Liberal Agenda
by Anna Schwartz

Peace is the antithesis of war. Peace is what we liberals claim to want at our anti-war rallies, in our op-ed pieces and in heated discussions conducted over low fat, no foam cappuccinos. But will peace be the result of not going to war? If our reasoning is humanitarian, we should consider that the Iraqi people will be left with a brutal dictator and our own people will remain in danger of those weapons of mass destruction that Saddam is so craftily hiding.

We must question what it is we want out of our protest against the war. Are we making our voices heard? Exercising our rights of free speech? Demonstrating our dissent? Is our objection moral or political? What is the liberal agenda?

Anarchists, environmentalists, Naderites, socialists, and good ol’ hard-line democrats all converged in New York (and other major cities) last weekend in hordes to protest the war. Most of these interest groups seem to oppose the war in principle and the Bush administration’s tactics in practice. Almost every protester held a sign depicting Bush, Powell and Cheney as the “Asses of Evil,” or other slurs toward the administration. These different interest groups agree on little else than a common contempt for Bush and the Republicans. This divergence of interests, even amongst the Democrats, who are the institutional manifestation of anti-war sentiment (I mean real Democrats, not Joe Lieberman), causes deficiency in the anti-war agenda.

The liberals offer no alternative to war aside from waiting around with the French for Saddam to terrorize his people and potentially the rest of the world. This is not a viable alternative.

Bush’s State of the Union address was sickening in its unfounded polemics, but the president did speak one iota of truth: “trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.” The problem with this non-plan is that Saddam’s weapons (if he has them, which he does) are not pointing at France, Germany, or any of the other voices of dissent in the UN. They are pointing straight at us.

Additionally, Bush and his cronies have invested far too much into this war to call it quits; a peaceful resolution is highly unlikely. Other than exercising our right of free speech, what is the point of dissent? No one in Congress will dare to challenge Bush once we’ve declared war, at risk of being called unpatriotic and losing the next election. The latest Gallup poll shows that 63% of Americans are in favor of invading Iraq.

However, this does not mean that we liberals should roll over and play dead – this is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that there is and should be a strong opposition to administration policy. Instead, we must decide what it is we want, and how we will achieve our aims. To do anything else, especially playing the waiting game, is dangerous and cowardly. Why not push for diplomacy, Clinton-izing our approach to Iraq in the same way the administration is opting to deal with North Korea? Desmond Tutu can howl all he wants about the immorality of this war, but liberal inaction may have adverse consequences – it will either allow Bush to steamroll the country into wreaking death and destruction, or it will allow a brutal dictator to remain unchallenged and unpunished.

In the end, we are all fighting the same battle, and we should not allow partisan politics to affect our conceptions of morality. If we truly believe that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and that he is a brutal dictator who terrorizes his people, is it morally correct to oppose intervention? We must also ask these same questions of ourselves and our nation’s history as a superpower: while we have intervened against dictators countless times before, we have also financially and militarily supported brutal authoritarian regimes. We discourage wars over the race to arms, yet we ourselves have a sizeable collection of nasty weapons. Might never has and never will make right.

These questions run deeper than two hour’s worth of televised propaganda (see: State of the Union address), and they also run deeper than 500,000 urban elites screaming “Drop Bush, Not Bombs!” Do we fancy-coffee-toting liberals really believe that the Iraqi people should continue to suffer? How deep is our faith in democracy? The fact that some people in the world (namely Iraqis, amongst others) live without all of the same freedoms that we enjoy is a form of inequality – not a form of inequality that directly impacts us, like seeing homeless people on the street while returning to a warm, comfortable apartment – but inequality nonetheless. Iraq is not under the United States’ jurisdiction, and this is one of the strongest anti-war arguments. But it is a nation of the same world we inhabit, whose people should be afforded the same civil and political rights as ours. Many other nations, historically and currently, have suffered the same fate as the Iraqis; what is left up for consideration is whether this is a necessary and sufficient cause for war.

Peace is the antithesis of war, but peace is not the result of inaction. Liberals (and conservatives) must rally to find a way to depose Saddam, with carrots or sticks, or face the fact that war is the only real option on the table right now.