Posted by Dan Ewert : 7/28/2004 12:36:00 AM (Archive Link)
Bloodsport 4: Moore vs. O'Reilly

I caught The O'Reilly Factory tonight because I wanted to see O'Reilly and Michael Moore go at it. It was like a clash of the opinion media titans. I was waiting for the Kraken to rise up behind them in the Fleet Center.

What's interesting is that I first read the transcript of it on Drudge, and I thought that based upon that, Moore (unfortunately) got the better of O'Reilly. When I actually watched it, though, I thought O'Reilly had the upper hand or at the very least, broke even. I think O'Reilly definitely could've hammered a few points a little more. His best one was asking Moore whether it would have been the right thing to preemptively attack Hitler before he solidified power and became a threat. Moore had no good answer on that one.

The other point O'Reilly could've pressed more concerned Moore's contention that Saddam could be out of power right now had we not gone to war; there’s no way to know. After all, he said, people in Eastern Europe rose up, so the Iraqis could have done that. This is truly ridiculous. Those people in Europe rose up on several occasions but were always violently put down by Soviet forces. They ultimately succeeded because of the economic, social, and moral pressures that Reagan put on the USSR. Because of these pressures, Gorbochev opted not to quell the rebellions with Red Army tanks. This same dynamic wasn’t happening in Iraq and it wasn’t going to. Saddam’s police state machinery was in excellent working order and was not going to allow any revolt. Because of UN Oil for Food corruption, he also had plenty of money to wallpaper his closets. Nor was the populace especially disposed to revolt since its last great attempt was mercilessly quashed by Hussein after Gulf War I. This was when the U.S. sold out the rebels and let them be overrun and gunned down by relatively meager (compared to us) Iraqi forces and is, in my opinion, one of the most disgraceful things we’ve done. So, no, no revolt was forthcoming in Iraq. Were it not for us, Saddam would be sitting in a palace right now saying, “Death to America,” while watching his Greatest Execution and Torture Hits video on TV.

Now, the secondary point to the above comparison is that we would have militarily intervened in Eastern Europe a long time ago had it not been for the nuclear scenario. The only thing that prevented a conventional war solution to Soviet totalitarianism was the fact that they had the bomb. Because of this unfortunate standoff, Eastern Europe suffered some 45 years of oppression. That’s hardly positive. In the case of Iraq, they suffered for almost 30 years under Saddam and we were able to take him out conventionally. I think that’s a little better than 45 years. I guess Moore thinks we should have waited at least another 15 years to see what the people would do. He also said that are lots of other dictators out there, so why aren’t we going after them? It would be nice, but we have to wait until foreign policy and economic objectives align with the moral ones before we can undertake such actions. And besides, isn’t at least one less dictator in the world a good thing?

Moore's big talking point was asking O'Reilly if he would send his child to defend Fallujah. I've always thought this was absurd. My response would be that that has to be answered two different ways. The first is as a parent. I currently have no offspring, but if I did, I would, as a parent, answer this by saying that it doesn’t matter what I think. My son or daughter, if they’re of legal age to join the military, are able to make that decision on their own. It’s not for me to make it for them. It’s their responsibility and their decision to put their life on the line for their country, not mine, and I wouldn’t dare make it for them. Now, as a president, my response would be yes, I would be willing to sacrifice them. They made the decision to join the military and my capacity as commander in chief cannot be clouded by my relation to them. History is littered with leaders and commanders sending their children and relatives into harm’s way because that is what had to done.