Liberal Talk Radio

Bruno and I spent some time on this week’s program reviewing the week’s events in London.

Progressives have been deafeningly silent on these sad events. Why?

As many on the right have been quick to point out, the scale of the recent attacks relative to what we all fear might happen can be seen as a validation of the “hit ‘em first” strategy of the Bush regime. That, combined with the “flypaper” approach of the Iraq invasion are compelling proof of Bush’s essentially statistical strategy for combating terrorism. No matter how motivated the jihadis may be, they still have limited arms and limited lives available to sacrifice to their cause. And so a strategy that seeks simultaneously to re-channel the efforts of terrorists into less-destructive avenues and lop off the leadership of their organizations MUST work, and apparently it does.

But even as we on the left rethink our natural discinclination to violence (we’re humanists, after all) and come to see it as a necessary evil in a dangerous world, we must be sure to refrain from crediting the proginators of the strategy overmuch. Just because the Bush regime chose to approach Afghanistan, and even Iraq, in the manner they did does not mean that a Gore administration would not have taken a similar approach given the same circumstances.

So while we can — and should — think long and hard about the proper role of armed adventure in maintaining national security, we should also caution ourselves against giving too much credit to Bush and Co. After all, America has the armed forces it does in no small part because of the limited economic prospects of so many of our young people. And just because we have demonstrated our willingness to fight for empire does not yet mean that we have articulated a compelling argument for the empire.

In any case, the jury remains out on our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the current strategy seems to be working in the short term, whoever succeeds the Smug Monkey will have an awfully big mess to clean up. And while empires throughout history have time and again exhausted themselves in the struggle, the surging populations of the Islamic world still face a bleak, jobless, and repressed future.