Keith Devens .com

"That's not a bug -- it's a feature!"

Glenn Reynolds on Lebanon, Syria, and the War on Terror:

The French weren't able to protect Saddam, and they aren't even trying to protect the Syrians. And Bush speaks with the authority of a man with lots of troops stationed right along the border, troops that make it unlikely the Syrians will pull a Tiananmen Square in Beirut.

Back in 2003, some people were warning that Bush was more interested in spreading democracy through the Mideast than in simply toppling Saddam. But as we Microsoft employees are fond of saying, "that's not a bug -- it's a feature!"

In fact, it wasn't just a feature, but the plan all along. The Bush Administration has been taking the "root causes" talk seriously, instead of using it as an excuse to do nothing. It's addressing the root causes of terrorism by uprooting the Arab tyrannies that have encouraged terrorism to flourish.

More, at NRO:

Charles Krauthammer made the point last night that Lebanon supports the Syrian economy, and if Syria can no longer prop itself up with the resources of Lebanon, then the economic instability coupled with the loss of face to Assad makes it very likely that if Syria is kicked out of Lebanon entirely, the Syrian Regime will fall soon after. That would most definitely be a benefit to US interests even beyond what you have already rightly pointed out.

Of course, as Prof. Reynolds pointed out a few days ago, it's apparently not self evident to the lefty bloggers that the toppling of dictatorships is a good thing for the USA.

Glenn's post linked in that excerpt just made me realize something. A month or two ago I had a discussion with an ultra-liberal friend of mine (she even worked for the Kerry campain) and she asked me "Why attack Iraq?" I started going into strategic reasons involving Iraq's central location in the region, and the fact that it was the easiest target. She stopped me and said "No, why attack Iraq?", and explained that if France was located where Iraq is the strategic reasons would be irrelevant. I said that of course if France was there we wouldn't have had a problem, and simply responded to her original question by saying that I don't see any case against the war.

What I just realized was that it was not self-evident to her that removing Saddam Hussein, toppling his tyrannical and terrorist regime, and freeing 25 million people was a good thing, and worth fighting for.

She also went on to disagree with me that the war in Iraq would help create freedom in the region.

Anyway, this image Glenn linked (in that same post) brought a tear to my eye:

Lebanese waving the American flag, sign of freedom to the whole world

Permalink | 9 Comments | Tags: Opinions/Politics | id 6644

04:54 (utc-5)
edited: 05:41 (utc-5)

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you did not get my point, I resign...
Let me just say that it's not a matter of being right or wrong, republican or democrat, american or french...
You claim it is self-evident this war was good thing.
I claim that living in Irak for the simple citizen is much terrible today than it was one and half year ago.
If I understand you right, your bet is that this period of terror will bring something good for them.
At least, I sincerly hope it is true, but i'm quite pessimistic.

Concerning the link you send, there's no doubt about it : you won the war Congratulations!

I claim that living in Irak for the simple citizen is much terrible today than it was one and half year ago.

Then you're simply misinformed. Maybe you also don't think living under dictatorship is that bad.

The reason I pointed out Amy's post is that I think it addresses well how your idea that "freedom is a strange concept, very hard to catch sometime" is mere bigotry -- in other words, you think Arabs (or Muslims) are such üntermenschen that they can't handle being free, or wouldn't understand what to do with freedom if they had it. It comes across as deeply racist to hold that Arabs' natural state is to live under dictatorship, or to say that they're better off not being free. The hypocrisy here is that you say all this while believing that you really have their interests in mind.

Thursday, March 3, 2005

"That's not a bug -- it's a feature!"

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