Lenin alias Richard Seymour funderer i Socialist Worker over, hvordan det er gået de liberale neo-hawk-tilhængere som f.eks. Christopher Hitchens og Nick Cohen, i Danmark måske nærmest svarende til Dennis Nørmark- og Bjørn Lomborg-segmentet, efter at krigene “mod terror” og mod Irak er nedsmeltet til en rygende ruin og deres idoler i Bush-regeringen så miskrediterede, at de har måttet søge tilflugt i støtte til en af de modstandere af Irak-krigen, de før beskyldte for “islamofascisme” og “terrorstøtte”, nemlig Barack Obama.
Som vi læser:
Christopher Hitchens, who never looked better than when being waterboarded on assignment for the magazine Vanity Fair, spent more than five years hounding opponents of the Iraq war as fascist sympathisers and “capitulationists”. It must have felt like a betrayal for this newly minted American patriot to actually have to vote for one.
Or think of Michael Ignatieff who, in his bid to become leader of the Canadian Liberals, was forced to recant his support for the Iraq war and his justifications for torture. This is a man who once celebrated the rise of a “humanitarian empire” and warned against the “dampening” of “imperial ardour”. His own ardour is now tragically spent.
As for the British liberals who organised themselves under the now defunct Euston Manifesto, the alliance seems ever more tenuous. Its co-founder, Observer columnist Nick Cohen, has veered toward the lunatic right.
He can now be found reproducing racist claims about African immigrants spreading HIV, and indulging in bar room rants against multiculturalism. Like his guru Hitchens, he increasingly resembles the blimpish socialist turned Thatcherite Paul Johnson.
(…)
There is a simple political reason why liberal arguments for imperialism will tend to come to the fore – most people reject the militaristic nationalism of the hard right. It is much easier to win people to war if you can persuade them that humane and democratic values are stake.
This means that however ridiculous and exhausted the current generation of pro-war liberal sycophants appears to be, others will arise to take their place.
Link: Humbling Hawks