“Cruise Missile Socialists”: When Justifying Imperialist Intervention goes Wrong

On July 1, an article titled “Libya and Syria: When Anti-Imperialism Goes Wrong” was published on the North Star website, signed by “Pham Binh of Occupy Wall Street, Class War Camp.” The article argues that imperialist interventions in Libya and Syria are justified because they are demanded by forces the author calls revolutionary. While claiming to cut against the grain, he formulates what is a common position among liberals, progressives and even some self-proclaimed socialists and anti-imperialists. As such it is important to respond.When imperialist countries intervene in the affairs of oppressed countries, the justifications do not only emanate from the U.S. government and the corporate media. In each instance, various forces and individuals with liberal and progressive credentials succumb to the imperialist propaganda campaign and put forth pro-intervention arguments, albeit using progressive-sounding analyses and using liberal/left language.
Even if “progressive” arguments for intervention originate far away from the halls of power, and receive no wide audience among the ruling class, they nonetheless play an important role for the imperialist war drives. This is because such arguments address a specific audience: people with anti-war and progressive inclinations who are typically far less susceptible to run-of-the-mill Washington/Wall Street pro-war propaganda. By spreading confusion about the nature of the intervention, and the tasks of the progressive movement, those who would normally be the first responders in the anti-war movement are rendered inactive and passive. This is the value of this kind of propaganda for the ruling class.In the lead-up and immediate aftermath of each intervention, such forces emerge to explain that while anti-imperialism is good in general and in past scenarios, this time is different. Each time they present their arguments as new and unorthodox. While it is important to refute the specific arguments of the pro-intervention “left,” we must begin with the broad observation that they continue a long and definite political trend in the imperialist countries. In the Iraq invasion, this trend received the name “cruise missile liberalism,” but 100 years ago Lenin referred to it as “social-imperialism.”

[ED NOTES;GREAT ARTCILE,CLICK LINK FOR WHOLE PIECE,JUST POSTING A SMALL EXCERPT