regnad kcin:
it’s very sad to see these poisons get reduced to the level of ice cream. I remember in 2001 how a few teaspoons of this anthrax shut down Congress and caused a national panic – there’s a reason people take this stuff seriously, in case you weren’t aware. It’s not like the UN was there for no reason – the entire world knew he had literally TONS of these toxins, then he kicked out the inspectors, and he has never offered any kind of explanation for it. This is the fundamental crux of the problem that no one wants to seize hold of. If we all agree that Saddam needs to be disarmed (and everyone does except for the regnads of the world, who insist he’s innocent because we haven’t yet found his hidden stashes) then we must decide what to do when he fails to cooperate. Again, the only initiatives that have produced any results were diplomacy plus force, but the French said they would veto any such resolution last week.
What’s left to do? As it stands, the status quo means the UN keep passing toothless resolutions (do you want an 18th, a 20th, a 30th?), keep allowing Saddam to flout its requests, and not come to terms with the problem; or forcibly disarm him without security council approval. I say it’s better to deal with the problem than to pretend to deal with it. I am a lifelong democrat, I was once much much more to the left (was a big Chomsky fan, obviously no more) so it’s not like I’ve never been there. But Bush strikes me a serious person, even if he is wrong on pretty much every domestic issue and many foreign ones. I guess I just don’t go in for elaborate conspiracy theories anymore. You must realize that if this war goes badly, none of the Bush administration will ever be in public service again, and history will remember them as failures. I simply don’t think they would put themselves at such risk unless they actually believed in their rightness, because I think 9/11 has forced them to take foreign threats more seriously.
The UN considers Saddam guilty until proven innocent because there are easy ways to disarm, and easy ways to document how you do it. Unfortunately, when a regime like Hussein’s doesn’t want to disarm, they can just pretend they never had the stuff, and take shelter under Regnad’s enlightened view of how nations should be innocent until proven guilty. Let me spell it out: Iraq is the size of california, and there are less than 100 inspectors. Inspections only work if the regimes cooperate, as they have in every other case, even the guilty until proven innocent ones like South Africa. Saddam did not hand over his WPM, or even bother to offer a new account for his pre-1998 WPM, therefore anyone who cares even remotely about regional and world peace must take his possession of such arsenals very seriously. You shouldn’t hide your bad logic by changing the definition of what inspectors are (i.e. inspectors).
Those who would write Bush off as an imperialist and fail to take these cold, hard facts with their due consideration, are putting peace at risk, and for what? For the sake of preserving their liberal skepticism, even as they give Saddam benefit after benefit of the doubt? For peace? Proliferation used to be a very liberal issue – now it’s conservative to not want dicatators to have wpm? For justice? It seems pretty unjust to let Iraqis rot under this hideous human rights abuser. For sanctions – the ones that we oppose in Cuba, and which liberals used to oppose in Iraq until last year?
That’s why I say it’s actually nihilism, because there’s absolutely nothing positive required of the anti-Bush crowd – all you need to do is show your anti-imperialist, Bush is a monkey-retard credentials at the door, and you’re in the “progressive” club. There’s absolutely nothing JFK or Woodrow Wilson would comprehend about the rabidly anti-bush position – it is anti-war without being pro-peace; it is pacifism that ignores Iraqi violence; it is progressivism that see democracies and dictators as equivalent; it is mulitilateralal agreement without action; and it stands for absolutely nothing. I am not saying everyone on this board thinks this way; it just seems to be eating away at what makes liberalism something the world needs, especially these days.
