At Last, Leftists Can Rally Round the Flag : Gulf War: A persuasive Hitler analogy closes ranks on the home team’s side.

Many sincere progressives and radicals I know have been won over to the Gulf War by the argument that this is an “anti-fascist” crusade. Former ‘60s activists or anti-Vietnam protesters, especially if Jewish, insist that Saddam Hussein is no Ho Chi Minh but another Hitler who must be stopped with military violence, if only to remove a threat to Israel.

Is the Gulf War anti-fascist? The question may sound academic to an 82nd Airborne trooper or an Iraqi Revolutionary Guardsman in the desert. But it is what seems to be anguishing my friends. They are persuaded both by the Munich analogy and Saddam Hussein’s record of bestiality.

I’ve never been good at theology. After months of trying to fit Hussein on a scale of fascism that also includes the rapists of Afghanistan, northern Cyprus and certain African states, I have collapsed into thinking about the emotions rather than the moral philosophy of the war.

The Gulf fighting is the first conflict since World War II that I, an American Jewish leftist, have been able to raise even one cheer about. Korea, Lebanon, the Dominican blip, Vietnam, Grenada and Panama saw me turning a cold shoulder on the troops carrying out (in my view) the wrong mission.

But the Gulf has set me free. All of my hitherto pent-up feelings for our front-line troops have been released. The war gives me permission to become nearly a jingo patriot, albeit one on the demonstrating side of the peace barricade. I eagerly accept the “party line” of love-the-soldiers-hate-the-war. It makes sense and also helps make amends for an injustice committed against Vietnam veterans by my peace movement.

It is a painful fact that my opposition to my country’s wars since 1945 has excluded me from the American mainstream. Whatever temporary warmth and solidarity a protest movement offers, marching around with a peace placard during wartime can never quite erase a feeling that one is, well, a bit of a traitor. Ordinarily, I love rooting for the home team. And so, I suspect, do my pro-war progressive friends.

One little Cartesian leap of faith, and Munich becomes their Madrid in 1936. My friends, who are genuinely anti-fascist with long memories, have drawn a line in their minds somewhere west of East Timor. This time, they affirm, Munich really does apply--though we denied that analogy when John Foster Dulles in Korea and Dean Rusk in Vietnam eloquently invoked appeasement as a rallying cry. Warriors twice over in our fantasy for both America and Israel, we’re now part of that Hollywood combat patrol that always included one black and one Jew.

I didn’t go to Spain in 1936, and I served in World War II but did not see combat. Then age, and the Cold War, robbed me of a potential physical involvement in battle that could legitimize me as an American. My side may chronically sneer at John Wayne movies but, by God, we were influenced by them, too. Mix one part Ringo Kid with two parts memories of Neville Chamberlain, and I for one want to re-enlist.

I wish I could say that I take no pleasure from American Warthogs shooting up the Iraqi enemy, but maybe I saw “The Sands of Iwo Jima” too many times. However, I’ve also grown up, so I feel a little something for the poor grunt down there in his trench taking all those bullets. This inner conflict I resolve by marching against the war and for a pause, as soon as possible, for negotiations--or under any banner that begs simply for No More Bad News.