NICK DENTON IS UNIMPRESSED:

If Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, represents the flower of the liberal intelligentsia, god help us. She was in a debate yesterday at the NYSEC hall on the Upper West Side, with Bill Emmott, editor of The Economist. The topic: America’s role in the world, protector or predator? . . .

It would help, once in a while to go beyond the standard applause lines of the American left. Vanden Heuvel, in the course of 90 minutes, said literally nothing surprising, apart from appropriating the language of Pat Buchanan to rail against the cabal — could she possibly be implying they were Jewish? — of radical neocons who had captured American foreign policy. Now novelty isn’t a requirement of public speaking, or political analysis; but a token effort to veer from the party line, just once or twice, would at least demonstrate the capacity for independent thought. For Vanden Heuvel, and far too many others on the American Left, American power is always bad, all power is bad, the most recent Republic administration is always the most evil in history, globalization always works to the benefit of multinational corporations, international institutions are a power for good. These truths are held to be self-evident. No mere facts can alter her views. . . .

Oh, one last thing. Vanden Heuvel said the sanctions policy on Iraq was a mistake; what the US should have done was to encourage the kind of change from within that we saw in central Europe. What freaking planet is she living on? In countries such as Poland and Hungary, the communist regimes had lost the will to slaughter thousands; there, a few fax machines for dissidents could make a difference. To encourage the Iraqis to mount their own velvet revolution: that makes about as much sense as Jews mounting a sit-down protest at Auschwitz. When faced by a man with a gun and no conscience, Vanden Heuvel’s Left is incapable of coherence.

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