Apologism Rules
Eli Lake at the New York Sun on the growing Iraq apology trend and (a couple of the reasons) why the apologists* are full of it:Â Â Â Â Â
What the apologists are asking for, if only by default, is a return to the amorality of détente and Realpolitik. Again, Iraq demonstrates this. In the decade before the Gulf War, when Saddam’s torture state was a balance against Iran’s ruling clerics, America sold grain credits to the regime after it cleansed more than 100,000 Kurds from the country’s farmland in the north.
With a brief exception of a few arms sales to Iran to release hostages in Lebanon, America prevented Saddam’s opponent in the Iran- Iraq war from receiving the spare parts it needed to defend its cities from the ordinance our allies happily sold him.
After driving Saddam’s army from Kuwait, President George H. W. Bush called on the long oppressed Kurds and Shiites to rise against the dictator, only to allow Saddam to use his remaining helicopters to put down the uprising he encouraged. Determined we could neither topple the Iraq tyrant nor coexist with him, Mr. Bush and then President Clinton saddled Iraqis with the twin terrors of an embargo and Saddam. And so it went from 1991 to 2003.
Throughout this period, Saddam tightened his grip, using the people he was starving as a prop for world sympathy, a ploy that worked well on the left to which the Democrats keep apologizing. The uneasy pre-war consensus between liberal democracies and great powers was a chief cause of Iraqi misery, not to mention an obstacle to resolving the stand off over germs, chemicals, and nukes.
*Reader Pat notes that it should be “apologizers” not “apologists” … and Pat is correct, except that apologizing for past action on Iraq as a political manuever is so epidemic it’s an “ism” in its own right … or maybe an “itis.”
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:17 am on Tuesday, February 27, 2007
2 Responses to “Apologism Rules”
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February 27th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Web Reconnaissance for 02/26/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
February 27th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
I am never comfortable with second gussing things like this. If there had not been an invasion in 2003, there might have been an invasion a few years later with Saddam in a lot better shape to resist it. There is simply no way of knowing it would not have ended worse in the long run. I do think that given Saddam’s behavior in the past it is extremely naive to think he was going to behave himself.