Thought On Iraq

Salman Rushdie has things to say, and say well. Go read it.

This I agree with. This expresses my ambivalence about Iraq, my pro-regime-change stance, my anti-unilateral-US-action stance.

I don't want war, as a rule. War is an atrocity by itself, that turns living, thinking human beings into "others", preparatory to trying to convince you that it's OK to kill them. And yet, violence, well-applied, can also do more good than harm under the right conditions.

I don't want the US to wage war, on Iraq, because of allegations -- allegations -- of terrorist connections. What I want is for the global community to follow through all the way to "force as necessary" to apply its resolutions. What I want, is a US-supported war of liberation in Iraq. Either one of those are reasons that could make me proud of our action.

If we go to war with Iraq, what will it be for? What will be our stated mission? By what meterstick do we measure success or failure? When will we know it's over? As Rushdie points out, war on Iraq is not the same thing as war on al Qaeda, and the whole shift in attention from Afghanistan to Iraq sure does feel like someone changing the subject.