[casi] What is to be done?

["Diarmuid" <diarmuidfogarty@DELETETHISonetel.net.uk>]

Yasser asks what he is to do. My answer, for what little it is worth, is to
do what your conscience dictates. If you have come to the conclusion that
bombing your country with nuclear weapons, killing perhaps hundreds of
thousands of your fellow citizens, seizing your country's oil and imposing
restrictions on its economy so that it will remain indebted for the
forseeable future and relegating it to a truly Third World position is
better than the torment that the Iraqi people have to survive these days,
then that is your decision and, ultimately, you have to justify it to nobody
other than yourself.

In the meantime, it is worth pondering on how unexpected most revolutions
have been in history. I, for one, would be dubious of any political party
who was to say 'We can't do anything for the next thirty years'. Your choice
isn't merely between the abstract of a puppet government and the evil of the
dictatorship. It is between the current terror of the dictatorship (which,
if it is to be believed that has Saddam at the centre, can only be expected
to last as long as he does) or a long lasting slavery with thousands more
dead within the next few months and ecological disaster that could result in
death and illness for the next few decades. I truly believe that that choice
should reside with the people who are going to have to pay the price, the
Iraqi people who live in Iraq. At the moment, it would appear that those who
are agonising over the sacrifices others are going to have to make are
forgetting this in their hope of bringing about an end to the dictator.


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