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October 26, 2006
Credibility Gap
Nonsense like this completely undermines the credibility of real arguments against involvement in Iraq.
According to the hyperbole: "Armies claiming to bring prosperity have instead brought a misery worse than under the cruellest of modern dictators."
Misery worse than Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the two Kims? Really? Worse than that of the Rwanda Genocide. Worse than Saddam's genocide and rape rooms? Heck, misery worse than the entire province of Banda Aceh after the Tsunami. Please, get the rhetoric under control.
I have no problem with rational, real, and measured accounts of what is going wrong in Iraq. I have no problem with criticizing policy. But I have a real problem with the chronological memory of people who would say that this is worse than The Cultural Revolution. That people are more miserable here that they were in, say, Pol Pot's Cambodia. How is anyone to be persuaded to the real urgency of a situation when you start your exposition with this kind of nonsense?
There are many reasonable and rational ways to say that you think that it is not only a bad idea but that it is immoral and out-and-out evil. This particular way does not further the cause.
Posted by Steven Riddle at October 26, 2006 5:02 PM
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