The Dishonesty of the ‘Antiwar’ Left

According to one strand of leftist thinking, progressives should embrace U.S. global dominance as a vehicle for global emancipation. If that sounds crazy, it’s because it is. And while only a very few, relatively marginal figures today openly profess it—Christopher Hitchens was probably the last famous and unabashed proponent—the theory is, in fact, all too alive and operative on the mainstream left, albeit in unacknowledged fashion.

The imperialism-as-emancipation theory explains, I increasingly believe, the otherwise inexplicable absence of any measurable progressive dissent from relentless U.S. escalation in Ukraine, and from the...