From Josh Chafetz at OxBlog.com: "I've gotten a lot of exultant email over the last 24 hours from fellow hawks. Finally, we're going to take out Saddam! I believe that war is the right option. I believe that it will result in sparing more innocent lives than it takes. ***But it is not something to exult over. It will take innocent lives, and it will take the lives of allied soldiers. It will take the lives of Iraqi soldiers who joined the army, not because they wanted to, but because they were forced to. Each and every one of these deaths will be a tragedy, and for their family and friends, it will be a tragedy beyond measure.*** I have friends who are serving their country in the Gulf. As you know, David, one of my closest friends at Oxford, is in Israel right now. I am not happy about war. ***I am scared, and I am nervous.*** "...[T]here are no certainties in war. So, to my fellow hawks: a bit less triumphalism, please. A bit more gravity and humility." [***emphasis added***] Precisely my thoughts: I'm moved to mourn--pre-emptively, I may add--the poor sods, those unlucky men and boys to be killed as canon fodder...because they face evil taskmasters ruling through fear...because the American and British dogs of war will be efficient killing machines...because they fear BOTH their rulers and their enemy...because they just happen to be there. These are the evils of war, and I am not comforted by identifying them. They haunt me...I am only a reluctant war supporter: I can still argue, deeply and seriously, the side of peace. War has a cruel calculus, and I think the "war" side is a much dicier position than many want to believe. In the last Gulf War against Saddam, an estimated 40,000 Iraqi lives were lost; thousands, if not tens, will be lost in the war to come. Unlike then or the recent the war to liberate Afghanistan, we will know about these tragedies much sooner and in painfully more horrific detail. They should haunt us all. It's only a brighter and better future that makes it tolerable at all. --Orson
An anonymous blogger within Iraq wrote this 16 March: "Do support democracy in Iraq. But don’t equate it with war. What will happen is something that could/should have been avoided. Don’t expect me to wear a [I heart bush] t-shirt. Support democracy in Iraq not by bombing us to hell and then trying to build it up again (well that is going to happen any way) not by sending human shields (let’s be real the war is going to happen and Saddam will use you as hostages), but by keeping an eye on what will happen after the war." http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ (Amen.) His suggestion is that the world community ought to have established democracy in the South--just as it has evolved in the Kurdish North--and let the rest of Iraq witness the results and cast off Saddam themselves. But the world lacked the foresight or courage to see so far ahead. So did Bush (I) and the collective wisdom of his men.
