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1/31/2003 12:27:00 PM | Timothy

If only I could give him the Michael Mandelbaum award....

John Stevenson on the Dartmouth Observer says protests against the war should not rely on principles like 'peace' and 'justice' but instead on 'cost-benefit analysis.' John Stevenson on the observer says, in effect, if you have been gassed by Saddam, then your situation is not 'optimal'. He also wasn't in favor of intervening in Rwanda to stop genocide (not a very big 'cost' I guess).

"I would not support interevention in Rwanda unless it threatned to destabilized the African continent. A war to liberate Tibet or the Kurds would be unnecessary; their situation is not optimal but not worth expending blood over. Protesting the [Iraq] war should follow this guideline, cost-benefit anlysis, and not be based on concepts such as peace (I call upon Wilson's infamous 'war to end all wars' as sufficient proof) or justice (in the name of God, for the religious extremists of miedeval yesteryear and in the world today or of human rights, for the leftist extremist of recent invention)."

It's not leftists who are promoting human rights everywhere, and certainly not in Iraq. By and large, it is neo conservatives and hawkish humanitarian liberals. I'm proud (in most cases, not Iraq) to be the latter. I say to John: don't generalize such that you compare plundering in the name of God to trying to stop torture in the world today. Unless you think the only problem with the Holocaust was that Nazi Germany invaded other countries to kill Jews, I don't want to hear you claim you only support intervention on 'cost-benefit' analysis. We may be, as John says, "american citizens first" but we should not not forget that we are also all common members of humanity.



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