Tony Judt starts out sensibly in a New York Times editorial explaining why a number of liberals supported the war in Iraq, but as he gathers steam he proceeds to run himself right off the rails.
Consider the following puzzling paragraph:
Those of us who pressed for American-led military action in Bosnia and Kosovo did so for several reasons: because of the refusal of others (the European Union and United Nations) to engage effectively; because there was a demonstrable and immediate threat to rights and lives; and because it was clear we could be effective in this way and in no other. None of these considerations applied in Iraq, which is why I and many others opposed the war.
This is very strange. Mr. Judt believes that there was adequate justification for getting militarily involved in Kosova and Bosnia in the '90s but that those same justifications did not obtain in Iraq. How does he come to such an odd conclusion?
Surely he remembers that it was the failure of much of the rest of the world to do anything serious about Saddam that caused Mr. Bush to feel compelled to take action himself. Surely, he is aware of the murders and tortures which the Saddam regime was engaged in right up to the invasion. He cannot be unaware of the mass graves of tens of thousands of corpses that our troops uncovered in Iraq. Surely, too, he is aware of the twelve year diplomatic process the U.S. pushed in the U.N. that resulted in resolution after resolution, each one of which was used by Saddam merely to light his cigars.
It seems that Mr. Judt is either living in a state of self-delusion or he believes that by simply asserting something as though it were fact, his readers will accept it as the truth. In any case it's hard to imagine anyone giving credence to his reasoning.
RLC