Silence of world community allows aggression
United States' geopolitical interaction shows us as the primary driving force behind international instability
Robert Zaller
Issue date: 11/12/04 Section: Ed-Op
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Surveying the smoking ruins of a destroyed village, a Vietnam-era American officer famously remarked that he had to destroy it in order to save it. At least he only did the job once.
We are now engaged in destroying Fallujah for the third time in seven months, and it is not a village of a few hundred but a city of a quarter million. It is the latest atrocity in a mad and endless war, and what it is destroying, besides its helpless victims, is the United States of America.
The charade of our election having been concluded, we have chosen the eager warrior over the reluctant one. John Kerry, who had the courage to condemn the Vietnam war but, in his vain quest for power, had promised to win an even worse one, can now return to the musty silence of his Senate career.
An honorably defeated Howard Dean would at least have retained the moral authority to denounce Bush's latest offensive, but a primary system absurdly skewed to conservative southern and southwestern electorates, no less than his own unstoppable mouth, defeated him and deprived the election campaign of its one oppositional voice (I leave to the side Mr. Nader, who might have been a force had he not been consumed by his senile passion for seeking office).
Now there is nothing but silence from both ends of the political spectrum as the war runs is disastrous course, just as there was nothing but silence in the weeks of transparent preparation for the assault on Fallujah and the renewal of the "major combat" that Mr. Bush had promised was at an end eighteen months ago.
No modern democracy has ever faced a crisis in its core values with less candor and more deceit; one has to go back to the Parthian wars of the late Roman republic or Athens' Sicilian expedition to find the like. The capstone of our moral obliquity is that even had Kerry won, Fallujah would still be under the gun and Kerry himself would have had no standing to criticize the attack.
As it is, the pathetic inconsequence of Kerry's campaign has left the Democratic Party wondering how it can betray itself further, and the democratic left, which hitched itself to Kerry, in equal disarray. This is what comes of lying to oneself as well as to others.
We are now engaged in destroying Fallujah for the third time in seven months, and it is not a village of a few hundred but a city of a quarter million. It is the latest atrocity in a mad and endless war, and what it is destroying, besides its helpless victims, is the United States of America.
The charade of our election having been concluded, we have chosen the eager warrior over the reluctant one. John Kerry, who had the courage to condemn the Vietnam war but, in his vain quest for power, had promised to win an even worse one, can now return to the musty silence of his Senate career.
An honorably defeated Howard Dean would at least have retained the moral authority to denounce Bush's latest offensive, but a primary system absurdly skewed to conservative southern and southwestern electorates, no less than his own unstoppable mouth, defeated him and deprived the election campaign of its one oppositional voice (I leave to the side Mr. Nader, who might have been a force had he not been consumed by his senile passion for seeking office).
Now there is nothing but silence from both ends of the political spectrum as the war runs is disastrous course, just as there was nothing but silence in the weeks of transparent preparation for the assault on Fallujah and the renewal of the "major combat" that Mr. Bush had promised was at an end eighteen months ago.
No modern democracy has ever faced a crisis in its core values with less candor and more deceit; one has to go back to the Parthian wars of the late Roman republic or Athens' Sicilian expedition to find the like. The capstone of our moral obliquity is that even had Kerry won, Fallujah would still be under the gun and Kerry himself would have had no standing to criticize the attack.
As it is, the pathetic inconsequence of Kerry's campaign has left the Democratic Party wondering how it can betray itself further, and the democratic left, which hitched itself to Kerry, in equal disarray. This is what comes of lying to oneself as well as to others.
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