My occasionally snarky thoughts on everything from motherhood, politics, life and current events. Cocktails are sometimes mandatory. Bottoms up!

Monday, September 12, 2005

The Reason

Dean of Dean's World lays out the Moral Arguments About Iraq. And I agree. Completely.

From my perspective, it is far, far too late to start bringing up questions about funding priorities now, except maybe in the sense of bringing them up if another war is proposed. For this war, the die is cast. Furthermore, there is no denying the truth: if we pull up stakes and abandon those people in Iraq, we will have done something more immoral and more terrible than we ever did by going there in the first place. The power vacuum we would leave behind would result in a crushing blow against human rights. It wouldn't just be a great shame to the United States, it would be a great shame to the entire human race.

Thus those who oppose the continuing effort to democratize and bring human rights to Iraq are going to have to face an unending reality: if they propose abandoning those people, they are going to be hit with moral questions--and angry moral condemnation from those of us who argued from moral grounds all along that this was the right thing to do.

With some moral arguments, there really is no middle ground. I'd like to think there is but there isn't. So my suggestion--as "black and white" as it may sound--is simple: take a stand. Do you want to abandon those people in Iraq or do you not? Do we turn them over to the "freedom fighters" who bomb women and children and mosques and cops and elected politicians as well as our soldiers? Or do we protect the victims of those "freedom fighters," recognizing the "freedom fighters" as vicious fascist thugs and theocratic nutjobs, and try to help the real people, the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people, establish a democratic, human rights respecting, and free nation?

So what do we do?? Read the whole thing . Is there a better solution?