----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian Murray" <seamus2001 at attbi.com>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <RangerCat67 at aol.com>
> > http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,780386,00.html
> >
> > An excerpt:
> >
> > "What the Iraqi and Kurdish democrats would like is American aid for and
> > endorsement of their own efforts to replace the regime. And what they
fear is
> > what I also fear - a heavy-handed US attack which results in an Iraqi
puppet
> > government that is designed to placate the Saudis and the Turks.
>
> See, fiction in action..............Just how does Hitch know the
prerogatives of the Iraqi and
> Kurdish democrats? Do they number more than a 1,000 or 100 or 100,000?
Where are his figures,
> connections etc.?
Well the issue of "democrats" is an open one-- not that Hitchens said it that way in the quote above-- but the issue of the strength of the potential opposition is clear from history, both in the 1970s with the Kurds and post-Gulf War with serious uprisings among the Shia muslims in the South. The denial that there is widespread opposition to Hussein is exactly the "realpolitick pacificism" that Hitchens is rightly condemning.
This was the dividing issue in the Gulf War and a fracture during the Kosovo intervention on whether the Left will condemn authoritarian regimes forthrightly while making their analyses. Some will still come out on the antiinterventionist side with that, but at least the basis of discussion is one of moral realism, not realpolitick. There is far too much moral agnosticism on oppression by dictators like Hussein, for fear that acknowledging that brutality will just empower hawks in the US. But as should be clear at this point, the hawks are able to mobilize when they have consensus, while the lack of forthright moral analysis by the Left just undermines its one key asset, its moral authority.
There is indisputable evidence that most Kurds and Shia Iraqis would prefer the removal of Hussein and good evidence that many or most other Iraqis also resent his tyrranny. Whether they would all be better off in the chaos that would follow on his removal is worth debating, but whether they want his removal is not an open question. On the Kurds part, they've wanted different arrangements since the beginning of the century when they lost out on an independent Kurdistan.
-- Nathan Newman