Speaking on Meet The Press this morning, Howard Dean bore witness to his moral blindness. In lashing out against the war that liberated Iraq, Dean characterized Saddam Hussein as, "...a pathetic old man who we'd been containing for 12 years by overflights". Dean added, "We had sanctions on him that were paralyzing him."
What Dean failed to explain is how a supposedly pathetic old man, contained by overflights and paralyzed by sanctions, could be responsible for what Human Rights Watch characterized in a 2002 policy paper as, "... a vast number of crimes that constitute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity." Human Rights Watch continued, "The victims of such crimes include up to 290,000 persons who have been 'disappeared' since the late 1970s, many of whom are believed to have been killed."
If Saddam Hussein seems pathetic in photographs that emerged from his capture, it is because President Bush led the liberation of Iraq that forced Hussein to hide in "spider holes" for months on end. The moral vision of Bush makes possible the moral blindness of Dean, John Kerry (the candidate for whom Dean was campaigning on Meet the Press) and the Democrat party.
Dean also failed to explain how Uday and Qusay, the sadistic sons of Saddam Hussein and the presumed heirs to his reign of terror, fit into his theory of a pathetic and paralyzed Iraq from which we had no worries.
Dean's remarks reveal an ignorance of international affairs and a callousness toward the hundreds of thousands who have died at the hands of a mass murderer. Needless to say, were either Dean or Kerry occupant of the White House at the time of the World Trade Center attack, Hussein would still be in the business of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity and no one would be calling him pathetic, old or paralyzed.
Dean's mouth lost him the Democrat party nomination, it now ends his hope of being seen as a serious person.
Posted by publius at March 14, 2004 05:45 PM