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Last week British Labour's Tony Blair drew Washington back to its senses for at least one news cycle with his stirring speech to a joint session of Congress in justification of the war in Iraq. To those who have become convinced that "Who hyped the Niger yellowcake report?" is the central question of our times, Blair offered this rejoinder:

"Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive."

Down in the folds of this week's papers, in background stories on the termination of Uday and Qusay Hussein, you could find some hints about the "inhuman carnage and suffering" their dynasty inflicted on the people of Iraq.

The Washington Post's Pam Constable recounted one story about a family that persuaded its attorney to go to plead with Uday to give back their abducted 17-year old daughter. "A henchman shot the lawyer's right foot, leaving him unable to walk, and he recalled being dumped near a hospital. The girl was eventually sent home, having been repeatedly raped, and her family was told not to move. But they fled in terror to Poland, where they had relatives. Several years later, gunmen working for Uday tracked them down there and killed the girl and her father, according to the lawyer."
"After Uday, Iraqis Release Their Rage," July 24, 2003.

The younger Qusay was less mercurial, so was entrusted with organizational duties, such as the slaughter of many thousands of Shiites in the south, or the cleansing of overcrowded prisons through mass shootings and torture.
"For Brutality, Hussein's Sons Exceeded Even Their Father," New York Times, July 23, 2003.

The dispute about what weapons of mass destruction Saddam had is not an unimportant one. But, as we said in the open letter to President Bush that the SD-USA helped circulate during the build-up to the war: "The threat Iraq and its weapons pose to us and to others is truly grave. But attention to these matters must not allow us to lose sight of the vast and continuing cruelty of Saddam Hussein's rule, or the possibilities that will be created by his departure. Inadequate concern for the plight of the people of Iraq and for their future has diminished debate about Iraq here and, even more so, abroad."

As he did just before the war began, last week Tony Blair again brought our sometimes narcissistic media and political class back to some elemental truths. The government of Saddam Hussein itself was a weapon of mass destruction and terror, and not only for the people of Iraq. The dangers we face from terrorist and maniac states indeed are vastly different from those we have faced from traditional adversaries. And, Blair reminded both squeamish Americans and contentious Europeans, "There never has been a time when the power of America was so necessary or so misunderstood…."

Many Democrats in Congress seemed to leap more spryly to their feet at the applause lines in Blair's speech than did even the beaming Republicans. Their eagerness seemed to betray an undercurrent of understanding that the dynamics of scandal-mongering are dragging the party away from its moorings in economic issues, off into re-enactment of the McGovern and Carter debacles. Here is how it was described by Richard Just, a young editor at The American Prospect, a magazine not known for hawkishness:

"If the Democratic presidential candidates weren't paying attention last Thursday, they missed a powerful lesson in both the shortcomings of their own foreign policies and in how best to attack the Bush administration's handling of international affairs. To date, the national-security platforms of the top Democratic contenders have run the gamut from muddled critiques of Bush's hawkish conduct (John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Lieberman) to straightforward rejection of American power (Howard Dean). What these strategies fail to take into account is that Americans remain genuinely concerned about their country's safety.

"What Democrats can learn from Tony Blair's speech to Congress," American Prospect, July 22, 2003.

Off-Shoring Controversy Heats Up

Sam Leiken sent in a batch of articles shedding light on the newest manifestation of corporate citizenship: "off-shoring." Companies are peeling off their service and technical jobs to send the work overseas, where it can be done cheaply by English-speaking employees. Forrester Research, a consulting firm in the technology field, estimates that about 2% of American jobs, many of them jobs that paid well here, will be sent abroad by 2015. Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times reported that a recording of a conference call among I.B.M. executives was obtained by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, an affiliate of the Communications Workers, in which I.B.M.'s plans to shift significant elements of software design and other work to India were discussed. Even Republicans in Congress and the Administration have expressed some disquiet about this trend.

I.B.M. Explores Shift of Some Jobs Overseas," New York Times, July 22, 2003

"U.S. Jobs Jumping Ship," cnnmoney, July 22, 2003.

Radosh Pricks Coulter Bubble

Ron Radosh, an historian of the Communist movement not often accused of tenderheartedness toward the softheaded, has turned his critical attention to right-wing diva Ann Coulter. Coulter's new book, “Treason” got a slashing review from liberal columnist Joe Conanson in the electronic journal Salon.com. Radosh says “I disagree with Conanson about most things, but he is correct about Coulter's book. It is even worse than he says.”

Coulter is a talk show vixen who rose to fame and fortune attacking the Clinton presidency and what she claims are liberal falsehoods about conservatives. Her book on the latter theme, “Slander,” went to the top of the NYT bestseller list last year. It was written with a certain verve, and included some entertaining accounts of leftist foibles. There were some sour notes -- Gary Rosen, Managing Editor of Commentary, said in his review that Coulter "pretends to intellectual seriousness where there is none" -- but by and large conservatives were grateful to find a glamorous new voice.

But “Treason” may begin a new phase in Coulter's career. She paints everyone to the left of Ronald Reagan as “either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self preservation, the difference is irrelevant.” Joe McCarthy is her hero – her web site describes him as one of “the five men who did the most to defend our freedom in the last century.” She airbrushes out of her political landscape any conservatives who have expressed reservations about the Cold War or anti-Saddam policies.

Andrew Sullivan wrote in his London Sunday Times critique of Coulter's book: “Radosh has endured ostracism and abuse for insisting that many of McCarthy's victims were indeed Communist spies or agents. But he draws the line at Coulter's crude and inflammatory defense of McCarthy."

"Has She No Shame?" salon.com, July 4, 2003

Poll Shows Poor Prefer Globalization

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has released its second analysis of world-wide public opinion surveys, taken in 49 nations and the Palestinian Authority. The focus of this report is how Europe and the Muslim world now see the United States. The general conclusion is that the Bush Administration's unilateralism and style are breeding an increasingly sour opinion of us out there.

Fouad Ajami wrote a provocative rejoinder to the Pew report in the July 3 Wall Street Journal. It's not available to non-subscribers, but the gist is that Pew pollsters are reporting as reasoned and honestly stated opinion what is actually the “legend and evasion” of people in the Arab world and elsewhere who blame America for many things that have little to do with us.

But there is another facet of the Pew report that caught our eye: its analysis of attitudes toward “globalization.” (In this area, it strikes us that the pollsters are on pretty firm ground.) Many critics of the economic consequences of globalization proclaim their solidarity with the Third World's poor. The problem is, as the Pew report strikingly demonstrates, the peoples of the poorer countries want “growing trade and business ties” with the wider world. Africa, the poorest region, is also the most eager to be entangled in the tentacles of globalization.

Most social democrats have concerns about certain effects of globalization. But the claims many anti-globalization activists make to speak for the world's poor are deceptive, and should convince anyone not already put off by their anti-American and anti-Israel ranting to stay away when their demonstrations resume in the fall.

World Without War Council Urges Democratic Peace

The World Without War Council continues its unstinting vocation for persuading peace activists that there are better ways to avoid war than by making concessions to aggressors. Bob Woito of the Council's Chicago Office has produced an excellent guide for religious and educational groups entitled “Extending the Democratic Peace.”

Since the War in Vietnam the American peace movement has been in wobbly orbit around those who sneer at “bourgeois democracy” and contend that the U.S. is the mainspring of world conflict. Woito's volume walks through an abundance of evidence and analysis to demonstrate that democracy actually provides a reliable system for resolving humanity's inevitable conflicts without resort to war. It offers a number of persuasive ideas about how small groups of engaged citizens can make practical contributions to advancing both democracy and peace.

Labourstart Campaigns for Chinese Unionists

Eric Lee, whom some Notes readers may recall from his youthful years in the American social democratic movement, now directs the international Labourstart news service from London. He sends an appeal for support, excerpted below:

“On May 9th two leaders of China's independent workers' movement, Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang, were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for the "crime" of leading worker protests. Their lawyers and families were [recently] startled to learn that in a secret court session to which family members and lawyers were not invited, their sentences were confirmed. China has the largest working class in the world which is still utterly deprived of the right to form independent trade unions. Trade unionists have a strong interest in ensuring that Chinese workers have the rights to independent trade unions enshrined in the ILO conventions and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."

If you have not yet done so, please send your letter of protest today.

A Nation Building Corps?

We've found that a number of social democrats are closet readers of the farmer/classicist Victor Davis Hanson, who argues that the ancient Greeks' legacy of reason and individual responsibility in war generally defeats the lockstep discipline and fanaticism of despots and theocrats. Of late Hanson has been touted by the Rumsfeld/Cheney circle, but he's a registered Democrat and trenchant critic of much of today's corporate culture -- a sort of Eric Hoffer figure.

Hanson has proposed an idea that -- if Democrats could untangle themselves from anti-Vietnam hang-ups -- might make a good one for the Party's platform. So often when the U.S. military is sent into the chaos of civil war and social breakdown, complaints from the troops come back that "we're soldiers, not social workers" and "this isn't want we trained for." Fair enough, Hanson says, let's create a military that does have the professional capability to deal with these recurrent situations. In a recent column he argues:

"To meet such challenges, perhaps it is time to create a permanent division-strength body of peacekeepers, police, and civilian reconstructionists. Their duties would be to follow the military into captured enemy cities and - within a matter of days, if not hours, rather than the current months -- hunt down government criminals in hiding, keep order and security, provide the populace with food and water, resurrect infrastructure and utilities, and begin near-immediate resumption of television, radio, and newspapers. In theory, such a corps would include a variety of company-sized cohorts, from snipers and police to electricians and constitutional framers --- and their tasks would be coordinated with the antebellum bombing-planning."

This new outfit could be called something like the "1st Armored Nation Building Corps" -- with apologies to President Bush.

The Gay Rights Movement Rediscovers Bayard Rustin

Look for a review of a new biography of the late SD Chairman Bayard Rustin by NED President Carl Gershman in a coming issue of Commentary. The book is by John D'Emilio, a Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and it looks at Rustin's life and work through the prism of his homosexuality.

The gay sub-culture has happily re-discovered Rustin, one of the early gay figures in our political life who did not deny his sexual orientation. Rustin proves difficult for some gay activists to evaluate because, although he endured hardship and embarrassment on account of his homosexuality, and courageously defied racial injustice, he did not participate in the early gay rights movement.

Toward the end of his life Rustin did begin to show some support for the gay rights cause, although he never became fully engaged. One difficulty for him may have been that the gay political subculture, going back to communists who founded the Mattachine Society, often became entangled with undemocratic currents on the far left. Gay rights spokespersons and organizers regularly assailed the foreign affairs posture of the U.S. and allied democracies, while offering comforting explanations for the misdeeds of hostile dictatorships (even those whose secret police were ruthlessly persecuting homosexuals.)

Rustin, ever true to his own lights, knew that the enemies of his homophobe tormentors were not always his friends. His career came into second flower during the climactic years of the Cold War, and he was clear about his commitment to the victory of democracy over communism. All this should prove interesting when historians and critics of the gay rights movement eventually come around to examining its perplexing engagement with international issues.

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