AN OLD LEFTIST CASTS A CRITICAL EYE AT OUR `PEACE MOVEMENT'

One of the most interesting and compelling public figures writing and speaking today is one David Horowitz, an enormously articulate ex-leftist who once edited Ramparts magazine, a principal organ of the revolutionary Movement of the New Left during the '60s. Horowitz came to see the error of his former ways in pursuing leftist causes, and has written a remarkable book on his years in that misbegotten "Movement."

That book is aptly titled "Destructive Generation: A Second Look at the Sixties" (written with Peter Collier). It is essential reading for anyone who would understand the crazy '60s and the mindless radicalism that swept so many American campuses then, profoundly affecting much of the news media and entertainment worlds, and through these institutions, influencing so much of our mainstream culture even today.

In their devastating account, which at 364 pages is a quick read, Horowitz and Collier name names, give dates and places, and describe most leading figures of '60s radicalism. In the process, there are devastating profiles of leading figures of the Movement, including everything from physical descriptions to sexual habits (most were promiscuous, some wildly so) and petty jealousies among various Movement leaders.

Horowitz has now trained his formidable analytical powers on what passes for a "peace" movement regarding the current war in the Persian Gulf. He sees much of the same old mangy crew involving themselves all over again.

In a paper prepared for an American Bar Association conference on January 31, Horowitz wrote, "I see no organized political force in America today that deserves the name `peace movement.' To call the current anti-American mobilization by veterans of the discredited Left a `peace movement' is really but one more surrender, in a long regrettable line of such surrenders, in the Orwellian battle over our moral vocabulary."

The first anti-war demonstration in Washington was staged January 19 by the "Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East." Horowitz recognizes among the coalition's components many old New Left acquaintances from 25-30 years ago, and performs the enormously useful task of tracing their backgrounds. The catalyst, he says, was the Workers World Party.

"I remember them from the '60s as a group that distinguished itself by being the only Trotskyist splinter to wholeheartedly endorse the Soviet invasion of Hungary (1956). Thus the spearhead of the season's `anti-war' demonstrations is revealed as a party that defined itself by supporting a bloody invasion, which took the lives of 30,000 Hungarians whose only crime was to want their national independence and freedom."

A principal coalition spokesman, Achmed Nassef, comes from the Palestinian Solidarity Committee. Horowitz identifies these folks as "one of the only groups in the world supporting Saddam's rape of Kuwait."

Other segments, Horowitz reports, backed Danny Ortega and his squalid little band of Sandanista Communists in Nicaragua, and the terrorist FMLN in El Salvador. Horowitz quotes a student protester who said, "Siphoned through 20 years of anti-Vietnam sentiments, my generation enters its movement more cynically than our counterparts of the '60s ..."

Horowitz responds with these devastating observations:

"More cynically indeed. For what did those anti-Vietnam sentiments accomplish? A Communist-sponsored genocide in Indochina that extinguished nearly two million lives and obliterated a national culture. A decade and a half of Communist repression in South Vietnam that has killed more than half-a-million civilians ... and made Communist Vietnam one of the poorest, most repressive and let us not forget militaristic states on the face of the earth."

Horowitz sees the "peace" coalition as "a nihilistic force whose goal is to deconstruct and dismantle America as a democracy and as a nation. Revolution is a form of total war. The radical Left sees itself has always seen itself as part of an international revolutionary army. The arch-enemy of this international army is ... the United States."

There you have it: The "Peace Movement" or what passes for one these days unmasked. Thank you, David Horowitz.

Again, if you want to understand the '60s radicals, and their continuing, farreaching, profoundly negative effects on our culture today, you must read Horowitz's book, "Destructive Generation" (Simon & Schuster, $9.95 paperback).