Taking a Stand Against Empire’s Invasions

A few days ago a Professor Gary Leupp placed his article called "Beyond Good and Evil: Some Thoughts on Invasions" at bellaciao. After circulating the article to my news group one of my comrades, Adam Bowker, wrote an excellent response to the article that articulates the heart of the problem with what I view as lift and liberal morally relativistic stances that in turn support empire’s invasions and atrocities. Here it is!
Genoa June

Having read this article and Husayn Al-Kurdi’s response, I
thought I’d write my own thoughts on the issue as a
(slightly) more mainstream historian.

To me, the biggest problem with Leupp’s article is
that he conceals what is in truth a vague and sloppy
argument behind virtual panoply of scholarly word
choice and professorial turns of phrase designed
explicitly to stymie the deconstruction of his
argument. It does not surprise me in the slightest
that he is a history professor. Worse still, Leupp
positions himself as something of a radical, a
self-righteous pundit preaching truth to the ignorant
and uninformed-but it is clear to anyone with the
slightest knowledge of radical or left-wing' historiography of the last forty years that he is not working for any real change. I have long been one to doubt the conspiracy theories about the institutional Left and its co-optation of legitimate radical discourse, its transformation of truly challenging arguments into mundane squabbles over syntax. But I think this article confirms that, intentionally or unintentionally, these diversions do occur. Leupp's denunciations do actually advance the cause of imperialism and world hegemony-by bastardizing Bush's own version of crusading Good-and-Evil morality, by wasting legitimate arguments and comparisons with faulty logic, and, worst of all, by defending injustice on the basis of historical inevitability. By declaring "invasions happen," Leupp projects an unrefined and unjustified form of historical determinism. Since violence, and therefore invasions, are a natural outgrowth of the human condition, we as observers have no right to condemn them unilaterally, and thus have no right to delve into the deeper historical processes and constructs that allow organized state violence to proliferate. We are left, it seems, with little more than vague moral constructs ofgood,’ legitimate' invasions andbad,’ invalid' ones. "You decide," Leupp writes, in an attempt to discredit the Bush (I) administration's invasion of Iraq after the Kuwait war. Iraq's ambitions, it seems, might not have been so awful. Wow! And maybe, just maybe, the U.S. had broader designs in mind thanfreedom’ and democracy.' Leupp is right to make this comparison, and right to explore the moral complexities of international conflict. Yet he fails to follow through on his own logic. "The U.S. was the boss," he writes, detailing how the United States and its allies first supported and then destroyed Iraq, how it supported a murderous regime in Indonesia, how it funded Saddam before running afoul of him, how it supplied some chemical ingredients forWMD’ to Iraq
during the Cold War. In my opinion, Leupp is also
correct not to fall into the leftist trap of
condemning anything and everything the United States
government has done as inevitably nefarious and
manipulative. Hegemony is complicated and never
exclusive. But it is the rhetoric he uses to make this
distinction that is most harmful. "Invasions
happen"— they are everyday occurrences, and given
that this is a historical fact, we must assume they
have the right to happen. Good and bad are ascribed
arbitrarily and messily-simultaneously slapping the US
regime on the wrist for the invasion of Iraq, not
because it was a gross dismissal of every
international organization an overt statement of brute
American imperialism, but rather that the invasion
came outside of the normal' American (hemispheric) imperialism. It's ok for us to invade Granada, Panama, etc. because we have historically exerted influence in the area-but not to support Suharto or overthrow Saddam. I'm sure Venezuelans, Guatemalans, Cubans, Colombians, and everyone else the U.S. has invaded forhemispheric security’ would agree.

The argument is all the more frustrating to me because
he uses legitimate facts and comparisons, only to rob
his conclusions of any conviction or certitude … we’re
190 years past Hegel, and Leupp is still counting on
the forces of history' to set the rules of international politics. Comparing the two recent Iraq wars, Leupp writes, "one of the more routine and relatively defensible invasions of modern times [Iraq invading Kuwait] led so seamlessly into this most unusually preposterous invasion [the U.S. invading Iraq]." Routine? Reasonable? It sounds like he's talking about baseball. [I]After getting the batter to hit into a routine double play, the manager made the reasonable decision to let the pitcher stay in another inning…'[/I] War is not routine or reasonable. It can, I suppose, be preposterous, although when I hear that word I picture something like a doddering old lady in a pink polka dot blouse and a monstrous feathered hat. War is not reasonable. War is never routine. And reducing it to vague andobjective’
historical commentary is one of the worst imaginable
insults to those who have struggled, fought, and died
in it. Pretty soon Leupp will start spouting
catchphrases like collateral damage' andacceptable
civilian casualties.’ It’s not about whether any
specific invasion is `justified.’ It’s always
justified by somebody. The far more important question
is who stands to gain (and lose) influence and power
as a result of the invasion. I’m not quite cynical
enough yet to proclaim that there can never be a
conflict in which all (or some) of the common people
benefit. But to write off all invasions, all
massacres, all injustices as inevitable historical
realities - that, it seems, is the ultimate corruption
of a leftist/radical ideal.
Leupp is calling for change while simultaneously
making it logically and physically impossible. May we
all avoid this fate.

Adam Bowker
adam@bowkers.org