Oliver Kamm

<CENTER>"Iraq was the most far-sighted and noble act of British foreign policy since the founding of Nato." - Oliver Kamm Oliver Kamm, 'Help, I'm a pro-war leftie', The Times, 2 May 2005</CENTER>
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Oliver Kamm is a columnist for the Times (London). He is member of the Henry Jackson Society and is affiliated to Democratiya. According to a biographical note on his own blog:
:I am an author, columnist and banker. I write regularly for The Times, and have written also for The Guardian, Prospect, The New Republic, Index on Censorship and The Jewish Chronicle. I am an advisory editor of Democratiya. My book Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy was published in 2005. I was a contributor to Britain's Bomb: What Next?, edited by Brian Wicker and General Sir Hugh Beach, in 2006. Oliver Kamm's blog About, accessed 9 September 2007
==Background==
Kamm was born in 1963 and studied at Oxford and London universities.Norman Geras, The normblog profile 9: Oliver Kamm, normblog, 21 November 2003. He is the nephew of journalist Martin Bell.Oliver Kamm, Rural Writing, Oliver Kamm's blog, 3 September 2005.
==Banking Career==
Kamm has worked at the Bank of England, HSBC Securities and Commerzbank Securities. In 1997, he became one of the founders of London-based asset management and advisory firm, WMG Advisors LLP.Oliver Kamm's blog About, accessed 9 September 2007Norman Geras, The normblog profile 9: Oliver Kamm, normblog, 21 November 2003.
==Politics==
At the 1979 election, Kamm canvassed for Labour in his hometown constituency of Leicester South.Oliver Kamm, The liberal prospect now, Oliver Kamm's blog, 6 May 2005. He also voted Labour in the 1983 election.Oliver Kamm, Foot Again, Oliver Kamm's blog, 5 April 2004.
Kamm is a former chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club.Jamie Glazov, The Left-wing case for liberating Iraq, frontpagemag.com, 7 February 2006.
In 1997, Kamm worked on Martin Bell's independent campaign to unseat Conservative MP Neil Hamilton:
::I take some pride in having drafted an election manifesto so right-wing that Hamilton was incapable of outflanking it.Oliver Kamm, 'Living Marxism' and 'Tory sleaze', Oliver Kamm's blog, 13 December 2003.
In December 2003, Kamm quoted an 1976 address to the Social Democrats USA from Sidney Hook, who he described as one of "my principal intellectual influences".Oliver Kamm, Norman Geras and Marxism, Times Online, 14 December 2003.
In 2004, Kamm supported the re-election of George W. Bush.Oliver Kamm, The liberal case for returning Bush to the White House, Oliver Kamm's blog, 9 July 2004.
In 2005, Kamm contemplated rejoining the Labour Party, but ultimately voted Conservative, because the local Conservative candidate, Nicholas Boles, was more supportive of Labour Government foreign policy than the Labour one.Oliver Kamm, The liberal prospect now, Oliver Kamm's blog, 6 May 2005.Oliver Kamm, Help, I'm a pro-war leftie, The Times, 2 May 2005.
In November 2005, Kamm supported New Republic editor Peter Beinart in calling for the left to update the tradition of Cold War anti-communism for the war on terror:
::Beinart recalled the fractious debates over foreign policy in the late 1940s, when American liberals were divided over whether to define themselves principally as anti-conservative or to put anti-communism at the heart of their programme. He identified a similar cleavage within liberalism now in confronting Islamist terrorism, and concluded: “The fundamental question is again whether the proper prism through which to view this new world is anti-totalitarianism based on the idea that we face another totalitarian foe.”Oliver Kamm, Time for the Left to be brave again, The Times, 7 November 2005.
In April 2006, Peter Wilby claimed Kamm was "one of those mysterious commentators" who "claim to be left-wing but hold no discernible left-wing views."Peter Wilby, The Media Column, New Statesman, 24 April 2006.
Kamm responded that: "[I] do claim to be left-wing, for the straightforward reason that it's true."
::My views will be of largely autobiographical interest to me and scant interest to anyone else, but here they are. I support economic redistribution (though on grounds of autonomy, not equality), progressive taxation and a welfare state of very roughly its current scope and size.Oliver Kamm, Staggering, Oliver Kamm's blog, 20 April 2006.
In January 2007, Kamm supported the thesis of Nick Cohen's What's Left, arguing that there had been "an extraordinary process in which part of the left has ended up arguing for what by any objective standards are reactionary positions".Oliver Kamm, What's Left is right, Comment is Free, guardian.co.uk, 30 January 2007.
==Chomsky controversy==
After Prospect Magazine readers voted Noam Chomsky the world's leading public intellectual, Kamm wrote in the magazine that Chomsky "deploys dubious arguments leavened with extravagant rhetoric."Oliver Kamm, Against Chomsky, Prospect, November 2005.
In response, Chomsky accused Kamm of "failing with impressive consistency, to find something to criticise in the efforts to terminate state crimes for which he and I share responsibility".
::To demonstrate "a particularly dishonest handling of source material," Kamm alleges that, "Chomsky manipulates a self-mocking reference in the memoirs of the then US ambassador to the UN... to yield the conclusion that Moynihan took pride in Nazi-like policies." The topic is Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor, condemned by the security council, which ordered Indonesia to withdraw, to no effect. Moynihan explains why: "The US wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The department of state desired that the UN prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success." He then refers to reports that within two months 60,000 people had been killed, "10 per cent of the population, almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the second world war"-at the hands of Nazi Germany. His comparison, not mine, as Kamm pretends.Noam Chomsky, We are all complicit, Prospect, January 2006.
In a subsequent letter to the magazine, Kamm accused Chomsky of reprising his "polemical distortions":
:Chomsky's account of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's comments on East Timor excises relevant context, presents unrelated passages as sequential, and interpolates remarks that Moynihan did not make. Even where Chomsky was right to attack western policy, he is analytically unscrupulous.Oliver Kamm, Kamm replies to Chomsky, Prospect, 29 December 2005.
Kamm had earlier given a fuller account of his argument on this point in a blog post at FrontPage Magazine.Oliver Kamm, Anti-Chomsky Blog, Part II, frontpagemag.com, 9 September 2004. This appeared to show that Moynihan had been misquoted, while conceding the point that he had blocked opposition to the invasion of East Timor at the UN.
==Views==
===On Iraq===
In May 2005 Kamm wrote of the 2003 invasion: 
::Contrary to the Liberal Democrats’ depiction of it as the biggest foreign policy error since Suez, Iraq was the most far-sighted and noble act of British foreign policy since the founding of Nato. Mr Blair’s record exemplifies foreign policy 'with an ethical dimension'. Oliver Kamm, 'Help, I'm a pro-war leftie', The Times, 2 May 2005
In the run-up to the third anniversary of the Iraq War, Kamm defended the invasion:
::It is a fine judgment whether a rogue state or a failed state, prey to the barbarities that jihadists are trying to inflict on Iraq now but without hindrance, would have been the worse prospect. The notion that terrorism has been brought to Iraq uniquely by the west's overthrow of Saddam, who bankrolled it and was the most likely conduit for Islamist groups to obtain WMD, is astonishingly ahistorical.Oliver Kamm, '
We were right ot invade Iraq', The Guardian, 14 March 2006.
===On the 2006 Lebanon War===
In August 2006 Kamm wrote that "the principal ethical question concerning Israel's military campaign is whether it has been curtailed too soon."
::There is a substantial risk, on historical precedent, that not all necessary action will be taken. Continued failure will be damaging - for Israel, for the government of Lebanon, and for the prospects of a Palestinian state. This was why Tony Blair was right to resist calls at the start of the conflict for an immediate ceasefire, on the grounds that: "If [the violence] is to stop, it has to stop by undoing how it started. And it started with the kidnap of Israeli soldiers and the bombardment of northern Israel. If we want this to stop, that has to stop."Oliver Kamm, Diplomacy has a limit, Comment is Free, guardian.co.uk, 18 August 2006.
==Affiliations==
*Democratiya - advisory editor
*Henry Jackson Society Project for Democratic Geopolitics - Signatory
*Euston Manifesto
*Social Affairs Unit
*Chatham House
*FrontPage Magazine - interviewee
===Connections===
*Norman Geras
===Links===
The following links appeared on Kamm's blog as of October 2008:
Adam LeBor
Agnès Poirier
Andrew Sullivan
Anne Applebaum
Ben Goldacre
Caroline Fourest
Christopher Hitchens
Coffee House
Counterknowledge.com
Daniel Finkelstein
David Aaronovitch
Democratiya
Harry's Place
Intelligence Squared
Johann Hari
John Lloyd
Jonathan Rauch
Linda Grant
Marko Attila Hoare
Martin Bell
Martin Bright
Martin Peretz
Nick Cohen
Norman Geras
Oona King
Open House
Paul Anderson
Philippe Legrain
PoliticsHome
Prospect Magazine
Ruth Gledhill
Standpoint.Online
Stephen Pollard
The New Republic
Walter Laqueur
William Shawcross
SourceOliver Kamm, home page Accessed 7 October 2008
==Contact, References and Resources==
===Contact===
:Blog: oliverkamm.typepad.com
:Times article list
:Email: mailto:oliver.kamm@tiscali.co.uk
===Resources===
===Publications===
*Oliver Kamm, Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy, Social Affairs Unit, ISBN:190486306X, October 2005.
===Third Party references===
*David Paterson, "David Peterson Responds to Oliver Kamm", Media Lens, 26 June 2008
*Chris Friel David Miller, Oliver Kamm, and Academic Inquiry
*The Oliver Kamm School of Falsification: Imperial Truth-Enforcement, British Branch By David Peterson, Edward S. Herman (Posted Jan 22, 2010)
===References===
Kamm, Oliver