Norman Geras explains it all for you
Norman Geras, a deeply committed "progressive" who supported the Iraq war, examines some of the alternatives espoused by the war's opponents and finds them mostly empty and disingenuous. It's a magnificent post.
In his conclusion, Geras envisions an alternative that the NION-ers could have gotten behind, but -- perhaps not so surprisingly -- didn't:
Since this post has been about alternative regime change scenarios, here finally is another one. It may look fanciful but it is no more so than those already considered, and indeed it grows out of one of them. As the US and its allies in late 2002 and early 2003 move towards a military intervention in Iraq, tens and hundreds of thousands of people all over the world mobilize, march, articulate their views through the media available to them. They do this to secure UN backing for the war, so that it will not be 'unilateral' or illegal or just George Bush's and Tony Blair's war; so that it will be our war; so that it will be a war supported by all democratic peoples to put an end to a political monstrosity that has survived into the new century; and a war to be held to our democratic norms and standards; and - now supported by the UN and France, and liberal editors and their progressive readers - a war in which universal opprobrium is directed against those doing everything they can to wreck the prospects of democratic transformation (opprobrium rather than a tut-tutting kind of 'understanding'), and not against those trying to bring this about, and in the aftermath of which men and women and money and expertise and materials pour into Iraq from every corner of the globe where there are the resources to offer something, in order to help rebuild the country and invest in its future. Yes indeed, friends, comrades and citizens, what would such a war and its aftermath have looked like? Well, maybe it is merely fanciful. But unlike the other alternative scenarios canvassed here, this one was at least in the power of the not-in-our-namers to try by their own efforts to bring about.
In his conclusion, Geras envisions an alternative that the NION-ers could have gotten behind, but -- perhaps not so surprisingly -- didn't:
Since this post has been about alternative regime change scenarios, here finally is another one. It may look fanciful but it is no more so than those already considered, and indeed it grows out of one of them. As the US and its allies in late 2002 and early 2003 move towards a military intervention in Iraq, tens and hundreds of thousands of people all over the world mobilize, march, articulate their views through the media available to them. They do this to secure UN backing for the war, so that it will not be 'unilateral' or illegal or just George Bush's and Tony Blair's war; so that it will be our war; so that it will be a war supported by all democratic peoples to put an end to a political monstrosity that has survived into the new century; and a war to be held to our democratic norms and standards; and - now supported by the UN and France, and liberal editors and their progressive readers - a war in which universal opprobrium is directed against those doing everything they can to wreck the prospects of democratic transformation (opprobrium rather than a tut-tutting kind of 'understanding'), and not against those trying to bring this about, and in the aftermath of which men and women and money and expertise and materials pour into Iraq from every corner of the globe where there are the resources to offer something, in order to help rebuild the country and invest in its future. Yes indeed, friends, comrades and citizens, what would such a war and its aftermath have looked like? Well, maybe it is merely fanciful. But unlike the other alternative scenarios canvassed here, this one was at least in the power of the not-in-our-namers to try by their own efforts to bring about.
posted by Kate Marie | 12:27 PM | Permalink
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1 comments
1 Comments:
Good post, Kate Marie. I, too, have been baffled that lefties I know have not backed the true freedom fighters in the Arab world (and elsewhere). But, I couldn't have said it as well as Geras.
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