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Why I Didn't March This Time (Nat Hentoff)
The Village Voice ^ | March 28th, 2003 | Nat Hentoff

Posted on 03/28/2003 4:03:24 PM PST by veronica

Their Tongues Were Cut Out for Slandering Hussein

Often, the executions have been carried out by the Fedayeen Saddam, a paramilitary group headed by Mr. Hussein's oldest son, 38-year-old Uday. These men, masked and clad in black, make the women kneel in busy city squares, along crowded sidewalks, or in neighborhood plots, then behead them with swords. The families of some victims have claimed they were innocent of any crime save that of criticizing Mr. Hussein. —John F. Burns, "How Many People Has Hussein Killed?" The New York Times, January 26, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I participated in many demonstrations against the Vietnam War, including some civil disobedience—though I was careful not to catch the eyes of the cops, sometimes a way of not getting arrested. But I could not participate in the demonstrations against the war on Iraq. As I told The New York Sun in its March 14-16 roundup of New Yorkers for and against the war:

"There was the disclosure . . . when the prisons were briefly opened of the gouging of eyes of prisoners and the raping of women in front of their husbands, from whom the torturers wanted to extract information. . . . So if people want to talk about containing [Saddam Hussein] and don't want to go in forcefully and remove him, how do they propose doing something about the horrors he is inflicting on his people who live in such fear of him?"

I did not cite "weapons of mass destruction." Nor do I believe Saddam Hussein is a direct threat to this country, any more than the creators of the mass graves in the Balkans were, or the Taliban. And as has been evident for a long time, I am no admirer of George W. Bush.

The United Nations? Did the inspectors go into the prisons and the torture chambers? Would they have, if given more time? Did they interview the Mukhabarat, Saddam's dreaded secret police?

An Iraqi in Detroit wanted to send a message to the anti-war protesters: "If you want to protest that it's not OK to send your kids to fight, that's OK. But please don't claim to speak for the Iraqis."

In The Guardian, a British paper that can hardly be characterized as conservative, there was a dispatch from Safwan, Iraq, liberated in the first days of the war: "Ajami Saadoun Khilis, whose son and brother were executed under the Saddam regime, sobbed like a child on the shoulder of The Guardian's Egyptian translator. He mopped the tears but they kept coming. 'You just arrived,' he said. 'You're late. What took you so long?' "

The United Nations? In 1994, Kofi Annan, then head of the UN's peacekeeping operations, blocked any use of UN troops in Rwanda even though he was told by his representative there that the genocide could be stopped before it started.

Bill Clinton refused to act as well, instructing the State Department not to use the word genocide because then the United States would be expected to do something. And President Clinton instructed Madeleine Albright, then our representative to the UN, to block any possible attempts to intervene despite Kofi Annan. Some 800,000 lives could have been saved.

The United Nations? Where Libya, Syria, and Sudan are on the Human Rights Commission? The UN is crucial for feeding people and trying to deal with such plagues as AIDS; but if you had been in a Hussein torture chamber, would you, even in a state of delirium, hope for rescue from the UN Security Council?

From Amnesty International, for whom human rights are not just a slogan, on Iraq: "Common methods of physical torture included electric shocks or cigarette burns to various parts of the body, pulling out fingernails, rape. . . . Two men, Zaher al-Zuhairi and Fares Kadhem Akia, reportedly had their tongues cut out for slandering the president by members of Feda'iyye Saddam, a militia created in 1994. The amputations took place in a public square in Diwaniya City, south of Baghdad."

As John Burns of The New York Times wrote in January: "History may judge that the stronger case [for an American-led invasion] . . . was the one that needed no [forbidden arms] inspectors to confirm: that Saddam Hussein, in his 23 years in power, plunged this country into a bloodbath of medieval proportions, and exported some of that terror to his neighbors."

When it appeared that Tony Blair's political career was near extinction, he gave a speech in the House of the Commons, as quoted in the March 18 issue of The Guardian:

"We must face the consequences of the actions we advocate. For me, that means all the dangers of war. But for others, opposed to this course, it means—let us be clear—that the Iraqi people, whose only true hope of liberation lies in the removal of Saddam, for them, the darkness will close back over them again; and he will be free to take his revenge upon those he must know wish him gone.

"And if this house now demands that at this moment, faced with this threat from this regime, that British troops are pulled back, that we turn away at the point of reckoning, and that is what it means—what then?

"What will Saddam feel? Strengthened beyond measure. What will the other states who tyrannise their people, the terrorists who threaten our existence, what will they take from that?. . . Who will celebrate and who will weep?"

The letters section of The New York Times is sometimes more penetrating than the editorials. A March 23 letter from Lawrence Borok: "As someone who was very active in the [anti-Vietnam War] protests, I think that the antiwar activists are totally wrong on this one. Granted, President Bush's insensitive policies in many areas dear to liberals (I am one) naturally make me suspicious of his motives. But even if he's doing it for all the wrong reasons, have they all forgotten about the Iraqi people?"

And, in the March 23 New York Times Magazine, Michael Ignatieff, a longtime human rights investigator, wrote of "14,000 'writers, academics, and other intellectuals'—many of them my friends—[who] published a petition against the war . . . condemning the Iraqi regime for its human rights violations and supporting 'efforts by the Iraqi opposition to create a democratic, multi-ethnic, and multireligious Iraq.' " But they say, he adds, that waging war at this time is "morally unacceptable."

"I wonder," Ignatieff wrote—as I also wonder—"what their support for the Iraqi opposition amounts to."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: iraqifreedom; liberalcaseforwar; nathentoff
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1 posted on 03/28/2003 4:03:24 PM PST by veronica
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To: dennisw; Lent; SJackson; Brian Allen; MadIvan; Bahbah; Grampa Dave; Alouette; Catspaw; BenF; ...
FYI.
2 posted on 03/28/2003 4:04:48 PM PST by veronica (On to Baghdad...)
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To: veronica
Thanks for posting this.
3 posted on 03/28/2003 4:06:58 PM PST by syriacus (Cultural Diversity..... Iraqis using WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST...as human shields.)
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To: veronica
Bumped and bookmarked.
4 posted on 03/28/2003 4:08:28 PM PST by Rocko
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To: veronica
Ah, once again we have a sighting of that most elusive of creatures--the honest liberal.

Nice post.
5 posted on 03/28/2003 4:08:34 PM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: veronica
Wow, some good points. Underscores just how extremely far off base France, Germany, Russia, and much of the rest of the world is by claiming they're "pro-Peace." In fact, they were merely "pro-Status Quo" which is functionally "pro-Torture", "pro-Rape" and "pro-Dictatorship."

Another factor that tends to be left out of the Iraq debate (by the pro-Torture crowd) is the fact that we already had a war going on, a war that the US and Britain largely continued on behalf of the international community. That could not have been called "peace" either.

I get the impression the world is jealous of US power, and has scapegoated us out of pure jealous rage, without paying a moment's notice to the depth of the situation. And some "protestors" in this country are just dumb enough (and knee jerk anti-authority enough) to fall for the ravings of our jealous former fake allies. Sad, in the short term, but truth will win out in the end.

6 posted on 03/28/2003 4:10:37 PM PST by EaglesUpForever (Ne messez pas avec le US)
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To: veronica
"I wonder...what their[anti-war demos] support for the Iraqi opposition amounts to."

They'll go so far as to speak well of them once they're dead.

They're highly moral, don't you know?
7 posted on 03/28/2003 4:10:46 PM PST by headsonpikes
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To: veronica
BUMP!
8 posted on 03/28/2003 4:10:52 PM PST by Cool Guy (In God We Trust.)
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To: veronica
Well, they were wrong on the Vietnam War too! We should ask these Johnny-come-latelys how come the North Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian Communist atrocities were hunky dory and the Iraqi ones aren't! (Yeah, yeah, I know that Hentoff is against abortion and for this and that, but...)
9 posted on 03/28/2003 4:12:47 PM PST by Revolting cat! (Subvert the dominant cliche!)
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To: veronica
Nat Hentoff: One of the few people about whom you may use these two words in the same sentence: "Honest Liberal."
10 posted on 03/28/2003 4:13:54 PM PST by Illbay (Don't believe every tagline you read - including this one)
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To: EternalVigilance
Ooh. Great minds think alike.
11 posted on 03/28/2003 4:15:17 PM PST by Illbay (Don't believe every tagline you read - including this one)
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To: Revolting cat!
You don't understand! They provided the people Free Health Care!
12 posted on 03/28/2003 4:16:46 PM PST by Illbay (Don't believe every tagline you read - including this one)
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To: veronica
I hate to break it to him, but George Bush is doing this for all the right reasons.

13 posted on 03/28/2003 4:17:34 PM PST by samtheman
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To: Illbay
Well, I agree with Nat on this issue.

Bump
14 posted on 03/28/2003 4:21:59 PM PST by baseballmom
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To: Illbay
Do you remember the exact quote that made its rounds a few years back (I saw it here too) which went something like this (a clumsy attempt at recollection):

"Wherever in the world there are heads being bashed, the Left will tell you that the heads receive free health care and education"

15 posted on 03/28/2003 4:23:33 PM PST by Revolting cat! (Subvert the dominant cliche!)
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To: headsonpikes
"They'll go so far as to speak well of them once they're dead."

Exactly. Just as they spoke well of the two-and-a-half million Vietnamese who were slaughtered by the communists once the "anti-war" crowd forced our withdrawal from that country. Who doesn't remember the airhead Joan Baez going on about how horrible it all was and how "we had no idea"? This is the same Baez who now shares the "peace" rally stage with Martin Sheen, supporting the continued genocide against the people of Iraq.

16 posted on 03/28/2003 4:27:35 PM PST by Bonaparte
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To: veronica
Nat Hentoff has always been that rarest of breeds: The honest liberal.
17 posted on 03/28/2003 4:28:31 PM PST by Dont Mention the War
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To: EternalVigilance
Ah, once again we have a sighting of that most elusive of creatures--the honest liberal.

Elusive Chupracabra Liberal bump...(they only suck blood part-time)

18 posted on 03/28/2003 4:29:55 PM PST by piasa (Attitude adjustments offered here free of charge.)
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To: veronica
The only thing I would disagree about is this: "The UN is crucial for feeding people and trying to deal with such plagues as AIDS."

This seems very doubtful to me. The UN food programs do nothing that individual nations and charitable organizations couldn't do more directly. In fact the UN takes a large rakeoff for expenses, and often has been accused of incompetence and corruption in these operations.

As for AIDS, it has been obvious for some time that distributing condoms and telling people to enjoy indiscriminate sex helps to spread AIDS, not prevent it. Wherever the UN population controllers and sex educators have gone, things have gotten much worse.
19 posted on 03/28/2003 4:33:07 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: knighthawk; spectre; Howlin; Ernest_at_the_Beach
Very worthy read!
20 posted on 03/28/2003 4:43:01 PM PST by MizSterious ("The truth takes only seconds to tell."--Jack Straw)
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