[Dean's World] Dean: Americaphobia: Final Thoughts

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Posted by Dean:
Americaphobia: Final Thoughts
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1175125709.shtml


   I have not yet had a chance to read Ali's latest, or really anything
   else on the Dean's World front page today. I've been too busy. But
   I've had all day to think about this and I'm going to lay out
   something I've been thinking for a long time:

   It's very hard for me to look at American Muslims, or Muslims in
   general, or anyone who considers themselves "liberal" or "progressive"
   or "humanist," who claim to stand for freedom and human rights and
   then attack everything America has done and tried to do in Iraq over
   the last four years.

   The fact is that the naysayers claimed we weren't really striving for
   liberation. We were. They claimed we'd install a new dictator. We did
   not. They claimed that we wouldn't really try to set up a democracy.
   We did. They claimed there would be no legitimate elections. The
   Iraqis had three national elections in a row, all certified as
   legitimate by international observers, not counting local elections
   that had happened before.

   They claimed we'd do everything possibly to get out of the country
   "before the next elections"--they claimed that before the 2004
   elections and it didn't happen, and then they claimed it again before
   the 2006 elections. It didn't happen. Now these same people in many
   cases are cheering for a Congress that's trying to force us out of
   Iraq even though the war supporters consistently say "no, that would
   be morally and strategically wrong." And continue to act as if these
   murdering fascist scum who terrorize the Iraqi people every day are
   American's fault. Rather than being the fault of the murdering
   terrorist fascist bastards who cut people's heads off and shoot
   children in the face.

   Time after time the naysayers have proven themselves both morally and
   intellectually incoherent, and yet they never have the introspection
   to acknowledge this.

   Furthermore, anyone calling himself a "liberal" or a
   "humanist"--Muslim or not--is in my view faced with a stark choice:

   You either sit around pretending that a vicious, murderous, fascist
   "insurgency" that routinely cuts people's heads off and shoots
   children in the face is the "legitimate voice of the Iraqi people," or
   you recognize that a government elected by the Iraqi people (as
   recognized and ratified by all major international authorities)
   working under a Constitution written entirely by native Iraqis is
   worth supporting no matter how many reservations you have about how it
   was done.

   If you take the former position you have no business calling yourself
   a liberal or a progressive or a humanist. None.

   If you take the latter position, then maybe you have to swallow the
   bitter pill that someone named George Bush, whom you don't like and
   maybe think is incompetent, was the instigator of something important
   that damn well needs to be supported.

   But you can't have it both ways. Indeed, by declaring the whole thing
   illegitimate, all you're doing is siding with the Islamophobes of the
   world who claim the Muslims and the Arabs are far too savage,
   backward, and primitive to respect things like democracy and human
   rights. Indeed, you're implicitely siding the the Robert Spencers of
   the world.

   And it's high time someone told you people this, whether you're
   Muslims or not.

   The progressive position is not, and never has been, the "anti-war"
   position.