Editor's Page
Walzer, Michael
Editor's Page IT Is HARD to know what to say. At this moment, it looks as if our country is headed into a "war of choice" that we should not have chosen. When you read this issue of Dissent,...
...At this moment, it looks as if our country is headed into a "war of choice" that we should not have chosen...
...On a host of issues— political, economic, environmental—we need allies, and we need them even if (or precisely because) we will have to negotiate and compromise for the sake of the alliances...
...unilateralism for us is at once arrogant and foolish...
...A deal with second-tier Ba'athists, at the expense of Iraqi dissidents, would be a political and moral disaster...
...One crucial test will be a settlement that doesn't represent another American betrayal of the Kurdish people...
...certainly those of us who oppose the war find it hard to imagine realizing it in this world...
...Within a real empire, unilateralism makes a lot of sense: who else is there to invite into the decisionmaking process...
...Going it alone is not a policy...
...But now the administration, working with Iraqi opponents of Saddam, must bring it as close to realization as possible...
...n The second issue for the left is the political and economic reconstruction of Iraq...
...If our strategy and tactics are designed to minimize civilian casualties, even if this entails greater risks for American and British soldiers, we will send a hopeful signal to ordinary Iraqis...
...Once the fighting begins, I shall hope for the early fall of the Ba'athist regime...
...Maybe that is a millennial vision...
...I have heard it called an imperial foreign policy, but I don't think that we will succeed in understanding or opposing it unless we break with the old categories of Marxist theory...
...When you read this issue of Dissent, we will be at war, or there will have been a war, or not...
...n The third issue for the left is the foreign policy that produced this war (and that also produced, as an unintended consequence, worldwide opposition to it...
...Editor's Page IT Is HARD to know what to say...
...n Assuming that there is a war, the first issue for the left must be the conduct of the battles...
...Afghanistan is a sorry precedent, and nothing in the administration's work-up to the war inspires confidence in its commitment to the vision of its own ideologues: a liberal, democratic, federalist Iraqi state...
...The moment for opposition to the war itself will probably be over...
...If we kill large numbers of civilians, we won't look like much of an alternative to Saddam Hussein...
...it is a fantasy, and it is the kind of fantasy that politicians have before a great fall...
...But that is not our situation...
...The way the war is fought will be the most immediate indication of the Bush administration's plans for its aftermath...
...Regime change" is not a good reason for war, but it had better be a consequence of it...
Vol. 50 • April 2003 • No. 2
