is this what people up north are thinking?
The movement to placate GWB seemed doomed from the start, but somehow I still can’t believe that we’re really doing it: The US is defying the UN Security Council by going to war in order to punish Iraq for defying the UN Security Council.
Not that anybody anywhere really believes Iraq’s defiance of the UN is why we’re going to war in Iraq.
If not to punish Iraq for disobedience of the UN, though, just why are we attacking Iraq? I know what people in the rest of the world think, but I’m curious what all those pro-war US citizens that I see on the news telling jokes about France and eating freedom fries really think. Do they honestly think the US is on a mission to spread democracy? Do they think that the war is a legitimate attempt to secure our future access to oil? Do they think a pre-emptive attack is an acceptable foreign policy maneuver?
Or is the desire to attack Iraq that so many people appear to share more of a gut impulse, and not something thought out at all? From afar, it sure looks that way.
US citizens seem to support the attack on Iraq not because of any careful analysis, but because they actually want to attack Iraq. They don’t want to dilly-dally around with diplomacy, or try to reason the whole affair out. They want unite behind team USA in the fight against EVIL.
People really seem to think that this war will be fun – like the Superbowl, except with your team guaranteed to win. Like reality TV meets your favorite war movie, with all the latest, cool-looking technology. I wasn’t encouraged to find the New York Times selling a limited edition photograph of an F-18 fighter plane next to a news story on the war.
Heck, the people getting the popcorn ready and investing in new easy-chairs could be right – maybe we can win easily.
But it’s disgusting to see a people so morally lazy that they will support an attack on a country on the other side of the world without thinking long and hard about whether it is the right thing to do. Or, if they are thinking about whether it is the right thing to do, worrying only whether it is the right thing to do for their own nation.
In case anyone in the US is wondering how this war looks from abroad, it looks crazy. If a reasoned analysis suggested that this war was going to do good for the Iraqi people, wouldn’t there be more than three nations in the world willing to say so? Or are the people who live in the United States, Britain and Spain wiser than everybody else?
You can’t chalk the world’s opposition up to simple “anti-Americanism” any more than Israelis can say people who oppose their settlement claims are “anti-Semitic.” Oh please.
Sometimes I wonder if there is a particularly American pride in taking decisive action, whether or not it is right.
I remember while in college, I once went to see a debate about whether the Rosenbergs really were guilty of spying. At one point, the man defending the Rosenbergs appeared to catch his opponent in a trap, showing that the court had chosen to act before all necessary evidence had been presented. If I recall correctly, this had particular relevance to the fate of Ethel Rosenberg. “Wasn’t that wrong?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we have waited a bit until we knew the facts?”
The woman arguing against him looked at the audience and smiled grimly. “You know,” she said, staring into the crowd, “sometimes you just have to make a decision. You can’t sit on the moral fence forever.”
And the audience broke out into applause. Applause! For the idea that taking action quickly is superior to doing the right thing, even when there is no benefit to such decisiveness.
That’s the cowboy way, I suppose, but I’m sad to see so many people buy into the idea that “well, we had to do something, didn’t we”?