I'm anti-war. Why don't I trust the anti-war right?
A look at Josh Hammer's most recent column.
I was a full-grown adult when 9/11 happened, so I remember the aftermath of that terrible day — and the leadup to the invasion of Iraq — with a bit of bitterness. The people who urged restraint and caution, the anti-war folks, were treated with utter contempt.
Here’s Michael Kelly disparaging pacifists:
The Nazis wished the British to not fight. If the British did not fight, the Nazis would conquer Britain. The British pacifists also wished the British to not fight. The British pacifists, therefore, were on the side of a Nazi victory over Britain. They were objectively pro-Fascist.
An essentially identical logic obtains now. Organized terrorist groups have attacked America. These groups wish the Americans to not fight. The American pacifists wish the Americans to not fight. If the Americans do not fight, the terrorists will attack America again. And now we know such attacks can kill many thousands of Americans. The American pacifists, therefore, are on the side of future mass murders of Americans. They are objectively pro-terrorist.
There is no way out of this reasoning.
"The middle part of the country--the great red zone that voted for Bush--is clearly ready for war. The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead--and may well mount a fifth column."
Here’s the thing: The pacifists were right. America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were disasters. Kelly died in Iraq during the invasion, in a car accident of all things. Sullivan went on to repent his early calumnies against war skeptics. It was all a tragedy, a mistake, and we’re still paying for it.
My own instincts are generally dovish, probably even pacifistic. (I had a lapse after Afghanistan, which I regret, though — that being before I got into opinion writing — that was pretty much a private opinion at the time.) So I’m hesitant to sling charges of being “objectively pro-Russia” at anti-war right figures like Tucker Carlson and the rest of his ilk, because A) it’s much too resonant to throw around hints and allegations of treason or something like it and B) maybe, I don’t know, they’re onto something?
But Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer’s latest syndicated column clarifies for me some of why I don’t trust this group. It’s not just that some of them see Vladimir Putin as a Christian anti-woke hero, or that some of their objections to the war take a detour into racism.
Fundamentally, he isn’t describing the world in a way that seems to me to be accurate or fair.
Here is how things start:
We are now more than seven months removed from Vladimir Putin’s regrettable incursion1 into eastern Ukraine and Crimea. But despite that elapsed time and all the various developments since then, the United States’ formal position on the conflict has changed markedly little. That over-simplified and Manichaean position, in short, is one of Ukrainian maximalism: Putin is evil, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is noble, and—here is the big logical leap—the United States will thus support the Ukrainian effort to retake every square inch of territory in the Donbass and Crimea from its nuclear-armed adversary, seemingly no matter the cost to the U.S. taxpayer.
Regrettable incursion?
I’m not going to get all “Webster defines ‘incursion’ as…” on you. Suffice it to say, “incursion” is a word that — to me anyway — rather drastically underplays what we know has happened: Namely, that Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine and tried to conquer it.
Hammer never uses the word “invasion” in his column. He uses “incursion” twice.
What about “war?” Let’s look at some of his uses of that word.
On U.S. policy backing Ukraine:
Translation: We will defend your war to retake every square inch of historically contested and ethnically mixed territory no matter what the people living there say they want2, no matter the cost, and despite the fact that the fate of Zelenskyy’s regime in Kyiv is secure.
On the need to change course:
Our national interest in the Ukrainian theater is not coterminous with Zelenskyy’s absolutist stance; our interest is for de-escalation, detente and peace. But if we want to achieve those ends—especially as the threat of nuclear warfare is bursting out into the open, many in the West recklessly continue their calls for Ukraine’s ascension to NATO, and the 3 is himself calling for a NATO-led “preemptive strike” against Russia—Biden needs to recognize reality and change strategic course immediately.
His conclusion:
That our present ruling class demonstrates no interest in common sense de-escalation, and instead demonstrates a seemingly interminable interest in escalation and Ukrainian territorial maximalism, speaks volumes about how out of touch that ruling class is. If nothing else, we should hope the American people speak up and begin to rein in our sordid, war-hungry ruling class at the ballot box next month.
Hammer’s language tends to place the burden of the war — the fault — on Ukraine and its American backers. Zelenskyy is “absolutist” and "war-hungry." America’s leaders are also “war-hungry4.” But Putin, the guy who started the war? His actions are “regrettable.”
Something’s off about all this.
The problem, of course, is that Hammer isn’t entirely wrong. The U.S. probably should be nudging Ukraine and Russia to the bargaining table — though, publicly, there’s not much sign that either party is interested. We don’t want a nuclear war, and some of the American commentators who write off the possibility strike me as entirely too blase. And given our history, it really is worth questioning how much U.S. interests are driving Ukraine’s war aims.
Then again: I’m not living in the invaded country.
Something I’ve come to realize over the last few months is that my own dovishness is driven not just by my Mennonite associations, but also from living in the most militarily powerful country on the planet. We’ve been in plenty of wars in my lifetime, and we’ve lost a few. But we’ve never really been the underdog. We haven’t even really fought on our own soil. We’re almost always the outsiders with the giant footprint. We’re powerful. And it’s good to be skeptical of the powerful.
But I’m not sure that dynamic fully works with “our” side of the Ukraine-Russia war. Ukraine is fighting to defend — and yes, recover — its own territory and its own people. Zelenskyy and his people are the underdogs, even if they have the United States at their back. Russia is the aggressor, the bully, and seemingly (until this year) the more powerful of the two.
And that’s why I don’t trust the anti-war right, or at least Hammer’s representation of it. Again, I won’t accuse him of being “objectively pro-Russia.” But it’s clear that in the Ukraine-Russia war that Hammer affords more latitude and deference to the invader than the invaded. A genuine anti-war stance would entail looking at the death and destruction that Putin has wrought, and finding his actions something more than merely regrettable.
Emphasis added.
Hammer doesn’t say, but I assume he’s referring here to the sham referenda Putin held in the occupied territories, which seems … credulous, let’s say.
Emphasis added again!
OK, maybe he has a point.