Tough Questions

The news that Saddam Hussein had been taken ripped me in two.

I never expected that Hussein would be captured alive, just as I’d still be shocked if Osama bin Laden were ever taken prisoner. So my first response to his capture was a feeling of surprise, followed by something akin to pleasure: Victory was ours -- and the "us" in this case is huge. Here was a win not just for Americans or even for Iraqis. The removal of any genocidal monster is a triumph for all of humanity. But this sense of triumph has been smothered by my despair about what could happen next in American and world politics.

Now that Saddam is in American hands, those like me who opposed war in Iraq face two assertions bordering on fact that are difficult to square with our politics.

The first is that if we had not gone to war and had pursued a more peaceful policy of containing Saddam Hussein instead of removing him, he would still be in power.

The second is that the Iraqi people are better off now than before the war and that the world as a whole is a safer place.

Fact is, if we want to take back this nation from the corporate warlords and religious extremists now running the show, we're going to have to answer those two assertions. For if they are not answered, this victory for humanity will lead to certain defeat for American progressives at the polls -- next year and perhaps beyond.

Would Saddam still be in power today without war? It's likely given the way the Bush administration has neither the will nor skill to remove tyrants through peaceful international policies.

War is a blunt instrument with which to fashion foreign policy and yet it seems to be only one in the Bush administration's toolbox. The problem is that wars create as much hate as they quell.

Which leads me to the second point. Are Iraq -- and the world -- a better and safer place? Possibly, but probably not for long. The wounds that America inflicted on that nation -- by first supporting and then destroying Saddam -- will hardly disappear now that he's in our hands.

The Iraqi people may be rejoicing now but I doubt they have any more love for us than before, given America's past role in bringing this scourge to power.

President Bush, in his post-capture press conference, previewed his re-election strategy with this question: Is this country more secure today than it was just after 9/11?

The answer, on the whole, is no. For all the good that has come in the removal of Saddam Hussein, the warlike ways of the Bush administration are making our country and the world a less safe place, day by day.

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