The Agony of the Left
Correction</br></br>An editorial page article, "The Agony of the Left" (Oct. 4), incorrectly stated where a Salman Rushdie article had appeared. It ran in the Washington Post, not the New York Times. (WSJ Oct. 16, 2001)</br></br>One of the most telling things I have seen since the Sept. 11 massacre was an early "peace movement" e-mail. It listed three major demands: stop the war; stop racism; stop ethnic scapegoating. A liberal friend had appended a sardonic comment to the bottom. "Any chance we could come out against terrorism as well?"</br></br>One of the overlooked aspects of the war we are now fighting is the awakening it has spawned on the left. In one atrocity, Osama bin Laden may have accomplished what a generation of conservative writers have failed to do: convince mainstream liberals of the illogic and nihilism of the powerful postmodern left. For the first time in a very long while, many liberals are reassessing -- quietly for the most part -- their alliance with the anti-American, anti-capitalist forces they have long appeased, ignored or supported.</br></br>Of course the initial response of left-wing intellectuals to Sept. 11 was one jerking of the collective knee. This was America's fault. From Susan Sontag to Michael Moore, from Noam Chomsky to Edward Said, there was no question that, however awful the attack on the World Trade Center, it was vital to keep attention fixed on the real culprit: the United States. Of the massacre, a Rutgers professor summed up the consensus by informing her students that "We should be aware that, whatever its proximate cause, its ultimate cause is the fascism of U.S. foreign policy over the past many decades." Or as a poster at the demonstrations in Washington last weekend put it, "Amerika, Get A Clue."