Letters

...Tom Kahn defended the labor movement to his death as a progressive force in America and he opposed those who attacked it because they didn't like George Meany or because they discovered a "new class" around which to "re-align politics" (a popular phrase of Michael Harrington...

...the second conflates two kinds of crimes different in scale, motive, and moral content...

...I believe Kahn was right, and it seems that Meyerson now agrees with him, even in labor's divided state...

...It is even more difficult to do so when some of this history has been officially suppressed in the aftermath...

...In addition, Qutb (1906-1966) was not a founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, but joined it in the early 1950s after resigning from the civil service...

...Of course, the real debate for radicals of the time was whether or not the working class was a reactionary force...

...Dissent and its editors, Michael Harrington, perhaps first and foremost, espoused an opposition to the Vietnam War that was part and parcel of their anticommunism...

...But the debate of the time was not between supporters of containment who were for the Vietnam War and supporters of containment who were against...

...In social services, evangelical organizations were allowed to draft bills and recommend officials to implement them...

...Defending Tom Kahn In the Summer 2006 issue ("On Second Thought . . ."), Harold Meyerson decided to enter the ugly waters of personal attack in an otherwise unremarkable critique of Peter Beinart's The Good Fight...

...CONSTANCE MORRILL New York, N.Y...

...Kahn and Kirkland fought over a decade to help the Polish workers' movement while others paid lip service...

...John Ashcroft set up within the civil rights division a separate "religious rights" unit—this division had originally focused attention on racial injustice...

...indeed we are attacked for "a facile stereotype" of Bush's faith-based presidency...

...They eventually insisted that America's war in Vietnam was so bloody, with so little to show for it, that it was undermining the moral claim of anticommunism...

...Solidarity in Poland proved them right...

...The article constitutes a clear example of selected items to prove his poorly presented argument...

...Misreading the Christian Right I am disappointed, if not surprised, that our precious journal decided to publish Leo Ribuffo's article on George W. Bush and his faith-based politics ("George W. Bush and the Latest Evangelical Menace," Fall 2006...

...The victim, Marcel Sengali, seems to have been mistaken for Tutsi because he was seen with a herd of cows (Tutsis were traditionally pastoralists...

...In addition, he briefly notes some examples of Hutu resistance, including the failed effort of a sixty-five-year-old farmer in Ntarama, who was slain after verbally reproaching an oncoming band of killers, which included his son...

...The first would provide no justice at all...

...Hatzfeld is right to include these examples, even if he does not delve further into the question of why many of the "just"—in addition to the murderers—seem to have disappeared...

...Harold Meyerson replies If Eric Chenoweth's history is accurate, then the magazine in which this exchange is taking place doesn't exist...

...In the field of science, the president has asked that intelligent design be given equal play with Darwin's evolution in classrooms...

...Indeed, Stansell raises some important questions in her review, but perhaps does not have the space to provide complete and satisfying answers...

...Finally, most of these examples are concerns of the evangelicals, so that this administration's outreach to faith-based groups has been seriously limited...

...First, Meyerson is trying to rewrite opposition to the Vietnam War as one of many foundation stones in supporting liberal internationalism and the victory of containment...

...Some of the editors were slow to come around to this position, to be sure...

...CORRECTION: Many thanks to our sharp-eyed reader Simon Hirschfeld, who noted that Sayyid Qutb's name was given an incorrect alternate spelling in Anson Rabinbach's article ("Totalitarianism Revisited," Summer 2006...

...What Meyerson writes about Kahn (and minimally about Bayard Rustin) is simply wrong...

...The only reason the issue is even material to Hatzfeld is that he wants readers to understand the intimate, neighborly nature of the violence in the rural region he studied, where identity cards usually didn't enter into the killings...

...On the other side, Kahn...

...My own view is that, with all its drawbacks, gacaca is more acceptable than the other procedures implied or suggested by critics: mass amnesty or undertaking additional war crimes trials of troops who fought for the Rwandan Patriotic Front...

...and his successor, Lane Kirkland, argued that workers would ultimately rise up in the Soviet bloc to vindicate containment's premise and thus strong liberal anticommunism remained essential...

...AFL-CIO President George Meany...

...But whoever was right or wrong from those divided times, the ideas they represent deserve honest debate...

...To prove his argument he simply omits the research that is available, which indicates clearly that this president has taken faith-based politics to a new, if not dangerous, level...

...As Hatzfeld mentions, Sengali's family had developed a "mutual trust and friendship" with his Tutsi neighbors, and they had combined their herds of cattle...

...Were it true, American politics would be much less onerous today...

...With so much intellectual focus on the goals of "truth, justice and reconciliation" by Western observers studying Rwanda, and so many top-down reassurances inside Rwanda that gacaca is the mechanism by which these goals can be achieved, it is easy to lose sight of what such an undertaking entails...

...Some of the bigger grants went to abstinence-only types of sex education...

...With limited space, let me give just a few examples of how faith has played a dominant part in this administration, which this article omits...

...No, the debate was whether America would "come home," in George McGovern's famous phrase, and withdraw from containment...

...DISSENT / Winter 2007 n 143...

...He attacks us, the critics, for giving too little "serious examination" of this charge...

...She writes, for example, that the "notorious identity papers [national ID cards] designating Tutsi or Hutu played no role because everyone knew everyone else," yet neglects to reference a chapter of the book, "In Search of the Just," which describes a group of killers' discovery of their "bloody mistake" in sacrificing another Hutu—an ordinary Hutuwhose ID card was pulled from his jacket after his murder...

...The argument I make in my article centers mainly on the imbalance that the official suppression of one dimension of the "truth" creates, and that with such an imbalance, one cannot hope to approach the complex endeavor of "reconciliation" sincerely or with any promise of success, or justice...

...Harrington's insistence on labor's centrality to progressive politics was one key reason why a number of sixties radicals didn't give up on the Meany-ized movement altogether...

...Civil rights activist and top AFL-CIO staffer Tom Kahn, whom Beinart mentions as someone who upheld traditional liberalism and anticommunism against the misdirections of the New Left, becomes a bogeyman who nefariously challenged liberal icons and supported homophobic labor leaders...

...As to the identity cards: Yes, in some places, they were instrumental to the killings, but in other places they weren't...

...The online version of the article has been corrected (www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=660) . We apologize for the mistakes.—Ens...

...It is not possible, as I know Stansell will agree, to 142 n DISSENT / Winter 2007 present a complete picture within the space of 4,000—or even 500,000—words of almost any aspect of Rwanda's complex sociopolitical history...

...Christine Stansell replies Gacaca is deeply flawed...

...And although Harrington did indeed write and speak about the progressive potential of the new class, he always made clear that the labor movement was the linchpin of any majoritarian progressive movement in America...

...Anticommunism and liberalism were separated, and those who tried to keep them together were vilified...

...Let's not forget that one of his first executive actions was to institute a gag rule on aid to international groups that advised women on abortion and, most seriously, the discussion of family planning was cause for cutting off much needed funds abroad...

...JEWEL BELLUSH Valhalla, New York Complexities of Justice and Genocide In her review of Jean Hatzfeld's Machete Season (Fall 2006), Christine Stansell parenthetically characterizes my view of the gacaca jurisdictions ("Show Business and `Lawfare' in Rwanda," Summer 2006) as a "calculated opportunism" on the part of the current regime and believes that I "simplify" the "political complexity of justice in the aftermath...

...Individuals such as Pat Robertson and Charles Colson got millions of dollars, and in a short time one could not see the separation of preaching and aiding...

...But to argue, as does Morrill, that the entire process is a front for an illegitimate regime to put up a show for the international community LETTERS evades the central problem the country faces: how to bring any sort of justice in the long aftermath of massmobilized murder that involved the majority, and possibly the great majority, of people who are now still living in the country alongside a tiny remnant of survivors...

...ERIC CHENOWETH New York, N.Y...

...One look at the leadership of the more successful unions today makes clear that its Harrington's brand of unionism, or perhaps Reutherism (open to working with newer social movements and in solidarity with a range of union movements from across the planet), more than Meany's, that has prevailed...