The danger of this “Lettitor” page is that it can
quickly descend into self-indulgent tripe if you’re
not careful. But I haven’t been editor for very
long, so I can still get away with it. The trick is
to just frame your self-indulgent ramblings as an
“introduction.”

I’ve read enough of the OP archives to know
I am probably the first openly right-wing editor
in the paper’s history. There was a time when my
kind wouldn’t even be welcome in the office, but
thankfully the student movement has shed most of
their radicalism in recent years. At the very least
they now tolerate dissenting voices within their
midst.

My writing career in this paper began in 2003,
when I was summoned up to offer some “balance”
for the endless stream of leftist ramblings that
filled the pages of this publication in the lead up to
the second Gulf War. And I obliged, beginning a
column entitled “Right Hook” that would last for
many years to come.

At the time, I was super in favour of the war.
I’m still more or less in favour today —I certainly
don’t want an immediate pullout or anything

like that— but like all sane conservatives, my
expectations for what this war can accomplish have
receded quite a bit. Turning Iraq into a “model
democracy” now seems a bit far-fetched; at best we
can now hope the country is merely governable and
reasonably unoppressive.

The problem with the Iraq war, as I now see
with the benefit of hindsight, is that the original
motivation behind it was far too naive. Liberal,
even.

The multi-culturalist left has long argued
that all cultures and peoples of the world are
basically morally equal, declaring that countries
only embrace dictatorship or terrorism when such
forces are unjustly imposed on them by some
unlawful, unwanted (and usually foreign) party. A
just American foreign policy was thus said to be
one that championed liberation, and sought to free
oppressed people from their illegitimate tyrants and
blackmailers, allowing them to return to the true,
peaceful nature of their unmolested culture. This,
and not coddling or appeasing dictators in the name
of “stability,” was the true path to world peace.

That was the logic of the right-wing case for the

Iraq war, and the left-wing case too, from the few
liberals who big enough to support Bush in the
name of a larger cause. Free the Iragi people and
the rest will follow. The realities of post-Saddam
Traq have obviously called into question this
simple narrative, however. It now seems that the
Middle East has larger problems than just dictators
and terrorists, the latter being symptoms, rather
than causes of the region’s troubles. Ancient hang-
ups about religion and tribalism that the so-called
ultra-secular, educated Iraq people were supposed
to so easily transcend have instead proven to be

 

_ their lead priorities certainly much more than

solidifying a democratic state. Openly questioning
Islam’s compatibility with western-style freedoms,
science, and progress has thus become a much
more mainstream (and depressing) topic of
conversation in the US and elsewhere, as the
world loses patience with a “simple goal” conflict
that has now dragged on longer than the Second
World War.

Amid all this it’s interesting to observe how
the worse Iraq goes, the farther the left turns
from its support of a liberationist foreign policy,
and towards pessimistic realism. Conservatives
like Bush now scold those who dare question
the Iraqis’ “capability” for democracy, while
the left responds with ultra-pragmatic lines that
invariability begin with “Saddam was a bad guy,
but compared to this...”

When Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize
last week, a friend of mine wondered aloud at
how different our political world would be had
Gore actually won the presidency seven years
ago. Instead of globally-beloved environmental
crusader, Mr. Gore might’ be the much-hated leader
of an ill-fated war in Iraq; a war I am quite certain
he would have launched just as eagerly as Bush,
despite his denials. Perhaps the raving Ron Paul
would not be on the kook fringe of the Republican
Party, but rather one of its most eloquent leaders,
making a strong isolationist case for opposing
“Gore’s war” just as Democrats do today for
Bush’s. The GOP might find itself in the place of
the British Tories, trying to peel off the support
of leftist dissidents unnerved by “their party’s”
descent into imperialistic global meddling.

And maybe I'd be writing smugly, like I used
to, instead of defensively, like I am forced to
today. I guess it wouldn’t be ail bad.

J.J. McCullough,
Editor in Chief of the Other Press