Why it’s me, ranting in The Stranger, a little more than two years ago. Money quote:
As a lifelong lefty of the commie- pinko-faggot variety, I was shocked to wake up one day and find myself just slightly to the left of far-far-right raving psycho superstar Ann Coulter. In a column she wrote for National Review Online two days after the September 11 attacks, Coulter suggested that the United States “invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.”
Someone at work handed me a copy of Coulter’s infamous 9/11 column after listening to me rant about the attacks and what our response should be. Sitting in front of the television, watching the remains of the World Trade Center burn, I had been telling my fellow lefties that we no longer had a choice: We would have to invade the Middle East, depose absolutely everybody–the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Saudi royals in Saudi Arabia–and start all over again. My position was rooted, I felt, in a lefty analysis of September 11: Our support for tyrants, dictators, and fascist monarchs created the anger and irrationality that led to the attacks. As Bob Kerrey wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “[I]t has been a terrible and tragic mistake for the U.S. to be in favor of freedom every place on earth except in Arab nations.”
Unlike Coulter, though, I wasn’t in favor of converting “them” to Christianity; replacing one idiotic fairy tale with another doesn’t seem like a net gain to me. But I was–and still am–in favor of the West remaking the Middle East–AKA invading their countries and deposing their leaders. Like Ann Coulter, I felt that what we witnessed on September 11 wasn’t just about Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and Afghanistan. Islamo-fascism is a regional problem, like European fascism–and the Middle East would have to be remade just as Europe was remade.
What right does the West have to remake the Middle East? Well, the West made the region the mess it is today. At the end of World War I, the British drew lines in the sand around fictions they called “states,” lumping together different–and often warring–ethnic, tribal, and religious groups. We know now that these pseudo-states could only be ruled by brute force and that they would ultimately become breeding grounds for a murderous strain of religious fanaticism. (When we redraw the lines–and we will–hopefully this time we’ll have the wisdom to draw them around things that actually exist, like Kurdistan.) After creating these pseudo-states, the West made a bad situation worse by creating and arming many of the tyrants who ruled over them. As Christopher Hitchens wrote in the Nation, the fact that we helped tyrants achieve power in the Middle East should not prevent us from removing them from power; instead our history in the region doubles or triples our responsibility to remove them from power. “The sponsorship of the Taliban,” Hitchens wrote, “could be redeemed by the demolition of its regime and the liberation of its victims.”
The same argument Hitchens applied to the Taliban in Afghanistan applies to Saddam Hussein in Iraq–and Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Saudi royals in Saudi Arabia. That Iraq wasn’t in bed with al Qaeda–the supposed trump card of the antiwar protesters–is beside the point. We should remove Saddam from power because we owe it to the people of Iraq, and because we have to start remaking the Middle East somewhere. Why not Iraq? Normandy wasn’t Berlin, but that’s where we started rolling back the Nazis.
But what right do we have to impose our values on them? About as much right as we had to impose “our” values on them Germans. There’s also the small matter of our values being superior–can we lefties get behind that concept? While we often fall short in practice, in theory, the equality of the sexes, religious freedom, the separation of church and state, tolerance, and secularism are superior to religious fascism as practiced in Saudi Arabia and secular fascism as practiced in Iraq. And then there’s the small matter of the Islamo-fascists’ stated desire to impose their values on us. In November of last year, Osama bin Laden sent a letter to the American people. In case you missed it, here’s the gist: “The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam…. We call you to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and trading with interest.”
Osama calls on us to replace the U.S. Constitution with Sharia law (stoning adulterers, decapitating homos, etc.), cease separating “religion from policies,” and end our “support [for] the liberation of women.” If we don’t get with the Islamo-fascist program, Osama says we should “expect [him] in New York and Washington.”
• • •
Osama’s letter reminded me why I supported the war to remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, and why I support the coming war on Iraq. Or supported the coming war on Iraq. I’m officially against the war now–or against it for now, I should say–which may or may not please the peaceniks who’ve bothered to read this far.
Did the people in the streets convince me? No. Yes. Sorta. I believe in the power of people taking to the streets. I lived in West Berlin when demonstrations brought down the East German government; I was in Prague when the demonstrations toppled Czechoslovakia’s communist rulers. George W. Bush’s dismissal of massive demonstrations all over the world–calling them “focus groups”–only served to prove something we already knew: The man is an idiot.
And so are a lot of the protesters. “Violence never solved anything.” Really? Violence solved the Holocaust. “Bombs just make more terrorists.” Really? We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we dropped on Europe during World War II. Where are all the Vietnamese terrorists? “Innocent people will die.” True enough–but innocent people are dying right now in Iraq. The left’s selective empathy is shocking. My lefty pals feel the pain of Iraqi civilians–but only the pain that the U.S. inflicts or might inflict. You don’t hear much from the left about the pain that Saddam Hussein inflicts. “War kills the innocent.” No, the status quo in the Middle East kills the innocent–and as we’ve seen in Manhattan and Bali, not just the innocent in the Middle East. War at times is the only hope for an oppressed people–as each Iraqi refugee quickly informs the first Western reporter he can find.
But, whatever, I’m against the war on Iraq now. Why? Because George W. Bush blew it. George W. Bush failed to make the case. George W. Bush wasn’t able to convince NATO–NATO!–or the United Nations of the necessity of this necessary war. Now the Bush administration seems set on a course that may destroy NATO and the UN. I don’t know about the Bushies, but I think a world without NATO and the UN will be more dangerous in the long run than a world without Saddam Hussein will be in the short run. So I’m against the war. Hey, when’s the next peace march?
• • •
The Middle East is a mess. The West made it a mess. The West is going to have to clean it up. The longer we wait, the greater the odds that New York or London or Paris will disappear under a mushroom cloud. And more attacks will come. The quote at the beginning of this essay (“These are the enemies of God. They will burn in hell”) is from a videotape made by a pair of Islamo-fascists casing a public square in advance of a planned terrorist attack. The square was in Strasbourg, a lovely town in France, of all places. The enemies of God were the men, women, and children shopping, eating, and playing in the square. Their crimes? Being Westerners, Christians, French. And to Islamo-fascists, those are crimes.
The Islamo-fascists will succeed where the Bush administration has failed. Colin Powell couldn’t bring France, Germany, and Ru
ssia to their senses, but the next wave of deadly terrorist attacks no doubt will. So we’ll just have to wait until after New York or Paris or Seattle or Strasbourg is wiped off the map to do what must be done. Make no mistake, my fellow lefties: We, the West, will ultimately invade, occupy, and remake the Middle East. Unfortunately for future innocent victims of terrorist attacks, the United States can’t do it alone, which means we can’t do it now.
Actually, that’s the whole essay.
-posted by Dan.
BAWK, BAWK Did I say the other day that I was the only sex advice columnist who supported the invasion of Iraq? I guess I misspoke-it seems I lost my nerve, chickening out at the last minute in early March, 2003. But in April of 2003 I chickened back in again when it looked like the war was coming to an end. Remember the happy days when it looked like this war would, or could, ever end? By December of 2003, in The Stranger’s annual “Regrets” issue, I was basically all over the damn place.
After December of 2003, I decided it might be wise to finally take the advice that Neal Pollack had given me in an essay he wrote for The Stranger before the war began:
Meanwhile, in turncoat land, Dan Savage, generally liberal sex-advice columnist and medium-market weekly newspaper editor, writes pieces in favor of the war so persuasive that Rush Limbaugh reads them on the air. Hooray, Dan! You support the president! Now shut up and go test-drive that three-pronged dildo for your next column. I wouldn’t read a sex-advice column by, say, E. J. Dionne, and I don’t want to read a political article by you…. Shut up!
That’s just what I did. My career as a war pundit was nasty, brutal and short.
-posted by Dan.
TESTING, TESTING
This was the closest thing I could find to a three-pronged dildo. Tests showed that it kinda hurts.
-posted by Dan.
SO, HOW’S IT GOING? Like any liberal who supported the invasion of Iraq, I’m frequently asked if I’m pleased with myself now. I get the question all the time-I mean, I edit a big lefty paper in a big lefty city, for crying out loud. And, hey, folks have a right to ask. What irks me, though, is that the folks who ask me if I’m pleased with the state of things in Iraq employ this… tone. It’s a tone that implies that I not only thought the invasion might be a good idea, but that I’m also personally responsible for the conduct of the war, as if I were popping in at the White House and the ranch Crawford once in a week and Rummy and Condi and Dick-and George too, let’s not forget about the Mountain-Biker-in-Chief-were hanging on my every word. As we all know now, the folks in this administration doesn’t listen to members of their own party about the conduct of the war-to say nothing of the brass at the Pentagon or the troops or the mothers of dead soldiers. It’s not like the sex advice columnist community is getting much of a hearing.
-posted by Dan.
CINDY SHEEHAN: Oh, regarding Cindy Sheehan…
I’m all for what she’s trying to do. Yes, she appears to be-say it ain’t so!-slightly partisan. But since when does being slightly partisan disqualify someone from having an opinion? Rightwing bloggers would have us believe that, unless you’re a Republican (and an R who supports the war, no questions asked), you have no right to speak out about the war. Cindy Sheehan, partisan or not, is free to form opinions about this war-a war that she being fought by“her kind of people”-and guess what else? She’s an American. She can have an opinion about the war, and she can 1. express her opinion freely, and 2. “peaceably to assemble [and] petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The President is on vacation for five weeks. The First Amendment is not.
-posted by Dan.
BUT WHERE ARE YOU ON IRAQ NOW, DAN? I think I hear my mother calling me.
Seriously, I have to go do some work at The Stranger-you know, the kind of writing that, unlike blogging, actually comes with a paycheck attached to it. I will post more on Iraq later.
-posted by Dan.
The Dish 