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This is what liberal war fever looks like
From delusions of a no-fly zone to anti-Russian attacks abroad, it’s uglier than they imagine
March 9, 2022![]()
(Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)
Written by:
James W. Carden
In
a private letter written in 1918, the recently deposed German
chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg admitted that in the run-up to
the Great War, “there were special circumstances that militated in favor
of war, including those in which Germany in 1870-71 entered the circle
of great powers” and became “the object of vengeful envy on the part of
the other Great Powers, largely though not entirely by her own fault.”
Yet
Bethmann saw another crucial factor at work: that of public opinion.
“How else,” he asked, “[to] explain the senseless and impassioned zeal
which allowed countries like Italy, Rumania, and even America, not
originally involved in the war, no rest until they too had immersed
themselves in the bloodbath? Surely this is the immediate, tangible
_expression_ of a general disposition toward war in the world.”
The
Austrian writer Stefan Zweig got a taste of the war fever gripping
France in the spring of 1914 while sitting in a movie theater in Tours.
As Nicholson Baker recounts in Human Smoke, his monumental pacifist history of the Second World War,
an image of Wilhelm II, then Emperor of Germany, came on screen for a moment. At once the theater was in an uproar.
The
good natured people of Tours, who knew no more about the world and
politics than what they had read in the newspapers, had gone mad for an
instant…it had only been a second, but one that showed me how easily
people anywhere could be aroused in a time of crisis, despite all
attempts at understanding.
America
shared in the “general disposition toward war” of which Bethmann wrote.
On April 6, 1917, the House of Representatives voted 374 to 50 in favor
of America’s entry into the war. One of the holdouts, the first woman
elected to Congress, Jeanette Rankin from Montana, was castigated not
only by her fellow suffragettes but by her hometown paper, which accused
her of being a “dupe of the Kaiser.”
The similarities between then and now are hard to miss.
Consider
the current popular mania over the possibility of a “no-fly zone” over
Ukraine. A Reuters poll found that 74 percent of Americans believe the
US and its NATO allies should impose a no-fly zone. Meanwhile, artists
in Manhattan held an event at the Guggenheim Museum in which they threw paper airplanes in support of such a policy.
In
the enthusiasm for a “no-fly zone,” one can’t help but recall the words
of World War I veteran and poet Siegfried Sassoon, who ridiculed the
armchair warriors of his time:
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
The
popular support for a no-fly zone — essentially a declaration war on
Russia that would immerse NATO in the Russo-Ukrainian war — has
manifested itself in other, perhaps more shameful ways.
Reports abound of broken windows at Russian restaurants; of Russian artists and
students being dismissed; of loyalty pledges; of threats of
ostracization and petty, common cruelties aimed at Russian and former
Soviet Union citizens living abroad.
This has been a long time coming.
We were treated to a preview of what liberal war hysteria looks like back in 2014 when “good” liberals, such as then-New Republic literary
editor Leon Wieseltier, traveled to Kiev to stand in solidarity with
the new government there. His remarks are revealing for what they reveal
about the rush-to-war mindset so prevalent among liberals today:
I
watched the progress of Putin’s imperialism beyond his borders and
fascism within his borders, I ruefully remarked to Frank Foer that the
moment reminded me of what I used to call my Congress for Cultural
Freedom-envy — my somewhat facile but nonetheless sincere regret at
having been born too late to participate in the struggle of Western
intellectuals, some of whom became my teachers and my heroes, against
the Stalinist assault on democracy in Europe. And all of a sudden,
pondering the Russian aggression in Crimea, and the Russian campaign of
destabilization in Ukraine, I realized that I had exaggerated my
belatedness. I was not born too late at all.
Like
Miniver Cheever, who “Loved the days of old, When swords were bright
and steeds were prancing,” Wieseltier and his fellow liberals see the
conflict between Russia and the West as a way to prove their own worth —
never mind the stakes.
It
is fair to assume that this latest iteration of Russia hysteria runs as
wild as it does in part due to the influence of Russiagate. Primed by
fictional tales of pee-tapes and Alfa Bank, today every Wine Mom and Sad Dad is
a Russia expert, having been weaned on a steady diet of Chris Hayes,
Rachel Maddow, Don Lemon and their reliable stable of on-call fabulists
such as Natasha Bertrand, David Corn, Franklin Foer and former
“intelligence official” Malcolm Nance.
In
the prevailing liberal hierarchy of evil, Trump equals Putin equals
Hitler, and, applying the lessons fed to them by Tom Hanks and Steven
Spielberg, the time has come…for what exactly? Boomers and Gen-Xers to
storm the beaches of Crimea?
Even
more worrisome is that the invincible ignorance of these liberals and
progressives is fortified by a belief in their own good intentions.
Never mind that calling for a “no-fly zone” would kick off World War III
and, perhaps with it, nuclear catastrophe.