Elliott
Abrams, who is steering Trump’s Venezuela policy, has a long track
record of war crimes. Yet a number of liberal commentators are
rushing to his defense.
by
Paul Heideman
Part
5 - Liberal enablers
As Rep.
Omar dragged Abrams’ ugly past into the spotlight, millions of
Americans were alerted to the country’s bloody footprints in Latin
America. The El Mozote massacre in particular received renewed
attention. Yet even as Americans heard about this record for the
first time, a number of voices spoke up to defend Abrams’ honor.
Some of
these, like the neocon-turned-“resistance” member Max Boot, or
the radical-turned-neocon Ronald Radosh, were predictable and
uninspiring. Boot warned that Omar showcased the dangers of the
“uber-progressive wing” of the Democratic Party, while Radosh
compared her to white supremacist Rep. Steve King. National
Review’s Jay Nordlinger put a bit more effort in, tweeting that
“I’ve come back to my phone to find about 5,000 tweets
libeling the great Elliott Abrams as a war criminal….I feel like
I’m back in the dorm, listening to stoned undergrads repeat what
they recently read in In These Times.”
More
surprisingly, Abrams also found a number of liberal defenders. Kelly
Magsamen, Vice President for National Security and International
Policy at the Center for American Progress, called Abrams “a
fierce advocate for human rights and democracy” who had made
“serious professional mistakes.” Dave Harden, a former
USAID administrator (and Biden 2020 supporter), agreed, describing
Abrams as “a kind, thoughtful, non partisan mentor” and
exhorting his followers to “see the best—rather than the
worst—in people.” R. Nicholas Burns, a diplomat and Trump
critic, also chimed in, declaring “It’s time to build bridges
in America and not tear people down.” Edward Luce, the British
liberal journalist and author of The Retreat of Western
Liberalism, offered his support for poor beleaguered Abrams as
well.
Abrams’
liberal defenders were, thankfully, met with a tidal wave of
condemnation on Twitter, as hundreds of thousands of tweets
denouncing Abrams filled their mentions. Harden petulantly told “the
170k twitter responders who pillared [sic] me as a war criminal in
the last 24 hrs” that he’s “doubling down.” The
impact Omar’s questioning had in galvanizing opposition to the
bloody track record of American imperialism could hardly be clearer.
But why
were there liberals defending Abrams in the first place? And not
merely any liberals, but highly-credentialed figures in the liberal
foreign policy establishment. The answer to this question reveals no
small amount about the American foreign policy intelligentsia.
As
several of Abrams’ defenders stated, they had worked directly with
him. Whether at the State Department or the National Security
Council, they had been part of the same body making and carrying out
American foreign policy. But even outside of government, Abrams
rubbed shoulders with establishment liberals in plenty of capacities.
At the Council on Foreign Relations, a premier centrist foreign
policy think tank, Abrams is an accredited CFR “expert” along
with Clinton Administration officials Martin Indyk and Robert Rubin.
On the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience, he
serves with liberal academics like Deborah Lipstadt and Timothy
Snyder (as well as Nicholas Burns).
This
latter appointment is particularly ironic, given Abrams’ lies on
behalf of an outright fascist like d'Aubuisson. But Abrams made a
habit of associating with truly despicable racists. As mentioned
above, he worked for Ernest Lefever after his Iran-Contra disgrace.
Abrams even married a particularly unhinged racist, the stepdaughter
of neocon Norman Podhoretz. Rachel Abrams, who died in 2013,
maintained a blog, “Bad Rachel,” where she offered reflections on
the War on Terror such as the following: “[T]his is where I have
begun to wonder whether it is possible to help these benighted
forgeries of humanity save themselves from themselves—for after
all, isn’t that the point, once we’ve beaten our enemy, of
continuing the fight?—and, more to the point…whether the
attempting to do so has been worth the lives…of all those great,
valiant, heroic, wonderful, Americans who’ve given them for that
cause.”
Abrams’
links to disreputable characters like these, however, weren’t
enough to disqualify him from association in the eyes of elite
liberals. Once he made it inside the clubhouse gates, he established
himself as a Serious Person, deserving of respect from the plebs.
Foreign policy has always been the most mandarin wing of the U.S.
state, and when elite liberals saw a properly credentialed and
accomplished fellow of theirs under attack from the plebeians, they
reacted quickly.
Analysts
like Noam Chomsky have long insisted that there is more continuity
than discontinuity when it comes to foreign policy in the United
States. The bonhomie liberal elites exhibit towards Abrams is what
this continuity means on the level of personnel. It’s the same
people, working together, who carry out American foreign policy. This
placid continuity, the disruption of which by Trump is a chief reason
for the enmity he has earned from this camp, helps ensure that the
ship of state remains on a steady course.
But
Ilhan Omar’s refusal to let Abrams’ bloody past rest threatened
that continuity. It suggested that the new generation of progressives
and socialists will not be content to let their revolution stop at
the nation’s borders. Much like Bernie Sanders’ declaration in a
2016 presidential debate that he was proud Henry Kissinger was not
his friend, Omar’s questioning of Abrams signaled a radical break
with the traditional etiquette of deference in foreign policy.
If this
is the type of direct challenge to U.S. foreign policy that left-wing
elected officials like Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and Sanders have planned, establishment liberals are right to be
nervous.
***
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