Posted on 10/04/2002 11:40:56 AM PDT by Molly Pitcher
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:
"With regimes like the Iraqi one, there will be no peace in the Middle East. You cannot contain a regime like Saddam Hussein's. That was a mistake of the West. So the question is: Is America ready to face up to the mistakes it made in '91 and in the '80s? Are the Americans ready to support democracy? Because people like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden grew out of the Middle East.
They are not products of Afghanistan." - Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, a leading German expert and activist on Iraq. This interview is persuasive and riveting, and also puts the lie to the notion that there is a single, unified "German" view on Iraq. It also highlights, I think, one of the weirdnesses of the current debate.
That weirdness is that the anti-war Left's partly justified argument that the U.S. has been implicated in the past in Saddam's disgusting regime leads them nevertheless to argue that we should do nothing today to rectify that. Why not? Aren't we, in particular, responsible? Shouldn't we, in particular, set it right?
It's a telling feature of the anti-war left that they never use their criticism of American foreign policy in the past to advocate a more aggressive and progressive American foreign policy for today. Which leads to the question of whether their horror of tyranny and evil abroad is what really motivates them - or whether hatred of America and what it stands for is their unifying thread.
Responsibility? Maybe...all the more reason to make it right!
OMG! You mean, the left hates America? Say it ain't so!
Well really, it ain't.
The left hates us. They want us to go away and let them make America exclusively, er...ah, inclusively leftist.
It's a telling feature of the anti-war left that they never use their criticism of American foreign policy in the past to advocate a more aggressive and progressive American foreign policy for today. Which leads to the question of whether their horror of tyranny and evil abroad is what really motivates them - or whether hatred of America and what it stands for is their unifying thread.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.