Paradoxical
Pacifism
By Pascal Bruckner
Translated by Douglas
French original: "Paradoxal pacifisme"
(Pascal Bruckner, Le Monde, 2003/02/03)The world over, the partisans of a non-intervention in Iraq are ceaselessly growing in number and this is a good thing. Still, one fears that their determination is out of visceral hostility for Washington rather than an authentic taste for democracy.
Indeed, as many of them see it, any régime opposed by the United States receives ipso facto a seal of courage and virtue — as was the case for Milosevic's Serbia. Therefore, when, Le Monde diplomatique entitles special edition dedicated to the Gulf crisis as "The Empire against Iraq," its editors perhaps unwittingly transform this little country of 23 million inhabitants into symbol of resistance to the Yankee steam roller. An enemy of America can't be all bad, be it even covered in blood.
If the D-Day landings took place today, let's bet that uncle Adolf would enjoy the sympathies of countless humanists and far-Left radicals because Uncle Sam would be trying to crush him.
However, what rotten luck for a people to be massacred by a power other than America: its extermination occurs in general indifference (the Chechens, the Tibetans know something of this). The eternal paradox of pacifism: preferring to maintain a disarrayed tyranny in power rather than see its possible reversal, on the pretense of the best of intentions. In the present case: criminalizing George W. Bush, the better to exculpate the Iraqi head of State. There is, however, a very simple means of avoiding war: let Saddam abandon his post and leave in exile. This man who rules through terror with methods worthy of the greatest psychopaths of the 20th Century, this "secular" dictator, responsible for two bloody wars against Iran and Kuwait and who uses the embargo to starve his population, remains a danger to the Iraqi nation and to the region. Why not imagine a solemn UN resolution demanding his resignation in a matter of weeks, failing which he would face an armed confrontation?
As in 1991, it is on him alone that the outbreak of war remains.
Some advice to our pacifist friends for their next demonstrations: they should all demand the departure of Saddam Hussein, the wisest solution that will spare the most human lives.
Pascal Bruckner is a novelist.
[Posted 2003/02/09]
Copyright © Watch 2001-2006. Copyrights of quoted materials
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