Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Blowing Raspberries
Columnist William Raspberry in the "Washington Post" (hat tip Deacon at Powerline):
The problem with the left is not that it keeps asking utalitarian questions about the costs and benefits of maintaining status quo versus affecting change in places like Iraq. The problem is that after all is said and done there never seems to be a regime horrid and oppressive enough for the benefits of its removal to outweigh the costs. Europeans can thank their lucky star that the Second World War took place sixty years ago and not yesterday.
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"We can argue all day that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant whose defeat and humiliation should evoke no sympathy from us. But he did have a functioning country. There was a government in place. People went to work and to the market and to school in relative safety. Can anyone really believe that the U.S.-spawned anarchy has left the Iraqi people better off?"The beautiful thing about paragraphs like this one is that you don't need to make too many changes to come up with an infinite variety of new versions. Like this one for example:
"We can argue all day that Adolf Hitler was a tyrant whose defeat and humiliation should evoke no sympathy from us. But he did have a functioning country. There was a government in place. People went to work and to the market and to school in relative safety. Can anyone really believe that the Allied-spawned anarchy of the Second World War has left the German people [or Jews or Europeans in general] better off?"An extreme example, perhaps? Saddam was not nearly as wicked as Hitler? Yes, but by the same token the liberation and its aftermath in Iraq pale in comparison with the horror of the Second World War and the desolation afterwards.
The problem with the left is not that it keeps asking utalitarian questions about the costs and benefits of maintaining status quo versus affecting change in places like Iraq. The problem is that after all is said and done there never seems to be a regime horrid and oppressive enough for the benefits of its removal to outweigh the costs. Europeans can thank their lucky star that the Second World War took place sixty years ago and not yesterday.
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