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The Baghdad celebrations, April 2003: the neocon view versus the VFR view
From April 9, 2003, here is my response to William Bennett’s belief that the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein meant that the Iraqi people wanted and were ready for democracy. Notice the difference between Bennett’s Pollyannish view of the celebrations, and my own view, which was that the Iraqis were, quite naturally, happy to be free of a tyrant, not that they wanted democracy.
That same blog entry included exchanges with virulently anti-war and anti-American types who saw the whole war as a big lie from the start. VFR consumed tens of thousands of words debating with such people in 2002 and 2003. If the anti-war people had discussed the pros and cons of the war instead of mindlessly attacking it as a big lie, we might have had a more productive debate. For example, we might have discussed at more length what our policy toward the reconstruction of Iraq ought to be. In retrospect, it was a mistake to allow Bush haters to post at VFR, which required me and other rational people to spend all our energy replying to their hateful (literally full of hate) statements instead of engaging in a more constructive debate. From that same thread, here is one of my detailed replies to the America haters. This was energy that would have been better spent asking, now that we’ve removed Hussein, what should we do with Iraq? Email entry |