Earlier today I was reading an article about a clash between people who support the war in Iraq and people who don't. The two sides were labelled "anti-war" and "pro-troops".
It seems sort of unfair to define one group by a negative and the other by a positive. It's like there's a subtle level of editorialising going on. I've always appreciated the fact that, in the abortion debate, the two sides are generally referred to as "pro-life" and "pro-choice". Both sides are defined by a positive, by what they have to bring to the debate. As the culture wars have heated up over the last few years, I've occasionally noticed references to "pro-choice" and "anti-choice", but such ratbaggery has been rare. In discussing the debate, most people have realised that both sides have something positive to say, even if they don't agree that the other side trumps theirs.
Wouldn't it be nice if the sides in the issue of support for the Iraq war could be so civilised?
It'd also be nice if biscotti rained from the sky, and about as likely. For a start, it's hard to determine exactly what an anti-war person is protesting. The initial invasion? The continuing actions of troops? The fact that George W Bush continues to live and breathe? And if we try to switch anti-war to pro-something, it's near impossible to determine what they want. Pro-peace? Everyone wants peace; they just don't agree about how to get it. Pro-diplomacy? With Saddam Hussein? That's a difficult one to morally defend. Pro-containment? Irrelevant now that Saddam has gone, and slightly, well, reprehensible. Pro-sovereignty? It's probably the best one I've come up with, but one must question whether it's acceptable to let a people suffer under a tyrant merely in the name of self-determination. The opposite side would presumably be pro-intervention.
It's easier to claim the moral high ground when you're anti-war than when you're pro-sovereignty. Pro-sovereignty sounds like a position taken by a dry bureaucrat in a comfortable UN office in Geneva. Anti-war is passionate, if not particularly coherent. It's much easier, and more satisfying, to scream NO WAR and NO BUSH and NO BLOOD FOR OIL rather than to put forward some different solution to the problem.
Pro-choice, pro-life. Pro-sovereignty, pro-intervention. Such titles may not give you the same little thrill of self-righteousness, or the same confident sense of untrammeled, black-hearted evil in your opposition, but they're fair, and perhaps uncomfortably indicative.
It seems sort of unfair to define one group by a negative and the other by a positive. It's like there's a subtle level of editorialising going on. I've always appreciated the fact that, in the abortion debate, the two sides are generally referred to as "pro-life" and "pro-choice". Both sides are defined by a positive, by what they have to bring to the debate. As the culture wars have heated up over the last few years, I've occasionally noticed references to "pro-choice" and "anti-choice", but such ratbaggery has been rare. In discussing the debate, most people have realised that both sides have something positive to say, even if they don't agree that the other side trumps theirs.
Wouldn't it be nice if the sides in the issue of support for the Iraq war could be so civilised?
It'd also be nice if biscotti rained from the sky, and about as likely. For a start, it's hard to determine exactly what an anti-war person is protesting. The initial invasion? The continuing actions of troops? The fact that George W Bush continues to live and breathe? And if we try to switch anti-war to pro-something, it's near impossible to determine what they want. Pro-peace? Everyone wants peace; they just don't agree about how to get it. Pro-diplomacy? With Saddam Hussein? That's a difficult one to morally defend. Pro-containment? Irrelevant now that Saddam has gone, and slightly, well, reprehensible. Pro-sovereignty? It's probably the best one I've come up with, but one must question whether it's acceptable to let a people suffer under a tyrant merely in the name of self-determination. The opposite side would presumably be pro-intervention.
It's easier to claim the moral high ground when you're anti-war than when you're pro-sovereignty. Pro-sovereignty sounds like a position taken by a dry bureaucrat in a comfortable UN office in Geneva. Anti-war is passionate, if not particularly coherent. It's much easier, and more satisfying, to scream NO WAR and NO BUSH and NO BLOOD FOR OIL rather than to put forward some different solution to the problem.
Pro-choice, pro-life. Pro-sovereignty, pro-intervention. Such titles may not give you the same little thrill of self-righteousness, or the same confident sense of untrammeled, black-hearted evil in your opposition, but they're fair, and perhaps uncomfortably indicative.
