This morning I was listening, briefly, to local talk show host Dave Ross. Ross is what you might call a member of the Defeat Now! caucus. He wants an American defeat in Iraq, and he wants it now. I came in during the middle of the discussion, so I did not hear why he thought that would be a good idea, but I did hear the end, and was horrified.
Ross was being challenged by a caller who asked him to consider the possible consequences of a victory for terrorists in Iraq. Ross responded to the challenge in two ways, first by saying that he did not think these terrible things would happen. And second, and this is what horrified me, by saying that he could accept those horrific consequences.
In particular, Ross said he was willing to accept the enormous death toll from a nuclear war in the Middle East. The caller argued that the instability resulting from our immediate withdrawal from Iraq might result in nuclear war in the Middle East, with Iran on one side. To this, Ross replied:
If it eliminates Iran, once and for all, that's the price you have to pay.
Iran has a population of about 70 million. A nuclear war in which one side decided to "eliminate" Iran might cause, directly and indirectly, 50 million deaths in Iran alone, and perhaps another 10 million in other nations.
After Ross said this, I waited to see if he would qualify what he said, or even if he would set some upper limit, if he would say, for instance, that he thought that 100 million deaths might be too big a price even for his Defeat Now! caucus. He did not. And what he had said earlier about Indochina makes me think that I did not hear him wrong, did not misunderstand him. He conceded that millions had died after we had abandoned Vietnam and Cambodia. But he did not seem much bothered by that. (He did say, correctly, that the blame for the millions of dead was not mainly ours. But he didn't go on to say, as he might have, that the left in the US was not terribly critical of Pol Pot and the other mass murderers then, or since.)
Ross's nonchalance about genocide, and potential genocide, in these two cases forces me to raise an unpleasant question. Cambodians, Vietnamese, and Iraqis share one characteristic; they have different skin colors than most Americans. And so I have to ask: Would Ross be equally nonchalant about the possibility that, say, France, would be eliminated? (France's population is a little smaller than Iran's.) And it is an unpleasant fact that few on the left cared much when, by the most common estimate, 800,000 were massacred in Rwanda, while Bill Clinton was preserving his political viability.
Let me end this by quoting a president that Ross should know well:
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge—and more.
To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do—for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.
To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom—and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
You may find it instructive to rewrite those four paragraphs to make them suitable for Dave Ross and the rest of his Defeat Now! caucus. I might start something like this: "We won't pay any price, but we will be happy to impose enormous prices on others, especially if they trusted us."
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(For those not familiar with the politics in this area: Ross was the Democratic candidate for 8th congressional district in 2004. He was defeated by Dave Reichert — fortunately.)
Posted by Jim Miller at May 15, 2008 02:05 PM | Email This