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whether his anti-Russian activities helped any enemy country. He
was a pure internationalist. And unless Brooks is similarly un–
concerned over the fate of America, or of the democratic West,
he must consider the effects of advocating a policy that involves
the survival of America and the West. This brings us to the ques–
tion of one's relation to one's country. Obviously, one must con–
tinue to be critical and skeptical. Butone wonders whether Brooks's
ideological commitments are such that he sees no crucial difference
between Western democracy, however faulted, and Soviet totali–
tarianism, and therefore considers any concern over the fate of
America-or the West-as a species of right wing patriotism.
Was Brooks really unaware that the protest by most of the left
against Afghanistan was muted, as compared to the protest against
Salvador? Does he not know what every informed person here and
abroad knows? His elementary answer that we can do something
about Salvador, but nothing about Afghanistan and Poland is
equally mind boggling. Is he unaware of the effect mass protests
might have against Poland, or Afghanistan, or the persecution of
Russian dissidents, or of Russian Jews? When Brooks talks about
moral stands regardless of their practicality, are we to assume that
Brooks favors only certain moral stands? And whoever said, as
Brooks argues, that we use Afghanistan or Poland to justify any
policies we do not believe to be wise or practical?
Brooks's rosy picture of the peace movement also belies the
facts. Has he read, for example, the statement by E.P. Thompson,
the leader of English pacifism, that the peace movement must be
supported even if it fails to press the Soviet Union for disarma–
ment-that disarmament of the West is sufficient? Has he not
heard, as everyone in Europe knows, that the German peace
movement has been financed by the East Germans?
But even more important than the polemical tactics of Brooks
and Dickstein is their garbling of political reality. When they re–
iterate the cry for nuclear negotiations with the Russians, they
don't seem to understand as Leslie Gelb pointed out recently in
the
New York Times,
that everyone is for negotiations, but that
negotiations simply represent the bargaining of both sides in
terms of their own interests. And they confuse the issue further by
identifying all American policies with Reagan; many policies
have been continuous from one president to the next. Finally,
Dickstein and Brooks assume that nuclear war can be prevented
by slowing down armament and the development of weapons,
