Nothing left?

It is worthwhile reading Michael Berube's discussion of the response by a part of the left to the current War with No Name. This is apparently the opening of a week-long examination of why things seem to have gotten so bad that there are apparently people who think of themselves as left-wing but who nevertheless side with Hisbollah, the Iranian mullahs or Iraqi terrorism.

Of course, some of this “radical” “leftism” is just the sloppy thinking of people who believe that in order to oppose Israel’s response in Lebanon, one has to endorse the other side—as has the Los Angeles chapter of the newly re-formed Students for a Democratic Society, which has apparently decided to bypass the early democratic years of the initial SDS and move right into the Weather Underground phase. But here on this blog, where we condemn Israel’s response while desiring Hezbollah’s disarmament and wishing that all parties in the region would acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, we try to avoid that kind of sloppy either-or thinking. We also think there’s more to it than just some sloppy thinking, and so, begging your indulgence, we begin Democratic Left week with a nod to the good people at Human Rights Watch, where they hold all parties to the standards that every democratic leftist should support.

I often believe that the sort of sloppy thinking Berube condems is a relatively marginal phenomenon. But this series of photos from the Stop the War Coalition's last anti-war demo make me wonder.