Anniversary

Dennis Perrin dperrin at comcast.net
Thu Sep 12 08:35:36 PDT 2002



> your position sounds to me rather like a "soft-on-saddam" left position .
. .
> are you arguing that iraq and the world would not be better off w/o saddam
> hussein? are you miminizing the crimes saddam has in fact committed (e.g.,
> gassing kurds or contributing consciously, voluntarily, and non-trivially
to
> the starvation of his own people while he and his officers live in the lap
of
> luxury)?
>
> true, saddam hussein did not massacre several thousand in new york and
> washington, dc, but if *that* is the determinative difference between
saddam
> and al-qa'ida, then that alters the substance of your argument about
> afghanistan, as far as i can tell. indeed, it shows that afghanistan
really
> WAS what we think it was: US vengeance, with the side-effect of the
liberation
> of a downtrodden people from a thoroughly repressive regime. wouldn't bush
> fils finishing the vendetta of bush pere be the same thing--US
vindictiveness
> (and/or worse) that ultimately makes things better for iraqis?
>
> jeff

If Saddam had sent those planes into the Towers, and promised more death to come, then yes, I would definitely support attacking his regime. But as it stands there is no evidence of any kind, and a unilateral assault on Iraq would, in my mind, be disastrous. Apart from the civilian dead, what would be done to placate the various nationalisms? I mean, would the Shi'ias get their patch, the Kurds theirs? What about the Sunni minority which rules Iraq? I think containment of Saddam has worked fine. This "regime change" is totally unnecessary, especially given that Iraq controls only a portion of its own air space. What the hell is it going to do?

If the US sought mere vengeance, then Afghanistan would be a parking lot. It's not, quite the contrary, and this no doubt rankles the Soft-on-al-Qs -- oh for a million dead! Think of the organizing possibilities! Al-Qaeda has recently stated that it will kill as many people as it can, that last year's attacks were just the beginning. Saddam, awful though he is, hasn't gone this route, and being a materialist thug, it certainly isn't in his interests. That's one difference between the two situations. A big one, actually.

DP



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