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Date Posted: 18:54:01 03/11/03 Tue
Author: Hagbard
Author Host/IP: dsc01-chc-il-2-107.rasserver.net / 209.109.241.107
Subject: A prowar perspective from a liberal

Repost of two columns from the Chicago Tribune by Eric Zorn. The second column was in response to all the feedback the first one generated.

Liberals' goal of peace may require a war
Published March 6, 2003

After I finished a speech last week in Naperville defending the record and vitality of liberalism, a friendly fellow traveler approached and handed me a blue and white "No War" button.

I thanked him and put the button in my bag. The subject of Iraq hadn't come up during my remarks or in the Q & A afterward--the assumption being, I suppose, why even ask? Liberals are peace loving and therefore opposed to military action.

Yet it is precisely because I'm a peace-loving liberal that I've come to support this particular military action.

Not because Saddam Hussein is a twisted tyrant who perpetrates just the sorts of oppression, cruelty and other human rights violations against which liberals have traditionally led the fight. Though he is.

Not because Iraq has stockpiled and hidden horrific weapons that are a threat to people everywhere. Though it pretty obviously has.

But because for 12 years Iraq has flagrantly defied and therefore threatened with irrelevance the will of the so-called "international community"-- the only hope that my children and yours have to live someday in a world with, to quote the button, "no war."

The promise of national alliances, leagues and unions to police the world is a fundamentally liberal notion that goes back hundreds of years. Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, one of ours, helped found the ill-fated League of Nations more than 80 years ago on the grounds, as he said, that "a steadfast concert of peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations."

Wilson said: "We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states."

And we are now at the beginning (if not well into) an age when such insistence has become vital. As nuclear, chemical and biological weapons inevitably get into more and more hands, the spread of meaningful freedom that real liberals hold dear (not to mention the survival of mankind) will increasingly depend on an ever stronger, ever larger, ever more determined and credible coalition of nations devoted to peace.

A weak, vacillating, hand-wringing coalition of nations that won't fight for its own resolutions will lead to mo' war, not no war.

A dithering coalition will be the international equivalent of the bad parent who uses empty threats to try to keep an unruly child in line and then is baffled when the child shrugs off the threats and escalates his misbehavior.

Iraq has been more than unruly. Since 1991 its leaders have failed to abide by the terms they agreed to after they invaded Kuwait and we led the alliance that gave them a mean whuppin.

The Security Council of the United Nations--an organization with hold-hands-around-the-world bona fides a true liberal can love--voted 15-0 in November that Iraq would face "serious consequences" if it didn't disclose and disarm.

It hasn't and it won't, despite the recent hopeful claims of the bad-parent nations that arms inspectors are making real progress and just need more time. The current weak resolve of the UN is a greater threat to the liberal dream than unilateral military action. And if the member nations won't defend their own long-standing resolutions and bolster the organization's credibility for the terrifying century ahead, the U.S. must do it for them.

Yes, it will be unpopular, even here at home where polls show most people want us to wait until the UN gets back behind the effort. Yes, our government's indignation over violations of UN resolutions has been so selective in the past that our footing on the high ground today is unsteady at best. Yes, the consequences of even a quick victory in Iraq are uncertain and may include bloody civil wars in the region and increased terrorism abroad.

And yes, tragically, the invasion will cost young American lives. Every impulse, conservative and liberal, recoils at that inevitability, mourns in advance and searches for an alternative that will not in the end cost even more young American lives, as well as more lives of innocents around the world.

But peace is a goal, not a strategy.

Hand me a peace button, brother, and I'll wear it proudly.

---------------

Be it resolved that war forges a greater good
Published March 11, 2003

The columnist,

Following up his essay of Thursday headlined "Liberals' goal of peace may require a war" in which he explained why he supported military action in Iraq even though he's a confirmed lefty,

Reaffirming his view that peace is most likely in the 21st Century if the world has an international governing body that means business when it passes resolutions,

Further reaffirming that a military strike to enforce 12 years' worth of demands by the United Nations is the best way to strengthen that body, even though such a strike now seems unlikely to win UN Security Council approval,

Noting the scores of calls and letters from astonished readers and esteemed friends who've said it makes no sense to argue that defying the UN will strengthen it,

Choosing to address this seeming paradox using the format of United Nations resolutions, which usually read like one long sentence,

Acknowledging that it's kind of irritating,

Intending to inspire readers to visit www.un.int/usa/sres-iraq.htm and study the full 2,000-word text of UN Resolution 1441, in which the Security Council found Iraq in "material breach" of resolutions dating to 1991, called those breaches a "threat ... to international peace and security," gave Iraq a "final opportunity" for "full and immediate compliance" and warned of "serious consequences" if Iraq continued to delay and obstruct those trying to verify disarmament,

Reminding everyone that the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1441 more than four months ago,

Observing that Iraq has by most accounts continued to obstruct inspectors and lie about its weapons programs,

Contending that recent progress reported by inspectors is due to the presence of a quarter-million allied troops on Iraq's borders and proves only that force or the threat of force is of critical importance in this crisis,

Interjecting helpfully that, next time the UN crafts resolutions that may lead to global conflict, it ought to set dates for specific acts of compliance and be a little more exact than "serious consequences" when issuing warnings,

Agreeing in part with his critics (see ericzorn.com/forum for a robust sampling of their views) that for the U.S. to initiate a war against Iraq without Security Council approval will weaken the authority of this important international peacemaking body,

Asserting again, however, that it will be worse in the long run for the UN if we allow November's stern proclamation to turn into Suggestion 1441,

Imagining wicked despots of the future snickering at the huffy, indignant scoldings from ambassadors who shrink from backing up their talk with real action,

Conceding that the idea we must defy the UN to support it is an ironic proposition, similar to the irony that war is sometimes the way to peace, and that I do not consider this an easy call,

Stressing that one can favor military action here and not be a fan of President Bush's, not buy into his claim that Iraq poses an immediate threat to the United States and not endorse the hypocrisies in American foreign policy,

Underlining the belief that, in the long run, war stands to save more lives than it costs and result in a world more conducive to human rights and dignity,

Knowing this is easy to say when one's own blood is not on the line,

Nurturing the Pollyannaish hope that, before the real shooting starts, reluctant members of the Security Council and the U.S.-led faction will negotiate a third way out; one that pushes back just a bit the proposed March 17 deadline for Iraq's compliance and sets out the vivid, specific "or else..." threat lacking in previous resolutions,

Figuring such a compromise would save face both for those who believe in the supreme value of international diplomacy and for those who believe that diplomacy is just so much bluster without the explicit, credible threat of military force behind it,

Seeing this as a win-win-win-lose scenario for, respectively, doves, hawks, Iraqi citizens and Saddam Hussein,

At the same time fearing that it's too late for any of that in the minds of entrenched world leaders,

Promising never again to write a column in the form of a resolution,

Hopes like hell he's right to support the attack because it looks like we're going to find out.

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