From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Sat 14 Dec 2002 - 03:32:23 GMT
Thanks, Joe, for the Rushdie piece.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of joedees@bellsouth.net
> Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 7:53 PM
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: Tracking down the truth...
>
>
> >
> > 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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> > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
> >
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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
>
===============================================================
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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