Moe Time

Perspective

Thanks to Vodkapundit, I just got a whole lot of it.

Stephen Green, thank you.

A blog really does not do justice to what is going on out there. As Gandhi said, here, we make speeches for each other. We argue on our blogs, and we wonder about the morality of covering the Abu Ghraib story. We sit and watch Arab leaders talk about morality, and we nod sagely. We listen to France and Germany talk about the immorality of occupation, and we rub our chins, and concede a point.

Saddam's brutality makes every discussion of the morality of the Iraq war a farce, a grotesque little play that we put on in order to give the appearance of respectability to all the players, as though every viewpoint on the issue is valid. It is the ultimate distillation of moral relativism, and a single viewing of this video puts it to rest.

What I saw tonight, on a small grainy video, was true evil. Evil that worms itself into everyday prison activities, evil that becomes so routine that it is banal, inconsequential. Evil that becomes someone's job, something they get up in the morning and put on a uniform to do. Evil that finally dehumanises and cheapens life until the perpetrators of this evil listlessly chant slogans before slicing of someone's fingers and helping him away.

And they do this in broad daylight. They do it in front of groups and they do it in front of children, who crane their necks to see what happens when a blindfolded man's tongue is cut off.

Any argument that I may have had against the war seems weak and inconsequential against the images of that video. They drive away all questions of President Bush's motivations and lay bare this truth - that no matter what the reason, whether it is oil, filial obligation or world domination, it pales before the moral necessity of removing this regime from power.

How could any people, in good conscience, defend this regime? France wanted to keep these people in power? A nation that recoils from our Texas-bred good ol' boy President is able to countenance these barbarities? Germany does not feel the crushing weight of history commanding it to forever oppose all tyranny no matter where it occurs?

People are complaining that the power is still fitful, or the plumbing doesn't work? They are against the invasion because we allowed museums to be desecrated? They say that the occupation should end because the Iraqi infrastructure is still down? Have they no sense of scale?

I know that there will be voices tomorrow, whispering that the video is fabricated - why is that man wearing orange, or why is the man with the sword clean-shaven? They will look for errors in the translation, or suggest that maybe the video was shot after the invasion. I have no time for these people. They are no friends of ours, and they are no friends of the Iraqis. The longer we continue to entertain them, as we continue to entertain moral relativists and cultural apologists, the more we waste our time.

There are some things in the world that just need to be stopped. There is much misery in the world, and much tyranny. For whatever reason, we have chosen to take on this tyrant. No matter what our motivations, this is a good thing. People may question our motivations, but the moment that they say that we should not have done this, they have lost me. For in doing so, they are saying that it is better that such videos as this continue to be made than that they be stopped for something so banal as to merit an argument on a blog.

Posted by moe at June 18, 2004 12:35 AM