If you can come up with a better explanation of why these anti-war marchers believe that America's actions (and Israel's) are so desperately their business, but the Taliban and Saddam deserve to be left to their own devices, please, have at it.
Good thing I didn't sit down, because if anything is clear with this post it is that you don't agree with me.
It's not up to the marchers to offer an acceptable rationale for another course of action. The need only say no or yes.
Demonstrations are rather like Bush's binary logic; that's why neither are very suitable for actually fashioning foreign policy. But they can say, in the bluntest of terms, do this (in a binary logic) or don't do this (again, in a binary logic). Give women the vote; get out of Vietnam; stop racism in the US.
In this case, I read these particular demonstrations, at least their size as saying something like, we are not persuaded. You guys with the power want to go to war. You have to persuade us that we should do so. A great many of those demonstrations were, after all, held in democracies, putative or otherwise. And they were meant to pass a message. I would not read that message as no war, no way, though some demonstrators probably had that on their signs. Rather, we are here in such large numbers because you have yet to persuade us and there is too much at stake for us to any longer remain silent.
So all these discussions we have here, as helpful as they are, about what should be done in Iraq, are beside the point for the demonstrators, because the leaders of their countries simply haven't made the case. Which is to say Bush has not made the case. If Bush had, a political leader as sharp and articulate as Tony Blair would have no trouble making it.
Now you may well reply that the signs and such at demonstrations didn't say, please persuade us. Instead they said things like no war, don't invade Iraq, etc. Of course, but the question one needs to ask is what would it take for those demonstrations to diminish to insignificance. I think it would happen if the present incumbent of the White House could sell the deal. He has not done so to date.
As for the Taliban insertion in that sentence, I assume that was a typo. You meant to type Al Q. But now having typed it, it does occur to me that had the US continued after Al Q after 9-11,and not taken a wrong turn into Iraq, the same kind of backing found for the Afghanistan campaign would likely still be around. Assuming, of course, the Bush folk could handle the diplomacy of all that with a bit better skill than to date. |
