The U.S. invasion of Kosovo helped protect a Muslim minority; the invasion of Afghanistan helped to free a Muslim population, though the follow-through has been insufficient. This argument assumes that other Muslims in the region are not smart enough to get that message. In fact, though, Saddam's support in the Muslim world is, at best, limited; despite the prevailing propaganda, Iraqi exiles in the region have had some influence in tempering the inclination to make Saddam an Arabic martyr. Yes, it's true that an invasion might drive some into the terrorist camp. But if we are paralyzed by that fear, or if we fail to act because we fear a terrorist counterattack, then the intolerance of the terrorists and the repression of the dictators win out over liberation.

5. We have to let the U.N. weapons inspectors finish their job.

This is a credible argument, but it raises worrisome questions. According to a detailed written report prepared and delivered last week by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, the inspections teams has been unable to account for 550 shells and 450 bombs filled with mustard gas; 6,526 bombs containing about 1,000 tons of chemical warfare compounds; 10,000 liters of anthrax; and up to 19,000 liters of botulinum toxin. British foreign secretary Jack Straw -- once described by the Sunday Times of London as "the decent man of politics" -- last week further expanded the list of missing items: 1.5 tons of VX nerve agent; 6,500 chemical bombs and 30,000 weapons for delivering biological and chemical weapons. The question is: What if Saddam doesn't account for them, and the inspectors can't find them? Is an invasion justified then? Confronted with this contradiction, some antiwar activists have recently argued there is no evidence to prove that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. That argument is nearly untenable, except on a basis of wishful thinking.

6. This is a war for oil. The general variant: Bush does not have the right motive for war.

The evidence suggests this is not a war for oil, or not purely so. Though Bush's motives have been as changeable as the political weather, and therefore largely unconvincing, the record suggests that some of his closest advisors believe that by moving the Taliban out of Afghanistan, turning Saddam out of Iraq and, perhaps, fomenting democratic revolution in Iran, the U.S. will have partially neutralized the cancerous anti-American sentiment that thrives in the region. Is that plausible? Perhaps it is, and perhaps it isn't. Clearly, the women of Afghanistan are better off today than they were under the Taliban. Clearly, Saudi Arabia has signaled that it will move toward some modest democratic reforms. Many in the Iranian democracy movement believe that a U.S. intervention against Saddam will help their cause. But still, let's suppose the war-for-oil charge is true. Suppose further that, in the process of seizing control of the oil fields, Saddam's system of repression is broken and the political prisoners are freed. The result is unintended, but it is positive nonetheless. Or would it be better, as some seem to suggest, that Saddam and his system of terror be left in place if only so that Chevron didn't get control of the oil?

7. The U.S. is guilty of gross hypocrisy because it backed Saddam in the war against Iran and helped him rebuild after the Gulf War.

Yes, the U.S. and other Western powers are guilty as charged. At what point, then, does the time come to correct the error and to make reparations for this moral failure?

The arguments of the Bush hawks are no more persuasive. Even when they have argued that invading Iraq is a human rights issue, it's almost impossible to take them seriously because none of their arguments in favor of war have been steady or consistent. And yet, here is the paradox: Bush is insincere and untrustworthy, but at least he's talking about stopping torture and repression.

On the left, none of these arguments frames the war issue as an issue of freedom (or even relative freedom) vs. totalitarianism. With the exception of the argument in favor of weapons inspections, each is designed to block forceful action against a dictator who has the DNA of Hitler and Stalin. None of the arguments above offers a plan for ending torture, ending suppression, and protecting human rights and civil liberties.

In a moment of moral urgency, the arguments against war instead urge preservation of the status quo. They are, in a word, conservative.

The implicit assumption of the post-Vietnam culture is that pacifism always holds the moral high ground. But in the Iraq conundrum, there is no high ground, no moral purity. If you argue for war, on humanitarian grounds, you are saying: We must risk thousands of casualties not only among soldiers, but among children and civilians, so that Saddam's weapons can be destroyed and his murderous system of repression can be dismantled. If you argue that war is to be avoided because of those potential casualties, then you are arguing that Saddam's system of repression -- the political murders, the torture chambers, the slow death of the soul that comes from living under such tyranny -- must be endured.

It is an impossible calculation, especially for those who are leftists precisely because they wish to relieve human suffering. But in the current context, every choice entails suffering and death. And so we are left to weigh the potential casualties, which we can never really know; we weigh the likely reactions to a military intervention in the wider Arab world. We weigh the moral elements, as well, whether the costs we incur balance out in favor of liberation.

Which leads to the best argument against the war: That the costs are likely to be so high -- in civilian casualties, in terrorist counterattacks, in tax dollars, in environmental damage -- that they justify leaving Saddam and his system of repression in place. But while opponents of the war frequently make the first half of that argument, they are understandably uneasy to articulate the second. By definition, leftists oppose tyranny, and it goes profoundly against character to accept it.

The esteemed writer and human rights campaigner Ariel Dorfman is among the few to take on this contradiction directly. Dorfman comes to the debate with a powerful moral pedigree: He served as an advisor to Chilean President Salvador Allende and then, after the 1973 military coup, he managed (unlike many of his friends and colleagues) to escape Chile. He spoke out eloquently against Israel's war in Lebanon. His letter to an unknown Iraqi in the Washington Post last month was chilling in its honesty.

In the letter, Dorfman acknowledges that he has done next to nothing over the years to counter Saddam's tyranny and nothing to help those who suffer from it daily; and he acknowledges that many Iraqis would likely welcome a U.S. invasion. "What right does anyone have to deny you and your fellow Iraqis that liberation from tyranny? " he asks. "What right do we have to oppose the war the United States is preparing to wage on your country, if it could indeed result in the ouster of Saddam Hussein?"

But Dorfman doubts the Saddam has substantial quantities of weapons of mass destruction, doubts that the U.S. is interested in democracy, and fears that the human costs of war would be greater than the benefits of liberation. To the unknown Iraqi he says: You must fight your own battle; no one else can liberate you. And he concludes with a lament: "Heaven help me, I am saying that I care more about the future of this sad world than about the future of your unprotected children."

Dorfman is anguished by the choice, plainly. There has not been a more difficult moral challenge confronted by the left since Stalin. And so I can understand when people who have weighed these issues honestly conclude, with evident agony, that the costs of invading Iraq are likely to be higher than the costs of preserving the status quo. But just as I'm haunted by the videotape of the Iraqi woman being raped, or by the red torture chamber at the General Intelligence headquarters in Baghdad, the words of exiled Iraqi opposition leader Kanan Makiya have resonated for weeks in my imagination. Salon reporter Michelle Goldberg interviewed the Iraqi leftist in December, and she asked him: What would you say to liberals who oppose the war?

"Think this question through from the point of view of what people in Iraq have been through," Makiya replied, "not from the point of view of your agendas at home. You do not want to be where you're putting yourself today. In your deepest heart of hearts, you don't want to be there. If you are there, it's because you're ignorant of what's going on inside Iraq. But the very people who stand to suffer the most are asking you to do this, and you of all people should be behind it."

Makiya's calculation is implicit: The costs of war will be justified by the benefits of liberation -- the people of Iraq believe so themselves.

I agree with Makiya. Perhaps it is a leap of faith on my part, perhaps a fatal form of optimism, but I believe that leftists must stand for the liberation of Iraq. It is a debt owed to the Iraqis, and to every democratic movement in the Middle East, whether in Iran, in the occupied territories, in Turkey or Egypt, and all the more because the U.S. has so often been the co-author of their repression. As a leftist, I cannot rule out the value of force in achieving the ends of freedom and tolerance -- the threat of force and, if there is no other alternative, the use of force.

We are now days away from invasion, perhaps only hours. It is too late to wish that it could've happened at another time, in another climate, too late to argue that Bush should have waited -- too late to argue that, even at a cost of billions of dollars, Bush should've waited even into the fall so that he could build trust with other nations and with the people of the Arab world. Perhaps keeping a gun at Saddam's head would have worked, though after so many years of his stubborn deception, I doubt it.

For those leftists who have supported the war, and for those who have loudly opposed it, now is the time for a shift in strategy. Bush and his inner circle have repeatedly gone on the record describing the war on Iraq as a war of liberation. Even if we do not believe them, we must work relentlessly to hold them accountable. We must insist that the U.S. and its allies implement, as quickly as possible, a constructive post-war plan. They must protect the Kurds from Saddam and from Turkey. Aided by the U.N., they must provide for the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people, no matter the cost. If they truly want to detoxify the Middle East, Bush and his inner circle must commit to seeking a practical solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. They must be reminded constantly, and forcefully, that it is urgent to repair trust, and to stop the corrosion that comes with chronic hypocrisy. By insisting on these values, by returning to the street in a tide of millions, the left might hijack the meaning of this tragedy and salvage from it something constructive. In doing so, we would stand for something that would resonate well into the political center; in doing so, we might create energy that could be channeled into the 2004 presidential campaign.

In the chaos of the moment, we must remember that we are living in the crucible of our era. The Cold War is over. The Vietnam paradigm no longer holds. History is tipping on a fulcrum. For fear of military intervention, the world failed to stop the Rwandan genocide of 1994, but since then, the U.S. and the U.N. have engaged in three invasions with significant humanitarian impact: Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Whatever the intentions of the Bush administration, Iraq is a similar test, and though it is far more extreme in its requirements, and far more uncertain in its justification, it is part of a growing momentum in which world leaders can join to use military force to resolve humanitarian emergencies.

Pacifism is the highest ideal, but it has practical limits. The use of force is the gravest undertaking, and yet, sometimes it is necessary. It is a sad fact that a credible threat of military force, or the earlier use of it, could have prevented well over a million deaths in Rwanda, in Bosnia and Iraq. And it is a sad fact of human nature that we will be confronted with this question again. There will be another rogue state that kills its own people, and that radiates menace and instability beyond its borders. We would do well to remember that by accepting military force as option, we do not undermine leftist ideals, but instead we simply prepare to apply them, soberly, in a world of hard choices and moral ambiguity.

There is no way to avoid this responsibility without paying high costs. Let us hope that if an uneducated Nigerian divorcee named Amina Lawal is standing alone in her remote village, facing execution by stoning for making love with a man, that we on the left are ready to do whatever is needed to save her life, or to accept the consequences of our compromise.

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