq
reinforces the truth of his reformed views.

"At the time of the Kosovo war, I had written that, if I had to make the
choice, I would choose imperialism over barbarism," he explains. "In
retrospect, though, I did not realize the extent to which imperialism is or
at least can always become barbarism." This admission alone makes At the
Point of the Gun worth reading.

full: http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=9186


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