HOORAY FOR NAT: Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff, one of the American left's most venerable and respected voices, a man who vociferously opposed the Vietnam War, who voted for and actively supported the campaign of Ralph Nader, who has written almost every week for the past year that Bush and Ashcroft are making America into a fascist police state, and who is known as one of the media's leading civil libertarians, has come out in support of the war in Iraq. Hentoff believes that Saddam's long record of torture and repression is so vile that he can't justify protesting his removal. Interestingly, Hentoff's column is not included in the sidebar of six pieces on the Voice's front page called "Another Bush, Another War."
Unlike most on the American far left, when Hentoff says he believes in free speech he means it for everybody: he may despise Bush just as much as his colleagues do, but he realizes that Saddam's the one who cuts out the tongues of political dissidents and forces men to watch their own wives being raped. Because really, a liberal case for war in Iraq can very easily be made; too bad Hentoff's one of the only major voices in America who seems to be making it.