> Many on the political left have been reluctant to concede the special > brutality of Saddam, as if admitting that truth would justify a war they > opposed. Some genocides are apparently more equal than others. It's true > that America can't right every wrong, or depose every dictator. But the > U.S. does take on some greater obligation when an American president > encourages an uprising against a madman and then walks away from those who > do as we hope. The liberation of the Marsh Arabs may well have come just in > time to save their culture, and to remove a stain on the American > conscience. >
This is bullshit. For one thing, it was a right-wing president who abandoned the "Marsh Arabs" in the first place. There may be some people who opposed this year's war who are concealing Saddam's brutality, but they are extreme left-wing kooks, about as representative of mainstream liberals as David Duke is of mainstream Republicans. Considering for how many decades right wingers in this country tolerated dictators such as Somoza and Pinochet and Marcos without caring what they did to their people, I sniff a bit of hypocrisy that they've all of a sudden gotten religion about freedom (anywhere but in the US, of course) from torture and oppression. It's possible to honorably oppose an invasion of a small, poor country that, more and more, is looking like it might not have been such a real threat to us after all, without being vilified, misrepresented, and having your motives and decency trashed. George Bush is president, he's not the king. I'm glad Saddam is gone, and if that was Bush's motive for the invasion - WHY THE HELL DIDN'T HE SIMPLY COME OUT AND SAY SO instead of building such a flimsy case that Saddam had WMD and was sponsoring Al Qaeda? Tom Beck www.prydonians.org www.mercerjewishsingles.org "I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed I'd see the last." - Dr Jerry Pournelle _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
