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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (130910)	5/1/2004 9:20:20 PM
From: h0db	Respond to of 281500

"Show me anybody on the Left who thought that it was urgent to stop Saddam Husseins human rights abuses in the period since 1998, when regime change became US policy." I guess Bill Clinton, Madelline Albright, and Sandy Berger don't count as part of the "Left," so who would you include? BTW, it isn't just the "left:" "Above all, Bush administration officials were afraid any action in support of the Shiites and Kurds might lead to the disintegration of Iraq, the result that the Saudis and others in the Middle East were trying to prevent... The most succinct and Machiavellian description of the Bush administration's underlying strategy came from Powell. The United States wasn't merely neutral, he later admitted; in fact, it actually favored Saddam's armed forces over the Shiites and the Kurds. "Our practical intention was to leave Baghdad enough power to survive as a threat to an Iran that remained bitterly hostile to the United States." -- James Mann, *"Rise of the Vulcans,"* p. 193.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (130910)	5/1/2004 10:11:02 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Not thinking it was "urgent" to stop the abuses (by war, perhaps?) is not the same as not caring. You have self defined "caring" in your post as "thinking it was urgent to stop Saddam Husseins (sic) human rights abuses"- and yet, you overlook all the people on the left who DID think it was urgent, but who did not want to stop abuses, by the abusive instrument of war. And yes, I've read Hitchens. Sometimes he overgeneralizes and overstates (sometimes wildly). One man's creative crusade to promote himself in his job (and I'm sure some of it is also what he believes) is not exactly proof that the whole left doesn't care, or "has nothing to say... to the victims of fascism." I would argue that at the very least some people of the left would say "We aren't going to invade your country and make a bigger mess out of it, unless we are very, very sure that would be the right thing to do." Now you could argue that every single victim of fascism wants the US to invade their country, but I think that is 1. wrong 2. very bad policy for the US and 3. greatly undermines our ability to help other "victims of fascism" in non-military ways. If you really want me to dig up people of the left who thought it was urgent to work against Saddam in non-military ways, I will be happy to do it- but I think what you really want is for me to find people of the left who wanted to take Saddam out violently- and I'd say to you, that this is not necessarily "caring" for the beleaguered people of Iraq. It might turn out ok, what we have done in terms of "regime change" (and what a euphemism that is for what we have done) but the chances were so great that it might not turn out well that people of the left might very well have thought that it was better for Iraq, and for the US, to work in other ways. If you cannot even see the possibility that this might have been a logical and even caring way of looking at things(especially with the way events have unfolded in Iraq, which, I think, makes the left look fairly prescient) I think we should end this conversation.