506
PARTISAN REVIEW
while the right-wing response to Mapplethorpe similarly identifies him with
modernism as a whole.
*
*
*
To be sure, the far right has bigger fish to
fry
than Mapplethorpe.
At least part of it, faced with the possibility of further military action by Bush
against Iraq, has turned isolationist and pacifist. And, led by its most articulate
spokesmen, Patrick Buchanan, Roland Evans and Robert Novak, it has
launched a campaign against a military strike to oust Hussein from Kuwait
and to topple him from power. Obviously, it is surprising to see the political
right, long known as hawkish and the first to denounce dovish and appeasing
tactics as un-American, suddenly take the dovish posture usually associated
with the left. In this situation, it is worth noting that the left has been silenced
by -
if
not convinced by - the Soviet Union's support of Bush's initiative. But
the left has not been shouting for the invasion of Iraq or its ouster from
Kuwait.
How is this political somersault to be explained? One thing seems clear:
the newspaper columns of Buchanan, Evans and Novak, for example, in
The
New York Post,
would indicate that the motives for this shift may be found in
a desire not to alienate the Arabs and a lack of concern with the fate of
Israel, if not outright hostility to the Jewish State. Evans and Novak, as well
as Buchanan, have been shrilly arguing that American interests are not
involved in the Persian Gulf crisis. The price of oil, they insist, is not a suffi–
cient cause for war, especially since there is no reason to believe that oil
would stop flowing. Nor, they claim, should the invasion of Kuwait and the
ouster of the ruling family be a reason for sacrificing American lives.
Chauvinism has turned to pacifism in the deserts of the Mideast.
Now, if the issues were simply the price of oil and saving the rulers of
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, then the argument against intervening would have
considerable plausibility. But when we consider that the entire balance of
power in the Mideast is being drastically upset by Hussein, and that the
danger to Israel's security is immeasurably increased - when we consider
that Israel is the one stabilizing force and the one outpost of Western
civilization in the region, it should be clear, contrary to what the right-wingers
are saying, that action against Hussein is in the national interest. And the
newly found pacifism of the right becomes very suspect.
*
*
*
What has happened to our sense of proportion when
all
kinds of ques–
tionable cultural activities are funded and such a distinguished journal as
The
Yale R eview
is cut off? Even more puzzling are the reasons given by Yale
University'S President Benno Schmidt for the decision to discontinue
