Anti-Imperialism 101 Re: Hitchens quits Nation

Peter K. peterk at enteract.com
Fri Sep 27 16:29:55 PDT 2002



>>If the explicit goal of US intervention was to run Iraq from abroad
>>dictatorially, that might be an argument, but since the explicit goal is to
>>restore power to the Iraqi people through democratic institutions, the nice
>>symmetry fails.
>
>Has anybody asked the Iraqi people if they even want this?

It's seem they'd want Hussein gone, but are fearful of what or who the US would replace him with. Karzai seems better than the Taliban. At least for women.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021014&s=hitchens

"But what I cannot bear is the sight of French and Russian diplomats posing and smirking with Naji Sabry, Iraq's foreign minister, or with Tariq Aziz. I used to know Naji and I know that two of his brothers, Mohammed and Shukri, were imprisoned and tortured by Saddam Hussein--in Mohammed's case, tortured to death. The son of Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was sentenced to twenty-two years of imprisonment last year; he has since been released and rearrested and released again, partly no doubt to show who is in charge. Another former friend of mine, Mazen Zahawi, was Saddam Hussein's interpreter until shortly after the Gulf War, when he was foully murdered and then denounced as a homosexual. I have known many regimes where stories of murder and disappearance are the common talk among the opposition; the Iraqi despotism is salient in that such horrors are also routine among its functionaries. Saddam Hussein likes to use as envoys the men he has morally destroyed; men who are sick with fear and humiliation, and whose families are hostages."



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list