Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Liberals for the War

Well, the Anonymous Liberal has said something that I thought nobody else but me was thinking:
Iraq is a true test for those of us who consider ourselves to be liberals.

No kidding. Am I the only one who has mixed feelings about the war?
I don't actually see it as "imperialist oppression" like so many people on the left (who honestly see quite a few things as "imperialist oppression"). Nor do I really think that the Curtis Administration is undertaking the effort "for oil". I've always sort of thought that was a lame argument. It would have been a lot cheaper and easier to work with Saddam; he was nuts, but not stupid, and you're kidding yourself if you think he wouldn't have allied himself with the US.

But, we did work with him! We negotiated with a tyrant!
Right. But, we quit when he gassed the Kurds. Which was unquestionably the right thing to do.
But, what about Korea? Or China? Huh?
I've never thought that argument really answered anything. I can say that it's a good thing to topple a tyrant. But, the fact that we haven't toppled every tyrant on earth doesn't really negate the fact that it's a good thing to topple a tyrant.

Also, Paul Wolfowitz was talking about toppling Saddam back in 1995 in Foreign Affairs. His idea was that the US can now afford to be a force for fostering democracy around the world. Dictatorships are on the outs in world history, especially with the end of the Cold War. In 20 years, they've declined by half. They could be wiped out in the next twenty years, and it's particuarly hard for me, as a liberal, to be opposed to that process.

Admittedly, the current gang has fucked up everything they possibly could in persuing this war. They should have secured the borders first, the bombing accomplished nothing besides killing 10,000 innocent people, they clearly fostered a mentality that torture was acceptable against every value and belief of our society, they undersupplied and undermined our own troops and they used a pretext for war that would ultimately turn a majority of Americans against the war effort. Most importantly, they've undermined our rights at home and have convinced a terrifying number of blogging pinheads in this country that questioning the war is treasonous. No denying that this is the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

And yet... we see signs that democracy is taking root in Iraq. We see, even more strangely, a blossoming democracy movement in Iran. Can dictatorships survive in the age of the Internet? I don't think they can. More importantly, for the first time since before the Cold War, we've made it clear to tyrants that we will use force to support those democratic movements. This is an event of world-historical importance and underlines the liberal aspect of neo-conservatism. Compared to our Cold War policy of supporting every tyrant who liked us, this policy of toppling tyrants for world stablility is actually refreshing. And a vindication of liberalism, I might add.

But, were the ends worth these means? That, I think, is the real question here. As a liberal, I support every effort to end tyranny and oppression over the minds of man. This is why I believe that the Patriot Act must be dumped into Boston Harbor and we absolutely cannot allow even the slightest act of torture to be committed in our name. But, it's also why I supported this war. The problem is that the people who have planned the war have been so stupid and short-sighted that it's hard to tell if those honorable ends are even reachable anymore, or if they haven't been totally corrupted by corrupt means.
Something Aristotle warned us about.

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