Moyers program is on line, and I thought I would try to isolate and post some of the more interesting exchanges.
GENEIVE ABDO: So the therefore is you have to ... allow self determination. The, the therefore is you have to allow ... I mean, we're speaking here as if the United States should sit down at a table and carve up the world and decide that so and so ... this country should have democracy and this country is, okay, they're stable enough so maybe their Islamists can be allowed to run elections and ... I mean, that's the problem in the Islamic world. The problem in the Islamic world is they, they want the United States out of their lives. And we didn't learn this from September 11th. We're still not learning it, because we wouldn't be having this conversation if we had learned this lesson.
FAREED ZAKARIA: We will never be out of their lives in that sense. When the United States doesn't act, as in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine, people say, "Why are you not acting?" And it's a legitimate point, because for a country as powerful as the United States, not acting is itself a policy. So if you act you're going to be blamed for something; if you don't act you're going to be blamed for something. Better, I say, to act with wisdom.
KANAN MAKIYA: The main Palestinian point has been for the United States to act, and Iraqis just want Palestinians want. They want the United States to act also, in a different direction. Now my argument is not the United States should go ... I see all the dangers that, that ... that you pointed out, both of you pointed out.
KANAN MAKIYA: But my, there is an Iraqi case to be made, an exceptionalism, an Iraqi exceptionalism, and let's call it that, based on the exceptional nature of the dictatorship that was put in place there, and based on the history of US engagement with that dictatorship. I mean, the United States chose in 1991 to send half a million American soldiers halfway across the globe to deal with this occupation, Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Once it did, it engaged with Iraq. It acquired a responsibility, and once the outcome of that war took place and the shadowed infrastructure and the sanctions, it acquired a responsibility that perhaps I would understand it did not have before. But it did.
I speak and I have argued for this as any, as a person of Iraqi origin with a kind of patriotic ... because I wish the best for the people of that country and I hold my position, I derive my position from what I think is in the best interest of Iraqis, not what's in the best interest of the United States.
But, there is a case to be made for doing this, for other interest, the strategic interest in the world. Let's just imagine ... the next few weeks in the coming ... situation in the West Bank, it's not at all out of the probability that Saddam succeeds in equipping some suicide bomber with anthrax or VX poison gas in one of these explosion suits and this person blows them up in Israel, killing, say, some three to 4000 Israelis with VX, anthrax, whatever. Almost certainly with Israel in the mood that it's in today, with Sharon in the leadership that he's in, they would drop a nuclear device on Bagdad. I mean, it's not out of the probability at all if an event like that happened. I'm talking about ... I'm, you know, you could ... certainly it's a factor. It's real.
BILL MOYERS: So you're arguing preventive action against Saddam?
KANAN MAKIYA: Well ... it's, it's very real. There are, Iraqi defectors have come out, they've been coming out in a stream, the most recent effect are coming from within the Prabarate, the section of the Prabarate that dealt with these chemical and biological weapons. His job was to house these things. Has come out with devastating information. Why do you think Powell changed his position? The State Department was dead against the regime changing Iraq.
He changed his position because of new information that came out in December. Since 1998 he has perfected his ways of hiding these weapons, he has developed more types of them. There's still good reason to think he might be behind the anthrax part. That he might have supplied the anthrax that we still haven't solved. This ... is a scary regime. |
