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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (60400)	12/7/2002 1:46:54 PM
From: Rascal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Such an effort. And who is it who always complains about Stockman Scott? It is so long! I'll have to get back to you on it. The whole time I read it, I'll be thinking of you. Does the length of this post trigger the 24 hour rule? If you don't hear from me in 24 hours, I don't care! Rascal@VBG.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (60400)	12/7/2002 3:27:04 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Excellent Article from this Weeks "New York Times Magazine" on the dilemma of the American Left. I see a lot of the Quandary here that you and JohnM, among others, are in. An excellent article, Bill, I agree. Thanks for finding it. I haven't worked my way through this morning's Times yet which has the Magazine in it. So you've got me reading it before I leave my computer and head for the living room. That's close to where I am politically--I thought Bosnian intervention was well overdue; ditto Kosovo. And have great difficulties justifying, as you've seen, an Iraqi intervention. I liked David Reiff's comment that the one--Bosnia--was about protecting a democracy and the other--Iraq--was about imposing a democracy. Which was difficult to impossible. Though I don't take the Bush folk seriously when they talk about wanting a democratic Iraq. And I have great admiration for Michael Ignatieff. I return repeatedly to his books, of which I have several, to help rethink some issues. But two things. I'm still back with the notion that the principle public justifications for going in to Iraq will prove critical in determining just how the aftemath is handled. And the Bush administration justifications worry me. They focus too much on simply getting rid of Saddam, not enough on what follows. And they (and we as a country) don't have a good history with sticking around to make something better. And the centrality of oil in the global economy as a justification is, while correct, not, as I've typed before, enough to justify the deaths that will surely follow. The second thing that article brings up is about joining the anti war movement. A part of what I was doing during my disappearance from the thread was doing some calling around about that. I'm ready. But then decided that it's not yet politically wise. Basically, I did a circle. If demonstrations are organized now they turn out to be small and over organized by folk I don't know and don't know whether to trust. They are easily dismissed as showing the country is behind Bush rather than extremely ambivalent. Here's a flyer for for a program on CBS tomorrow night on the selling of the Iraqi invasion. Looks interesting. cbsnews.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (60400)	12/7/2002 3:30:28 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Respond to of 281500

Excellent from start to finish. >> He was an Iraqi dissident named Kanan Makiya, and he said, ''I'm afraid I'm going to strike a discordant note.'' He pointed out that Iraqis, who will pay the highest price in the event of an invasion, ''overwhelmingly want this war.'' He outlined a vision of postwar Iraq as a secular democracy with equal rights for all of its citizens. This vision would be new to the Arab world. ''It can be encouraged, or it can be crushed just like that. But think about what you're doing if you crush it.'' Makiya's voice rose as he came to an end. ''I rest my moral case on the following: if there's a sliver of a chance of it happening, a 5 to 10 percent chance, you have a moral obligation, I say, to do it.''<<