Left-Wing Hawks
Why liberals should want to topple Saddam.

December 20, 2001 2:05 p.m.

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.