"the great debate"

last night mark danner and leon wieseltier debated the question of war in iraq here at swarthmore. it was not exactly the discussion i wanted most to hear, but it was perhaps the best discussion i've heard so far from people of national repute. this being a smart debate by people of good faith, i'd say that no one really won it...i agreed with danner's arguments almost entirely and thought wieseltier an astoundingly good extemp speaker.

a few quibbles: danner didn't clarify the importance of his concern with the bush administration's motives enough. after all, as wieseltier pointed out, it would be stupid to argue that a nation, seeing that its policy (in this case arming and supporting iraq in the '80's) is dangerous and stupid, should refuse to change course because that would be hypocritical. danner needed to, but didn't really, hammer home the point that motivations matter. they matter because [the ends justify the means] or in this case, [achieving regime change in iraq under any rationale, even if not the avowed one, is good] is untrue, immoral and dangerous. wieseltier holds what is often described as the "moral" liberal hawk position -- his claim is that democracy is a universal good and that it is our moral responsibility to bring democracy to iraq.

i agree with that. so does danner. what wieseltier is missing, and what he attempted last night to obscure with rhetoric about "fears of hypocrisy" and "international popularity contests," is that the moral claim about the goodness of democracy is worthless unless that is the true motivation of this administration. why? because installing a substantively democratic regime in iraq will take years, if not decades, and if the motivation of our administration is not what that administration claims, then it will abandon the project as soon as its real end has been achieved. not only will we have devastated the country and changed the character of our own nation irrevocably; we will not have done what we supposedly set out to do in the first place.

the hypocrisy of the bush administration on this point is too clear for doubt. i think it undoubted that the administration is exclusively serving what it sees as the interests of america. and while this is bad enough -- surprisingly (!), what's best, or rather, easiest and most pleasurable, for us and our gas-guzzling, consumerist society is not necessarily what's best for everyone else -- i am also deeply suspicious of the administration's take on the interests of america. [that, however, is an argument for another day. or perhaps an argument for every day.] in the eighties we (well, the reagan administration -- somehow they never got around to informing the public) armed saddam for his war with iran, provided him with targeting information and calmly watched as he massacred thousands of kurds. he was a threat *because of* us. now the same cast of characters seeks a war because (a) he's supposedly a threat *to* us and (b) it's the Right Thing To Do. bullshit. sad, depressing, morally bankrupt bullshit.

anyway: wieseltier's position rests on the optimistic notion that we'll actually achieve something better if and when we topple saddam. i doubt it. because you know, believe it or not, it's not as if saddam is as bad as it gets and anything's better. there are worse things than saddam. there's north korea and its nuclear power; there's the actual, active genocide in rwanda that we didn't care to stop. there are lovely cases like the sad story of chile--you know, the cases wherein america topples a regime it doesn't like and then allows an actively evil, and constantly and mercilessly violent, dictator to take its place. or how about the possible future of our own country: isolated by world hatred and under constant terrorist threat because of our imperial stance, a country founded on civil liberties becomes a repressive security state where torture is acceptable and dissent is not. how's that? is that "worse enough" for you?