Euston Manifesto Catching A Toehold
Almost a year ago I mentioned the Euston Manifesto, a call from people of the Left not infected by derangement syndrome to adhere to classical liberal values in the war on terror. Norm Geras wrote an op-ed reporting the reaction: “good idea, but lost cause”.
Maybe it isn’t such a lost cause. Enrevanche catches a New York Times editorial praising the manifesto.
My bias is simple and clear: I would like to avoid having to die in a war, but more importantly I’d like to not lose my family–and I would not like to lose Houston. We’re in a war. People who disagree about some things need to work together on the things they agree on in order to get that agreed thing accomplished. It’s all about the execution, the completion, the implementation. To that end the Euston Manifesto is a call to work towards a common goal. Leftism under the thrall of Communism killed tens of millions of human beings. Leftism doesn’t have to be that way, and it was not always that way in the Cold War, either.
Common cause is important when achieving a goal. This Ryan Sager comment on a Dick Armey postmortem on why the Rs lost is useful: unless you hold true to your principles, you lose.
I’d rather not lose.
3 Responses to “Euston Manifesto Catching A Toehold”
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December 31st, 2006 at 8:54 pm
I really recommend James Fallows to you on the idea of a war. Fallows makes a very convincing case why we need to move beyond that rhetoric. He, like I makes a distinction between Iraq and the GWOT, however which is important. When you take IRAQ out of the GWOT equation
1) Omaha is perfectly safe
2) Al Qaeda ain’t the organization it used to be
3) It will never be that way again.
Happy New Year
January 1st, 2007 at 12:45 am
I’ve read a chunk of Fallows’ stuff in the Atlantic. His work appears thoroughly researched and persuasive. I just don’t agree with his conclusions all that much and would prefer Michael Kelly’s writing if I had the option (which, alas, we do not).
In an old comment over at Milblogs (two of us posted about his “Declaring Victory” piece) I said this, which seems to still hold:
January 1st, 2007 at 8:58 am
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. To me, he makes a lot of sense. As I said earlier he makes the distinction between the occupation of Iraq, and the overall effort to enhance global security. (Which is a better way to put things than GWOT..)
Saying this is about war and bringing people to justice, creates artifically high expectations. Saying nothing and working towards the overall US intereset-even if that means working with non democratic regimes- makes considerable sense. Problem is, that you need an man who can think first about US interest. The US will not have that till at least 2009.