"A few weeks ago, Iraq held a nationwide vote on the country's constitution. How much have you heard about this: a lot, a little, or nothing at all?"
A Lot 22%
A Little 52%
Nothing At All 25%
Unsure 1%
Well, duh. That explains it. Terrell Owens' numbers are probably pretty close. Opinions are like...well, you know the rest.
Like Cindy Sheehan? Nah, I wouldn't compare her to one of those. She suffered, not only from the loss of her brave son, but apparently from a pre-existing psychological/political condition. But her effect was felt.
A tour of the lefty blogosphere (I do it, so you don't have to) tells us that since new darling Gen. Wesley Clark calls for pretty much Bush's status quo, more or less , the Cindy Sheehan summer (I shall always think of it as "The Cindy Sheehan Summer"---we should print T-shirts) revival of the glory days of Vietnam withdrawal protests are pretty much dead. Don't blame me, blame Wes Clark, OK?
(The music sucked anyway. Steve Earle played Camp Casey, but Woodstock had The Who and Jimi. Everyone, both then and now, was subjected to Joan Baez, tho. There is no protest without pain.)
Polls always lag, so I expect they'll catch up to Wes Clark soon and leave Cindy as just another fond memory, like Country Joe & The Fish or Al Gore.
So pretty much all that's left is "Bush lied."
John Podhoretz dutifully and nobly took it all on, once again, ad infinitum, ad nauseum in a well-researched article, with lots of quotes.
Not surprising that lefty mainstay Kevin Drum (he's considered the reasonable one) gets up in arms and unloads on it, although more with a snarl than a scalpel.
If the left loses "Bush lied," it's Game Over. Iraq will make its way somehow to a self-governing system, because without murderous tyrants, history is teaching us that that's what human beings tend to do.
And these al-Qaeda maniacs and their Ba'athist collaborators have shown themselves as the enemies of all humanity, just like their patrons bin Laden and Hussein, all smoked out for the world to see by the occupant of the White House for the next 3+ years.
(Personal Note: Our regular and welcome guests from the left do not harangue TRC with Iraq 24/7, and I for damn one appreciate it. I've opened the door here, so it's all fair game. I just had to write this essay, even knowing what might follow. If at least the initial salvo had something to do with Cindy, Wes, John, or Kevin, that would be cool. Cheers.)
I've always felt that Clark's criticisms mirrored my own - that is, largely procedural rather than political. I really don't have a problem with deposing Saddam Hussein, and I've always maintained that if Bush had just said, "We're going in there because Saddam's a giant douche and deserves to be destroyed," I'd have been cheering him on. I'll probably have more on the subject later, but I'm trying to respect your wishes.
ReplyDeleteWhy, thanks, James. Your complimentary "Cindy Sheehan Summer" T-shirt is on its way.
ReplyDeleteMan, don't get me started on Cindy Sheehan. Sometimes I just don't think I'm tolerant of other people enough to be a good liberal. Fortunately, I like the sound of my voice too much to believe it.
ReplyDeleteI accept the tears for the victims of the war as sincere, but their deaths are at least in the hope of a better future for the Iraqi people and for the world as a whole.
ReplyDeleteSaddam's victims, the victims of the American-led sanctions, and the continuing victims of the Islamist and Ba'athist terrorists are far more numerous, and deserve our deepest concern because they were and are innocents, and because their suffering was useless, in the cause of nothing.
(Protest [or its peacetime equivalent, progress] is necessary and desirable. As long as one understands the nature of what already is. Babies should not be thrown out with bathwater, and the world should not start anew with every morning's newspaper. For one thing, it becomes tiresome questioning every day if there should even be a morning newspaper. There should.)
And yes, James, I hear you. I find the raised voice of a self-righteous progressive more pleasing than a self-righteous reactionary.
ReplyDeleteAt least there's a chance I might hear something new. Rock on, mate. :-)
That protests might make things worse is a thought so scary that protesters dare not entertain it, so they don't.
ReplyDeleteI envy their moral certainty that they are doing good. I myself have never experienced it.
You want to defend an immoral war, at least use some logic.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you call the war immoral?
"You want to defend an immoral war, at least use some logic."
ReplyDeleteWhy do you call the war immoral?
I think this is a fundamental divide between pro-war and anti-war ideologies. Peter Daou addresses it here. You may need to watch an ad or fill out a Salon day pass if you're interested in reading it.
But I will sum up. The anti-war movement is essentially composed of two elements: There are the pacifists, who are opposed to all war, and the "anti-this-war" opposition. Daou's point, which largely mirrors my opinions on the Right's arguments for this war, addresses this second group very well.
Essentially, the argument is this: War is such a brutal, destructive, and dangerous prospect for our soldiers, our opponents, and the civilians in the crossfire, that our leaders (and I refer to both sides of the aisle here) and the people who support them have a moral obligation to enter it with honesty of both purpose and intentions. The fact is, emerging and long-emerged information strongly bolsters the opinion that we were misled, that the war was perpetrated ineptly for spurious reasons and that the mendacity of the war's architects has led to countless deaths.
This is a moral failing. All the good results in the world after the fact are unintended if the very purpose of the war was flawed or, worse, an outright lie. No amount of freedom in Iraq justifies or excuses ineptitude, placing politics over prowess, and failure to be truthful.
So, yes, pulling out of Iraq now would be a moral failure eclipsing the war itself. But that does not mean we should fail to hold our leaders accountable for their immoral decisions.
But the subject of the original essay was protest, Connie, and now that even Wes Clark pronounces we should stay the course, the role of protest.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest, I can't see doing an autopsy when the patient isn't even dead yet.
(And yes, I know accusations of moral certainty make a liberal's head explode. Anything but that! But can protest do harm? As noted, a thought too scary to consider.)
Thank you James.
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of what you have to say. I do have a problem, however, with the ex post facto application of the immoral label.
I like your rants better than Ariana's, Connie. Please have mercy on us all and park her at the door.
ReplyDeleteI believe Shakespeare's Beatrice summed Tom's response up best in Much Ado About Nothing, Connie:
ReplyDelete"You always end with a jade's trick: I know you of old."