A rchive Date
[ 11-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/goldstein_mar11.html
War/no war? The divisive question
And the voices for or against are becoming increasingly hardened and shrill
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN -- Toronto Sun
March 11, 2003
If the first casualty of war is truth, then surely the second is doubt. War, or the prospect of it, inevitably forces us into one of two opposing camps. For or against. Yes or no.
It's happening inside the UN Security Council, it's happening in the media and, most important, it's happening inside the head and heart of every person who thinks seriously about these things.
A wise friend who is a close reader of newspapers told me the other day he laments the loss of the time when people could publicly debate issues without calling each other self-loathing morons, simply for holding different views.
I know what he means. If you don't, take a look at the commentary going on in the four Toronto dailies these days in which views - for or against war - are becoming increasingly hardened and shrill.
But war, I think, inevitably does that. It forces you to extremes and to dismiss those who hold opposing views.
Perhaps it's because the prospect of being wrong about a war - for or against - is so frightening.
I'm "for" war, yet find myself disagreeing with half the reasons "my" side - which, I suppose, is led by U.S. President George Bush - gives for it.
I don't believe that war, or the death of Saddam Hussein, will bring democracy to the people of Iraq or the Mideast.
I don't believe the Americans have shown any direct link between Saddam and 9/11 or any convincing links to al-Qaida.
I don't believe the moral case for war depends on any one piece of evidence, or lack of it, upon who lied to whom, or whether there's a smoking gun.
And, no offence intended, but I don't really care how Chile, Pakistan, Guinea, Mexico, Cameroon and Angola - the swing votes at the Security Council - ultimately vote or whether the UN sanctions this war or not.
To me, it's not an issue of morality, but practicality. I'm for this war - after opposing the bombing of Kosovo and the 1998 bombing of Iraq - because I think 9/11 changed everything. On that day, we lost our naive notion that Islamic terrorists would never dare to attack North America.
We should have lost it in 1993 when they first tried to take down the World Trade Center and failed. But we didn't.
Simple rationale
So for me, the rationale for this war is simple. To fight this sort of terror, it's not enough just to hunt down terrorists in the desert. You also have to demonstrate to the tyrants who run the rogue states supporting this kind of terrorism that from now on, they will pay with their regimes and lives if they do, particularly if they pursue biological, chemical or nuclear weapons and are thinking of giving them to terrorists.
Granted, Saddam's Iraq - which supports Palestinian terrorism if not the al-Qaida variety - isn't the only potential threat. Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran and many other states spring to mind. But someone has to be made an example of, and to me, Saddam's Iraq is as good a place to start as any.
Is this a selfish view? Yes. Do I care more about my own security and North America's than the suffering a war will inflict on innocent Iraqis half a world away? Yes.
Might I be wrong in what I think will happen? Yes.
Might the "Arab street" rise in anger for years to come, spawning more terrorists than ever before? Yes.
But war makes you choose and I believe the "Arab street" will ultimately respect success and power. To me, backing down now and showing weakness is exactly what will encourage more tyranny and terrorism, given that you can't expect the U.S. and Britain to keep 300,000 troops on Iraq's doorstep forever. They have to go in or go home.
Innocents will die
When they go in, as seems inevitable, will innocent Iraqis die as a result? Yes. Will all Iraqis be better off in the long run? I think so, but I don't know. Then again, innocent Iraqis have been dying for a generation under Saddam's murderous regime and most of us on either side of the war/no war divide never gave them much thought before now, did we?
Nor did most of us care that innocent Iraqis continued to die because of the sanctions imposed after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990. Regardless of whether you believe the fault for those deaths lies with the world community for imposing sanctions or Saddam for failing to disarm, the fact remains that innocent people still died.
Is it easy to sit at a desk in Toronto and call for waging war half a world away? Yes. Are my feelings coloured by the fact I'm Jewish and loathe Saddam, who is not only a tyrant, but an anti-Semite who would drive Israel into the sea? Yes.
Does it ever occur to me I might be wrong? Yes.
Last month, writing in Time, Joe Klein complained of Bush in a piece called "The Blinding Glare of His Certainty," that the world would have more faith in Bush's judgment if he didn't seem so sure he's right. I doubt that, since everyone who's speaking out on the issue seems pretty sure of his own position. Besides, Bush obviously can't afford to show doubts, even if he has any.
At least that's his excuse. But what about the rest of us?
Lorrie can be reached at (416) 947-2212, by fax at (416) 947-3228 or by e-mail at Lorrie.goldstein@tor.sunpub.com. Or visit his home page Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
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