What's Left? A Chat With Nick Cohen About It All

More berserking about Cohen's book What's Left? ensued yesterday following Norm Geras and his take, and Oliver Kamm and his. Here's mine, in today's Tyee. One of things I asked Cohen when we spoke a couple of days ago is why, exactly, certain otherwise reasonable-sounding people tend to go batty when the questions he raises in his book are openly discussed.

“People don’t like admitting that there are significant disagreements within the left. It breaks the air of moral superiority and makes them seem more fragile,” he said. “So anyone who does disagree is immediately attacked, as though you can’t be left wing and find fault, as though we are all united and there are no cracks in the armour. So you’re anathematized as soon as you start talking out of it.”

You're also anathematized for having supported the invasion of Iraq - which Cohen did, for all the good reasons many people on the Left did. But Cohen points out that if he'd opposed the invasion - as did some of his fellow Euston Manifesto co-authors and many of its signers - it wouldn't have made What’s Left? all that different a book.

Kamm supported the invasion and hasn't backed down. Geras supported the invasion and has since said that if he'd known how things would have turned out, he wouldn't have. Shalom Lappin opposed the invasion (but Lappin's take on the trajectory of the Left complements Cohen's perfectly), and on it goes. But with the benefit of hindsight, what does Cohen say now?

“Maybe I wouldn’t. I don’t know. But if you were to ask me, `Would you turn the clock back and put Saddam Hussein back in power?’ I would find that very hard to say. If you were to have been given foresight at the time, and said, `Well look here, you see now what’s going to happen,’ then you’d also have to give the foresight to say, `This is what will happen if you leave Saddam Hussein in power.’ ”

No matter how badly things have gone in Iraq, those of us who were against the invasion have no right to get on a high horse about it, not just because the drama is still unfolding, but because none of us is clairvoyant. None of us can say that things would have turned out better if George W. Bush and Tony Blair had gone for a long walk one day and just decided then and there to drop the subject and leave Hans Blix to figure it all out.

All you have to do is say this out loud to see how stupid it sounds. "Things would have been better if they'd just left Saddam Hussein in power."

Try it. See?

There comes a point where all these might-have-beens become completely irrelevant. We're actually long past that point: It occurred on March 20, 2003, when the bombs started falling. From that moment on, the Left, all over the world - in government and in the streets - should have come to the aid of Iraqi democrats, Iraqi teachers, Iraqi feminists, trade unionists and socialists. It didn't. There were exceptions, of course. But in the main, the Left was paralyzed.

Cohen sets out to explain the reasons why this was the case, and he traces the paralysis to its origins (the book is by no means just about Iraq or the contemporary "anti-war" movement). I think Cohen does a splendid job, and I think What's Left? is a brave book, a smart book, and damn well-written, in the bargain.

Agree with him or not, anyone who says Cohen's book is just a "smear job" is someone who's trying to hide something. And if you think what Cohen has to say has no direct relevance to Canada, you simply haven't been paying any attention at all.