Culture War at a Time of War

Lynn Cheney and her friends are at it again, listing and baiting academic critics of Bush administration policies in Afghanistan as"the weak link" in the war against terrorism,"blaming America," and short on patriotism and long on self-flagellation." So goes the conservative organization she founded, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, in a recent report which has raised cries of"McCarthyism" from its targets and counter-charges by the council that untenured patriotic professors are held in check by a powerful left-wing academic establishment.

There is an old Yiddish term, chutzpah, which I would define as three dimensional arrogance, which has passed into general American speech. The classic example of chutzpah used to be the man who kills his mother and father and then throws himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan. To this example, one might add the former officials and supporters of the Reagan and Bush administrations, which provided billions in weapons, training and other aid to the anti-Communist"Holy War" fighters in Afghanistan, in the process largely creating both Osama bin Laden and those who became his anti-U.S."Holy War" network and the Taliban in the 1990s, and now seek to silence those who rightly denounce their policies as unpatriotic, i.e.,"un-American." This would be like Neville Chamberlain, whose appeasement of Hitler led to World War II and a near Axis victory, accusing those who criticized him before and after Winston Churchill replaced him in 1940 as"anti-British."

Neville Chamberlain and his Conservative party weren't Britain and Lynn Cheney's Council of Trustees and Alumni and their Republican party are not America. America is a nation and a culture whose political spectrum ranges from Eugene V. Debs and Gus Hall on the left to Joe McCarthy and Jesse Helms on the right, with many, many shades in between and many, from Edgar Allen Poe to Ken Kesey who don't fit into any known political definition

Those who take history seriously should also understand that unity in wartime in the United States has very rarely meant an absence of strong criticism of government policies, although governments have sought to silence criticism in wartime.

Forgetting about the Revolutionary war, which was in part a Civil War, where a significant section of the population, the conservatives, loyalists, or"Tories," supported the British Empire, the War of 1812 saw extensive criticism of government policies by former Federalists and New England commercial interests, who even launched in ill-fated secession movement. The Mexican War was actively condemned by abolitionists on the left who denounced it as a war to expand slavery, and more moderately by anti-slavery Whigs or liberals like congressman Abraham Lincoln, whose vote in support of war credits, he noted, didn't mean blind adherence to the policies of the Polk administration. During the Civil War, certainly the most significant conflict in the history of the Republic, Lincoln faced greater and more savage attacks than any president until Lyndon Johnson, from conservative"peace" Democrats on his right and, to a much lesser extent, abolitionists on his left. The Anti-Imperialist League, including such figures as Andrew Carnegie and Mark Twain, strongly criticized the McKinley administration's annexationist policies during the Spanish-American War and even widespread repression and extreme anti-civil liberties' legislation like the Espionage and Sedition Acts did not stay extensive opposition and criticism of the Wilson administration's policies during WWI.

While the Roosevelt administration avoided repressive legislation and, with the monstrous exception of the incarceration of Japanese -Americans, widespread repression during WWII, it faced extensive criticism from conservative Republicans and their media over both the Pearl Harbor attack and its conduct of the war, particularly its Europe first concentration against Hitler compared with an Asia first concentration against Japan. When U.S. diplomats worked out a deal with Vichy French admiral Jean Darlan to break with Vichy that temporarily left a fascist administration in power in French North Africa, New Deal liberal and labor media were intensely critical of the move.

All of this, long before the Vietnam War, was the rule rather than the exception, and all this was quite healthy. It is in wartime, particularly in a conflict like this where the enemy and how-to-fight the enemy is very murky, that active criticism is most useful to keep governments from becoming drunk with power and doing real damage, both to the society, and, often, to an effective war effort. Real and effective national participation in a war has never been about passive flag-waving, but about active involvement, participation, informed citizenship. Without serious policy debate and discussion, all of that is impossible.

The events of September 11 have created a new situation, but those who say that and want to stifle criticism merely wish to continue the old politics and policies that produced September 11. As the great French man of letters, Anatole France, said long ago, war is too important to be left to the generals. An updated version of that might read: war is too important to be left to the generals and a narrow circle of politicians and media people, feeding the public predigested information and opinions.