Stardate 20031216.0956

(On Screen): One of the anti-war arguments that had kind of faded out is now back in its full glory with the capture of Saddam: "America is responsible for Saddam."

Scott Burchill writes about that in a column in SMH. As an Australian, he is writing about Australia, but one could take his column and perform a few minor search-and-replace operations ("President Bush" for "Prime Minister Howard", "America" for "Australia", "Washington" for "Canberra") and you could transplant it to an American leftist publication just fine, where it would make just as much sense as most of the rest of what you'd find there. (Which is to say, "not much".)

Most of those claims are exaggerated and have been refuted long since, but assume they were true. The response to that is pretty clear: If we are responsible for Saddam being in power, we have an obligation to make up for the sins of our past by removing him. If we made a mistake in the past, should we not correct it now?

The anti-war logic on this has never been clear. Why were claims of past support for Saddam an argument that we should not oppose him now? Were they contending that we were required to keep supporting Saddam because we had done so in the past, compounding the very sins they accuse us of?

Actually, what they wanted, what they've always wanted, was for us to be convulsed and paralyzed by self-doubt and shame. They didn't want us to support Saddam, nor did they want us to oppose him. What they wanted was for us to oppose ourselves, to hate ourselves as Americans (and Australians), to hate the entire notion of "Americans" ("Australians"), to reject our membership in the group "Americans" ("Australians") and to start thinking of ourselves as post-modern citizens-of-the-world.

"Ask yourself why they hate you." It's the essence of that question. And it's always been a stupid question, because what they were really asking was this: "If they hate you, should you not also hate yourselves?"

Update: Phil Fraering says I'm giving them too much credit. (He also worries too much; I wasn't offended by the first post.)