>problem is the coddling of dictators throughout the Middle East regime.
>Democratize Iraq and it puts pressure on and weakens Saudi Arabia and
>Pakistan dictators.
>Now, I don't buy that the neocon democrats either run the show or are
>all-together serious, but the argument is appealing to many liberal
>supporters of the war. So if folks don't acknowledge and respond to a
>pretty clear argument, the Left has little chance of convincing them to
>oppose intervention.
I think the burden is on the neocon dems, or whoever, to show that the U.S. is breaking with a policy of 50 years standing in the Middle East (arming, installing and coddling compliant dictators) and to prove it with more than rhetoric. Especially since current actions look quite consistent with previous U.S. policy. I thought the impending crisis was not so much that Saddam's government was about to be overthrown anyway--as Hitchens is now saying--but that Russia and others were making oil deals there. In other words, the embargo is played out and it's the U.S.'s move.
>Merely yelling "oil" at every turn is unconvcincing to folks who can say,
>sure that's a side benefit, but the real goal is something else. If you
>can't knock down the "real goal" on its own terms, they'll never believe the
>oil argument.
They can say all they want that the 'real goal' is democratizing Iraq, but that's pretty close to delusional given that those who are actually carrying out the policy have been fairly clear: you can't have democracy cause you've got oil, and oil, to paraphrase Kissinger, is too important to be left up to the people.
Jenny Brown