Continuing Questions

Good article by Michael Kelly on the continuing questions of the war. Here we are at victory in the military struggle, where few on either side of this issue doubted we'd be. And now we need to decide what victory means. What victory will look like for us and for the Iraqi People.

What is an honest opponent of a war supposed to do? Since even the end of this war won’t settle most of the important arguments about it, dropping all opposition at the beginning of the war would surely be more intellectually suspicious than maintaining your doubts while sincerely hoping for victory. Inevitably, more than one supporter of this war has taunted its opponents with Orwell’s famous observation in 1942 that pacifists—the few who opposed a military response to Hitler—were “objectively pro-fascist.” The suggestion is that opposing this war makes you objectively pro-Saddam. In an oddly less famous passage two years later, Orwell recanted that “objectively” formula and called it “dishonest.” Which it is.

The psychological challenge of opposing a war like this after it has started isn’t supporting the American troops, but hoping to be proven wrong. That, though, is the burden of pessimism on all subjects. As a skeptic, at the least, about Gulf War II, I do hope to be proven wrong. But it hasn’t happened yet.

In other news there was a positive article at MSNBC discussing Iraqis and US starting to do Joint patrols to get a handle on the looting, and a scary article underlining that Syria is probably next on the chopping block.

On Aids in Africa

Some thoughts from Michael Kelly, at Townhall today.

"President Bush did not until now appear to promise much better than Clinton. His last previous global AIDS proposal was a modest $500 million program aimed solely at the politically safe goal of preventing mothers with AIDS from passing it on to their babies.

But then this: $15 billion, and not just for babies--for vast programs of treatment with the cheap generic drugs, for wide-scale condom distribution. Billions in taxpayers' money. For condoms for Africa. In a recession. In a time of record budget deficits. It is a rare and wonderful thing.

History will very easily be able to judge whether a world led by America stood by and let transpire one of the greatest destructions of human life of all time--or performed one of the greatest rescues of human life of all time. President Bush has opened the door to the latter possibility. The drugs that are, day by day, saving the lives of thousands upon thousands of Americans can do the same for millions upon millions of Africans.

The response to the president's proposal has been faint and largely uncaring. It must become deafening. It must become--from Congress, from conservatives and Republicans, from liberals and Democrats, from the media, from our wealthy European friends, from all of us: Yes, do it. Do more. Up the ante. Make that $15 billion $30 billion. Do it now. Save 10 million lives."

Obviously I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Kelly's assessment.