From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Sat 14 Dec 2002 - 00:52:59 GMT
>
> Scanning today's news, I found this in a BBC article:
>
> Referring to a US-sponsored conference on why their is so much
> anti-American opinion world-wide, "But before it started, the author
> Salman Rushdie had some very public advice for everyone involved.
>
> "He warned that attacking Iraq would unleash what he described as a
> generation-long plague of anti-Americanism that could make the present
> epidemic look like a time of good health. "
>
> Yet, we have Rushdie cited here as supporting a US attack in Iraq...
>
> Does anyone have an accurate and reliable quote from Rushdie and the
> US and Iraq?
>
> Best regards,
> Lawry
>
Read below or go to:
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-
dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A49220-
2002)ct31¬found=true
A Liberal Argument For Regime Change
By Salman Rushdie
Friday, November 1, 2002; Page A35
Just in case it had slipped your memory -- and as the antiwar
protests grow in size and volume, it easily might have -- there is a
strong, even unanswerable case for a "regime change" in Iraq.
What's more, it's a case that ought to appeal not just to militaristic
Bushie-Blairite hawks but also to lily-livered bleeding-heart
liberals; a case, moreover, that ought to unite Western public
opinion and all those who care about the brutal oppression of an
entire Muslim nation.
In this strange, unattractive historical moment, the extremely
strong anti-Saddam Hussein argument isn't getting a fraction of
the attention it deserves.
This is, of course, the argument based on his 31/2-decade-long
assault on the Iraqi people. He has impoverished them, murdered
them, gassed and tortured them, sent them off to die by the tens of
thousands in futile wars, repressed them, gagged them,
bludgeoned them and then murdered them some more.
Saddam Hussein and his ruthless gang of cronies from his home
village of Tikrit are homicidal criminals, and their Iraq is a living
hell. This obvious truth is no less true because we have been
turning a blind eye to it -- and "we" includes, until recently, the
government of the United States, an early and committed
supporter of the "secular" Hussein against the "fanatical" Islamic
religionists of the region. Nor is it less true because it suits the
politics of the Muslim world to inveigh against the global bully it
believes the United States to be, while it tolerates the all-too-real
monsters in its own ranks. Nor is it less true because it's getting
buried beneath the loudly made but poorly argued U.S. position,
which is that Hussein is a big threat, not so much to his own
people but to us.
Iraqi opposition groups in exile have been trying to get the West's
attention for years. Until recently, however, the Bush people
weren't giving them the time of day, and even made rude remarks
about Ahmed Chalabi, the most likely first leader of a
democratized Iraq. Now, there's a change in Washington's tune.
Good. One may suspect the commitment of the Wolfowitz-
Cheney-Rumsfeld axis to the creation and support of a free,
democratic Iraq, but it remains the most desirable of goals.
This is the hard part for antiwar liberals to ignore. All the Iraqi
democratic voices that still exist, all the leaders and potential
leaders who still survive, are asking, even pleading for the
proposed regime change. Will the American and European left
make the mistake of being so eager to oppose Bush that they end
up seeming to back Saddam Hussein, just as many of them
seemed to prefer the continuation of the Taliban's rule in
Afghanistan to the American intervention there?
The complicating factors, sadly, are this U.S. administration's
preemptive, unilateralist instincts, which have alienated so many
of America's natural allies. Unilateralist action by the world's only
hyperpower looks like bullying because, well, it is bullying. And
the United States' new preemptive-strike policy would, if applied,
make America itself a much less safe place, because if the United
States reserves the right to attack any country it doesn't like the
look of, then those who don't like the look of the United States
might feel obliged to return the compliment. It's not always as
smart as it sounds to get your retaliation in first.
Also deeply suspect is the U.S. government's insistence that its
anti-Hussein obsession is a part of the global war on terror. As al
Qaeda regroups, attacking innocent vacationers in Bali and
issuing new threats, those of us who supported the war on al
Qaeda can't help feeling that the Iraq initiative is a way of
changing the subject, of focusing on an enemy who can be found
and defeated instead of the far more elusive enemies who really
are at war with America. "We don't want to change your mind," as
one Islamist leader put it recently in Lebanon. "We want to
destroy you." The connection between Hussein and al Qaeda
remains comprehensively unproven, whereas the presence of the
al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan, and of al Qaeda sympathizers in
that country's intelligence services, is well known. Yet nobody is
talking about attacking Pakistan.
Nor does America's vagueness about its plans for a post-Hussein
Iraq and its own "exit strategy" inspire much confidence. Yes, the
administration is talking democracy, but does America really have
the determination to (a) dismantle the Baathist one-party state and
(b) avoid the military strongman solution that has been so
attractive to American global scenarists in the past -- "our son of a
bitch," as Roosevelt once described the dictator Somoza in
Nicaragua? Does it (c) have the long-term stomach for keeping
troops in Iraq, quite possibly in large, even Vietnam-size numbers,
for what could easily be a generation, while democracy takes root
in a country that has no experience of it whatever; a country,
moreover, bedeviled by internal divisions and separatist
tendencies? How will it (d) answer the accusations that any
regime shored up by U.S. military power, even a democratic one,
would just be an American puppet? And (e) if Iraq starts
unraveling and comes apart on America's watch, is the
administration prepared to take the rap for that?
These are some of the reasons why I, among others, have
remained unconvinced by President Bush's Iraqi grand design. But
as I listen to Iraqi voices describing the numberless atrocities of
the Hussein years, then I am bound to say that if, as now seems
possible, the United States and the United Nations do agree on a
new Iraq resolution; and if inspectors do return, and, as is
probable, Hussein gets up to his old obstructionist tricks again; or
if Iraq refuses to accept the new U.N. resolution; then the rest of
the world must stop sitting on its hands and join the Americans
and British in ridding the world of this vile despot and his cohorts.
It should, however, be said and said loudly that the primary
justification for regime change in Iraq is the dreadful and
prolonged suffering of the Iraqi people, and that the remote
possibility of a future attack on America by Iraqi weapons is of
secondary importance. A war of liberation might just be one
worth fighting. The war that America is currently trying to justify
is not.
Salman Rushdie is the author of "Fury" and other novels.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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