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Some voices on the war:
Rebecca Blood:
The silver lining in this storm is that soon the Iraqis will be out from under the house of Saddam. But we have lost incalculable moral authority with this action.
Instapundit:
The antiwar movement failed because it was morally and intellectually unserious, and could never articulate an alternative position that might plausibly have led to a safer America and a safer world.
Had it been able to do so, it might have gotten some traction. But it was too overwhelmed by anti-Bush, anti-capitalist, and anti-American sentiments to generate a positive vision. Even a lot of lefties have noticed that recently.
Bob Herbert (NYT):
But the fact that a war may be quick does not mean that it is wise. Against the wishes of most of the world, we have plunged not just into war, but toward a peace that is potentially more problematic than the war itself.
Are Americans ready to pay the cost in lives and dollars of a long-term military occupation of Iraq? To what end?
Will an occupation of Iraq increase or decrease our security here at home?
Do most Americans understand that even as we are launching one of the most devastating air assaults in the history of warfare, private companies are lining up to reap the riches of rebuilding the very structures we're in the process of destroying?
Companies like Halliburton, Schlumberger and the Bechtel Group understand this conflict a heck of a lot better than most of the men and women who will fight and die in it, or the armchair patriots who'll be watching on CNN and cheering them on.
It's not unpatriotic to say that there are billions of dollars to be made in Iraq and that the gold rush is already under way. It's simply a matter of fact.
Jon Carroll:
George Bush wishes no harm to the people of California. He appreciates their willingness to express "sincere differences." But they have been misled by their leaders, that Davis fellow and the two Browns and everyone named Burton. These people need to be removed. Diplomatic measures have failed. Did not Dick Cheney visit California? And still the Brown people are in charge.
Simon Jenkins:
Osama bin Laden hovers over events in the Gulf as he hovered over Mr Blair's dispatch box. History will surely rate this stateless psychopath as potent beyond all imaginings. He did not just kill 3,000 people. His single act entered so deep into US psychology as to traumatise its sense of security and well-being. He devastated the economy of a city, New York, and a whole country. He turned Americans in on themselves, fortifying their houses, buying gas masks, fearing dark-skinned foreigners and screaming at the sight of powder. He bankrupted their airline companies. He emptied their office blocks. He made them suspend habeas corpus.
Michael Walzer:
There are two ways of opposing a war with Iraq. The first way is simple and wrong; the second way is right but difficult.
The first way is to deny that the Iraqi regime is particularly ugly, that it lies somewhere outside the range of ordinary states, or to argue that, however ugly it is, it doesn't pose any significant threat to its neighbors or to world peace. Perhaps, despite Saddam's denials, his government is in fact seek-ing to acquire nuclear weapons. But other governments are doing the same thing, and if or when Iraq succeeds in developing such weapons--so the argument continues--we can deal with that through conventional deterrence, in exactly the same way that the US and the Soviet Union dealt with each other in the cold war years.
Obviously, if this argument is right, there is no reason to attack Iraq. Nor is there any reason for a strong inspection system, or for the current embargo, or for the northern and southern "no-fly" zones. Some of the most vocal organizers of the antiwar movement, here and in Europe, seem to have adopted exactly this position. It has been overrepresented among speakers at the big demonstrations against the war. Most of the demonstrators, I believe, don't hold this first view; nor is it held by the wider constituency of actual and potential opponents of Bush's foreign policy. But we have to recognize a constant temptation of antiwar politics: to pretend that there really isn't a serious enemy out there.
This pretense certainly keeps things simple, but it is wrong in every possible way. The tyranny and brutality of the Iraqi regime are widely known and cannot be covered up. Its use of chemical weapons in the recent past; the recklessness of its invasions of Iran and Kuwait; the rhetoric of threat and violence that is now standard in Baghdad; the record of the 1990s, when UN inspectors were systematically obstructed; the cruel repression of the uprisings that followed the Gulf War of 1991; the torture and murder of political opponents--how can all this be ignored by a serious political movement?
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JoDI Issue (3:4) on E-Education: Design and Evaluation just out.
Posted by Raymond Yee on 3/20/03; 10:50:01 AM
from the Personal Notes dept.
Discuss
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Thursday, March 20, 2003
