----- Original Message ----- From: <kjkhoo at softhome.net>
> The character of Saddam's regime apart, let's have some of this
> indisputable evidence.
How about repeated massive rebellions against his rule, back in the 1970s and following the Gulf War?
> Furthermore, I thought and think the basic issue at hand is American
> foreign policy and the right of Washington to decide when "regime
> change" is or is not needed, or desirable and when, or if, action
> will be taken to effect it; if so, then realpolitik does come into
> it.
What "right"? This goes to the problems of left morality on these interventions-- because the US blocks intervention in many instances where justice would call for intervention, the Left then demands that there be no intervention when US self-interest coincides with just intervention (read Kosovo in my view). This demand for symmetry in lack of justice is not a morally tenable position.
I have more sympathy for Hitchens approach on this issue than most of the left, since he calls for intervention where it is just, then highlights the ciminal behavior of the US when it has failed to support similar intervention where it was equally just on similar terms.
I don't agree with his enthusiastic support for intervention in the abstract, largely because the consequences would likely be a nasty internal factional war that might be worse than Saddam, but that is separate from the moral analysis where I think he is more correct than much of the peace left.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. That, it seems to me, is where a principled critique of the war-planning might begin. But it's depressing to see the status quo Left preferring to parrot the arguments of pacifist realpolitik.
-- Nathan Newman