Well, first, Rock is not my "sidekick". Just because someone agrees with someone else hardly implies this. Republicans have believed for a very long time that calling people names bolsters their arguments. This is not to claim that Democrats are immune from this disease, they clearly aren't, but Republicans have advanced it to an art form, especially under the aegis of the late Lee Atwater and the redoubtable Roger Ailes, both truly masterful admen who understand the great power of sound bites and labels.
Second, the issue isn't whether the job (one important job) of government is to preserve the peace and maintain security. No one argues that. The issue is what advances that goal, and how should the means to that end be determined. The Constitution sets up a sharp separation of powers. It gives both Congress and the Executive branch powers. In this case, the Bush admin was trying to use an 11 year old resolution to circumvent Congressional powers. The Federalist Papers also makes it clear that our government must respect international opinions as well as treaties and the sovereignty of other nations (cf Federalist 62 and 63, for example). The fleeting passions and interests of any one group must be checked by the dispassionate reason of others if peace and order is to maintained (reread especially Federalist 10 and 51 on this). While I don't have the time right now to get into this in detail, IMHO the Bush admin has stepped over constitutional lines as well as basic reason in their pursuit of Saddam, not totally unlike the pursuit of Clinton by Starr et al (using him just as a symbol for the pack of anti-Clintonians). Each argument for bombing Saddam is inadequate in itself--for example, the emotionally charge linkage of Saddam to Al Quaida is on the face of it absurd--aside from not having any evidence of linkage, those two groups basically hate each other. (The loony linkage of Vietnam to China was just like this, those two countries had centuries of hatred and mistrust between them, but it didn't stop people in the Eisenhauer administration from linking them to justify their ignoring Vietnamese elections in 1954, and setting up South Vietnam, eventually leading to the Vietnam war). Violating the sovereignty of another country for insufficient cause is
something we have done all too often in the past, almost always with bad results for the people of the country we interfered with.
Let me ask a question I haven't seen those who claim Iraq is such a great immediate danger address: why didn't Saddam use his WMDs during the Gulf War? We all agree that he had them then. His infrastructure was more intact then than it is now, his stocks were fresher, and he had an obvious opportunity. He doesn't really have a good means of delivery. The bottom line is, he isn't really very smart, and he doesn't have the allegiance of many smart people. Containment and inspections are a much better way to deal with him than bombing and forcible regime change. The country itself doesn't make much sense, the colonial forces that created it paid no attention whatsoever to the groups that they were lumping together,as those groups have historical animosity toward each other (of couse, another interpretation is that the colonial powers did pay attention to that, and put them together in one country in order to ensure that the country would be perpetually in conflict--all the easier to dominate them).
Anyway, I don't have time for this right now. "Righteous indignation" has little to do with my opinions, though. Reason and a respect for our Constitution as well as a fear of the always numerous unintended consequences of war & violence underlies my concerns.
Sam |
