Hi Pearly - no debate from me - the people in Iraq are suffering. We agree on that, right?
And their suffering is needless. We agree on that, too, right?
The reason they are suffering is probably also not really subject to debate. There is a blockade because Saddam Hussein won't back down.
So the question is - should we be attempting to force Saddam to back down?
Ball's in your court.
(Hey, I could do an endless riff on what it means to be a sovereign nation, and all that. Why does the US think it has the right to tell other people what to do? In this case, I think it's because we could have killed the man, and did not, because he promised to make nice. Consider this the continuation of diplomacy by other means.)
(Why we did not kill him is another matter. I think we should have. But I also think it would have been an incredible hassle. Bush, Sr., did not think it was worth it at the time. In retrospect, he was wrong.)
(Or maybe what's really going on is that we've got all these goddamn nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union is no longer a target and Iraq is such a little pissant country that we feel really magnanimous because so far we've refrained from bombing it back to the Stone Age. I mean, we could do that to anyone, including the Soviet Union. And who could do it to us? So a freaking blockade is kind, when you think of what we could do if we really got pissed off.) |
