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Thursday, December 23, 2004
Blood-Soaked Strawman Gee, Tom, I thought you were some kind of expert in foreign affairs. Didn't you know that "tiny minorit(ies) who want to rule [their countries] by force" are prevalent in most of the world, especially in the Middle East? Didn't you know that the governments of Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran all take this form? Didn't you know that they have always taken this form? Why did you expect post-Saddam Iraq to be different? Please include your sources. Was it unthinkable that, faced with the prospect of a government dominated by the Shi'ites whom they had brutally oppressed for decades, some Iraqi Sunnis might try everything in their power to derail the process? Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq.That's very nice, except that no one is saying that, Tom. It's really simple: the insurgents think they can wind up with a better deal by derailing the elections. Is this really the best the nation's most widely read Mideast expert can do, to label the insurgents evil, so that America is good by implicit contrast? As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, "These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age." They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It's time we called them by their real names.Let me get this straight, Tom. We invade and occupy a sovereign nation, and it's the insurgents who are the colonialists and imperialists? I'm no famous, feted, highly paid expert, like you, Tom, but I think you're just the tiniest bit full of shit. Nobody, and I mean nobody, outside of the insurgents themselves, thinks they're justified in what they're doing. They're killing people. They're evil. Everyone knows this. It's not news. Take your straw man and shove it, Tom. Does the fact that our stated objective is to ensure free and fair elections in Iraq absolve us from everything we've done wrong in Iraq? Does it justify our indiscriminate bombing, our attempts to set up a Chalabi-led kleptocracy, our dissolving the Iraqi Army, and all the other manifestations of short-sightedness, callousness, greed, and brutality Iraq has endured since the invasion? Is that how it works, Tom? Indeed, they haven't even bothered to tell us otherwise. They have counted on the fact that the Bush administration is so hated around the world that any opponents will be seen as having justice on their side. Well, they do not. They are murdering Iraqis every day for the sole purpose of preventing them from exercising that thing so many on the political left and so many Europeans have demanded for the Palestinians: "the right of self-determination."One more time, Tom: the fact that the insurgents are bad does not thereby make us good. Maybe if you get that sentence tattooed backwards on your forehead, it might sink in as you read it every time you have the gall to look at yourself in a mirror. We took it upon ourselves to change the course of Iraqi history. As Colin Powell said, we own what happens there as the result of our actions. World opinion is clearly relevant to us, and it's not critical of our actions because of any regard for the insurgents. It's anti-U.S. because we lied to get the war started, handled it abominably, and in all likelihood made things worse in Iraq and the Mideast. The evil that is the Ba'athist insurgency is a direct result of our actions in Iraq. The blood of those election workers is also on our hands. You are right about one thing, Tom: the vast majority of our soldiers are making noble sacrifices. But they're not the bringing-freedom-to-the-oppressed kind of sacrifices, they're The Charge of the Light Brigade kind. |