To have savaged and discredited al-Qaida in an open fight and to have taken down a fascist Baath Party, which betrayed its pseudosecularism by forging an alliance with al-Qaida, is to have scored an impressive victory on any terms. However, the price of this achievement was often the indulgence of some excessive conduct on the part of the Shiite parties and militias. The next stage must be the reining-in of the Sadrists and the discouragement of Iranian support for such groups. Again, one hardly dares to hope, but there are some promising signs. The Maliki government is not using undue haste or sectarian demagogy in the case of Sultan Hashim Ahmed al-Tai, Saddam Hussein’s former defense minister, sentenced to death but not yet executed. Many Sunni Kurds and Arabs, either opposed to the death penalty on principle or opposed in this case, seem for now to have prevailed. And “the cabinet,” according to the Nov. 18 New York Times, “has sent legislation to the Parliament softening the de-Baathification law that had prevented former Baathists’ working in government jobs.” I wonder how many people, reading that ordinary sentence about “the cabinet” and “the Parliament,” as reported also in independent Iraqi media, have any idea what it means when compared with the insane proceedings of the totalitarian abattoir state that was Iraq until 2003.
As I began by saying, I am not at all certain that any of this apparently good news is really genuine or will be really lasting. However, I am quite sure both that it could be true and that it would be wonderful if it were to be true.
Oh the ironies. Christopher Hitchens, virulent atheist author of “God is not Great” lists reasons to “give thanks.” One of them: the destruction of the Baath party, the same party he supported during the 70’s.
I’ve come to wonder, does Hitchens support the strongest man in a two man fight? Today it is the US, but at the rate it is bankrupting itself and killing off its young it’s an open bet whether our man will be changing sides.
justingmartyr,
What Hitchens sees is that the overriding secular issue of the day is how the west responds to the threat of Islamofascism. He has been in support of action against the totalitarian states in the middle east from the beginning.
Why is it that you wish to negate what is positive news coming out of Iran?
What’s your source for this?
Whom exactly is Hitchens giving thanks to?
Just as Hitchens can’t believe every story he reads in the Bible, he shouldn’t believe every story he reads in the media as well.
MAN it’ll be difficult to be you when Bush pulls this off, won’t it, Fred?
. . . and the Freds of the world show their colors by rooting for defeat rather than cheering success.
Front page, above the fold, New York Times –
http://tinyurl.com/3deosj
Hitchens quote from 1976 article:
[blockquote]The Baghdad regime is the first oil-producing government to opt for 100-per-cent nationalisation, a process completed with the acquisition of foreign assets in Basrah last December. It was the first to call for the use of oil as a political weapon against Israel and her backers. It gives strong economic and political support to the ‘Rejection Front’ Palestinians who oppose Arafat’s conciliation and are currently trying to outface the Syrians in Beirut. And it has a leader — Saddam Hussein — who has sprung from being an underground revolutionary gunman to perhaps the first visionary Arab statesman since Nasser.”[/blockquote]
Fred has every right to decide where his taxpayer money is spent. As the republicans did in the 90’s when the Clinton regime policed the world, Fred is within just limits to question the morality and efficaciousness of the Iraqi morass. Anyone who out of hand dismisses his objections as defeatism loses all of my respect as a partisan flake.
Justinmartyr,
Your quote does nothing to answer James’ question.
I don’t dismiss out of hand Fred’s objections. I simply state that he has no grasp of reality.
Actually I was answering Steven’s question. What did James ask?
Charges of insanity are the most plausible forms of attack for intellectually lazy. Of course you didn’t dismiss Fred’s objections. You simply rolled your eyes and stuck out your tongue.
Fred, after all was simply calling for the Foreign Policy platform on which Governor George W Bush ran:
– A humble foreign policy, no nation building, and no policing the world.
I’m guessing you cheered when he said that back in 99? It was fine W saying it back then. But Fred’s a liberal. And that makes all the difference.
Sorry, I meant Steven.
As for Fred’s comment all he did was stick out his tongue at the Hitchen’s article. Is Fred immune from making an argument?
And as for a liberal stance (from the last Democratic Party debate)”
[blockquote]In Thursday evening’s Democratic Presidential debate, several candidates were asked which is more important, human rights or U.S. national security. Here is how Barack Obama answered:
Mr. Obama responded, “The concepts are not contradictory, they are complementary.”
“Pakistan’s democracy would strengthen our battle against extremists,” he said. “The more we see repression, the more there are no outlets for how people can express themselves and their aspirations, the worse off we’re going to be and the more anti-American sentiment there’s going to be in the Middle East. We keep on making this mistake.”
“If we simply prop up anti-democratic practices, that feeds the sense that America is only concerned about us and that our fates are not tied to these other folks,” he said. “And that’s going to make us less safe.”[/blockquote]
Sounds like the Bush doctrine to me.
Fred’s not immune from defending his arguments. Fred come up with some proof for why one “shouldn’t believe everything one reads in the media” or I will call you to task too!
gdb, there are huge concerns with the way the Bush foreign policy is being directed. Those concerns reach all the way from the Pope down to many previous Bush supporters (myself included). Preemptive wars don’t fit nicely into the Christian Just War Doctrine. The condoning of torture is plain evil. The kidnapping and indefinite imprisonment of suspects without any chance of a trial. Do unto others as you would have them do to you. If we’re to be even slightly honest, we wouldn’t want another country using the same tactics on us.
And all this without considering the bankrupting of our children and children’s children. At least half of the country (statistics reach as high as 70%) don’t want to be a part of this. How can we conscionably spend their money (20,000 per family by last count) on policies they find morally reprehensible?
justinm,
you keep throwing up straw men – haven’t addressed Steven’s question, haven’t addressed the Hitchens article and so forth.
First, have the tactics of the Iraq battlefield been sometimes lacking? Of course they have. That is the nature of war. The indefinite confinement (where do you see kidnapping?) of prisoners of war is a part of the Geneva Convention. The US has gone beyond the convention in confining unlawful combatants rather than taking more extreme measures. Who is condoning torture? If you are trying to say that waterboarding is torture then why doesn’t the Congress forbid it? Because they know it is effective and really doesn’t meet the defintion of torture? (Would protesters voluntarily submit, as they did when they voluntarily submitted to waterboarding in front of the capitol, to true torture?) Are you going to condemn the beheading of prisoners, a standard Islamofascist tactic, or is it only correct to try and besmirch US troops and tactics.
As far as expenses, we are bankrupting our children with social security and other governmental programs far more than with any expenditures on our missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you wish to condemn those far more profligate programs, too?
Sorry, I have to go preside at three Eagle Scout Boards of Review or I’d spend more time. PERhaps later.
gdb, it saddens me to see that instead of appealing to morality you appeal to Congress, the Geneva Convention, etc.
In what has been declared to be an endless War on Terror, you find it acceptable to detain people in cages a few feet in size without legal representation FOREVER. There have been scores of stories where the Administration has admitted that they have no evidence or at the most circumstantial evidence against these detainees.
Waterboarding IS torture. I don’t CARE what congress calls it. And the protestors outside the capital were not subjected to simulated drowning. It was simply faked. The government will not come clean on what it defines as torture, beyond the hypothetical from former DOJ chief Gonzales that torture becomes an issue when there is severe organ failure or death. You left unanswered my question about whether you would be okay with these tactics be enacted on our soldiers by foreign countries, and for good reason. Because we’re not as bad as our enemies does not justify the way we treat innocents who end up in our custody. Wrong is wrong, and evil is evil.
Here is just one story that should give you pause for thought:
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/09/arar.html
For links to Hitchens articles and information on Hitchen’s previous stand, please check out his Wikipedia article,
for a start.
Theft is theft, and the horrendous mismanagement of retirees funds in the Social Security debacle is shameful. I agree with you there.
I hope I have covered all of your questions…
justin –
Don’t even try to preach to me from a psycobabble moral position.
If you were in a position of legal authority and you had a known terrorist in your custody, and you knew they were complicit in a plot to kill thousands of people, what would you be willing to do to protect the innocent? If one of your children was among the threatened would that affect your perspective? Sometimes it helps to personalize the scenario faced by those charged to protect the nation and its citizenry to gain an appreciation for the moral conundrum they face in the discharge of their sworn duty.
On a broader basis, which is the moral high ground? To leave innocents at risk knowing the terrorist you are interrogating has information that can save them, or ensuring there is no discomfort on the part of the terrorist? Is the greater moral requirement to the many, or to the one who seeks their harm? Terrorists are willing to kill, maim, and destroy men, women, and children in pursuit of their twisted political and theological objectives. Is their brief sensation of drowning a greater evil than the potential death of thousands? These are challenging moral issues that the administration must address and promulgate to the rest of us, for their decisions reflect on the morality and the priorities of the whole country.
In the endless war for terror we treat our internees with a regard for humanity that they would not hesitate to deny us. The prisoners at Gitmo are treated with respect and, when warranted, are released after appropriate investigations. How many of those released on humanitarian grounds have been recaptured? (see Washington Post, 10/22/04, page A01 and that is only a partial list).
You link to a Mother Jones commentary? Ha
Sleep well tonight, my friend. So you can maintain your air of moral superiority men better than you (and just as moral) are keeping watch.