Letters to the Editor:

LiP Magazine responds to "Blaming America"

As the publisher and co-editor of LiP Magazine, which published the
interview with McChesney, you no doubt expected that I would disagree with
the contentions you make in "Sontag, McChesney and the Rage of the Left". 

And you would be right in that expectation. I find a number of holes in
your logic that, to me, seem more like an inborn bias against this
so-called (and spectacularly ill-defined, on your part) "left" than a
credible intellectual analysis. You take two people, generalize their views
to an entire group of people who hold distinct and separate opinions, and
use it to advance your own, poorly supported polemics.

For instance, in your comments re: Sontag, you write:
"What is striking about these comments is that they imply that America was
attacked because it engaged in wrongdoing."

I literally laughed out loud at that line, Mr. Sanes. Of COURSE people who
are looking critically at U.S. foreign policy will conclude -- if they are
honest -- that the U.S. has sponsored "terrorism" around the world, and has
engaged directly in "terrorism" on numerous occasions. These are not
matters of mere opinion, or products of some teaming leftist "rage". They
are quantifiable, if one cares to add up the death toll. Iraq, which you
mention specifically, is a good example. You seem to think that sanctions
that kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians but leave a despot
like Hussein in power are somehow OK: blame can be squarely and wholly
placed at the feet of Hussein. Our hands are clean. This is ludicrous and
self-serving. The U.N. has roundly condemned these sanctions as inhumane.
The deaths are documented. And the sanctions are doing little to dislodge
Hussein. They're just killing innocent people AND cultivating solidarity
among anti-American forces around the world. 

There are dozens of examples of U.S. malfeasance around the globe which
don't merit cataloguing in this email. I contend that those on your "left"
are disproportionately people of conscience, who hold that all life is
equal, that civilians should not pay with their lives for the actions of
their leaders, and that the U.S. public has been sorely misled and confused
by an extremely effective state propaganda apparatus. 

Which is to say, the U.S., if it concedes that it operates in an
interconnected world, has to at least consider the possibility of its own
wrongdoing. As the world's leading arms dealer, we have to interrogate our
role in murderous conflict after murderous conflict. We have to question
our bullying approach to foreign policy. We have to question what it is
about our government and its policies that impels it to seek ever more
power around the world. We have to call it "empire," which is what it is,
and ask, on sound intellectual grounds, what the predictable outcome of
being an empire is. History shows that such empires always fall. It shows
that power corrupts. It shows that opponents eventually unify against such
empires, or that the empires rot from the inside. 

Those on your ill-defined "left" are, by and large, people who are
concerned about these questions. They don't feel like we're entitled to
something everyone else is not. They feel like we should learn how to play
well with others, just like most kids are taught in kindergarten. I don't
live with my head in utopian clouds, Mr. Sanes, and I realize there are
ugly facts of world politics that require elements of pragmatism, even
violence. But I think American citizens, such as yourself, have an
additional responsibility to interrogate and question our military role in
the world, if only because we are the world's sole superpower. 

It's important to try and understand why large parts of the world oppose
us. Not because anything could justify the 9.11 attacks, but because
instead of jingoism and brainless patriotism, we need a greater general
understanding of what our role in the world really is. Americans, as
McChesney ably points out, are woefully ignorant in this regard. I do not
believe your article helps advance any understanding whatsoever in this
regard. You should consider a broader sampling of "the left". I also think
you should try, if you can, to define "terrorism" in a way that's
intellectually consistent and that has any real meaning. I think you'll
find that it's a completely debased term that has no consistent meaning in
political discourse beyond its ability to manipulate public sentiment.

Eqbal Ahmad, by the way, has some powerful things to say about this, at:
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featahmad_134.shtml

Brian Brasel
Co-Editor, LiP Magazine
info@lipmagazine.org

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Mr. Sanes:

Susan Sontag's cautious word choice and her oblique criticisms have more
to do with the context in which she was writing than you consider in your
essay. Her short statement appeared in the first post-attack issue of The
New Yorker when the country was weeping for the dead and rescue crews were
still frantically tearing through the smoking rubble for signs of life.
Plus, Sontag was writing for a magazine whose readership is largely
based in New York, the primary target of the terrorist rage. It was
neither the time nor place to lacerate a country that was just wounded by
the worst terror attack in world history. Sontag seemed to understand that
America was in no condition to be scolded, so she obfuscated her
criticisms so as not to appear insensitive but to espouse her leftist
opinions all the same.

Also, I do not believe that the American press has hidden away from our
past foreign policy mistakes. I have seen plenty of articles that deal
critically with the very issues you cite. You say that America needs to
educate itself, but where is your evidence to support that claim?

Sincerely,
Jacob Gershman