Where's ANSWER now?
07.15.2003Peter Beinart asks some important questions about the consistency of the left's interest in human rights. Excerpt:
ANSWER is symptomatic of the left in general. A LexisNexis search going back to 2000 finds not a single reference to the crises in Congo, Liberia, Sudan, or Zimbabwe from Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Michael Moore, Michael Lerner, Gore Vidal, Cornel West, or Howard Zinn. In Congo alone, according to the International Rescue Committee, five years of civil war have taken the lives of a mind-boggling 3.3 million people. How can the leaders of the global left--men and women ostensibly dedicated to solidarity with the world's oppressed, impoverished masses--not care?
Posted by Miguel at 01:24 PM
Comments
Chomsky was talking about Congo at least back to 1999. http://www.madre.org/resources_features/noam.html
I'm not exactly the greatest fan of Chomsky, but I really dislike it when people like the guy you quoted think Lexis-Nexis is all inclusive for information sources.
Posted by: Duane at July 16, 2003 06:29 AM
The point isn't that LexisNexis is utterly exclusive. But if you read the article I mentioned (and then some of the numerous blogs that cite it), what you see is frustration in the radical left's clearly bias towards issues only on the basis of knee-jerk anti-Americanism. I'm sure Chomsky may've been mentioning Congo back in 1999, but he's not been mentioning it lately. Oh, and LexisNexis is quite comprehensive -- at least for print material (obviously not for online material).
And the point still stands. I don't see protests on behalf of the Congo or the other places. Where's ANSWER now? Why only protest the places the US decides to get involved in. What you see is a damned if you do, damned if you don't political approach. American governments are railed against if they ignore a world social problem, and railed against if they try to get involved and so something about it.
Posted by: miguel at July 16, 2003 12:47 PM