BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
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See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Savage war. Dan Savage, the
editor of Seattle's The Stranger and a noted sex columnist,
caused a stir earlier this year when he came out in favor of the war
in Iraq. He hasn't changed his mind, but this week he
offers
some regrets:
I regret that the
president of the United States is a lying sack of shit. And I
regret the first piece I wrote about Iraq. I was taken in by the
Bushies' attempts to link Saddam and Osama, and conflate Baathism
with Islamo-fascism, and the first piece I wrote is so credulous
that I can't read it without cringing. I put too much stock in
Condoleezza and her mushroom clouds, Colin and his mobile weapons
labs, and Cheney and his alternate reality.
Savage hangs his hat on Christopher
Hitchens's coat hook, arguing that the United States had a
responsibility to remove Saddam Hussein's lunatic homicidal regime,
especially since we had so much to do with propping him up over the
years. It's an eminently respectable argument, even if I don't agree
with it.
Unfortunately, Savage goes insane
at the end. Here is his last paragraph:
Saddam Hussein was our man
in Baghdad for years, our creation, our problem. And that it's
costing American lives and money to remove Saddam Hussein from
power is, in a sense, only right.
Money? Okay, fine. But
lives? Is Savage serious? Is he really sitting up there in the
Pacific Northwest, somehow satisfied or even pleased that American
soldiers are making the moral equation even by doing us the favor of
getting killed in a war that Savage himself doesn't have to fight?
This is repulsive.
Remedial reading for Savage:
today's New York Times front-pager
on Army Sergeant Jeremy Feldbusch, who, while serving in Iraq, was
hit by a piece of shrapnel that blinded him and damaged a part of his
brain that controls emotions.
Savage may believe it's "only
right" that Feldbusch's life has been ruined, and that Donald
Rumsfeld's long-ago handshake with Saddam has thus been somehow
negated. What Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman really shows
us, though, is the true horror of war - and why it is a moral
obscenity that the Bush White House lied about weapons of mass
destruction.
Savage should stick to what he's
good at. Like licking
doorknobs.
The Dissector's year in
review. Danny Schechter, the executive editor of Mediachannel.org,
blogs some of the lowlights of 2003 here.
And check out his new personal website, Dissectorville.
posted at 11:06 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
