Posted on 10/19/2002 10:46:17 AM PDT by Trailer Trash
Is That All That's Left? So Long, Fellow Travelers
By Christopher Hitchens
George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as "evil." Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the "lesser evil." This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, "lesser evil" is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism -- the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it -- is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than "cowboy" language. Actually..
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link > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50657 2002Oct19.html
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
But the element of bad faith in the argument is far worse than the feeble-minded hysteria of its logic. In the Balkans, those on the Left and Right who favored intervention could not live with the idea that Europe would permit the extermination of its oldest Muslim minority. At that point, the sensibilities of Islam did not seem to matter to the Ramsey Clarks and Noam Chomskys, who thought and wrote of national-socialist and Orthodox Serbia as if it were mounting a gallant resistance to globalization. (Saddam, of course, took Milosevic's side even though the Serb leader was destroying mosques and murdering Muslims.)
Now, however, the same people are all frenzied about an American-led "attack on the Muslim world." Are the Kurds not Muslims? Is the new Afghan government not Muslim? Will not the next Iraqi government be Muslim also? This meaningless demagogy among the peaceniks can only be explained by a masochistic refusal to admit that our own civil society has any merit, or by a nostalgia for Stalinism that I can sometimes actually taste as well as smell.
I liked this line.
Very true. The underlying reason for this is simple: the leftist elites desire to transform america into a socialist welfare state. This transformation will put them in control of every aspect of our society (the desire for total power to shape our nation along the lines of their "utopian" philosophy.....and the accompanying adulation and perks that they will accumulate along the way, is at the very center of the liberal psyche).
The muslims do not represent a realistic danger to this program. In fact, this war may allow the liberal elites to accumulate even more power and to degrade our constitution.
The conservatives, on the other hand, do represent a fundamental danger to this central goal of liberalism. The masses of "redneck white conservatives" could, if sufficiently unified and motivated, destroy liberalism in america (at least until a few more decades of immigration transforms america beyond the point of return).
Thus, while the liberals' desire to defeat Osama may be sincere.....defeating the much more dangerous enemy represented by the conservative white middle class is a much more urgent pursuit.
Tony said it was going to be in the Sunday edition, but here it is online now.
This new google news engine REALLY cooks!
Years ago I heard Hitchens say abortion was evil, but that he wasn't willing to support the politicians who were ready to fight against it.
His article is full of namby-pamby commonplaces, lacks any real moral standing and is actually a part of inter-Left scirmishes.
Rubbish!
Sooner or later, one way or another, the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples will be free of Saddam Hussein. When that day comes, I am booked to have a reunion in Baghdad with several old comrades who have been through hell. We shall not be inviting anyone who spent this precious time urging democratic countries to give Saddam another chance.</>
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I can't help but wonder how many sniveling, limp-wristed, pseudo-intellectual Marxists in the media would even know this let alone acknowledge it. |
Mr. Hitchens is dead on with his criticisms of the left here. I hope a side benefit of our actions vis a vis Iraq is the meeting with his old friends he yearns for.
Exactly. Socialist Demo-rats would rather destroy the country than have the Republicans in control.
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