Anti-Climacus

A LIBERAL CASE FOR WAR WITH IRAQ
or:
I SWEAR I'M NOT A REPUBLICAN. REALLY.

I was downtown this past Saturday, and had the opportunity to witness the anti-war protest as it went up Huron past City Hall. All this, as I found out later, while across the world, more undeclared chemical warheads were found, as well as evidence pointing to a restarting Iraqi nuclear weapons program. There are a lot of cliches I could drag out at this point, but I think it suffices to say that however you wish to read the inspections thusfar, it is clear that Saddam Hussein has much less of an interest in being peaceful than do our own ill-informed (if well-intentioned) peaceniks.

The threat of a less-than-stable dictator with wmd capability is sufficient reason to go to war, I think, if we feel the need to look for casus belli. But there's a better, much simpler reason to favor regime change in Iraq: democracy is good. It's good here, and it would be good anywhere else. Take a deep breath, if need be. It might seem counterfactual to claim that America has anything resembling democracy--Bush v. Gore and all--but the last time I checked, all of our major public officials can be run out of office in two years or so. What faith in the virtue of democratic (read: secular and pluralistic) government means is, essentially, a belief in some commonality of man that entitles us all to a measure of decency. Christopher Hitchens, possibly the most important man on the Left nowadays, hits on this point well: "When I first became a socialist, the imperative of international solidarity was the essential if not the defining thing, whether the cause was popular or risky or not." The entire attractiveness of liberal-ness is that it is actuely aware of this link between freedom-loving people.

War is not going to be pretty. No one is fatuous enough to assume that. But I honestly cannot get my mind around why it is that anyone on the Left would oppose this war. I think of the populations of millions, Kurds and Sunnis, being repressed, harassed, and given the status of permanent refugees, all because of the intense hatred for them possessed by That Man in Baghdad. And we can do something about it. I understand that many on the Left are uncomfortable with the language of moral imperative, but this is as clear-cut a situation of obligation as you can get.

Many of the protestors this past weekend are, particularly, uncomfortable with the idea of taking the same position as Dubya. I'd be lying if I said I was not slightly put-off by this fact. It is hard, though, not to come to the conclusion that those who are "anti-war" are actually on the same side as Hussein. Bush may not be a philosopher-king, but he's no thug autocrat. What defensible argument can you make for being de facto supporter of a boderline-fascist government, except that you love something more than you love freedom?

As has been noted, if there's similarity between, say, my opinion on foreign policy and Bill Kristol's, it might be a sign that we're both on the right track. And both working within legitimate liberal foreign policy. Think about it: FDR and Harry Truman. Dean Acheson and George Kennan. All liberals, all willing to use military force to advance liberal causes. Where are the heirs to that tradition?

They're people like Hitchens, or the writers for Dissent and The New Republic. You may feel like you're alone on the Left, fighting against the forces of unthinking reaction-- but you aren't. Think about what would've happened if we'd pushed harder for intervention in Rwanda. The best argument for war with Iraq is the violence and suffering that will never happen with a democratically elected government in power.