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5bb6eb0 George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism--the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it--is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language. morality moral-absolutism presidency-of-george-w-bush presidency-of-bill-clinton al-shifa-pharmaceutical-factory rwanda rwandan-genocide sudan bill-clinton anti-war ba-ath-party democratic-party-united-states opposition-to-the-iraq-war george-w-bush iraq saddam-hussein united-nations peace-movement iraq-war united-states madeleine-albright moral-relativism liberalism leftism evil Christopher Hitchens
4c1ce1d You might think that the Left could have a regime-change perspective of its own, based on solidarity with its comrades abroad. After all, Saddam's ruling Ba'ath Party consolidated its power by first destroying the Iraqi communist and labor movements, and then turning on the Kurds (whose cause, historically, has been one of the main priorities of the Left in the Middle East). When I first became a socialist, the imperative of international solidarity was the essential if not the defining thing, whether the cause was popular or risky or not. I haven't seen an anti-war meeting all this year at which you could even guess at the existence of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition to Saddam, an opposition that was fighting for 'regime change' when both Republicans and Democrats were fawning over Baghdad as a profitable client and geopolitical ally. Not only does the 'peace' movement ignore the anti-Saddam civilian opposition, it sends missions to console the Ba'athists in their isolation, and speaks of the invader of Kuwait and Iran and the butcher of Kurdistan as if he were the victim and George W. Bush the aggressor. socialism anti-war ba-ath-party democratic-party-united-states iran-iraq-war iraqi-communist-party iraqi-kurdistan kurdish-people labour-movement middle-east opposition-to-the-iraq-war republican-party-united-states baghdad george-w-bush invasion-of-kuwait iraq kuwait saddam-hussein peace-movement iraq-war leftism communism Christopher Hitchens