Wednesday, December 17, 2003

Iraq War: That Trial (Pt. 1 of 2)

Has everything become so politicizied that we can even think about what's going on without wondering how it plays in partisan politics?

I was just reading a post by Meteor Blades at the Daily Kos site. He was making an argument opposing the death penalty for Saddam Hussein. And yet he felt compelled to qualify it beforehand by saying, "My reptile brain takes over when I ponder how Saddam should be treated for his vicious reign." Gosh, if he hadn't thrown that in, somebody might think he was such a wuss that he doesn't sit around fantasizing about creatively killing bad guys!

The world does not revolve around America, and the vicious clichees in American politics around the death penalty are not going to do anything to help anyone understand what's going on with the Iraq War. The arrogance of thinking we could bludgeon the world into going along with us on this war to begin with has caused us endless trouble. We haven't even been able to bludgeon Iraq or Afghanistan into going along with us yet.

Mishandling the trial of Saddam Hussein is going to be one more problem for the United States. The very fact that someone making an argument against the death penalty for Saddam feels obliged to toss out some pseudo-redneck bluster is a sign of how narcissistic the American way of looking at the world has become. (And it's actually a good post that didn't require the author to give assurances that he possessed a "reptile brain.")

But out there in the rest of Planet Earth, where 97% or so of the world is not American, there is more to think about than the partisan fortunes of the Democrats and Republicans in the United States. For instance, this article from Amnesty International offers some useful perspective.

(cont. in Part 2)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you know the term Redneck is an offesive racist slang word historically used to describe poor working whites? You seem like such a good liberal, you would probably never dream of using the N WORD why do you use the term Redneck? I urge you to read The Redneck Manifesto so that you can learn some tolerance and sensitivity!

Anonymous said...

Uh, that's why I wrote PSEUDO redneck. Because most regular working-class people have better sense than that. So, I assume that since you feel such solidarity with the working class that you also think it's a ridiculous attitude and that you are opposed to having the death penalty on the table for Saddam, too. Good for you! - Bruce