First of all, he's a bigot. Please click
here.
For the piece by Pipes originally published in the
New York Sun, to which Mr. Cogan makes reference, please click
here.
No one can accuse Dr. Pipes of believing in universal human rights or in democracy. Muslims have their own ideas of what benefits them, and until they learn that it doesn't matter what they think is best for them and agree to support US interests over their own, they should not have democracy.
The right to self government is not a gift to be bestowed by neoconservatives on the brown masses of the developing world. It is an inalienable right. While I share Dr. Pipes' contempt of Hamas and his alarm at their electoral victory earlier this year, I will not question the right of the Palestinian people to choose them. Unfortunately, unlike the votes in Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004, the Palestinian election appears to have been free and fair.
Indeed, my contempt for Hamas is rooted in the same beliefs that give rise to my contempt for Dr. Pipes. Theirs is the kind of thinking that gives rise to evils like slavery, imperialism and fascism. Dr. Pipes, like Hamas, believes that some people are better than others and have a natural or divine right to rule over them. The only way in which they differ is in their belief as who are the elect or chosen people or elite or blue bloods whatever we're calling them this week; the leaders of Hamas believe that devout Muslims are the elite, while Dr. Pipes seems to think its supposedly civilized westerners. The leaders of Hamas would expel six and a half million Jews from the Middle East with no concern for the humanitarian crisis such a move would cause. Dr. Pipes can dismiss the suffering of the Iraqi people as no concern and even a potential benefit to humanity:
(W)hen Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice-versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt.I also share with Dr. Pipes a contempt of Saddam Hussein. However, again, I believe my contempt for Saddam is rooted in an entirely different set of values than that of Dr. Pipes. To me, Saddam was a bloody tyrant who bestowed favors on a part of the population, oppressed other parts even with murder and terror, killed whom he pleased, raped whom he pleased, and used Iraq's treasury as his personal bank account. He was a tyrant and a bloodthirsty fascist. He richly deserved to be overthrown and hung from a lamp post.
However, if Dr. Pipes does not believe that fixing Iraq is the west's responsibility, then why does he believe that overthrowing Saddam was the west's responsibility?
When Washington and its allies toppled the hideous regime of Saddam Hussein, which endangered the outside world by beginning two wars of expansion, by building a WMD arsenal, and by aspiring to control the trade in oil and gas, they bestowed a historic benefit on Iraqis, a population that had been wantonly oppressed by the Stalinist dictator.
Here, Dr. Pipes is being disingenuous. He knows as well as anybody that Saddam fought the first of those two wars with the encouragement of the United States, which supplied him with the materials to make the WMD arsenal which Saddam, in turn, used against his own population as well as against the Iranians. And, just like any cheap Bushbot, Dr. Pipes leaves out the fact that Saddam had disarmed after the 1991 war, making him no threat to either the west or his weakest neighbor. He was a creation of the United States government, which looked the other way at his most heinous crimes, including the gas attack at Halabjah, as long as he did its bidding.
If the Iraqi people aren't important to Dr. Pipes, why should we believe that Saddam's downfall is "a glory of American foreign policy" and "a personal achievement for President Bush." It is obvious that Dr. Pipes doesn't believe that invading Iraq and ousting Saddam was done for the benefit of the Iraqi people any more than I do. It was done for the benefit of elite western interests, those at the top of the hierarchy whom Dr. Pipes and other deluded Straussians believe to be best suited to govern the world, by force and deception if necessary.
Today, Iraq is in very sorry shape. With coalition forces in the country, the population has been subjected to terror (bombing Fallujah) and torture (in Saddam's old torture chamber, Abu Ghraib prison, no less) in order to get the Iraqis to submit to US rule, the crowning achievement of which seems to be that moment when the US administrator, Paul Bremer, decreed changed in Iraq's foreign investment laws for the benefit of Mr. Bush's corporate cronies. So the coalition forces, under the ultimate command of Bush, are oppressing the population with murder and terror, killing whom they please, raping whom they please and using Iraq's resources to fatten somebody else's bank account.
Personal achievement? Bush is another bloodthirsty tyrant that the Iraqi people would do well to rid themselves. Dr. Pipes is nothing more than an apologist for Bush and his crimes.
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