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" . . . it was suddenly clear, even to many opponents of the war, that the Taliban regime had been the biggest obstacle to any serious effort to address the looming humanitarian crisis, and it was the American war that removed the obstacle. It looked (almost) like a war of liberation, a humanitarian intervention. But the war was primarily neither of these things; it was a preventive war, designed to make it impossible to train terrorists in Afghanistan and to plan and organize attacks like that of September 11. And that war was never really accepted, in wide sections of the left, as either just or necessary. . . . The truth is that most leftists were not committed to having a coherent view about things like that; they were committed to opposing the war, and they were prepared to oppose it without regard to its causes or character and without any visible concern about preventing future terrorist attacks."
"The radical failure of the left’s response to the events of last fall raises a disturbing question: can there be a decent left in . . . the only superpower? . . . Certainly, all those emotions were plain to see in the left=s reaction to September 11, in the failure to register the horror of the attack or to acknowledge the human pain it caused, in the schadenfreude of so many of the first responses, the barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally gotten what it deserved."
"Is there any way of escaping the politics of guilt and resentment on the home ground of a superpower? We might begin to worry about this question by looking at oppositional politics in older imperial states. . . . For wasn’t France the birthplace of enlightenment, universal values, and human rights?"
"The cold war, imperial adventures in Central America, Vietnam above all, and then the experience of globalization under American leadership: all these, for good reasons and bad, produced a pervasive leftist view of the United States as global bully, rich, privileged, selfish, hedonistic, and corrupt beyond remedy. The sense of a civilizing mission . . . never got off the ground here. Foreign aid, the Peace Corps, and nation-building never took on the dimensions of a 'mission'; they were mostly sidelines of U.S. foreign policy: underfunded, frequently in the shade of military operations. . . . And yet, the leftist critique . . . has been stupid, overwrought, grossly inaccurate. It is the product of . . . 'the combination of embitterment and not thinking.' The left has lost its bearings. Why?"
" . . . four reasons:
1. Ideology: the lingering effects of the Marxist theory of imperialism and of the third worldist doctrines of the 1960s and 1970s. . . . the inability of leftists to recognize or acknowledge the power of religion in the modern world. Whenever writers on the left say that the root cause of terror is global inequality or human poverty, the assertion is in fact a denial that religious motives really count. . . . it would be better to find a reason in the realities of terrorism itself, in the idea of a holy war against the infidels, which is not the same thing as a war against inferior races or alien nations. In fact, Islamic radicalism is not, as fascism is, a racist or ultra-nationalist doctrine. Something else is going on, which we need to understand. But ideologically primed leftists were likely to think that . . . [a]ny group that attacks the imperial power must be a representative of the oppressed, and its agenda must be the agenda of the left. It isn't necessary to listen to its spokesmen. What else can they want except...the redistribution of resources across the globe, the withdrawal of American soldiers from wherever they are, the closing down of aid programs for repressive governments, the end of the blockade of Iraq, and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel? . . . A holy war against infidels is not, even unintentionally, unconsciously, or “objectively,” a left politics. But how many leftists can even imagine a holy war against infidels?
2. Powerlessness and alienation: leftists have no power in the United States and most of us don't expect to exercise power, ever. Many left intellectuals live in America like internal aliens, refusing to identify with their fellow citizens, regarding any hint of patriotic feeling as politically incorrect. . . . They talked and wrote as if they could not imagine themselves responsible for the lives of their fellow-citizens. That was someone else’s business; the business of the left was...what? To oppose the authorities, whatever they did. . . . as if there was no need at all to balance security and freedom. Maybe the right balance will emerge spontaneously from the clash of rightwing authoritarianism and leftwing absolutism, but it would be better practice for the left to figure out the right balance for itself, on its own; the effort would suggest a responsible politics and a real desire to exercise power, some day. But what really marks the left, or a large part of it, is the bitterness that comes with abandoning any such desire. The alienation is radical.
3. The moral purism of blaming America first: many leftists seem to believe that this is like blaming oneself, taking responsibility for the crimes of the imperial state. In fact, when we blame America, we also lift ourselves above the blameworthy (other) Americans. The left sets itself apart. Whatever America is doing in the world isn’t our doing. . . . it doesn’t allow for the favorite posture of many American leftists: standing as a righteous minority, brave and determined, among the timid, the corrupt, and the wicked. A posture like that ensures at once the moral superiority of the left and its political failure.
4. The sense of not being entitled to criticize anyone else: how can we live here in America, the richest, most powerful, and most privileged country in the world, and say anything critical about people who are poorer and weaker than we are? . . . we all enlisted on the side of oppressed men and women and failed, again and again, to criticize the authoritarianism and brutality that often scars their politics. There is no deeper impulse in left politics than this enlistment; solidarity with people in trouble seems to me the most profound commitment that leftists make. . . . Even the oppressed have obligations, and surely the first among these is not to murder innocent people, not to make terrorism their politics. Leftists who cannot insist upon this point, even to people poorer and weaker than themselves, have abandoned both politics and morality for something else. They are radical only in their abjection."
"What ought to be done? I have a modest agenda: put decency first, and then we will see. So, let’s go back over my list of reasons for the current indecency.
Ideology. . . . For the moment we can make do with a little humility, an openness to heterodox ideas, a sharp eye for the real world , and a readiness to attend to moral as well as materialist arguments. . . . high among our interests are our values: secular enlightenment, human rights, and democratic government. Left politics starts with the defense of these three.
Alienation and powerlessness. . . . they don't necessarily get things right, and the angrier they are and the more they are locked into their combative posture, the more likely they are to get things wrong. . . . We can be as critical as we like, but these are people whose fate we share; we are responsible for their safety as they are for ours, and our politics has to reflect that mutual responsibility.
Blaming America first. . . . The United States is not omnipotent, and its leaders should not be taken as co-conspirators in every human disaster. . . . But shouldn’t an internationalist left demand a more egalitarian distribution of power? Well, yes, in principle; but any actual redistribution will have to be judged by the quality of the states that would be empowered by it.
Not blaming anyone else. The world . . . is too full of hatred, cruelty, and corruption for any left, even the American left, to suspend its judgement about what’s going on. . . . If we value democracy, we have to be prepared to defend it, at home, of course, but not only there." ... [more]
1:19:00 PM Google It! 
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