War!
The National Post’s Mark Kingwell offers some well-reasoned words on the current brouhaha over Iraq in the US and how the affair is playing out across the pond.
Despite a populace that seethes with instinctual anti-Americanism, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been George W. Bush’s leading cheerleader for some time now. As Kingwell notes, he has put himself at odds with his own “Labour” Party, and even with the more reasoned, moderate voices in Bush’s own cabinet. And while he’s at it, Kingwell notes some of the silly superiority that often wafts odiously over the Atlantic. Or, to quote:
In short, the standard transatlantic move of mocking fat, weird, litigious Americans from a position of longstanding cultural superiority is still what it's always been, namely, a cliche dressed up as cleverness wrapped in baseless self-satisfaction.
Ouch.
But anyhow. Many of those who argue against another war against Iraq are caught up in the idea that sanctions and international kowtowing to American interests have killed thousands of innocent Iraqis (presumably through starvation) and while few would suggest that Saddam Hussein runs a happy ship, they seem quite willing to overlook all the various things that make an illegitimate head of state. Kingwell doesn’t fall into this trap, but rather argues that war at this point is completely illegitimate, both by international standards and by international opinion. And while the Iraqi regime ought to fall, it ought to occur initially through other, political, non-military intervention.
Previously: To Market, To Market
Subsequently: It’s Thirty Degrees and the Man’s Talking Winter?
Comments
This is a good time to send in the CIA and train the Kurds to take Iraq.
— Greg | Sep. 7, 2002 — 1 AM
I agree!
If ever there was a time for a little covert activity, this was it. If people in Iraq are starving, and the economy is in shambles, there must be the right ingredients to cook a revolution, or at least foment some instability.
Of course, one runs the risk of provoking a military dictator that has shown no mercy to his own in the past…
— Luke | Sep. 7, 2002 — 4 PM
Luke, did you perchance link to the wrong article? All I read in Kingwell’s column is a hyperbolic chain of superficial observations and out-of-context anecdotes. Hardly a “well-reasoned” argument demonstrating that “war at this point is completely illegitimate.”
What gives?
— Chris | Sep. 9, 2002 — 2 AM
Touché! That smarts. Well perhaps “well-reasoned” wasn’t the right description, but reading the article again I still think he offers some cogent points. Sometimes a little hyperbole is just the thing to demonstrate how silly an idea might be.
— Luke | Sep. 9, 2002 — 10 AM