Here's a good article from Johann Hari, a leftist writer in Australia's The Age:
Who, you may be asking incredulously, would want their country to be bombed? What would make people want to risk their children being blown to pieces? I thought this too until, last October, I spent a month as a journalist seeing the reality of life under Saddam Hussein.
(Link courtesy of Winds of Change.)
I do wish that Saddam Hussein's horrific human rights record were cited more frequently as justification for attacking Iraq. It's better documented that either his WMD programs or his connection, if any, to al Qaeda; and we have the precedent of Slobodan Milosevic to draw upon.
Of course, there are drawbacks to such an argument. The argument that this fight is "distracting us from the war on terrorism" would get a little more traction; our fair-weather Arab "allies" would be less inclined to help us if we were attacking Saddam for conduct they engage in themselves when they think nobody's looking; and of course, there would be an endless parade of other nearly-as-bad, maybe-worse dictators (Kim Jong-Il, Mugabe, Khameini, all the usual suspects) accompanied by the question, why Saddam and not them?
So it may be a diplomatic necessity for the administration to stick to the UN-resolution line; but there's no reason that columnists and bloggers who favor intervention should be so constrained.
Of course the writer, being a leftist, has to get in a shot at Bush:
If your hatred of Dubya overwhelms your hatred of Saddam, then I sympathise - that is the reason why I, too, once viewed this war with dread and contempt - but I strongly suspect that if you were confronted with the reality of Saddam's Iraq, you would change your mind. Of course, forming an alliance with George Bush is an unpleasant experience, but we formed an alliance with Stalin to defeat Hitler. It is also possible that Bush, like his father, will betray the hopes of the people of Iraq - and we must campaign to prevent this.
So Bush is another Stalin. Right. Whatever.
Anyway, I think Hari might be surprised at how little protest it would take to get the Bush administration to follow the course he suggests; I'd be very surprised if that weren't the plan from the very beginning.
Posted by Kevin Shaum at January 20, 2003 11:10 AM | TrackBack