RIGHT MAKES RIGHT--MIGHT MAKES POSSIBLE:

Unauthorized Entry: The Bush Doctrine: War without anyone's permission. (Michael Kinsley, March 20, 2003, Slate)

[S]ince the end of World War II, the United States has at least formally agreed to international constraints on the right of any nation, including itself, to start a war. These constraints were often evaded, but rarely just ignored. And evasion has its limits, enforced by the sanction of embarrassment. This gave these international rules at least some real bite.

But George W. Bush defied embarrassment and slew it with a series of Orwellian flourishes. If the United Nations wants to be "relevant," he said, it must do exactly as I say. In other words, in order to be relevant, it must become irrelevant. When that didn't work, he said: I am ignoring the wishes of the Security Council and violating the U.N. Charter in order to enforce a U.N. Security Council resolution. No, no, don't thank me! My pleasure!!

By Monday night, though, in his 48-hour-warning speech, the references to international law and the United Nations had become vestigial. Bush's defense of his decision to make war on Iraq was basic: "The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security." He did not claim that Iraq is a present threat to America's own national security but suggested that "in one year or five years" it could be such a threat. In the 20th century, threats from murderous dictators were foolishly ignored until it was too late. In this century, "terrorists and terrorist states" do not play the game of war by the traditional rules. They "do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations." Therefore, "Responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense. It is suicide."

What is wrong with Bush's case? Sovereign nations do have the right to act in their own self defense, and they will use that right no matter what the U.N. Charter says or how the Security Council votes. Waiting for an enemy to strike first can indeed be suicidal. So? [...]

[B]ush is asserting the right of the United States to attack any country that may be a threat to it in five years. And the right of the United States to evaluate that risk and respond in its sole discretion. And the right of the president to make that decision on behalf of the United States in his sole discretion. In short, the president can start a war against anyone at any time, and no one has the right to stop him. And presumably other nations and future presidents have that same right. All formal constraints on war-making are officially defunct.

Well, so what? Isn't this the way the world works anyway? Isn't it naive and ultimately dangerous to deny that might makes right? Actually, no. Might is important, probably most important, but there are good, practical reasons for even might and right together to defer sometimes to procedure, law, and the judgment of others. Uncertainty is one. If we knew which babies would turn out to be murderous dictators, we could smother them in their cribs. If we knew which babies would turn out to be wise and judicious leaders, we could crown them dictator. In terms of the power he now claims, without significant challenge, George W. Bush is now the closest thing in a long time to dictator of the world. He claims to see the future as clearly as the past. Let's hope he's right.

This is the quintessence of modern liberalism. Mr. Kinsley is simply incapable of accepting the central idea of the Bush doctrine: America is right. The war on states that utilize terror is not a matter of looking across the globe and picking out countries that might speculatively threaten us one day. Mr. Bush has quite specifically identified regimes that are evil, that repress their own people and deny their aspirations towards freedom, and in the cases of Iraq and North Korea (though not of Iran) are responsible for the murder and/or starvation of millions. Perhaps in the deracinated, multicultural, nonjudgmental circles that Mr. Kinsley moves in these kinds of governments have simply chosen alternate lifestyles for their people, but few Americans have any doubt about the true character of a Saddam Hussein, a Kim Jong-il, a Fidel Castro, a Robert Mugabe, etc., etc, etc., ad nauseum: they are evil and the systems they administer are evil and there can be no doubt that deposing them is right and just. Whether it is wise to do so is a different question, one on which decent people may disagree. But to maintain, as Mr. Kinsley seems to, that our sole basis for removing them is might, and that we can not objectively determine the right of the matter ,is to descend in the paralyzing relativism that makes it necessary to despise the Left.

MORE:
Saddam's son beats 12-year-olds who say no to sex: defectors (Sydney Morning Herald, March 22 2003)

Saddam Hussein's eldest son mercilessly beats girls as young as 12 on the soles of their feet if they refuse to sleep with him, Iraqi defectors said today.

Uday Hussein forces head teachers of schools in Baghdad's poorest districts to send pupils to his palace where he arranges dates with those he likes.

If the chosen girls annoy him in anyway they are dangled over a wooden beam held by his bodyguards and repeatedly hit with a wooden club, according to two former members of his inner circle who recently fled Iraq.

"He does it to a girl if she says she doesn't want to go out with him, or if she finds another boyfriend, or is late or reluctant," one defector told Vanity Fair magazine.

The 38-year-old warns victims not to flinch while the beating is administered or they will have their legs broken. He often hits them up to 50 times, the report claimed.

Afterwards, when they can barely walk, he orders them to dance. [...]

Intelligence officials believe Uday may have been in the bunker hit by a cruise missile in the "decapitation strike" on Baghdad in the first hours of the war.

His younger brother, Qusay, is Saddam's heir after Uday fell out of favour when he murdered a close friend of his father in 1988.

But who are we to judge?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 21, 2003 8:53 PM