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More on the Iraq Debate By Mark Grueter --------------------------------------- This essay is the next installment in an ongoing debate on Me Three concerning the impending war in Iraq. Click here for Mark Grueter's original essay "Siding with Hitchens" and here for Andrew Gold's response. Let me begin, not at the beginning, but with a few personal notes. I found your lengthy effort to undermine me and Siding with Hitchens admirable. I hope you wrote it more out of desire than out of any lingering sense of obligation. I’m also happy to have made you smile, even if you didn’t “get” the relevance of the Mark Green bit (too bad too, because it’s even funnier when you see the connection). Anyway, I wish you would have been more honest during our informal talks. Instead of telling me back then that you avoided our agreed upon challenge because you didn’t feel my piece addressed the “real arguments” involved, you pretended that you had lost interest in the subject (the left and Iraq) and decided to write a cranky summary of the mid-term elections instead. I had thought you knew me well enough to know that I’d rather have it between the eyes, as it were, than be deceived. My feelings can go to hell; I’m assured that the rest of me is going there anyway. I had attributed your equivocating use of the English language (when asked about the progress of your presumed anti-war/anti-Hitchens article) and general flightiness to personal issues, rather than a reluctance to confront yours truly. Evidently, I was wrong. But back to your letter: As far your concern with allowing the “combative impulse…(to) take another man’s words in the ways in which we can down him with the least trouble” - it should be clear to any literate person that you yourself could be charged with reverting to this tactic. Yes, the same tactic you accuse me of employing. The hypocrisy is startling, though not particularly instructive. Sir I.A. Richards, no doubt a scholar of the highest description, misses the more interesting and less obvious aspect of intellectual exchanges (at least in that much vaunted quote). Everybody, engaged in presenting a point of view, is guided by a “combative impulse,” whether they choose to admit it or not. Some people are able to hide this fact from superficial observers better than others. But there’s no such thing as an objective commentator. So, this seemingly insightful observation actually sheds no new light. And lose the self-righteous pose. You claim that Hitchens and I enjoy the debate so much that we disregard the real world consequences of what we say. I’ll be goddamned if I allow this outrageous assertion to pass uncontested. It’s an unserious allegation that merits no serious response. You might as well just call me an indifferent murderer. Do you really think Hitchens is so stupid as to “forget…about the real world consequences” of what he argues? This entire discussion has been based on “real world consequences.” Onward the and upward. Many skeptics oppose the war in Iraq, essentially because they don’t trust the Bush administration and the questionable ‘reasons’ for forcible disarmament it has put forth. In addition to adverse effects resulting from an “intervention” (and we all know they’ll exist, whether or not Bush publicly recognizes them) they suspect sinister, ulterior motives, and cite oil connections and shifting rationales to reinforce their claim. Fine. Instead of staking a position on the issue for themselves, these cynics provide us with a base of dissent critical for any thriving democracy. This formidable opposition compels any freethinking person to consider the alternatives. Only after carefully considering every regime-preservation argument ever presented did I become committed to my pro-regime change position. I wish the reasons for opposing Bush’s planned overthrow of Saddam had been more principled/cogent because, believe it or not, I don’t feel very comfortable applauding the Beltway consensus. Yet, as you know, some things may be true even if the shady Donald Rumsfeld says them. Yes, well, you wanted to know what I think (my ideas were apparently not made abundantly clear in Siding with Hitchens). So, here goes: the risks of trusting the United Nations and the Bush people to carry forward a campaign in Iraq that will ultimately benefit the people of Iraq, neighboring Arab countries and the world at large are not nearly as great as the risks associated with maintaining a policy of containment and sanctions, “smart” or otherwise. The so-called left, in its obstinate advocacy of nothingness, is taking a huge risk - they just don’t realize it. Risks should not be taken unless something is to be gained. One does not put $100 on a game of blackjack unless one expects to profit after winning the game. The risks the peacenik left would have us take will yield no rewards, only dangers: the continued humiliation and suffering of the Iraqi people and the proliferation of weapons being built with the intent to harm the U.S. and our interests. By not acting, the U.N. effectively tells the world that international organizations and the rule of law are meaningless, that the rights of sovereign nations still prevail - the latter an abject and archaic world order that ought to have been discarded after WWII, if not earlier. By not acting, the U.N. and the U.S. effectively tells tyrants and terrorists that we are weak and unwilling to fight. And on this, they would be correct. The risks associated with a campaign to displace Saddam offers many rewards to both the United States and member U.N. states: People living within the confines of Iraq will be liberated (which will provide hope for oppressed people all around the world), oil markets will no longer be held hostage to an Iraqi dictatorship and we’ll have a decreased threat of a large-scale chemical, biological or nuclear attack on friendly countries in that region and/or on the U.S. With an air of condescension, you rely on the assertion that it is “extraordinarily unlikely” that conditions in the region will manifestly improve for the people as a result of intervention. I couldn’t disagree more. On February 6, Oxford intellectual Timothy Garton Ash (himself ‘on the fence’ concerning the impending war) summarized a point I’ve been making recently in debates, “However messy postwar Iraq becomes - and it surely will be messy, like postwar Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan - it could hardly get worse.” He did not state this any more eloquently than I had been - I cite him merely to let you know that I’m not making this up as I go along. An aside: if you’re an open-minded person and still willing to consider supporting war in Iraq, you need to read former CIA agent Kenneth Pollack’s book The Threatening Storm, in which he meticulously demonstrates that Saddam is a direct threat to the United States, in addition to his own people and surrounding countries. It’s basically a question of odds, as you noted. Bush is taking a chance. We’re betting that regime change will help democratize and stabilize the region, rather than lead to more chaos and devastation. It strikes me as likely that the utterly dismal situation that currently exists in the region will be ameliorated by a campaign that will unseat one of the psychotic despots responsible for the depraved living conditions the old left affects to abhor. I’ve repeated that point deliberately, in case it was glanced over the first time. The US has proven that it has changed its ways - Kosovo, Afghanistan, Bosnia and the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq (a now autonomous mostly-democratic area created as a result of US military intervention, and safeguarded by us and the British) illustrate our capacity to contribute to the cause of humanity. Unlike during the Cold War, our leaders now seek to aid democratic movements because they know it is in our interest to do so. All sources indicate that our government, in collaboration with our allies and the United Nations (don’t fret, all this will be ‘multilateral’ - I don’t know how anyone can still accuse Bush of ‘going it alone’ - as if 16 other NATO members don’t constitute multilateral), is committed to replacing Saddam with a respectable leader while ensuring a relatively stable transition. Please, break out the evidence that suggests the US plans to replace Saddam with the second-coming of Pinochet. Don’t doomsday and alarmist theories need evidence to support their tenability, also? Perhaps not. The idea of a ‘democratic Iraq’ is far from utopian. The real utopian ideal, as Hitchens points out (hey, every argument you’ve made has already been made by several others), involves imagining that leaving Saddam in power while watching his regime “implode” from the sidelines will not have far more disastrous consequences than if we had been there to begin with, in control of the affairs. Foreign policy debacles in the post-Cold War world result from our unwillingness to use force and maintain a presence (i.e. in Rwanda, not early enough in former Yugoslavia, and not enough commitment in Somalia). You apparently think that even though these wars (which you tacitly concede were successes) all occurred recently, this is still somehow not relevant in their collective capacity to predict the efficacy and moral soundness of a present-day confrontation with Iraq. Surely, it makes more sense to compare wars within the same era than to compare wars between eras. I absolutely did not manipulate or misrepresent my opponent’s views, in an attempt to ‘win’ the debate. I thought you knew that I had Robin Blackburn (whom I criticized in the piece) read a draft to make sure that I didn’t do anything of the sort. Few would suggest that I did not allot ample space to substantive antiwar arguments, all of which (I dare say) were stated accurately and completely. One critique I received was that, in articulating the case against war so effectively, I hurt my own thesis. I agree with you that Saddam should be arrested and tried at The Hague, ala Milosevic. However, if they bomb his palace into smithereens and he happens to be inside it, that won’t be so bad either. One other point you brought up: If Saddam and his bandit of thugs all agree to exile themselves, it would make little sense for Bush to go forward with the invasion. The goal of regime change will have already been met. But this won’t happen (in my opinion), because it assumes that Saddam is sane. Finally, I’ll obviously be watching the unfolding events closely; if your predictions about how ugly and ineffective the war will be actually ring true than I’ll join you at the peace rallies. And it wounds me to see the Bush people not talking more about how many lives will be lost, how long the campaign will last, about what it plans to do in the region, post-Saddam, etc. etc. Unfortunately, most Americans probably don’t care about all that, so long as they feel safe and scores of GIs are not coming home in body bags. ---------------------------------------
2. In the first part of your letter you sneer at me for not, in your view, taking the time to research the ‘real’ antiwar arguments. But then towards the end, you accuse me of “reading too much about this stuff.” So which is it? Short of flying to Baghdad and conducting my own investigation, how am I supposed to conduct “research” besides reading reports and analysis on the subject? In fact, I study the most energetic and authoritative sources out there. I’m talking mainly about the reporting of Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky’s analysis, although there are many others. Chomsky is like some sort of demigod for the left. He has an army of obedient followers all around the world, some of them engaging, many of them dry, but all of them essentially making the same case. Every ‘concern’ I hear about smashing Saddam, whether it comes from GF professors, CNN or John Kerrey, I have already heard before because I read the man that created the talking points. 3. The temperature of your letter rises considerably as you prepare to clobber me over the head with what you are sure is damning argumentation: “No one is asking anyone to trust Hussein, just believe he does not want his life to end in a fiery nuclear holocaust. Period. That’s all that Arato needs to believe. I believe it as well.” It’s a shame that you do - it strikes me as extremely reckless to assume that Saddam will act rationally. The man is insane; the notion to the contrary that this “sadistic megalomaniac” will act sanely and not use WMDs against his enemies, unless we attack, is an obsolete point - it has already been thoroughly discredited. I find it almost unbelievable that you still invoke this - primarily because he has already used WMDs; he has long courted the “fiery nuclear holocaust” of which you speak. He would certainly sacrifice his own life, knowing that he had butchered thousands of Americans. 4. So what Hitchens wrote in The Nation (about how many on the left consider Bush a greater menace than bin Laden) is accurate, in the sense that most of you do believe this, right? You state, in no uncertain terms, that Bush is more dangerous than Hussein (and we can assume bin Laden as well) - “what to it? Bush is more powerful than Saddam,” True enough. “He (Bush) is capable of wreaking more havoc on the world system,” you assure me. Let me see if I understand this sort of thinking. You’re arguing that because Bush has the capacity to inflict more danger than Hussein that he most probably will? In other terms, this is how your logical train wreck reads: If x is more powerful than y then x is more dangerous than y. 5. Where do you stand on the war in Afghanistan? Many liberals, you included, that oppose intervention in Iraq claim that they supported Bush’s war in Afghanistan. I naively accepted this at face value. Judging by your letter, it appears as though you were actually against that intervention (or the way we went about it). I see that you weren’t opposed to going after Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in theory, but what about in practice and in hindsight? How do you rate what was actually done in Afghanistan by the US and our allies? I’ve found in arguments that some liberals pretend to have supported our efforts in Afghanistan and/or Kosovo so that they’re not simply dismissed as predictable pacifists. I have this strong sense that the resistance to war, especially campaigns initiated by the GOP, is absolute and that no matter what the administration proved, intervention would still be opposed on principle. There’s always an excuse. So, it makes me wonder why anyone should even bother to continue the effort to persuade the dissenters. Bush has surprisingly done everything the unilateralist screamers assured us he would not do; namely, take every precautionary step the UN has asked him to take. This war could have been over with last fall. ---------------------------------------
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