David Bromwich, a prof at Yale, is an important voice on the left. Last year he had what I believe is the only reasonable response to Walt and Mearsheimer–impressed by the scope of their work, disturbed by their findings–and said that Elliott Abrams should be scrutinized by the Congress for dual loyalty. (No, all we care about is investigating Eliot Spitzer).
In the latest NYRB, Bromwich has a nice piece on the ways that Iraq and the so-called war on terror have fostered euphemistic language. He makes an important observation:
if you take stock of how little general discussion there has
been of the advisability of pursuing the global war on terrorism, you
realize that this country has scarcely begun to take stock of the
United States as an ambiguous actor on the world stage. Those who said,
in the weeks just after the September 11 attacks, that the motives of
the terrorists might be traced back to some US policies in the Middle
East were understandably felt to have spoken unseasonably. The
surprising thing is that six and a half years later, when a politic
reticence is no longer the sole order of the day, discussion of such
matters is still confined to academic studies like Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback and Robert A. Pape’s Dying to Win, and has barely begun to register in The New York Times, in The Washington Post,
or on CNN or MSNBC. … you will find
educated people saying things like "They hate the West and resent
modernity," or "They hate the fact that we’re so free," or "They hate
us because this is a country where a man and a woman can look at each
other across a table with eyes of love." Indeed, the single greatest
propaganda victory of the Bush administration may be the belief shared
by most Americans that the rise of radical Islam—so-called
Islamofascism— has nothing to do with any previous actions by the
United States.
Very astute. Though I disagree about the unseasonableness issue. Within hours people were asking, "Why do they hate us?" The other criticism I have is that Bromwich goes on to say that the causes of 9/11 were resentment of "725 American bases worldwide, and the emotions with which these are
regarded by the people who live in their shadow"–notably the "presence of thousands of American troops on Arabian soil."
The Saudi part is important and unquestionable. But did American bases around the world play a role in 9/11? Bromwich is contributing to the very mystification he deplores. Pape, whom Bromwich quotes so approvingly, wrote that the "taproot" of Muslim rage was American "military policy" in the Persian Gulf–specifically, the presence of American soldiers in Saudi. But Pape also made clear that bin Laden regarded this military policy as serving plans for a "greater Israel." Bromwich makes no mention of this. If we are going to mainstream Pape, let us consider U.S. policy in Israel/Palestine. But no, there is a ton of polite self-censorship around this issue…
The point is not to appease bin Laden. (No, let us kill bin Laden.) The point is to understand the reservoir of resentment in the Muslim world upon which he drew. Some of it has a legitimate basis: injustice in Israel/Palestine.
