Robert Parry: Obama and the Left's Old Schism
[Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.]
My article mildly defending Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize drew a number of critical comments from readers who felt I was letting the President off too easily, essentially excusing his reluctance to fully reverse George W. Bush’s wars and crimes.
Some readers thought I was giving Obama a pass, too, when I faulted the American Left for its lack of an effective media infrastructure to challenge the Right in making a case with the American people – and thus making it easier for politicians (like Obama) to act more courageously.
The article, it seemed, had touched on a longstanding dispute among progressives regarding what they should demand from Democratic leaders...
... These conflicting viewpoints represent a schism on the Left that can be traced back at least four decades to Election 1968.
Then, the Vietnam War was raging; President Lyndon Johnson was struggling to end it through the Paris peace talks; and anti-war progressives were angry at him for both the war and the strong-arm tactics at the Chicago convention that secured the presidential nomination for Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
As the election neared, many “pragmatic” progressives returned to the Democratic fold, but many “purists” refused to do so. They sat out the election even knowing that their boycott could put Republican Richard Nixon in the White House, which is what narrowly happened.
Though it wasn’t clear to the American public at the time, we now know that Nixon’s team had sabotaged Johnson’s peace process by secretly promising a better deal to the South Vietnamese government. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Significance of Nixon’s ‘Treason’.”]
Spreading Havoc
What also wasn’t well known was how close Johnson was to a peace deal that might have ended the Vietnam War -- and thus spared the United States and Indochina many more years of slaughter. After taking office, Nixon expanded the conflict by bombing and invading Cambodia, opening the door to worse havoc across Indochina and bitter generational divisions in the United States.
Nixon, a Machiavellian politician, also launched a culture war with racial overtones. His Southern Strategy and “law-and-order” rhetoric put the Republican Party – and the country – on a course that has continued now for four decades.
Yet, to this day, some “purist” progressives defend their rejection of Humphrey’s candidacy even knowing that his election might have spared the lives of more than 20,000 U.S. soldiers, who died in Vietnam under Nixon, as well as the millions of Indochinese who perished in Vietnam and Cambodia.
The purist view is that Johnson and Humphrey were the ones who deserve the blame for this death and destruction.
Many progressives held a similar opinion of President Jimmy Carter when he ran for re-election in 1980 and beat back a primary challenge from liberal stalwart, Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Though Carter had pushed the cause of human rights, he got little credit from the American Left, which focused on his deviations from those principles, like his praise for the Shah of Iran and his approval of an early covert operation against the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan.
Few progressives shed many tears when Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980, another election that was tainted by Republican chicanery as some of the old Nixon operatives worked behind the scenes with Reagan's men to undermine Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran. [See Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
Once in office, Reagan cast aside Carter’s human rights policies and threw the United States behind brutal military operations in Central America, Africa and elsewhere. Reagan also sharply expanded U.S. support for the Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, and he credentialed a new group of hard-line intellectuals known as the neoconservatives.
Domestically, Reagan persuaded many working-class Americans (who became known as “Reagan Democrats”) that the federal government was the problem and that less regulation of corporations – and massive tax cuts primarily for the rich – represented the solution.
Reagan’s communication skills proved crucial in diverting the United States down a dramatically different course, essentially abandoning the environmental goals of the 1970s, adopting tough-guy stances in international affairs, and scapegoating “lib-rhuls” as the nation’s enemy within.
Changing Places
Through those years – especially after the Vietnam War ended in the 1970s – the American Left shut down or sold off many promising media entities, making it harder and harder to make counter-arguments against Reagan’s international and domestic strategies.
In the 1970s, the Left had held the upper hand over the Right on media, with a vibrant underground press appealing to the Vietnam War generation. Outlets, like Ramparts magazine and Dispatch News, broke important national security stories. Radio stations, like WBCN in Boston, broadcast news on anti-war demonstrations. The so-called “alternative press” was alive and well.
However, with the Vietnam War over and the mainstream press undergoing a brief awakening in exposing serious wrongdoing like Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, principal funders on the Left decided that media was no longer a priority.
Many key outlets, like Ramparts and Dispatch News, were shuttered. Others, like WBCN, were sold off to mainstream corporations. Some key left-of- center opinion magazines fell into the hands of neocons or conservatives.
For instance, The New Republic was purchased by neocon Martin Peretz, who staffed it with neocon and right-wing writers such as Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes.
In the 1980s, when I was covering Reagan’s wars in Central America for The Associated Press, The New Republic defended the slaughters that took the lives of tens of thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans.
Because of its history as a venerable leftist publication, The New Republic was valuable to Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams because he could argue that “even the liberal New Republic” agreed with Reagan’s policies.
The Right also began investing millions -- and then billions -- of dollars to create its own media institutions. The strategy was pushed by Nixon’s former Treasury Secretary William Simon, who used his perch as head of the Olin Foundation to pull together likeminded foundation executives to direct money into media outlets and anti-journalism attack groups.
In 1982, South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon, who was eager to buy influence in the U.S. capital, began pouring his mysterious fortune into a new Washington-based newspaper, The Washington Times, which was praised by President Reagan and his successor George H.W. Bush as an important voice supporting their policies. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “WTimes’ Hypocritical Obama- Nazi Slur.”]
Also in the 1980s, Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch expanded his news empire into the United States...
Read entire article at Truthout
My article mildly defending Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize drew a number of critical comments from readers who felt I was letting the President off too easily, essentially excusing his reluctance to fully reverse George W. Bush’s wars and crimes.
Some readers thought I was giving Obama a pass, too, when I faulted the American Left for its lack of an effective media infrastructure to challenge the Right in making a case with the American people – and thus making it easier for politicians (like Obama) to act more courageously.
The article, it seemed, had touched on a longstanding dispute among progressives regarding what they should demand from Democratic leaders...
... These conflicting viewpoints represent a schism on the Left that can be traced back at least four decades to Election 1968.
Then, the Vietnam War was raging; President Lyndon Johnson was struggling to end it through the Paris peace talks; and anti-war progressives were angry at him for both the war and the strong-arm tactics at the Chicago convention that secured the presidential nomination for Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
As the election neared, many “pragmatic” progressives returned to the Democratic fold, but many “purists” refused to do so. They sat out the election even knowing that their boycott could put Republican Richard Nixon in the White House, which is what narrowly happened.
Though it wasn’t clear to the American public at the time, we now know that Nixon’s team had sabotaged Johnson’s peace process by secretly promising a better deal to the South Vietnamese government. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Significance of Nixon’s ‘Treason’.”]
Spreading Havoc
What also wasn’t well known was how close Johnson was to a peace deal that might have ended the Vietnam War -- and thus spared the United States and Indochina many more years of slaughter. After taking office, Nixon expanded the conflict by bombing and invading Cambodia, opening the door to worse havoc across Indochina and bitter generational divisions in the United States.
Nixon, a Machiavellian politician, also launched a culture war with racial overtones. His Southern Strategy and “law-and-order” rhetoric put the Republican Party – and the country – on a course that has continued now for four decades.
Yet, to this day, some “purist” progressives defend their rejection of Humphrey’s candidacy even knowing that his election might have spared the lives of more than 20,000 U.S. soldiers, who died in Vietnam under Nixon, as well as the millions of Indochinese who perished in Vietnam and Cambodia.
The purist view is that Johnson and Humphrey were the ones who deserve the blame for this death and destruction.
Many progressives held a similar opinion of President Jimmy Carter when he ran for re-election in 1980 and beat back a primary challenge from liberal stalwart, Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Though Carter had pushed the cause of human rights, he got little credit from the American Left, which focused on his deviations from those principles, like his praise for the Shah of Iran and his approval of an early covert operation against the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan.
Few progressives shed many tears when Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980, another election that was tainted by Republican chicanery as some of the old Nixon operatives worked behind the scenes with Reagan's men to undermine Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran. [See Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
Once in office, Reagan cast aside Carter’s human rights policies and threw the United States behind brutal military operations in Central America, Africa and elsewhere. Reagan also sharply expanded U.S. support for the Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, and he credentialed a new group of hard-line intellectuals known as the neoconservatives.
Domestically, Reagan persuaded many working-class Americans (who became known as “Reagan Democrats”) that the federal government was the problem and that less regulation of corporations – and massive tax cuts primarily for the rich – represented the solution.
Reagan’s communication skills proved crucial in diverting the United States down a dramatically different course, essentially abandoning the environmental goals of the 1970s, adopting tough-guy stances in international affairs, and scapegoating “lib-rhuls” as the nation’s enemy within.
Changing Places
Through those years – especially after the Vietnam War ended in the 1970s – the American Left shut down or sold off many promising media entities, making it harder and harder to make counter-arguments against Reagan’s international and domestic strategies.
In the 1970s, the Left had held the upper hand over the Right on media, with a vibrant underground press appealing to the Vietnam War generation. Outlets, like Ramparts magazine and Dispatch News, broke important national security stories. Radio stations, like WBCN in Boston, broadcast news on anti-war demonstrations. The so-called “alternative press” was alive and well.
However, with the Vietnam War over and the mainstream press undergoing a brief awakening in exposing serious wrongdoing like Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, principal funders on the Left decided that media was no longer a priority.
Many key outlets, like Ramparts and Dispatch News, were shuttered. Others, like WBCN, were sold off to mainstream corporations. Some key left-of- center opinion magazines fell into the hands of neocons or conservatives.
For instance, The New Republic was purchased by neocon Martin Peretz, who staffed it with neocon and right-wing writers such as Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes.
In the 1980s, when I was covering Reagan’s wars in Central America for The Associated Press, The New Republic defended the slaughters that took the lives of tens of thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans.
Because of its history as a venerable leftist publication, The New Republic was valuable to Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams because he could argue that “even the liberal New Republic” agreed with Reagan’s policies.
The Right also began investing millions -- and then billions -- of dollars to create its own media institutions. The strategy was pushed by Nixon’s former Treasury Secretary William Simon, who used his perch as head of the Olin Foundation to pull together likeminded foundation executives to direct money into media outlets and anti-journalism attack groups.
In 1982, South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon, who was eager to buy influence in the U.S. capital, began pouring his mysterious fortune into a new Washington-based newspaper, The Washington Times, which was praised by President Reagan and his successor George H.W. Bush as an important voice supporting their policies. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “WTimes’ Hypocritical Obama- Nazi Slur.”]
Also in the 1980s, Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch expanded his news empire into the United States...