Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
The Bush administration is not known for thinking twice -- they pride themselves on their certitude, a certitude that strikes many as arrogant.
I'd call them parochial rather than arrogant. Last summer, Bush's tone was certainly arrogant, but he's quieted his rhetoric since then. I don't know who got to him, his father or the elders around him. Talk about destabilizing the world! "Regime change" and "You're with us or against us" and so on -- impatient, off-the-cuff rants that tore the fabric of international relations. You don't unilaterally demand the overthrow of a government of a sovereign nation, for heaven's sake. It turns our own presidents into targets. As for [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, I think he's some kind of hot dog. It's as if he's trying to pump up his testosterone, to operate on some constant, hyperadrenaline level, to show "I can still hack it, man!" I was of two minds about Rumsfeld's snide comment about "old Europe." On the one hand, I love to see France put in its place, because of course it no longer is the center of the world but keeps insisting that it is. On the other hand, this is yet another example of the ham-handedness of this administration in world relations.
I think that Bush administration officials are genuinely convinced of the rightness of their positions, although their biblical piety is cloying. I think they do intend the best for the American people. It's not just a covert grab for oil to placate corporate interests. But I also think that their current course of action in Iraq is disastrous for long-term world safety. After 9/11, what should have been perfectly clear is that we need a long, slow process of reeducating the peoples of the world, to try to convince Muslims of the fundamental benevolence of American intentions. And we had most of the world behind us in the days after 9/11, except for the Muslim extremists. We desperately need the world's cooperation, from police agencies to informers. Above all, we need moderate Muslims to turn out the homicidal fanatics in their midst.
Do you think the Bush administration's focus on Saddam is a diversion from this global campaign against terrorism?
The real diversion is from other global hot spots. If we get bogged down in Iraq, China might think it's a good moment to retake Taiwan. Saddam is an amoral thug, but he's not the principal danger to American security. The real problem is a shadowy, international network of young, radical Islamic men. And we have played right into their hands since last summer by coming across as a bullying world power, threatening war with Iraq and acting completely callous to the resulting human carnage and death of innocent civilians. What privileges American over Iraqi lives? Why does the chance of American casualties through random terrorism outweigh the certain reality of Iraqi devastation in a crushing invasion?
But don't you think if Saddam were to succeed in his longtime goal of building an operational arsenal of doomsday weapons, that he would then provide an umbrella for this network of terrorists to carry out its plots against the West?
But how are we going to counter that threat? Are we going to bomb laboratories and facilities storing dangerous chemicals and release them in the air near population centers? Are we going to poison Baghdad? This is as barbarous as what we're opposing in Saddam. We need to be going in the opposite direction -- to lower global tensions. This constant uncertainty is bad for everyone. It's bad for the economy, it's bad for people's psychic health, and it's going to endanger Americans around the world. How are we ever going to do business around the world and function in a global market, when any American traveling abroad is subject to assassination?
We know so little about Iraq in this country. It's enormous, and yet most Americans can't even find it on the map. I love to listen to talk radio and have been doing it for years. But I'm frightened by what I'm hearing these days from commentators like Sean Hannity, whose program I listen to when I'm driving home from school. He's conservative, but I'm not -- I'm a libertarian Democrat who voted for Ralph Nader. These days I can't believe what I'm hearing, the gung-ho passion for war, the lofty sense of moral certitude, the complete obliviousness to the world outside our borders. How many people has Hannity known who aren't Americans? Has he ever been anywhere in the world? His knowledge of world history and culture seems thin at best. This is increasingly our problem as a nation -- we can't see beyond ourselves. It shows the abject failure of public education.
But there are a number of people with a more sophisticated view of the world who also endorse war with Iraq -- people like Christopher Hitchens or New Yorker editor David Remnick, who just came out in favor of attacking Saddam.
I do believe that Saddam is a menace and that he must be confronted. But the Bush administration is operating under an artificial timetable. There's no reason not to give diplomacy and expanded inspections ample time to work. We need the support of the world community, not just for this crisis but the next one.
I tried to be open-minded about Bush's case for war. I waited for him to present the evidence for an imminent threat to the U.S. But months passed, and they hemmed and hawed. It was words, words, words. Do they think the American people are fools? That we can't be trusted to understand a casus belli? There was a shiftiness, a sleight of hand, a kind of blustery bravado and smugness: "Well, we know, but we just can't tell you, because it would compromise national security." Give me a break -- we're about to go to war and kill or maim thousands of innocent people. Americans will die too. And they couldn't lay all their cards on the table?
[Rep.] Charles Rangel is quite right that the burden will be borne by a lower social class. The American elite don't view military service as prestigious for their sons and daughters, whom they groom for white-collar professions. In England, however, serving in the military is part of aristocratic and royal tradition.
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