� Hadley Draws the Straw | Main | Micropayments are Back �

July 22, 2003

Why Did You Support the War, Daddy?

It looks like a lot of bloggers whom I respect are giving their rationales the once over and giving an entire retrospective on their wagging lo these many months. I suppose I have the advantage of not being so prolific with the call and response of the major blog circles. I try to call 'em simply and let the details fall to those without elementary school children in the house.

Uranium was never part of my moral calculus. In fact neither were WMDs. I was no more afraid of Saddam's military this time around than the first time, and everybody knows that Colin Powell cut them off and killed them. What's more, when mitigating circumstances showed themselves about gassing of the Kurds, I still didn't waver.

Something you are not going to hear in any of today's debates about this is the fate of the Kurds. The Kurds are just fine, thank you, not that any American in media earshot gives a damn today. In fact, the American forces have held back the Kurds from a well deserved jaunt of revenge during the hostilities, and the Turks were still displeased at the Kurdish bravado under their newly found freedom.

Let's get this all straight. We Americans are continuing our ridiculous debates only listening to ourselves and not the rest of the world, and it is making us a truly sucky empire. Thank god Tony Blair has the guts and brains to say what's up and what's right about this expression of might. It's all about liberty, but not American liberty. It's about the liberty of people in the Middle East and that's why deposing Saddam was a key priority with or without uranium, scuds, chemical agents, bioweapons or terrorist ties. Iraq itself was wrong, and now it has another chance. But until we Americans grow up and shutup sometimes and listen to the cries for freedom elsewhere in the world, all of our justifications for everything in our foreign policy, military or not, will become a partisan sham.

A partisan sham is what we are enduring right now. I'll try not to suffer it, but only repeat now the logic that made me support GWBush in his actions, if not his reasons.

Several weeks ago, I asked the rhetorical question whether or not the world will accept this imperial show. I wondered out loud if Saddam, of all the nasty bastards on the planet, and Iraq of all the gawdawful spots in the world, were the right targets for our first venture. Perhaps I am waiting for the right person to do the right thing in consideration of the fact the GWBush is wrong for just about everything which calls for an intelligent command of the oratory worthy of free world leadership. I want my emperor to be kingly, and why oh why did I get GW? Do you hear me pissing and moaning?

Yet if I could stop for a minute and start dealing with the hideous facts of the matter on the ground in Iraq (and probably a half dozen other horrible places), I wonder if I would mind so much if my president is Shrek instead of a Handsome Prince. I'm a policy snob in the face of Saddam's clear and present danger. Not to me, to Iraqis. It's not about me.

Since it is not about me, and a busybody neighbor is better than an abusive parent, I have to concede the fact that an ugly rescue is better than benign neglect. I feel that our geopolitical snobbery and posing are pretty worthless right about now, and the fact that we have to wheedle our way around the diplomatic chicanery of the UN and everyplace else is only necessitated by a failure of brotherhood and an ignoble squeamishness which is not rescued by our well-meant outrage at Bush's mendacity. I do believe in class warfare.That means noblesse on our part and revolt by the Shi'a.

The focus of the world is on Saddam Hussein. WMD or no, Iraqis are hopeless without our intervention. Now is the time for action, political snobs be damned. No matter how physically wreckless we may be, and I have a strong feeling that we won't be, this war is better happening than not. No matter how diplomatically wreckless we have been, and I know for damned sure that we have been, those are only words and hard feelings, but they're not lives. Lives are more important than words.

Posted by mbowen at July 22, 2003 04:44 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.visioncircle.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/285