It is right to deal with and confront the horrific human rights abuses in Iraq, but we can either be pragmatic or we can base our perspective on morality. If we take the latter course, the only acceptable morality is one we attempt, within reason, to apply universally. I watched the western world tolerate brutality in East Timor for the best part of 30 years. That brutality was initiated with, at the very least, the complicity, if not the active engagement, of most of the western powers. I read about the negation of democratic revolution in Guatemala, I watched the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Chile and I saw the destruction of the most exciting experiment in social justice and democracy in Nicaragua in the 1980s.