Bush’s Useful Idiots
There is no doubt that Mr. Tony Judt is a prolific writer. Two long but moving articles he wrote for London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books this week. Both of these are must read in my humble opinion. I may write more on these two articles in the coming days if and when I have any spare time. Till then, happy reading!
Regards,
Sohel
Bush’s Useful Idiots
Tony Judt on the Strange Death of Liberal America
Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy? Why have they so little to say about Iraq, about Lebanon, or about reports of a planned attack on Iran? Why has the administration’s sustained attack on civil liberties and international law aroused so little opposition or anger from those who used to care most about these things? Why, in short, has the liberal intelligentsia of the United States in recent years kept its head safely below the parapet?
It wasn’t always so. On 26 October 1988, the New York Times carried a full-page advertisement for liberalism. Headed ‘A Reaffirmation of Principle’, it openly rebuked Ronald Reagan for deriding ‘the dreaded L-word’ and treating ‘liberals’ and ‘liberalism’ as terms of opprobrium. Liberal principles, the text affirmed, are ‘timeless. Extremists of the right and of the left have long attacked liberalism as their greatest enemy. In our own time liberal democracies have been crushed by such extremists. Against any encouragement of this tendency in our own country, intentional or not, we feel obliged to speak out.’
Also read Tony Judt's The New York Review of Books Article from the following link: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19302
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