a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Thursday, December 18, 2003 Moore contra MooreTwo recent posts on this blog seem at odds: Last Wednesday I called the war in Iraq a frame-up job, and basically called Saddam a fall guy in the war on terrorism. Not that he's innocent, just that the stated charges don't hold up. Then on Sunday I was happy to see him caught. Do I contradict myself? ("Very well, I contradict myself.") Actually, no. My friend Marc and my blowhard namesake, Michael Moore, were both quick to call Saddam's capture a big charade, if only because "we supported his regime," in the ’80s (writes Moore). "We liked Saddam because he was willing to fight the Ayatollah."Moore's right about that, and I won't try to defend my own government's history of propping up evil strongmen. But if he seriously thinks September 11 was just a crime, and not an act of war that had to change our posture towards Iraq along with the entire Middle East, he's a damn fool. And if he can't celebrate the bloodless capture of a man who consciously modeled himself on Hitler — if Moore is so vain about his public image, and so concerned about the partisan damage that a clearly good thing like nabbing Saddam might wreak — then he's nothing but a jabbering head. A partisan robot, like Limbaugh or Coulter — names you never see on this blog because I don't take them seriously. The question is not whether the U.S. is culpable in creating Saddam or Osama bin Laden. Of course we are. But if we created them, we can also take them out. Moore thinks American guilt should equal passive, apologetic American foreign policy. It should not. After 9/11 I'd even argue we had a responsibility to remove the relevant monsters. It just had to be clear that Saddam was relevant. Right now, it isn't. What we have instead of a clear victory is a fishy-looking war, a world that mistrusts us, and a president who doesn't even seem to realize that he lacks the moral stature to carry off the conquest of an oil-rich nation his father once invaded. Lying about it, naturally, didn't help. Bush bullied his way into this war for quiet strategic reasons, insulted allies who could have helped, flubbed the post-war planning, and in general acted like an arrogant twit with more power than he knows how to handle responsibly. And if we re-elect him, he'll try it again. But the smoke and mirrors don't mean the end of Saddam's career is somehow a bad or laughable thing. This war, like any great event, is a deep contradiction — perhaps a mistake — which standard-wavers with too much partisan feeling to hold a pair of opposite ideas in their heads can never hope to understand. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:15 PM | |
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