David Schneider-Joseph Archives

Archives: February 2004

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Thu Feb 05, 2004

Oh Irony

Watching CBS Evening News tonight, I heard the words: "It's a common gripe among seniors, that doctors practice ageism, often treating older patients like children."

I want to cry.

2/5/2004 6:59 pm | Comments (4) | #

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Patrick Stewart's letdown

William Shatner once said "Get a life will ya people, I mean, for crying out loud, it's, it's just a TV show", at a Star Trek convention.

Now Patrick Stewart says we shouldn't colonize space.

Heartbreaking.

2/5/2004 3:41 am | Comments (4) | #

Wed Feb 04, 2004

The Kay Resignation

Two Fridays ago, David Kay, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, resigned his post, stating that weapons of mass destruction were probably not in Iraq when the U.S. invaded last March.

This poses some serious questions: Was the U.S. wrong to invade Iraq? Did President Bush lie about the reasons for war? Did he lie about intelligence? Was our intelligence wrong? Is the Administration responsible?

The answers, respectively, are: No, no, no, yes, and yes.

There's no getting around the fact that we were wrong — dead wrong — about Iraq's possession of WMD. Now, we certainly weren't alone in this assessment, and we could hardly be blamed for it, given Iraq's refusal to comply with its U.N. obligations to prove itself disarmed, and given its 20-year history of attempting to build chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

But the buck stops somewhere. The Administration said it was certain we'd find WMD and WMD programs in Iraq. We didn't. Our intelligence was at fault, not so much for the conclusions that it drew, but rather for the certainty of those conclusions. The Administration by its actions staked its credibility on those claims, and the claims turned out to be false. Now, there's every reason to believe that the mistakes were honest ones. But mistakes of incompetence in areas as critical as these should not be taken lightly. It was painful to hear the phrase "weapons of mass destruction related program activities" in the State of the Union address, without any acknowledgment that that's a far cry from what we expected to find, especially since Bush was probably aware at the time of that speech of the soon-to-be-released Kay report. Fortunately, we're starting to see an acknowledgment by the Administration of its mistakes, and hopefully we'll eventually find out how they happened.

The war was still an overwhelmingly just one, despite the lack of WMD in Iraq. Of course, even if no WMD was presently in Iraq, not enforcing the U.N. sanctions would guarantee that WMD would one day appear in Iraq. But WMD was just one of the many reasons for our obligation to liberate Iraq. Make no mistake: President Bush mentioned all those other reasons too. It is not merely after-the-fact that supporters of the war are arguing that their reasoning went well beyond the WMD issue. In a speech he gave three weeks before the war, President Bush said:

The safety of the American people depends on ending this direct and growing threat. Acting against the danger will also contribute greatly to the long-term safety and stability of our world. The current Iraqi regime has shown the power of tyranny to spread discord and violence in the Middle East. A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America's interests in security, and America's belief in liberty, both lead in the same direction: to a free and peaceful Iraq.

...

The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life.

...

Success in Iraq could also begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace, and set in motion progress towards a truly democratic Palestinian state. The passing of Saddam Hussein's regime will deprive terrorist networks of a wealthy patron that pays for terrorist training, and offers rewards to families of suicide bombers. And other regimes will be given a clear warning that support for terror will not be tolerated.

Despite all that, the Bush Administration is in my opinion very much responsible for the emphasis the WMD issue took in the debate leading up to the war. It was an easy legal pretext, for a war with a justification that genuinely constitutes a new doctrine in American foreign policy. That doctrine is the correct, moral one, but it does that doctrine an injustice to allow the terms of the debate to rest on the legalistic concepts of the pre-9/11 world.

The fundamental question of our time is this: will our counterterrorism efforts take the form of a police and legal action, or as a proactive war against the brutal forces in the world that allow terrorist networks to exist? It is absolutely vital that both sides of this debate be willing to recognize that question for what it is, or else we cannot have a real debate to begin with.

2/4/2004 5:39 pm | Comments (13) | #

North Korea's gas chambers

I'll admit that it seems like a burden to care about things like this. Judging by the lack of attention it has gotten, I guess I'm not alone. But don't we have a responsibility to care?

UPDATE: Anne Applebaum says it better than I.

2/4/2004 3:08 am | Comments (1) | #

Democratic Debate vs. Cultural Warfare

An apt commentary by Andrew Sullivan:

these days, every mistake people make is immediately denounced as a matter of bad faith. When that happens routinely, political discourse simply cannot operate civilly. Gilligan accused Blair of lying. That's different than claiming Blair was wrong. When we have lost that distinction, democratic debate is over. Which is why I get this horrible feeling that debate in this country has morphed into a kind of cultural warfare that will at some point devour us all.

2/4/2004 2:46 am | Comments (0) | #

Archives: February 2004

Thu Feb 05, 2004

Oh Irony

Patrick Stewart's letdown

Wed Feb 04, 2004

The Kay Resignation

North Korea's gas chambers

Democratic Debate vs. Cultural Warfare

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