Posted on 02/03/2003 6:06:49 AM PST by SJackson
Is Baghdad simply another miserable regime? Just one of those unpleasant tyrannies that, sadly, speckles our globe, but ought not to compel overbearing concern? Much depends on how one answers this question. The answer, I think, is no. Saddam Hussein's dictatorship is pathological and distinct from other rotten regimes today, including those rooted in a similar ideology (Syria, for example).
It is not just a matter of this regime's fascist-like character (call it fascism-plus), although its ruling Ba'ath Party fused Pan-Arabism to the worst ideas of early twentieth-century Europe. It is not just Baghdad's brutality, although it is difficult to imagine a more vicious, vengeful regime. It is not just a question of Saddam's totalitarian aspirations at home and aggressive ambitions abroad, although Iraq's citizens and neighbors know firsthand that these aspirations and ambitions are beyond question. It is not even a matter of Iraq's dogged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction-although this is clearly Saddam's fixation, and he has demonstrated his readiness to use them against citizens and neighbors (and would be pleased to do likewise against Americans).
No, it is not "just" these things. It is their combination with the fact that this regime never keeps agreements. Virtually every major accord Saddam has reached with domestic or foreign foes-usually under pressures produced by his recklessness-lasts only until he recovers sufficiently to pursue his purposes. Ask Iranians. Ask Kuwaitis. Ask Iraqi communists. Ask Iraqi Shiites. Ask Iraqi Kurds. Recall the UN inspections.
So I conclude, reluctantly, that the options are not "war or peace," but "sooner or later." Unless there is a coup, force will eventually be needed to defang Saddam's regime. The only real questions are when, how much force, and what aftermath.
Some people will, undoubtedly, protest: how can you support the Bush administration? I worry a great deal about the Bush administration-about the fact that it has not thought out adequately what happens after a war, about its cynical exploitation of the Iraq crisis to pursue its dreadful domestic agenda, about its unconstructive unilateralist instincts, displayed in matters like Kyoto and the International Criminal Court. But I urge people on the left to judge the Iraqi danger independently both of distrust of Bush and of third-worldist prejudices.
Sooner or later? "Sooner" will be costly, dicey, scary. Wars always are, which is why every sensible means ought always to be used to prevent them. "Sensible" is the key word, however, and it is perilous and not sensible to invent choices that are comfortable to you, and then to choose between them. So although I think that arguments against preemptive war are formidable, and although I share many of their assumptions, I don't think that they are always persuasive. "Kantianism has pure hands, but it has no hands," warned Charles Péguy, the French essayist, a century ago.
"Later" will allow Baghdad to shore up, to expand, and to conceal further its lethal capacities. There can be no doubt that Saddam will do so. UN inspectors, who are arriving in Baghdad as I write, will, I hope, impair his efforts at concealment, but their success is likely to be temporary and partial. Inspectors were readmitted only because of an immediate American threat, not because of a Security Council resolution-even if some Western governments, intellectuals, and activists won't admit it. For Saddam, inspectors are a problem to be overcome, and he has proven staying power. Disarmed-Saddam is an oxymoron. So, I'm afraid that "later" just means rescheduling to his advantage, and the likelihood of immeasurably more suffering among Iraqis, their neighbors, and any outside forces moving against him at another date.
The past inspection record is mixed. After its spring 1990 inspection of Iraq, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Baghdad's claim to be fulfilling its duties as a party to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. ("Exemplary" cooperation, said the supervisor of the Agency's safeguards division.) A year later, after the Gulf War, it was revealed that Baghdad had initiated and concealed an ambitious nuclear weapons program-between ten and fifteen billion dollars of investment in some thirty sites, in a workforce of twenty thousand, and, significantly, in the production of highly enriched uranium. And there was insurance: each important level of the program had a duplicate.
The United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), established in 1991 to deprive Baghdad of its biological, chemical, and nuclear arms and longer range ballistic missiles, achieved a good deal. The problem lies in what it could not achieve because of Saddam's determination to undermine inspections. (He acceded to them in the first place only because of military defeat.) So UNSCOM verified that thirty-nine tons of VX, the deadly nerve agent, were destroyed, but it also feared that Baghdad had sequestered chemical materials sufficient to produce another two hundred tons of it. Saddam manufactured mobile germ laboratories and the like. Around a hundred and sixty bombs and two dozen Scud missiles mounted with anthrax could not be found by UNSCOM, according to its final report. Its mission ended in 1998-not because it was completed but because it was frustrated so well by Saddam's apparatus.
In recent months, as the crisis intensified, some voices protested: by what right does the United States press this issue? The more important question is this: why was Baghdad willing to forgo a hundred and fifty billion dollars in oil earnings rather than disarm? In some extreme cases "right" doesn't matter. For instance, Vietnam invaded Cambodia without right, for its own purposes, in violation of international law, and installed a new regime. I'm glad it did so because it ended the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge.
Other voices protest: isn't this Iraq business just a ploy by Bush? "War should not start from a bolt from the blue, but be the consequence of demonstrated Iraqi unwillingness to accept international rules," wrote Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, last summer. He is, of course, right that war ought never to originate from nowhere. But that is a banality. If Saddam has not demonstrated unwillingness to accept international rules, then unwillingness to accept international rules is indemonstrable. The UN-alas!-has demonstrated its inability to enforce them adequately.
Current intelligence reports of Baghdad's accelerated efforts to produce nonconventional weapons surprise no one who has paid adequate attention to and understood Saddam's pathology and priorities. True, people don't always pay attention. Back in the late 1990s, while Saddam was freeing himself from UNSCOM (and while, elsewhere, al-Qaeda was planning attacks), our patriotic Republicans thought the nation's focus ought to be on Monica Lewinsky.
Why deal with Saddam now? Because his menace, especially nuclear, will only swell. The situation was captured long ago by words attributed to Cicero: "How can you believe that a man who has lived so licentiously up to the present time will not proceed to every extreme of insolence, if he shall also secure the authority given by arms? Do not, then, wait until you have suffered some treatment and then rue it, but be on your guard before you suffer; for it is rash to allow dangers to come upon you and then to repent of it, when you might have anticipated them."
I am wary of words like "anticipation" and "preemption" because they can be abused politically. They ought not to be a "doctrine." But they are appropriate in some cases, and Saddam's priorities demonstrate why he is one. His pursuit of nuclear capabilities began over two decades ago, although plentiful oil gives Iraq no need of nuclear energy. Baghdad's budget priorities after the vast carnage of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), which Saddam initiated, placed Iraq's high technology military industry over civilian reconstruction. Saddam's principal concern since UN sanctions began has been his arms and not his citizens.
Sanctions permitted Iraq to sell oil to buy medicine and food, but not military goods. Yet for some time now a loud, scurrilous public campaign has claimed on the basis of a UNICEF report that sanctions helped to kill some one million Iraqis. But why, then, did Saddam rebuff UN appeals to buy baby formula in 1998-1999? Why was he exporting food? Why was he importing massive quantities of scotch for his hierarchy and building an amusement park for the Ba'ath elite? Why has he spent two billion dollars on presidential palaces since the end of the Gulf War and offered another one billion dollars in aid to the Palestinian intifada? Why did mortality rates fall in the semi-autonomous Kurdish areas, where the UN-rather than Baghdad-administers proceeds of "oil for food"? Doesn't anyone notice that the UNICEF report was written in collaboration with Saddam's Ministry of Health?*
It is true that Iraqis have suffered. The reason is not the sanctions regime (which has, in fact, been quite porous). The problem is Saddam's exploitation of it. I do believe that there is a moral debt to be paid to Iraqis, but not because of sanctions. It is due because the United States encouraged Iraqis, especially the Kurds and Shiites, to rebel at the end of the Gulf War, and then stood back while Saddam slaughtered their intifada. I am not optimistic about democracy in Iraq, but this debt can be paid at least in part by support for a Saddam-free Iraq, and by making it clear that whatever the immediate post-war arrangements, post-Saddam Iraq belongs to Iraqis, not to the United States.
So I will not support an antiwar movement, even if it includes many good people. I hope, for the sake of honest public debate, that those good people keep this movement focused on Iraq. Iraqi suffering ought not to be exploited by "activists" with other agendas (such as Israel/Palestine, which has nothing to do with Saddam's tyranny and must be addressed on its own, unhappy grounds). In the meantime, I will support Iraqi democrats, even if they are few in number and their prospects difficult. I am antifascist before I am antiwar. I am antifascist before I am anti-imperialist. And I am antifascist before I am anti-Bush.
*I cull these points from Michael Rubin's devastating report, "Sanctions on Iraq," Middle East Review of International Affairs (online), December 2001. At various points in these comments I also draw material from the Economist, December 8, 2001, Chen Zak's Iran's Nuclear Policy and the IAEA (Washington Institute for Near East Policy Military Research Paper #3, 2002) and articles in the New York Times, September 8 and 16, 2002.
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Mitchell Cohen is co-editor of Dissent and professor of political theory at Baruch College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He is currently visiting professor at Stanford's Center for Integrative Research in the Sciences and Humanities.
I worry a great deal about the Bush administration... its unconstructive unilateralist instincts, displayed in matters like Kyoto and the International Criminal Court. But I urge people on the left to judge the Iraqi danger independently both of distrust of Bush and of third-worldist prejudices.Yes, think outside the stupid-box.
What morons these people are. Multilateralists are all process. Their truth comes not of the content of a treaty but the signators to it. Why don't we hear similar praise for Resolution 1441 -- I mean, the international body has endorsed it, no?
"Unilateralism" is when you don't agree with the cummulative worldwide opinion of idiots. I purge the word of the language. For Bush, it's called doing the right thing.
Lefties (and even some Mods) hate President Bush with a hatred so strong that the Conservatives' feeling over X-Clinton is relegated to dislike by comparison. The difference is, Conservatives had the entire history of X-Clinton's two terms as President, and all his time as Governor of Arkansas, upon which were based our conclusions about that man's character, motivation, and habit patterns. The evidence was on our side, yet the Left not only couldn't bring themselves to admit the truth about X-Clinton, they denied everything and defended him!
Why the unexplained and inexplicable HATRED of President Bush? Because he once drank to excess? Because his father was President before him? Because he is a Republican? There is no logic to their strong emotions against the President, and even no real basis for the emotion! Where does the hatred come from, and what fuels it? Why can it not be defeated with simple logic, a laying out of the evidence?
Though this group is smaller than it was pre-9/11, I don't think they can be brushed aside with quips about the Lefties' (and the Mods') intelligence. Something has drummed up this feeling, and keeps the fires of hatred burning despite evidence to the contrary. Is it just DU? Is it the media? Can it be explained Biblically, i.e., that the darkness shrinks from the light and that their minds have been given over to believe the lie since they have rejected the Truth?
It astounds me.
you know, .30, i know someone just like this. She is opposed to the war with iraq, a typical liberal. we had a debate on this very recently and i said WHAT PROOF would you require from a republican president? she refused to answer me. i told her that i would respect her MUCH more if she simply said, i hate Bush, i will never trust him nor believe a word that he says. I said that THAT would gain my respect because i can't sit here and swear that if bubba clinton was at the helm that i would be as supportive of the war effort. I like to think i would be, if i could independently verify that it was necessary. She wouldn't even admit to that. Their hatred is virulent and inexplicable. and yet, they won't admit to it, and cling to some halfbaked protestations as to why war is not necessary.
President Clinton didn't just get away with molesting a young intern in the Oval Office. He didn't just get away with lying under oath. He didn't just get away with corruption in Arkansas. He didn't just get away with taking Chinese political contributions. He didn't just get away with using the Internal Revenue Service as an attack dog on his political foes. He didn't just get away with cover-ups that will take a generation to unravel. He got away with subverting the Constitution.
On the day of the shuttle disaster, I recommended to a coworker that she listen to President Bush's speech, which I had just heard live on the radio as I finished my mail route, and which moved me to sobbing. I knew she could access it online. Of all the things she might have said, "I hate that man," was her emphatic response. Turned out she had no idea about what had happened to the Columbia and her crew.
(You posted: i said WHAT PROOF would you require from a republican president? she refused to answer me
I ask: Are they all intentionally ignorant, as in, 'Don't confuse me with the facts, I really like walking around in a violent rage 24/7!')
When I clued her in she went into a rant not about how tragic the loss of life was, but about the billions spent on the space program, which she feels we never should have begun! OMG!
They decide by emotion, not logic.
They are not stupid. I've worked with a lot of them.
Most voted for Gore in 2000 because they believed Bush was stupid! Shows no logic.
They don't really follow politics either... they're too busy.
But on what do they base their emotions?!
Is it old-fashioned prejudice against anyone who is different? Do they fear a difference of opinion as it challenges their assumptions? Does hate just come naturally to them? I just don't get it.
But when faced with a contrary opinion, they are forced to say, we will never agree, so there is no point discussing it further. She only said that because she came to the "gunfight" w/o any "ammo"...just her hatred of Bush and her "touchy feely war is wrong" load of crap.
Not because he drank, because he left that behind.
Because his father was President before him?
No, because his father was successful and honorable before him.
Because he is a Republican?
Yes.
There is no logic to their strong emotions against the President, and even no real basis for the emotion! Where does the hatred come from, and what fuels it? Why can it not be defeated with simple logic, a laying out of the evidence?
It has been said before that leftist ideology is a religion. Religion is not based in rationality it is based on faith and hope. As G. Orwell said in "1984" power is not a means to an end it is the end itself. Conservatives view politics and power as a tool, a means to an end. A necessary evil if you will.
If G Bush waved his hand and peace and prosperity pervaded every corner of the world they would still hate him. He is not "theirs". They do not have the "ring". His honor is a trick. His sincerity is a trick. His simple straightforward rationality is a trick. His unwavering diligence and discipline is a trick. To them it has to be a trick because these things are unobtainable for "normal" people. Their faith lies in man's corrupted nature being controlled by submitting the individual will to the collective vision espoused by the "leader" and enforced by the state. Their hope lies in the idea that when the state ends all suffering there will be no need for laws because of their belief that in the absence of suffering no one would even think of doing wrong. It is the cult mythology of victimhood. Only people who have been hurt cause hurt.
Certainly. It is the spiritual principle that Orwell's protagonist in "1984" struggled with. The individual mind vs. the collective mind. He wondered if he truly was insane simply because he believed something that no one else did. The collective said "yes, you are". The collective decides what truth is, your personal experience is of no value. You must reject what your mind tells you and accept the "truth" as defined by the party. The power of the party lies in that total submission of mind.
Bubba was their great hope. He forged "the ring". All his faults had to be overlooked, denied, ignored and/or restructured into positives. ie His childhood was scarred by an alcoholic stepfather therefore; he was a victim, he is like "us", that is good. To them he is not corrupt he is corrupted and more importantly he is unrepentant. Why would that be good you ask? Because in the psychology of victim hood it is someone else’s fault he is corrupt. To them to be repentant is hypocritical. To take blame for your own failings and repent is seen as a way to place yourself above others. That is what the left sees as evil.
The reality is he betrayed everyone, always. They can make that make sense by thinking “only someone as corrupted as Bubba could take "the ring" away from the evil Republicans." Algore was their next great hope. He could deliver them from all of the contradictions of Bubba. Or at least the most glaring ones. The ones that made them vulnerable to attack. It was OK that Bubba was vile and filthy to the core because, for the greater good, he was going to pass "the ring" to the more innocent Algore. The Spock like professor of the faith. But the "evil Bush" stole "the ring" from him. It could only be thus for them. Only some dark magic, some evil trickery could prevent "the peoples ring" from going to its rightful owner.
When rationality, common sense and logic are applied to collectivist/humanist ideology at any point on any level it begins to disintegrate. The only defense their ideology of collective good and collective guilt/victim hood has against the truth is to deny it, deflect it and/or distort it whenever the truth arises or, like a spark taking flame amongst kindling, their whole house of cards will be consumed. Everything has to be supported and promoted by an emotionalism that overrides the rational mind and defends the collective no matter what. On any given subject or in any situation logic has to support the preordained conclusion which has to fit the emotional paradigm of the overall doctrine. The rule there is that the conclusion has to make you feel good. The logic is; all bad results are someone else's fault.
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