Anti-Climacus

LINK: norman geras has an interesting post on what the current situation in Iraq means for supporters of the war. Best part:

"So I don't believe I have something to answer here - unless Hitchens was only meaning to say that we who supported, and support, the war have an obligation to speak out against what has happened, and to be clear and forthright about what remedial action should be taken. I don't believe it in general, and I especially don't believe I have something to answer for to, or before, all those who favoured a course of action towards Iraq the consequence of which would have been the persistence, the continuation, of tortures and atrocities in that country of a far worse kind and on a much greater scale for who knows what period of time. Note well here (since one can never be too careful about how quick to misunderstand one's meaning people will be who want to be) that I am not criciticizing anyone for their horror over the Abu Ghraib abuses because of the worse things that happened in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Anyone who was horrified, outraged, shocked, upset, was perfectly right to be so. But what I am saying is that I'll take no lessons in this matter from people who were either not similarly outraged by the tortures of the Saddam Hussein regime, or who, even if they were, were rather quieter and more discreet about their outrage (and the horrors that should have given it greater voice) in speaking about the future of Iraq than they are now in speaking about Abu Ghraib. To their sort, whether in the media or on the blogs, who challenge us, 'So what do you have to say now after Abu Ghraib?', I have a number of sharper responses than the one I'll give here, but the one I'll give here is: 'Excuse me? To you I owe no explanation about this.' To others, yes, I'll give an answer and it's simple: the reason I supported the war against Iraq was in the hope of bringing to an end the gross abuses of human rights for which the Iraqi regime was responsible, and nothing I'm aware of in my support for the war has ever implied condoning anything like the shameful betrayal of that hope which the Abu Ghraib abuses represent."

I have some critical stuff to say about his "should have known" criteron for moral responsibility (seems shot through with troubling hypothetical cases), but more on that after work.