...In the run-up to the war, almost whichever way the debate was going, one could count on the president’s opponents to stipulate that, yes, Saddam was certainly a dreadful and criminal figure. This position was hardly optional, given the Alps of evidence assembled over the years, much of it later excavated in mass graves and torture centers and in the ruin of two neighboring states.
Yet now, one of the best-known spokesmen for the antiwar cause [Ramsey Clark] appears across the world’s TV screens, openly saying the Hussein system was justified all along in its aggression abroad and fascism at home.
I was, and still am, one of those who advocated publicly for the overthrow of Saddam. In debates, I proposed that most participants could at least agree on something. Whatever one’s view of the propriety and competence of the intervention, it could surely be accepted that human rights groups in Iraq could use some help digging up the mass graves and identifying the fundamentalists on both sides of the argument; that the Kurdish people — the largest stateless minority in the region — were in need of solidarity; and that the ‘‘marsh’’ Arabs, victims of one of the worst ecocides ever inflicted, were calling for help.
For the most part, the antiwar faction has subordinated everything to its hatred of Bush, folded its hands and watched coldly as Iraqi democrats struggle in a sea of chaos. That sham neutrality is bad enough. But now, the antiwarriors do have a permanent representative in Baghdad, in the form of an apologist for the past crimes and aggressions of a man who makes his hero, Mussolini, seem like an amateur.
What will Sheehan and the other humanitarians say this time? Or are they simply pro-war and on the other side?
Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !
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