Campus Progress, Round Two

On Wednesday in Washington, I attended the second annual National Student Conference held by Campus Progress, an organization featured in "The New Face of the Campus Left."

Last year's conference was quite disappointing. "Critical dialogue was in short supply," I wrote then, "and the promotion of strategic tactics--rather than strong principles--seemed to rule the day. Instead of identifying the values with which to forge a movement, the speakers at the conference seemed obsessed over the forging itself." I complained then that the majority of the students in attendance were well-heeled, DC-insider, College Dem types, and that grassroots activists were in noticeably missing. The first conference hardly reflected the diversity of those involved in progressive campus politics.

What a difference a year makes. The opening plenary included Adrienne Marie-Brown of the Ruckus Society, an organization that trains grassroots activists, who implored students to turn their campuses into "hotbeds of sexy, revolutionary action." She told students to steer away from the "corporate biz-casual world and break the fuckin' rules." John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, even agreed with her ("We need more of you hanging from trees," he said, echoing Brown's earlier call for direct action).

The highlight of the conference, without doubt, was Illinois Senator Barack Obama's address. Eschewing the recycled stump-speech mode employed by Bill Clinton last year, Obama directly addressed the students, speaking mostly of his early days as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago. Obama's speech was less of a crowd-pumping call to action, and more of a contemplative, moving reflection on his path into politics.

Obama's first employer paid him $12,000, "plus an extra thousand to buy a car--an old, beat-up Honda Civic." He said his peers and elders thought he was crazy for taking such an unglamorous route, but he wanted to "build power from the bottom up, rather than the top down."

"It's easy to just take that diploma, forget about all this progressive politics stuff, and go chasing after the big house and the large salary and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy," he said. "But I hope you don't. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself, and it will leave you unfulfilled."

A lot of progressives, including one who recently wrote for this magazine, are nowhere near sold on Obama. But the most compelling thing about this man--and perhaps the main reason why my generation responds so strongly to him--is his background. Politicians who are more concerned with power than with people do not go to the South Side after college and take jobs paying jack squat to fight for people who hardly anyone else cares about. They take high-paying jobs so that some day they can buy their way into power, fill prestigious posts and clerk for famous judges, or seek the media spotlight any way they can.

Obama's early commitment to grassroots organizing is something that simply cannot be overlooked. His past is an integral part of his character. This comes through in his speeches, and this is why young people refuse to dismiss him as an ordinary political opportunist.

In addition to providing great speakers and above-average food, Campus Progress also unveiled two exciting activism campaigns, one calling for an end to America's oil addiction and another fighting against the cuts in student debt.

Campus Progress has truly shed much of its DC-centric feel and has made good on its commitment to be a big tent for young progressive activists, both pragmatic and radical. Students from a variety of races, classes, religious and ethnic backgrounds, across the ideological spectrum of the student left, came together to discuss, debate, and most importantly, organize.

There was a definite sense in the air that, come this fall, progressive student activism could reach heights not seen for decades on campuses.

Comments (33)

1. Boy I remember the LAST time the "kids" were "turn(ing) their campuses into 'hotbeds of sexy, revolutionary action.'"

   It was 1982 and the "P.I.R.G." movement was underway, in which a secret fee was buried in the Student Activity Fee, that required you to seek it out and check "no" against it, for it not to be taken out of your mandatory fee.

   It was going to go to "social change in the areas of environmental protection, consumer protection, and political reform".

   In other words, they couldn't get the students to poney up voluntarily or openly...so they went with a hidden fee.

   (Personal experience?...you bet)

   The myth of the "campus activism" is an egotistical hold-over from the 60s that somehow 15 guys at Princeton taking over the Administration Building got Kissinger and Le Duc Tho to sign the 1973 Accords. (Espoused primarily by those who were in college in 1966-1973)

   Posted by Mask at 07/13/2006 @ 4:30pm

2. .

   HOLD THE PRESSES

   come this fall, progressive student activism could reach [new] heights

   Where does the Nation find the Sam Graham Felsens and the Ari Bermans? These are rare birds. There must have been a massive search. I can imagine a test where the applicants were given rocks to throw at the ground. Those who missed were hired.

   Actually, that student activism is going to get bigger and better than ever really is sensational news. Progressives have just recently reached prodigious heights. To outdo that is going to require a tremendous effort. Just consider what has already been achieved.

   The Left has gone to bat for a fascist dictator who tore out tongues and attacked every one of his neighbors. This golden youth marched and demonstrated for that mass murderer even as he invaded Kuwait, and reneged on his 1991 commitments to the UN and the US. It tore out its hair against the no fly zones, against UN inspectors, against UN resolutions. It sought the Baath's victory over US forces. It grieved when Baghdad was quickly captured with little loss in American lives, it was despondent when Saddam was captured.

   And then it really showed its mettle supporting supporting a fascist insurgency that denounces religous toleration and free speech and opposes the legal govt elected of 8.5 million Iraqis.

   For the Progressive youth to beat that will take a formidable effort. I cannot imagine how they will do it short of stealing a few H bombs from US arsenals and presenting them to Osama Bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

   .

   Posted by nacl at 07/13/2006 @ 5:04pm

3. Rio Bravo, if the measure of an educational institution's greatness is the size of its kitty, then Hamb urger University [mcdonalds.com] is the finest academy of higher learning in the world.

   But back to the topic at hand, I thought Graham-Felsen's report was kind of naive. As a former student organizer (who's kept his activist commitments after graduation), this conference frankly stunk of opportunism. What does Barack Obama have to do with progressive organizing? The guy makes speeches about bombing Iran. I don't care if he drove a beat-up Civic, what's that supposed to prove? Let's talk about real issues and not all this focus-group image malarkey.

   Posted by rvs-convener at 07/13/2006 @ 5:07pm

4. NACL: Actually, the Nation recruited me based on a highly sophisticated search for the country's top young liberal writing talent. Not sure about that Berman guy, though.

   Posted by samgf at 07/13/2006 @ 5:35pm

5. .

   How the Nation Recruits

   Actually, the Nation recruited me based on a highly sophisticated search for the country's top young liberal writing talent.

   So the test was sophisticated eh?

   I can imagine a nation wide literary test. The challenge was emptying a boot filled with water. The instructions were written on the sole.

   .

   Posted by nacl at 07/13/2006 @ 5:51pm

6. NaCl

   The Left has gone to bat for a fascist dictator who tore out tongues and attacked every one of his neighbors. This golden youth marched and demonstrated for that mass murderer

   You poor deluded nut-sack. (Not an actual wing-nut, just the empty, plain-brown wrapper).

   Show us all one "Free Saddaam" rally? How about a single "liberal commie US hater" writing a piece declaring Hussein's innocence?

   Put up or STFU

   Posted by leftofcenter at 07/13/2006 @ 6:00pm

7. Ok, Israel is about to go medevial on HZbollah and Hamas, and the Nation shoots out a thread on????????????? Campus activism and what Al Gore is wearing????????

   Posted by CPT at 07/13/2006 @ 6:37pm

8. LEFTOCENTER

   If liberals are going to paint all those who support the war with the responsibility of ALL the deaths that are incurred due to that war........

   THEN,

   whats is so shocking about charging those who oppose the war, the result of which is SADDAM remains in power, with the deaths of all those he has killed?

   Posted by CPT at 07/13/2006 @ 6:43pm

9. .

   The Left is Stuck with Saddam and the Insurgency

   It is not going to get unstuck. In time it will realize, hooking up with Saddam and the Insurgency was a catastrophic error. It revealed the Left as fascist and fanatic, the enemy of democracy and toleration. If it wasn't that before, that is what it became, in the course of that support.

   That coupling with Saddam and Islamofascists has done to today's Left what its support of Stalin and Soviet totalitarianism did to the Left in the past. It has shot itself in the stomach. It has deligitimize itself.

   The fall of the Soviet Union actually presented the Left with enormous opportunity. It disencumbered it from that filthy association. It got out from under all that cruelty, lying, murder, failure. Suddenly the Left was no longer communist or socialist, tyrannical. It no longer had to talk in jargon. It no had to apologize for supporting a police state. It was again simply humane and progressive, concerned with fairness and the well being of the poor and underprivileged. It was free of the ideology of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Now it was honest and decent again. What a liberation. It was give had a new shot at US politics and European politics, a new shot at appealing to Joe public.

   What did it do witn this rebirth? At the first opportunity it hooked up with the most disgusting fascist/socialist creature on earth. It came to the support of the Baath, for heavens sake. It found its champion and cause in Saddam Hussein, and just to make sure there is no mistake, it is now in support of an insurgency that is even more explicitly anti-democratic, intolerant and murderous.

   There was something loathsome in you guys that found that loathsome cause compelling. Good. You are back to square one. You have each other and are stuck with each other. That Saddam stink, that pro-insurgency stink won't go away. You won't get rid of it. It will come out of your pores, it will cling to your skin to your hair. Your protestations won't avail. It will stick to you for the rest of the century.

   .

   Posted by nacl at 07/13/2006 @ 6:54pm

10. Posted by RIO BRAVO 07/13/2006 @ 4:07pm

    I won't even bother with repeating the wingnut rant you've spewed here, I'll just make three comments and move on to (at least) substantial material from others. First, progressive and liberal are not synonymous, so you really need to learn the difference before you make an even bigger fool of yourself. Second, the vast majority of university staffs (and I'll even limit that to faculty, just so that the average staff worker doesn't have to be involved at all) is not even remotely Marxist, much less Leninist (it shows that you have no idea what a Leninist is that you even make that accusation.) Marxist scholarship was once important (though hardly a majority) on American campuses, but that was in the seventies! It's 2006, in case you hadn't noticed (being the kind of wingnut who seems to live in the past) and Marxism has long since faded as an academic trend and the old Marxists have long since retired. Since I doubt you've seen the inside of a university in a long time (if ever) I can't imagine why you think you're an expert enough on this to even have an opinion (except that you no doubt are a disciple of Horowitz and his little right-wing dis-information campaign.) Third, since when are Ellison, Zuckerman, Rockefeller, etc. part of "the right"? All three are moderate to liberal (really liberal, not progressive) and even Smith can hardly be classed as a right-winger. Are they upset with the dismissal of Summers? Possibly, but he's a liberal himself so your characterization of the whole affair is hardly correct. Get a clue about modern academe before you go running off at the keyboard.

    Now I'll reset from the foregoing tone, so as not to give Mask the impression I'm lumping him in with Rio Bravo.

    Posted by MASK 07/13/2006 @ 4:30pm

    It was 1982 and the "P.I.R.G." movement was underway, in which a secret fee was buried in the Student Activity Fee, that required you to seek it out and check "no" against it, for it not to be taken out of your mandatory fee.

    I've never heard of this, and I was in college in 1982 (and since I was paying my own way I'd have hardly missed any fee, as I went over those bills with a fine-toothed comb.) Where did this happen? My experience was at a large public university, so I'd be interested to know if it was a private university or college or something else.

    In general though, there was a real downturn in college activism when we were in school in the 80's. Why I leave to others, though I suspect it was exactly the idea of "getting my own" that Obama cited in his speech. Now though, I'm starting to see a great deal more from students. At the public university where I teach there is a large and very active anti-war organization (student organized and lead) as well as a number of other student activist organizations of a progressive character (and some, though fewer by far, of a conservative nature too.) My own experience is that student activism is on the rise, though how that translates into action after graduation I can't say, not having a ready measure.

    All in all, Graham-Felsen seems to have a pretty good handle on what I've seen myself. I just hope (being a progressive and all) that it doesn't stop at the university gates. As for his analysis of Obama, well, I'll wait and see (being an old cynic too) whether or not he lives up to his activist past.

    Posted by Stwriley at 07/13/2006 @ 7:19pm

11. Posted by CPT 07/13/2006 @ 6:43pm

    might be a different sentiment about the war if it wasn't promulagated on lies and other creative constructs of "unreality"

    That being said, your attempt at comparison does NOT follow reason. Your cross-logic is as bad as NaCl's in saying that "If you don't support he war, you must support the enemy."

    Lemme see if I can elucidate....bullshit

    Posted by leftofcenter at 07/13/2006 @ 7:23pm

12. Nacl,

    I'll just ignore your rude and unecessary comments about Graham-Felsen, since they are beneath contempt coming as they do from someone who obviously can't write his was out of a wet paper bag.

    Let's move on to the other inflammatory and ridiculous statements you've made (and I'll address your's too, while I'm at it, CPT.)

    The Left has gone to bat for a fascist dictator who tore out tongues and attacked every one of his neighbors. This golden youth marched and demonstrated for that mass murderer even as he invaded Kuwait, and reneged on his 1991 commitments to the UN and the US. It tore out its hair against the no fly zones, against UN inspectors, against UN resolutions. It sought the Baath's victory over US forces. It grieved when Baghdad was quickly captured with little loss in American lives, it was despondent when Saddam was captured.

    I'll back LOC's statement on this, put up or shut up. You can't really, since you've mischaracterized even action you're implying belongs to progressives. Saddam did attack his neighbors, especially Iran. But who armed and encouraged him to do so? The Reagan and Bush I administrations. No progressives here, and no one supported the invasion of Kuwait, certainly not the progressives I know who all felt that we had to clean up the mess we'd created in backing Saddam up until then. Most progressives objections to the sanction against Iraq had nothing to do with Saddam, but with the harm they did to his (at least partly innocent) people. It is entirely possible to hate the dictator and still feel for those who are harmed by his and our actions. Again, did not call for the success of Saddam over US troops, though many of us feared what his forces could do (principly in the area of guerilla warfare, which turned out to be pretty close to the facts.) The simple fact again is that it was perfectly possible to oppose the idea that we could or should wage a war of choice (as Saddam himself had done) while wishing the troops well if they were ordered to do it anyway. You insist on presenting false dichotomies when most progressives are capable of taking a far more sophisticated view of things.

    The same is in a lesser way true of your contention about being responsible for Saddam, CPT. Those who support the war have enabled an illegal invasion, while those who oppose it have not by any means supported a single thing done by Saddam or any other dictator. Don't confuse opposition to one for support for the other.

    Posted by Stwriley at 07/13/2006 @ 7:44pm

13. .

    STWRILEY 07/13 @ 7:44pm

    But who armed and encouraged him to do so? The Reagan and Bush I administrations. No progressives here, and no one supported the invasion of Kuwait, certainly not the progressives I know

    Listen you pompous piss pot. This magazine, The Nation, for one, and a very large part of the Left, bitterly denounced US efforts to eject Iraq from Kuwait.

    Furthermore, you don't know your ass from your elbow with respect to who armed and encouraged Saddam. Anyone who reads the papers knows that the T-72s, the MIGS, SCUDS, AK-47, the artillery, etc., were Soviet weapons, not American. Nor were his Mirages American. Even his officers were trained in Russian tactics in Moscow's military schools.The United States did not so much as have diplomatic relations with Iraq from 1967 to November 1984. While Russia, China, France and most of Europe sold Saddam $100 billion in arms, including billion dollar c/b warfare labs, all the US did was call Iraq a rogue state and pass a law forbidding US firms from selling Iraq any weapons. That law was violated once and produced a sensational trial. The famous Swedish SEPRI institute determined that by 1991 less than one percent of all the arms in Saddam's arsenals had a US provenance.

    It was the Soviet Union that had influence on Saddam. Iraq was in the Soviet camp, not the American. The Soviet KGB station chief Primakov was Saddam's principle adviser and friend. For you to smugly claim the opposite is one more indication of the immense pool of beef brained pugs that flap their lips in these precincts.

    .

    Posted by nacl at 07/13/2006 @ 8:32pm

14. Sam, I appreciate all your thoughtful coverage of Campus Progress and other progressive youth efforts. But to be fair to yourself and to us, your coverage of our first Campus Progress conference was not as much of a downer as you now portray. Your conclusion then: "For all of its limitations, the conference left students, from Young Democrats to radical activists, energized and teeming with hope. Almost everyone I spoke with left the conference believing that a real, thriving, broad-based progressive student movement--whatever that might come to mean--was overdue, necessary, and most importantly, possible." Your next piece about us said, "the emergence of national progressive organizations on campus has given many student activists renewed hope. In its first year Campus Progress has provided progressive students with tools they've never had before: money and a sense of unity." You also described an interview with me: "If the ideological diversity of the students at the conference was limited, [Halperin] chalks that up to the fact that Campus Progress recruited a large portion of the attendees from the DC-based progressive organizations where many work as interns. The 2006 conference, he vows, will reflect a broader outreach." So (1) I lived up to my vow; and (2) even by your own previous accounts, it's not as if we suddenly were transformed. In fact, Campus Progress always has included and reflected a broad range of viewpoints under the progressive banner. Look at our website, our events, and everything else since our February 2005 launch. I'm just saying ... David Halperin, Director, Campus Progress

    Posted by halperindavid at 07/13/2006 @ 8:57pm

15. Mask and NACL have decided to ignore the facts that the Reagan Administration chose to normalize relations with Saddam in 1983, sending Rummy to go shake Saddam's hand and smile for the camera.

    Also ignored: Saddam's gas attacks on the Kurds, in 1988, which failed to make Reagan see him as anything but our new buddy in the region. No such level of atrocities had occurred under the Clinton/Bush sanctions regime, SO it's highly hypocritical, if not downright dishonest, to claim that the US invasion in 2003 was meant to save Iraqis from Saddam's terror, which was long past, and not punished as it was happening.

    As Chomsky and others have noted, US sanctions (not to mention our invasion) have killed far more Iraqis than Saddam ever did. And YES, it's possible to be against the killings launched by Bush AND those launched by Saddam.

    As for our supposedly Marxist colleges... I attended a state college in "The People's Republic of Massachusets" in the 1990s, majored in English, and found that a lot of my professors were conservative, even in the college of liberal arts. One was fond of openly deriding feminists in class. So much for a monolith of liberals! And I wonder what the faculty in the business department was like. (Should we demand "balance" in business and economics dept's, so that Marxist economics gets equal time with Alan Friedman?)

    Silly, silly Tories...

    Posted by seria at 07/13/2006 @ 10:01pm

16. Posted by SERIA 07/13/2006 @ 10:01pm | ignore this person

    Excuse me, SERIA....I know there's a tendency to lump all your "enemies" into one pile....BUT...

    Can you point out in this thread (or others) where I was "ignoring" or even DISCUSSING Reagan and Saddam?

    Posted by Mask at 07/13/2006 @ 10:26pm

17. My favorite activist college moment centers around the $12 an hour living wage movement. Some libs in my class (actually, it was an art school so most everyone claimed to be liberal) got jazzed up about raising the minimum wage to $12 or something. This went on for a few days and it really had a lot of momentum. I got tired of hearing this, so I piped up and suggested that we needed to stop talking about this and do something about it. I suggested that we talk to our parents about raising the pay of our maids. This conversation happened at 10:00 in the morning; by 3:00 that afternoon, the living wage fiasco was over. No one felt that their maids deserved it.

    Posted by woodyee at 07/13/2006 @ 10:47pm

18. .

    STWRILEY 07/13 @ 7:44pm

    Mask and NACL have decided to ignore the facts that the Reagan Administration chose to normalize relations with Saddam in 1983, sending Rummy to go shake Saddam's hand and smile for the camera.

    You mean Reagan was forced to acknowledge that the Iranian armies were threatening to break into the Gulf and overrun the oilfields. Against the catastrophe of the Ayatollah controlling the West's life blood Rumsfeld was sent to Baghdad in December 1983 to reestablish relations and help stabilize the Iraqi army against the Iranians. Relations were resumed in Nov 1984 and the Iraqi army was helped, mainly with satellite intelligence showing the disposition of Iranian concentrations.

    Also ignored: Saddam's gas attacks on the Kurds, in 1988, which failed to make Reagan see him as anything but our new buddy in the region.

    It was the Soviet Union and France who saw Saddam as their buddy and sold him everything from tanks to nuclear reactors to Scuds and c/b warfare labs. His poison gas technicians got their training in Leningrad labs. The chemical cocktail dropped on Halabja was a Soviet formula. The gas cannisters were dropped from Soviet and French jets. Saddam already used poison gas against Susengard, after the second month of the war.

    It is you who forget all that. You have some nerve to say it is we who forget and that Saddam was our new buddy. He was so much our buddy that one of his planes badly damaged and almost sank the USS Stark with an Exocet missile.

    As Chomsky and others have noted, US sanctions (not to mention our invasion) have killed far more Iraqis than Saddam ever did. And YES, it's possible to be against the killings launched by Bush AND those launched by Saddam.

    More gibberish. Saddam killed a combined total of about 900,000 Iraqis and Iranians in the Iran/Iraq war. He killed around 160,000 Kurds in the Anfil campaign. He killed or ethnically cleansed close to half a million Marsh Arabs. According to the UN and HRW he hilled an estimated 300,000 Shia. As to sanctions, they were not US but UN sanctions voted by the UN Security Council. If they brought down the nutritional level of Iraqis that was because Saddam built palaces with his money and because he smuggled oil and bribed people so that around 3 to 5 billion dollars that should have been available for food and medicine went into his and his fellow crook's pockets. Moreover, he made a big show of dying Iraqi children when in fact Iraqi doctors later revealed that those "dead baby" parades were faked.

    As to our invasion, the killing of civilians is notoriously the specialty of the insurgents. We take every precaution to avoid such casualties while they concentrate on killing crowds of civilians. But you have the gall to show your despair at our cruelty. You fraud.

    You claim to have gone to college. But your education clearly did not teach you to respect the facts, or the truth, or to think consistently. You don't think for yourself. You have learned to repeat the gibberish of ideologues. You are a waste.

    .

    Posted by nacl at 07/13/2006 @ 11:29pm

19. .

    CORRECTION

    The above was meant not for STWRILEY but for:

    SERIA 07/13/2006 @ 10:01pm

    Posted by nacl at 07/13/2006 @ 11:33pm

20. Once again, well said NACL.

    Posted by john maasch at 07/13/2006 @ 11:43pm

21. Conservatives saw the word "campus", and that hatred of students of theirs got going, they came up here, blab Liberals blab Liberals blab. Get rid of education. Campus Progress - theres a double bad word to Conservatives. Get rid of campuses, get rid of progress, go to Bob Jones University like George Bush.

    As we know, Republicans led by the idiot want to raise student loan interest rates.

    Posted by conshame at 07/14/2006 @ 12:30am

22. Conservatives understand they are not the intellectual elites.

    Posted by conshame at 07/14/2006 @ 12:40am

23. "...go to Bob Jones University like George Bush.

    Posted by CONSHAME 07/14/2006 @ 12:30am | ignore this person"

    CONSHAME, I know anti-conservative hyperbole is your stock-and-trade....but factually, Bush went to Yale....as well as his father, Clinton, John Kerry, and Howard Dean.

    Posted by Mask at 07/14/2006 @ 09:01am

24. Posted by NACL 07/13/2006 @ 8:32pm

    Ah, but what can we say of the pomposity of someone who bandies about incorrect opinion as though it were absolute factual certainty? Oh yes, we can call him Nacl. You've hit about every factual error or misrepresentation you could in this one, my friend, so we'll go through them and shoot them down, one by one.

    First, The Nation did not oppose removing Saddam from Kuwait, just the way in which the Bush I administration was doing it. They were, in fact, critical of some of the peace movements at the time for failing to balance their criticism of Bush and his policies (like building up US forces while claiming he was just helping to enforce UN sanctions) with proper criticism of Saddam and his brutality. If you want The Nation's opinion on this, just look at Alexander Cockburn's "Beat the Devil" column from 10/8/1990, at a time when Bush was insisting that war was not imminent. Here's the relevant quote:

    "In the present circumstance, the U.S.-dominated forces cannot be expected to remain inactive for long. The embargo will begin to erode, troops will get increasingly restive and voters back home correspondingly critical. Pressure for an attack will grow and war will break out. The other two options are for de facto acceptance of Iraq's annexation, which is impossible, or negotiation which is therefore the only sensible option to pursue."

    Cockburn and The Nation were advocating a different approach than I and my progressive friends (which was where I was calling you for your lumping together of all the left), but that still doesn't equate to support for Saddam or opposition to getting him out of Kuwait (your original contention.) As I said before, you insist on false dichotomies rather than the messy (but accurate) facts.

    When it come to US support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, here too you have fallen for the surface appearances rather than the underlying (and decidedly messy) facts. The US had no formal diplomatic relation from 1967 to 1982 (not 1984) but that hardly kept us from tacit support before normalization in 1982. The real push to help came with the possibility of Iranian victory after the 1982 operations (culminating with the success of Operation Muharram al-Harram in November) and a push for American help lest Iraq fall to an Iranian-backed regime.

    While the vast majority of Iraq's conventioal weapons had been purchased from the Soviets, most of that was before the war, while the French and other states aligned with the west provided most of the war-time arms. The US was thus largely operating through proxies for this move to re-arm Iraq, though we did provide a much larger proportion of so-called "dual-use" items that were actually for military purposes, including the supply of helicopters, computers, electronics, engines, industrial equipment for production of chemical weapons, and even weapons precursors (and not just in the Alcolac International case, either.) We also had a direct hand in enabling Iraq to buy the vast amounts of weapons that it did (since its oil revenue was insufficient and often cut off by Iranian moves on the Al-Fawa peninsula and attacks on Gulf shipping during the "Tanker war".) It was partly through direct US government collusion in the $5 billion of loans from BLN's Atlanta branch (despite the fact that these were illegal) and mostly through the monies lent by US proxies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (to the tune of approximatly $50 billion) that Iraq was able to sustain this very costly war as long as it did.

    The final part of US support is by far the most damning, well beyond the problem of weapons themselves. It was US intelligence, supplied to Saddam, that enabled the Iraqis to be so much more effective in the later parts of the war. We gave them the means to target Iranian attacks and effectively use the weapons they had (including chemical weapons, used extensively in the later parts of the war and without any condemnation from the US government at the time and with the same government blocking UN resolutions condeming their use after the war.) The large numbers of Iranian casualties due to chemical weapons used against these attacks were enabled by our intelligence and advisory activities with the Iraqi regime. Again, while that does not ecuse Saddam in any way, it doesn't excuse the Bush administration either. The messy facts once again get in the way of your false dichotomies. If you want the unvarnished facts on the Iran-Iraq war, try reading Edgar O'Ballance's The Gulf War (Brassey's Defense Publishers, 1988) for the best historical treatment (and before someone like Lvliberty accuses O'Ballance of being a "liberal" or "marxist" historian, know that he's a conservative who is the past editor-in-chief of the British Army News Service.)

    As far as the idea that Saddam or the Iraqi Ba'athist regime in the late 1970's (before his takeover in 1979) was "in the Soviet camp", once again you're off base with the facts. They were placed by the NSC (in their national Intelligence Estimate "Iraq's Role in the Middle East" [gwu.edu])in the middle ground of those past Soviet clients who were looking elsewhere for relations by 1979, especially in light of the Soviet's adventurism in Afghanistan and the uncertain conditions in Iran. They were characterized as seeking to limit Soviet influence in the Middle East, which is hardly what one expects from a Soviet client state. The estimate even holds out the possibility that a Soviet mis-step (like direct involvement in Afghanistan or an unfriendly regime in Tehran) could cause the Ba'athists to seek closer ties with the US. Once again, you fail to see the messy situation on the ground at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war for what it was, a transition point in US-Iraqi relations that led to the Reagan and Bush I administration's support for Saddam. That Saddam used that support for his own puposes is hardly surprising, just as his Ba'athist predecessors had used Soviet support in the 1960's and early 70's, but that doesn't excuse the support nor make it a figment of my imagination.

    All this leads back to my original point, that it was the darlings of the American right (Reagan and Bush I) who supported Saddam both covertly and openly, not the left as you claim. Many on the left (though by no means all) opposed this support and subsequent actions of the Bush administration it lead to, especially the actions Bush took on the Kuwait invasion. But this still doesn't translate into support for Saddam, no matter how you try to parse it. Most of us on the left (progressives, liberals, and all our other types of opinion) opposed both, but hardly in the way and with the intent you imply. It's you who's flapping you gums on this one Nacl, insisting on your black-and-white view in a world where the messiness of technicolor reality rules.

    Posted by Stwriley at 07/14/2006 @ 11:20am

25. You are certainly full of yourself if nothing else! The verboseness probably fits you well!

    It does indeed, since words are my trade. I make no excuses for giving a subject the treatment it deserves. Men of few words usually have few ideas to go with them.

    Call yourselves as you wish Marxist-Lenist, progressive, liberal, socialist, anarchist, extremist, or intellectual elitist.

    You imply that these are all the same, though of course they are not. Again, you only show your ignorance to write this. Anarchist and Marxist-Leninist the same thing? Opposites would be a far better characterization. Come on, Rio Bravo, if you can't tell the difference then you really do need to go back to school.

    I can't understand why you would lower yourself to grapple with the common rabble who certainly could never achieve the degree of intellectual univeralism you obviously feel you possess?

    I don't have contempt for "common rabble" at all, that's your term. I just have contempt for you. Many people know the limits of their education or abilities, including me. I would never venture to hold forth on molecular biology, or electrical engineering, or a host of other subjects about which I know no more than any educated and well-read layman. You obviously have no such internal filter but believe yourself an expert on things you know nothing about. Like all pompous asses, you hold forth claiming yur opinions as fact but only show others your foolishness.

    Oh, and before you fall back on the "intellectual elite" line, I'll tell you that I spent a dozen years as a professional carpenter before medical necessity forced me to give up physical work. I returned to college and embarked on my second career as a professor. So I know both sides of that supposed divide between "average working people" and the "intellectual elite" and can tell you that some of the most intelligent people I've ever met were some of those who worked with their hands and did it well. I believe in work, though the form I choose to engage in now is work of the mind rather than of the hands it is work all the same, no different and no better or worse than the work my hands once did.

    Posted by Stwriley at 07/14/2006 @ 11:49am

26. Cockburn and The Nation were advocating a different approach than I and my progressive friends

    Posted by STWRILEY 07/14/2006 @ 11:49am | ignore this person

    Curious....what were the two approaches (Cockburn's and yours)?

    Posted by Mask at 07/14/2006 @ 12:08pm

27. Posted by LVLIBERTY1 07/14/2006 @ 02:19am

    But it is to be expected when those like Stwriley and the like get so much of their "history" from people like Zinn and Chomsky.

    The leftists actually have the audacity to elevate these people as "truth-tellers".

    I have yet to quote Zinn here, because I find much of his historical thinking to be wrong. The People's History of the United States is a simplistic and poorly backed attempt by a hold-over marxist to provide a "balanced" idea of American history. I have read it but don't use it at all either for my self or in my classes. Once again, Lvliberty, you've gone out on a limb and it's been sawed off behind you. Oh, and Chomsky isn't an historian at all, he's a linguist (and in that regard is a very fine scholar.) His political opinions are somewhere out on the far edge of reality, since he's an anarcho-syndicalist. That's where he loses me and most others on the left, since he's essentially proposing a stateless and governmentless idea of the world that is completely untenable. Again, equating the general run of opinion on the left of the political spectrum with the views of Chomsky is like equating all opinion on the right with Fred Koch. Neither is an accurate view.

    STWRILEY is one who obviously has obtained his history credentials from far left sources. It is so apparent in not just the "facts" he attempts to cite, but even more so from his conclusions. The conclusions expose his lack of world experience.

    What may be "obvious" to you would come as a shock to my doctoral committee and advisor. Three of the four are Republicans (though hardly of your stripe), including my advisor (now sadly deceased.) You forget that I am a military historian, not exactly a specialty known for it's radical roots. Nor are my sources either far left or far right or anything in between. You once again display your ignorance of what an historical source is to say that. Sources are the original material of history (as when I cite the National Intelligence Estimate for Nacl in the post above) and while they may have biases that an historian must take into account, that does not make them "left" or "right" but simply sources. It is interpretation that may (if the historian is incautious or sloppy) be skewed by political leanings. It is also true that interpretation may naturally lead an historian to his opinions. I am a progressive because of what I have encountered in my research. Every look at strategic history sources, for instance, leads me to the conclusions I have expressed in this forum many times about the Iraq war. I go where my sources lead, no matter the outcome, as I have also shown in this forum by, for instance, backing an interpretation of the Second Amendment that you favored because that is what the sources demand. You insist, like Nacl, on a simple black-and-white view of the world that a good historian knows is too complex for such a view.

    As to real world experience, I seriously doubt you have more than I do. As I also noted to Nacl above, I have been a working man and a successful one too. If you were not blinded by your own preconcieved opinions you might have seen in my previous arguments with you that I never seek to argue only on the basis of what I believe but of what I can support. That is what the real world demands. Those who close their eyes to fact are the ones the world takes by surprise (and usually a nasty surprise too.)

    I'll mostly pass over your comments about firing Masters and Doctoral degree-holders, since I can't even begin to judge what the situations were, who the people were, or why you chose to fire them. No facts to go on but your rather cursory treatment here, you see, and that is insufficient for any kind of analysis. If I had to guess (and it would be a guess based only on my observations of your behavior and stated opinions), I'd say they probably wouldn't get anything like a fair break from you. Still, that's just a guess. I seriously doubt, though, that you "fix" every college grad who comes your way, nor could many businesses and industries run without what these workers learn in college. So save your anti-intellectual predjudices for your friends and get back to talking about something that really matters. If you can.

    Posted by Stwriley at 07/14/2006 @ 12:36pm

28. Posted by MASK 07/14/2006 @ 12:08am

    Curious....what were the two approaches (Cockburn's and yours)?

    A good question Mask, thanks for asking it.

    Cockburn was advocating for negotiated withdrawal of the Iraqis (since he viewed annexation as a ploy rather than real policy) based on overtures that Iraqis and others known to be in contact with the Ba'athist leadership had floated for months. It recognized what he considered to be legitimate grips of the Iraqis against the Kuwaitis despite his own distaste for the Iraqi regime (but when have we ever been reluctant to make deals with regimes we find otherwise distasteful or even repugnant) and the long history of the border dispute between the two states. As he saw it, war was a poor option since it had too many unknown variables that could lead to, among other things, high US military and Kuwaiti civilian casualties (I'll note that this proved unfounded, but it was a legitimate concern.) His criticism of Bush came from his build-up of forces and their overwhelmingly US character, which he felt sent a dangerous message to the rest of the world.

    I at the time favored military action, not for the reasons the Bush Adminitration was giving (which were disengenuous at best and better characterized as opportunistic) but because we had created the mess and needed to clean it up. I actually favored removing Saddam at the time, along with the senior Ba'athist leadership around him, and dragging them off to the Hague to stand trial. That would have left the Iraqi military leadership (at the time still not overly committed as Ba'athists and looking for stability and a salvaging of their position) in charge of the country. Not the best solution, but one that wouldn't have left a power vacuum and invited worse dangers like those we see now in Iraq. Admittedly, there might have been a partition of the country if the military proved too weak to hold the northern and southern provinces, but I can't see how we're likely to get anything other than that anyway now, and we could have saved a lot of lives on all sides by doing it then with full backing from the UN and even most Arab states. What we would have avoided is occupation, which is the one thing we should never have pursued under any circumstances.

    I hope that clears up where I'm at on this, Mask. I favored military action but not as Bush chose to do it, though the military's plan for and execution of the campaign itself was a brilliant piece of work, don't get me wrong. If Bush had let them go ahead and finish what they started it would have been even better. Cockburn favored negotiation and limitation of harm, also in opposition to Bush. Either were viable options, both would have gotten Saddam out of Kuwait, and neither would have produced the long sanctions regime and the harm that came to many innocent people as a result of Bush's plan.

    Posted by Stwriley at 07/14/2006 @ 12:58pm

29. "I favored military action but not as Bush chose to do it..."

    Posted by STWRILEY 07/14/2006 @ 12:58am | ignore this person

    Well not as THAT "Bush" chose to do it. Don't want to put words in your mouth, but it SOUNDS like you're saying you'd do in 1991 what we did in 2003, but without the stupid mistakes of Paul Bremer.

    Am I wrong in that assumption?

    Posted by Mask at 07/14/2006 @ 1:32pm

30. Posted by MASK 07/14/2006 @ 1:32pm

    Well not as THAT "Bush" chose to do it. Don't want to put words in your mouth, but it SOUNDS like you're saying you'd do in 1991 what we did in 2003, but without the stupid mistakes of Paul Bremer.

    Am I wrong in that assumption?

    Partly, because your assumption includes the idea that we would have stayed beyond the arrest of Saddam and his senior officials in 1991, which would not have been necessary. The progress of our invasion then would have been even more swift than in 2003 and would have eliminated exactly the people we wanted to get rid of, i.e., Saddam, his top officials, and the Special Republican Guard and its commanders (who were in the rearguard of Iraqi forces and our sights as Bush called a halt to the invasion.) We had much better intelligence at the time and could have rounded the lot of them up in a matter of a week or two and then bugged out while leaving the senior regular army generals in charge. That's not as bad as it sounds, since they were never regime insiders, but professional military men who probably could have held the country together but would at least have been able to give some stability. If things looked really bad by the time we rounded up Saddam, et.al., we could also have left a UN peacekeeping force there headed by Arab state troops and thus avoided the charge of imperialism that's hurting us so much now. That wasn't even an option for the younger Bush. We also wouldn't have felt we needed to keep large forces in Saudi Arabia and thus we would have avoided helping to create al-Qaida and the radical islamist fringe that looks to them as saviors from us. So in part you're right, the plan up until we actually defeated the remaining parts of the Iraqi army would have been very much the same, but from there it would have diverged radically toward the "get in and get out" idea that our military has always rightly preferred to anything that even hints at occupation.

    Posted by Stwriley at 07/14/2006 @ 2:38pm

31. Posted by STWRILEY 07/14/2006 @ 2:38pm | ignore this person

    The reason I find that strange, STW, is that "conventional liberal wisdom" on Iraq seems to be "We should have never gone in there in the FIRST place"....with some moderates and others saying "We COULD have invaded and it not turn into a quagmire if we had listened to ____ and not had Paul Bremer in charge".

    You seem to come down in that camp...which I think I am as well. The invasion worked (beyond the simple military objectives), the occupation was screwed up.

    Posted by Mask at 07/14/2006 @ 3:05pm

32. Posted by MASK 07/14/2006 @ 3:05pm

    The reason I find that strange, STW, is that "conventional liberal wisdom" on Iraq seems to be "We should have never gone in there in the FIRST place"....with some moderates and others saying "We COULD have invaded and it not turn into a quagmire if we had listened to ____ and not had Paul Bremer in charge".

    You seem to come down in that camp...which I think I am as well. The invasion worked (beyond the simple military objectives), the occupation was screwed up.

    You may have read more than I intended there Mask. I do not and did not favor the current invasion, though not necessarily for the standard "liberal" reasons. The time for that action was past, basically. We had our chance back in 1991 and we blew it. The strategic realities of the world had changed a great deal in the years between 1991 and 2003 and the new situation made invasion unwise at best.

    First, we simply did not have sufficient international legal backing in 2003 (as we did in 1991), which was reason enough to sit back and let the inspections regime work itself out. BushCo could have done that easily if they hadn't wanted a war for other purposes and in the end might (though we now know wouldn't) have gotten sufficient backing if Saddam proved too recalcitrant or if real WMD programs had been discovered. As it is, we are open to the charge that we ignored international law which is very damaging to our standing in the world and weakens every other effort we want and need to make on the world stage.

    Second, we played into the hands of the very people we should have been opposing most ardently, the extremist factions in Islam and al-Qaida in particular. We practically validated every exaggeration and propaganda piece they'd been using with little real success for years. Now, they are in a much better position vis-a-vis the Arab world and it is Islamic moderates and democrats that are on the defensive, the very people we want to support but now can't without tainting them in the eyes of their own co-religionists.

    Third, we had no real choice in 2003 except some form of occupation, though you are quite right that even that (bad though it is) was made worse by BushCo and their boy Bremer. The Iraqi military had been purged after 1991 and the other elements that might have provided a stabilizing element were missing. At the same time, tensions that had been present all along in Iraq had only grown with Saddam's post-1991 oppressions and made the country even harder to stabilize for anyone.

    Fourth, we have turned an improving situation with Iran into a horribly worsening one that has long-term strategic implication that make me shudder to even think about. Rather than the Iranian reformers (who weren't great by any means, but were at least business-like people we could eventually have dealt with on a reasonable basis) we now have populist radicals like Ahmadinejad who play on our actions for their own political success. The invasion made many Iranians nervous, and given their history with the US that's hardly surprising (going right back to the 1953 coup against Mossadeq.) The result was a turn to those who seemed likeliest to stand up to US pressure, or at least talked the best game on that subject. The invasion also gave Iran a far greater influence in Iraq than they'd ever had, given that the Shiite leaders who'd been sheltered for the last twelve years in Iran were able to wield influence unchecked afterwards. The results of this twin problem of percieved threat and growing influence has lead us not only to the nuclear stand-off (which I still think is mostly bluster on Ahmadinejad's part) but is also probably behind the current Hezbollah attack on Israel, which I would bet is an attempt by the Iranians to divert US attention away from themselves toward another front (and not a bad strategic idea on their part, at least not if they can keep their hand in the matter concealed and use the Lebanese as their scapegoat.)

    Fifth, we have done exactly what a state that depends on a small professional military should never do, get into an occupation. I alluded to this above, but it's also a seperate point. We have need of flexible miliary force to deal with problems as they arise, and that is all too likely given the rapid fluidity of modern military situations. As we stand now, that ability to respond has been drained away into the sands (quite literally) and we are pinned down and unable to use force as we should. I am not some peace-nik who opposes all use of force, I just think it ought to serve our interests rather than undermine them.

    As you can tell from this rather long and involved list, I tend to see the world through the lens of strategic interest (hardly surprising from an historian who specializes in strategy, I know) and judge what we do in foreign policy terms by that. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for an idealistic foreign policy as long as we make it match our strategic interests. I'm not some completely cynical realpolitik advocate who only see what benefits us, but I'm also not some neo-con boob who likes to imagine that the world conforms to my wishes and that the lessons of history don't apply just because I think the US is unique in the world (which in strategic terms at least, we're not.) So no, I didn't favor the 2003 invasion because I thought it would get us into a great deal of trouble, most of which has indeed come to pass.

    Posted by Stwriley at 07/14/2006 @ 4:39pm

33. First, we simply did not have sufficient international legal backing in 2003 (as we did in 1991)----Posted by STWRILEY 07/14/2006 @ 4:39pm | ignore this person

    Correct me if I'm wrong...but we had NO "international legal backing" to topple Saddam in 1991.

    Debatably none in 2003, but seems I remember a key proviso of UN support for "Desert Storm" was that we would "only liberate Kuwait".

    But more to your philosophy, than the "strategic elements"....would you have supported (all things being equal) an invasion and toppling of Saddam in 2003, if the determining factors you mentioned for 1991 were in place?

    Posted by Mask at 07/14/2006 @ 4:49pm