|
 he
push to liberate Iraq is being portrayed as an inherently right-wing
idea. It shouldn't be. Owlish college professors and liberal columnists
should be banging the drums of war loudly, because if there were
ever a call for left-wing hawks, this would be it. Just consider
some of the liberal reasons for toppling Saddam:
Do
It for the U.N.: If the United Nations is ever going
to represent the force for peace and global order that the Left
wants it to be, at the very least its resolutions should be abided
by. Resolution 1284, passed in 1999, calls for Iraq to allow inspections
by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
Saddam rejects it. Resolution 687, from back in 1991, calls on Iraq
to destroy its weapons of mass destruction. Saddam flouts it. All
of this should be more than a universally respected man of peace
like Kofi Annan is prepared to take.
Do
It for the Women:
Saddam represses women. This, by the standards set by feminists,
should be enough to topple his regime. National Organization for
Women president Kim Gandy complains: "What have they done to
help Afghan women? Would they have done this without Sept. 11? It
was a side effect. They didn't go in there to liberate women."
Well, when is the last time anyone saw a woman voting in a free
and fair election in Iraq? When is the last time anyone saw a woman
holding a position of major responsibility in the Iraqi government?
Or in business for that matter? Indeed, one theory has it that Saddam
ignored April Glaspie's warning not to invade Kuwait because she
was a woman. What is Eleanor Smeal waiting for? Saddam, the misogynist,
must go.
Do
It for the Children: According to UNICEF, roughly 500,000
children under age five died in Iraq between 1991 and 1998. By any
standard, this is a tragedy. You can argue about whether sanctions
or Saddam are primarily to blame, but there is no doubt that sanctions
are an extremely blunt instrument and affect not just a targeted
government, but its civilian population. This is why polite opinion
celebrates Colin Powell for wanting to partially lift sanctions
on Iraq. But his position is really what should be an unacceptable
straddle for the Left. The truly humanitarian position is to do
away with sanctions entirely, which will only happen as soon as
Saddam is overthrown.
Do
it for Arms Control:
The International Atomic Energy Agency is supposed to be a neighborly
international organization devoted not only to sharing nuclear power
with Third World nations, but also to preventing the spread of nuclear
weapons. Saddam instead used its good offices to jumpstart his nuclear-weapons
program. The Biological Weapons Convention is supposed to stop the
scourge of biological weapons from proliferating around the world.
The Bush administration recently outraged international opinion
by rejecting a new protocol for it, partly because countries like
Iraq are so obviously flouting it. How can we achieve a world community
delineated by well-meaning, multilateral agreements, if leaders
like Saddam are allowed to resolutely mock them?
Do
It for Muslims: Between the Iran-Iraq war, the invasion
of Kuwait, and the repression of various uprisings in the north
and south of Iraq, Saddam has killed more Muslims than any leader
in the Middle East — including the notorious Ariel Sharon.
Saddam should be ousted so Muslims in his immediate vicinity can
practice their "religion of peace," in peace.
Do
It for Nation-Building: The American military was deployed
throughout the 1990s by Bill Clinton to undertake operations that
included a major humanitarian aspect — Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo.
Killing doesn't seem quite so bad if GIs can build roads and schools
afterwards. Iraq has experienced a catastrophic economic and social
collapse since the Persian Gulf War, and so is as good a target
for nation-building as any. What do Port-au-Prince or Pristina have
on Baghdad?
There are only
two things that keep the Left from following the logic of these
(what should be their own) arguments. The first is the idea that
Arab popular opinion won't tolerate a war against Saddam —
exactly what we heard about the war in Afghanistan. This notion
is so discredited that even Arabs aren't pretending to believe in
it any longer.
The second
is more fundamental: a distrust of American power that is so deeply
ingrained, as a matter of temperament and ideology, that many on
the Left may not even know that it exists. This is why the case
against a war against Saddam tends to be made in such a flabby way:
Many doves probably don't really know why they oppose such a war.
They should jettison their fear of American power and instead have
the courage of the rest of their convictions — and put the
liberal back in liberate.
|
