Adam Michnik, a leading force in the Solidarity trade union movement, and the founder and editor of the largest Polish daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, was an outspoken supporter of the war in Iraq, along with Vaclav Havel and other leaders of the Polish Liberation movement. In this interview, which occurred in Warsaw on January 15, 2004, Michnik clarifies his position on the war and discusses the responses of other European intellectuals. The interviewer is Dissent Magazine’s Thomas Cushman.
Thomas Cushman: In your writing you often criticize utopian politics. It seems that George W. Bush’s vision (or that of his neoconservative advisers) is a utopian vision: destroying totalitarianism and instituting democracy. A large part of the reaction against Bush seems to be focused on his revival of some kind of American messianism. How do you reconcile your criticism of utopian thinking with support of this seeming American utopianism?
Adam Michnik: Bush has a utopian ideology . . . maybe not Bush, but maybe his circle. Perhaps I’m being na?ve, but I don’t think it is utopian to want to install democratic rule in Iraq. If it won’t be an ideal democracy, let it be a crippled democracy, but let it not be a totalitarian dictatorship. I don’t like many things in today’s Russia, but we have to say that there is a difference between Putin and Stalin. In my opinion, the religious visions of Bush’s circle are anachronistic. I can’t believe that John Ashcroft has personal conversations with God every day, who tells him what to do. But if God told him that he should destroy Saddam, then this was the right advice, because a world without Saddam Hussein is better than a world with Saddam Hussein.
Even God gets it right sometimes.