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 Wednesday, March 19, 2003


Why Am I Getting All This Spam? Unsolicited Commercial E-mail Research - Six Month Report - Center for Democracy & Technology - March 2003 [Slashdot]
3:15:21 PM    

I am so sick of stupidity on the war issue from otherwise intelligent people. Dave Winer has a post today ironically titled "Think!". In it he says:

I hear so much concern for the people inside Iraq. Come on. You right wing guys don't really care about them, do you? If so, why only Iraq? Why not take on civil strife, starvation and disease where ever it happens. I don't believe you really care about the people of Iraq. Sorry.

Think, Dave. Be logical. Those problems aren't easy to solve. The fact that we don't solve them everywhere doesn't mean people -- even "right wing guys" -- don't care. It means the price of solving them is often felt to be higher than we are willing to pay. But if a particular action enables us to address a number of grave problems at once, and one of them is the opportunity to help some people escape a dictator who routinely tortures them to death, then that is obviously one more argument in favor of taking the action.

Do you think Tony Blair was being cynical when he said:

Just last week, someone slandering Saddam was tied to a lamp post in a street in Baghdad, his tongue cut out, mutilated and left to bleed to death, as a warning to others.

I recall a few weeks ago talking to an Iraqi exile and saying to her that I understood how grim it must be under the lash of Saddam.

"But you don't", she replied. "You cannot. You do not know what it is like to live in perpetual fear."

And she is right. We take our freedom for granted. But imagine not to be able to speak or discuss or debate or even question the society you live in. To see friends and family taken away and never daring to complain. To suffer the humility of failing courage in face of pitiless terror. That is how the Iraqi people live. Leave Saddam in place and that is how they will continue to live.

We must face the consequences of the actions we advocate. For me, that means all the dangers of war. But for others, opposed to this course, it means - let us be clear - that the Iraqi people, whose only true hope of liberation lies in the removal of Saddam, for them, the darkness will close back over them again; and he will be free to take his revenge upon those he must know wish him gone.

Blair isn't advocating solving all problems everywhere. That would not be possible. But he puts forth a compelling case that the suffering of the Iraqi people is one more reason to go to war at this particular place and time. Is it really logical to assume this is just cynical exploitation of that suffering in order to justify war? How is that a better assumption than the alternative: that people care, but have competing interests and responsibilities, and can't do everything? Is it possible the real cynicism lies... elsewhere?
3:03:39 PM    


"A 'peace' activist is confronted by an Iraqi exile on live radio." [Andrew Sullivan]

You must hear it (mp3).

Readers of this blog have no doubt noticed a number of links lately to Andrew Sullivan. I am not putting up as many as deserve to be put up. Check his blog out if you haven't already. It got some attention months ago for eliciting $10's of K's per year in reader donations, due to the fact that people like his writing. Andrew has his biases as we all obviously do, but he is a welcome antidote, in particular, to the high-sounding pseudo-reason presented by the NY Times' editorial writers recently. More importantly, his blog is a superb source of links to relevant information and viewpoints.
9:09:55 AM    



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