"What's Left" is a crie de coeur from a man of the left who has come to believe that the principles have abandoned his position, and from that perspective it positively zings. Nick Cohen writes well - brutally - but fairly: he is still prepared, as he goes, to confront and acknowledge potential criticisms of his argument, valid alternative perspectives, and I think he realises that with this work he may have cooked his goose with a number of hitherto supportive readers. A valuable document, too, because Cohen still has left-wing credibility (but for how much longer, it remains to be seen) and so is sparking much needed debate in a way that a neo-con screed might not if it came from the pen of a traditional supporter of the moral right (pun intended).
That said, I think "What's Left" will find support in all the places, and with all the people, Nick Cohen would least like it to: for the most part, they won't be on the political left. Though he doesn't say it explicitly, this does represent something of a conversion on the road to Damascus: I think after this work Cohen will be generally considered a neo-conservative: he expresses unqualified support for Paul Wolfowitz and is far less distressed by Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair or George Bush than one would expect from a child of the far left.
What I think it boils down to is the subjectivism/objectivism debate. Cohen is an objectivist: he is prepared to say what he thinks is morally unacceptable, and is prepared to advocate whatever action or force is required to defeat the morally unacceptable.
By contrast, many on the left are "under the evil spell" (as Cohen sees it) of cultural relativism and are not prepared to make that judgment about the regime in Iraq, but are perfectly prepared to make it about the political elite in Britain and the United States. Cohen cites Ian McEwen's recent novel, Saturday, which remarks about anti-war protesters:
"... people are hugging themselves, it seems, as well as each other. If they think - and they could be right - that continued torture and summary executions, ethnic cleansing and occasional genocide are preferable to an invasion, they should be sombre in their view." (p. 69)
While I have a great deal of respect for his book and the passion with which he argues his case, I'm (unusually for me) with the lefties on this one.
For a start I don't feel qualified, either in terms of facts at my disposal nor the necessary cultural, social or political understanding, and nor do I consider it my business, to judge the situation in Iraq. On the other hand I *do* feel qualified, as a participant in the political process, to express a view about my own government. Furthermore, the resources of my government, contributed by people like me through taxation, are limited, and I can see more productive uses to which they could be put: before we sort out Iraq's mess, there is plenty of our own we could be fixing. But more to the point - and this is a point that Cohen glosses over entirely - the government's case for war had nothing whatsoever to do with alleviating the Iraqi people from torture or summary execution: this was not a humanitarian intervention at all. It couldn't be - since to take on Iraq would provoke obvious follow on questions: if Saddam, why not Mugabe? How about Kim Jong Il? The war was sold to the electorate as a pre-emptive measure against a credible military threat to the west (either directly or through the encouragement and cultivation of terrorists). That case was not properly made at the time (hence, in large part, the anti-war demonstrations), and has transpired to have been erroneous.
Nor has the war, which was prosecuted in spite of clear opposition in the electorate, been much of a success. Again, Cohen glosses over prescient warnings issued at the time that Iraq risked becoming another Vietnam, bogging the US army down in a close-quartered conflict with no obvious means of resolution. This, it seems to me, is exactly what happened, and the threat of terrorism and level of "Muslim angst" in western communities - which is surely fertile ground for new terrorists - is no lower than it has been since 9/11.
For all that I really enjoyed this book, and found it challenging and thought provoking.
John Mueller's Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them is an interesting counterpoint to "What's Left" - the two do not intersect on subject matter (Mueller restricts himself to terrorist threat; Cohen to the brutal governmental regime, and arguably the two are unrelated), but Mueller's skeptical view presents an interesting prism through which to consider Cohen's arguments.
Olly Buxton
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