Just wanted to bounce this off of some of you politically-minded folk around here...this appeared in my inbox. I skimmed over it, but it's late, and I have other things on my mind, I can't focus on reading all this stuff, maybe it's the cough syrup I'm taking for the congestion I've got from this cold...but anyway I'm not sure if this is for or against...whaddya think? Whaddya think of oit in general? Here it is:
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Subject: The Logic of Bush's War?
The Logic of War
Peter Freundlich - NPR 03-13-03
Let me see if I understand the logic of this right.
We are going to ignore the UN to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the UN cannot be ignored.
We are going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war.
The paramount principle is that the United Nation's Word must be taken seriously and if we have to subvert it's Will to guarantee that it is, then by god, we will.
Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Further if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the security council then we are honor bound to do that too because democracy as we define it is too important to be stopped by a little thing as democracy as they define it.
Also in dealing with a man who brooks no dissention at home we can't afford dissention among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard.
We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make mute the point that Might does not make right as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it let's us oust the regime that twists the arms of the opposition. We can't leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people and if our people and people elsewhere in the world fail to understand that then we have no choice but to ignore them.
Listen, don't misunderstand, I think its a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that Alice in Wonderland/Through the looking glass are meditations on Paradox & Puzzle & illogic & on the strangeness of things. Not templates for Foreign Policy. Its amusing for the Mad Hatter to say "We must make War on him because he's a threat to peace but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that.
As a collector of laughable arguments I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know, we all know, that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak circular reasoning accident.
