catapult magazine

Just finished an amazing Salon article on progressives and the use of force against Saddam Hussein:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/03/19/left/index.html

I thought it was amazing not because it confirms my own views, but because it critically examines the history of the left. You may need to be a premium subscriber to read the whole thing. If so, consider subscribing. It’s cheap and worth it.

wow . . . definitely a good article. it outlines the problem i’ve been trying to address in the “i don’t think war is noble” thread, which is that the argument has been polarized into two camps. left: anti-war no matter what. right: let’s go get ‘em. i feel like i’m not represented at all in the national debate over iraq because of this polarization.

here’s an article from sojourners, a christian political magazine, outlining a third way: http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=action.speak_out

this has been my issue all along. i do recognize that saddam hussein is an evil leader guilty of heinous torture and i whole-heartedly believe he should be overthrown. i just don’t think we exhausted the many other options available to us before trumpeting the call for war.

Yet another article from the left, supporting the war:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0314/hentoff.php

I read the Villaige Voice article today (Aug. 13, 2003).

As we all know, the major part of the war is declared over, but daily snipings & ambushes & small counterattacks take place.

While I don’t agree with every aspect of the war, we stopped (or significantly slowed) many crimes against innocent humans. The little white UN trucks zipped around—-but women were getting raped and murdered, persons tortured, persons mass murdered …etc. and the little white UN trucks zipped around looking for wmd’s. (Which Saddam surely had time to move…)

I would have loved for the UN as a whole to charge in there too, but they seem to have forgotten what an evil dictator looks & acts like. Maybe it’s because they lost sight of the decent UN Declaration of Human Rights Eleanor Roosevelt helped assemble…They seem to have no real, consistent standard for deciding what “evil” is.

And recently, we (the media—-many politicians) parsed words over the when, where, why & how of Saddam’s nuclear power. 16-18 words of the speech. Noone denying Saddam had (could have) nuclear weapons…noone denying that he’d love to get his hands on them….But hair splitting as to how good or bad the intelligence on that one point as to his present nuclear weapons capacity (in a speech of many points) was.

Pres. Bush also mentioned one of the many rape cases charged to that Saddam regieme. I don’t hear anyone parsing words on that. More evidence has come forward. Now…Families with pretty young women need not fear Uday will take their daughter, rape her, & kill her.

And we in our age get to see what our parents/grandparents got to see. after WWII…..mass murders by an evil dictator who (according to a History Channel bio) admired Stalin & Hitler.

Thanks for the perspective vanlee. I have no idea if the greater good will be achieved through US occupation, or if it will end up worse than it was. Nobody knows. It was bad under Hussein. Now it’s bad in a different way. From here it could get worse or better. If it gets better, we might someday be able to agree that the thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians who were killed by the American military this year did not die in vain.

Concerning the ineptitude of the UN, I agree that the organization is rather inefficient and often powerless. But the UN Declaration of Human Rights is not a document that authorizes the UN to invade a country which breaks those rules. In order to invade, the UN security council would have to agree that the country represents an imminent threat to its neighbours. And the US failed to convince enough of the others that Iraq presented that sort of danger. As most of you know, I wasn’t convinced either. And so far the skeptics are vindicated in regards to the weapons programs.

I hope for the Iraqi people that the occupying administration can create an orderly, safe society and that elections can be held next year. No matter how strongly I feel that the invasion was a mistake, I don’t want the mission to fail now, because that would be tragic for everyone except Osama and his kind.

A bit off topic, but not really. Have you read the story of Hussein’s secret bride (possible brides)?

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030813.wwife0813/BNStory/International/