Leslie Su Cheng

"Moral callousness" is used to describe the view expressed by Mr. Chien in his article, not directed to the person. I do not know Mr. Chien personally and would never want to make any judgment on his personality. Whether he is a moral person or not is beside the point. That is not what I am interested in or what I want to discuss.

The basic premise of Mr. Chien's comments is that my article is nothing but a campaign effort for Kerry, even though we all knew beforehand that by the time my article got published the election would be over. Following this logic, he then assumes that I, being a loyal follower of Kerry, was arguing everything along Kerry's line, even though Kerry's name did not even appear once in my article. Just like Mr. Howard Young who flung the label of "far left elite" upon me to discredit my opinion, Mr. Henry Chien also has to first frame me as a "Kerry's loyal follower" to diminish the seriousness of my argument. No wonder both Mr. Young and Mr. Chien have taken my criticism on political thinking as intolerant personal attack because they themselves have the need to always classify a person into a labeled group in order to make generalized judgment on that person or that person's point of view.

Based on his false assumption that anyone challenging his view is only capable of partisan thinking and is nothing more than a mouthpiece for Kerry campaign, Mr. Chien went on to argue against every bit of Kerry's views on the Iraq war as if they were the ones I have articulated in my original article. It almost looks as if Mr. Chien simply could not believe that anyone, other than motivated by the election, would actually criticize his morally dubious reasoning out of genuine disgust, independent of the election or partisan politics.

There are differences between my personal views on the war and those of Kerry's. But that is irrelevant here. Suffice it to say that it is really unnecessary for Mr. Chien to bring in all the party politics and campaign debates to divert what has been the focus of my criticism – the moral indifference implied in his argument on the brilliance of using another country as a bait to distract the enemy's threat upon us. My criticism was focused and clear. I did not talk about the election or Kerry's views and I was not speaking as a "Kerry's loyal follower". Instead of answering directly to my criticism, Mr. Chien brought in the mire of campaign politics to muddle up the core of the discussion.

In addition, I have never proposed that our troop be withdrawn from Iraq ASAP. That is another automatic assumption made by Mr. Chien (i.e. anyone against war must want the immediate withdraw). On the contrary, I feel strongly that we have to win peace in Iraq. To withdraw now and to leave the chaotic mess to the Iraqi people is almost as immoral as to invade the country in the first place. We have the moral responsibility to restore order for the Iraqi people whom we have greatly wronged and whose world we have turned upside down. But my pessimistic view and the behavioral pattern of Bush administration lead me to believe that, in the end, it is more likely that President Bush, sensing the war not winnable, will pull out of Iraq and declare victory to save face, leaving a huge mess behind (he has prematurely declared victory before anyway). Reflecting on Vietnam War as a shockingly similar precedent, I am hoping against hope that we will be able to deliver a better ending this time around. But the necessity to finish the war does not preclude us from making the judgment that it is a wrong war. The mistake to launch the war has now forced us to face the impossible moral dilemma of having to win "victory" over a wrong and unjust war.

Now to Mr. Howard Young's comments on my article. Same as I have said above, "twisted", "distorted", "repulsive", and "pathetic", words listed by Mr. Young as evidences of my intolerance and my intent to belittle the other author, were all used to describe views expressed in Mr. Henry Chien's article, not directed to the person. If Mr. Howard Young believes he is qualified to lecture the reader on the virtue of tolerance, why then does he have problem tolerating my strong emotion about a moral issue, my severe judgment on an amoral proposition made by Mr. Chien, or my singular choice of words as an author, as different from Mr. Chien's, to express my view? Why does he think that opinions expressed in stronger terms are not free expression of ideas, but a demonstration of intolerance? And why can't he, being a self-appointed lecturer on tolerance, resist the temptation to lump together people who choose to express opinions with different level of intensity as "far left elite", and, in the process of labeling, discredit a group of people for their different views?

Language bestows us with words to express our emotions and opinions. When we see something outrageous, we cannot call it anything other than outrageous. In the engagement of debate, no one can be belittled by anyone else. The gift from language and the right to free speech always guarantee a person who feels belittled the chance to counter with grander view or vision. A person can only allow himself/herself to be belittled, or in some sense belittle himself/herself, by crying victim of personal attack, flinging labels at the critic, picking on the critic's wording, or whispering censorship in the name of tolerance.

The statements about WMD cited by Mr. Young are all accurate but he had conveniently omitted the most recent and most objective reports on WMD. He had also skipped the 9/11 Commission's report which has discredited the group-think of intelligence operation and indicted this administration for its negligence (implicating Clinton does not exonerate Bush, the presiding president, for making the wrong judgment). It takes a lot for a country to launch an unprovoked invasion on another country, none of Bush's series of excuses, WMD being only one of them, even comes close to fulfill that tremendous burden of explanation.