Reply from Norman Geras posted by Richard Seymour

Normblog defends himself from one of my charges against the pro-war Left, particularly himself, in which I accused them of a tendency "to abstract a situation from the mesh of geopolitical considerations in which it is embedded and reduce it to a stark moral question."

He cites two responses to Ken McLeod to make his point, which is that he does weigh the concrete geopolitical considerations in his judgment, and indeed they do press it home rather firmly. One thing I would say in my defense, however, is that the post of his that I was discussing accused "the antiwar left" tout court of a "moral failure" (on account of one of the more threadbare arguments proffered by UN-fetishists that the war was "illegal"). Since the antiwar Left has many currents, and since I know of virtually noone who's sole objection is the alleged illegality of the war, I think it unfair to condemn all of the antiwar left on such grounds. My assumption is that if Norm agrees that many of us weigh matters of US power and so on differently, then this does not necessarily constitute a "moral failure". As I argued, noone has a hegemony on the moral high ground on this issue - and those who claim to have such a hegemony may just as well lose their stake in it.

One question, just an aside really, to those who do think the war was objectionable on legal grounds - does that mean if the law could be construed in such a way as to make it legal, then the war would have been justifiable? Only asking.