I’ve been looking for a way into the Little Green Footballs v. Daily Kos issue, and it’s hard.
We’re dealing with pretty visceral emotional reactions at the same time that we’re trying to maintain some sense of moral clarity, and those are not easy things to do.
But I thought of something that happened this weekend, and it shed some light on the question, so I’ll open with a brief story.
TG took a motorcycle riding class held on a racetrack here in Southern California (I’ll be slightly evasive on exactly which one, where, so forgive me, but we’ve been to most of the big schools), and I was her pit crew (and I’m not bitter about not getting to ride, no I’m not at all bitter…). This involved hanging out, reading two good books, intermittent flurries of activity on her behalf, worrying a lot (there’s an interesting post on that), and chatting with folks, as I tend to do.One guy I chatted with was the father of an AMA professional road racer who has recently retired, whose son – a 15-year old – was interested in following in his father’s footsteps. The boy had a successful career in other kinds of motorcycle racing, and was ready to start roadracing, and so was at the class polishing his skills (he was, thank God, in a more advanced group than TG was). The grandfather was an unbelievably neat guy; he called me on my anxiety when TG was out on the track, and got me to sit back and relax and enjoy myself, and we chatted about racing and kids and marriage and life for much of the day.
At the end of the day. when we’d packed the bikes onto the trailer and were headed home, I stopped by his motor home and said goodbye, and wished him and his grandson success. I complimented him grandson, pointing out that he was amazingly polite, helpful, and just overall a good kid.
“Yeah, he is,” the grand-dad said proudly. Then his face changed, and he added, “but I worry that he’s too nice to succeed as a racer, and that’s something he really wants to do.”
Too nice to succeed. An interesting thought. But it makes sense to us; you automatically understand what it means, and it helps me put a frame around the questions that I’ve been wrestling with for the last few days.
Looking at the discussion we’re having – the criticism I leveled at Kos, and the responses from commenters here, Nathan Newman and others – it seems like we’re really talking about three things.
First, why is it OK for us to be cruel, and not OK for them?
Next, what is the place of anger in conflict?
Finally, is it legitimate for us to be angry at the Arab world or elements of the Arab world?
This is turning out to be longer and messier than I’d intended, and I don’t have time to do as good a job of editing as I’d like, so let me just jump into the first question today, and follow up with the others tomorrow.
Nathan Newman challenged those who criticized Kos by posting a graphic image of a dead child and asking why that child’s death didn’t spur the same level of outrage as the deaths of the American civilian guards, and by extension, why the deaths of Iraqi civilians in the crossfire in Falluja last week didn’t outrage us.
The answer to Nathan’s question is, in no small part, that we’re not that nice. We don’t value all lives lost the same way; we value ours more than theirs, those murdered more than those killed in accidents, and so on.
And the reality is that it’s impossible to value all lives equally.
If we did, we could never go to war. Some people might think that’s a good thing; but there are other people in the world who aren’t that nice, and they would then win; they would force us to do their will and we’d be back where we started. I believe that; others disagree; they see our not-niceness as the cause of the conflicts, not a defense against them, and in large part, that defines the boundary between the two sides in the conflict over this war.
But it’s not only war. If we valued all lives, no one would smoke, or drink, or engage in risky sports, or eat anything except tofu and lentils.
Every decision we make kills someone. Every dollar we spend is a dollar that doesn’t save a starving child, everything we buy leaves a trail of pollution, exploitation and death behind.
My father built high-rise buildings. He probably lost a worker on every third or fourth project; he was devastated when it happened. We would go to the funerals. But it isn’t possible to build buildings like that without risk.
I ride motorcycles; in my circle of fifty or so riding acquaintances, we’ve had 4 deaths in six years.
My oldest son wants to join the military and fly jet fighters. In reality, flying them is riskier than fighting in them.
I value TG more than myself; I know that I would die to protect her. And yet I sat by when she took her motorcycle out onto a racetrack and rode. I did that because there are some things more important than life itself; the freedom to express yourself and to act, for one.
So we do accept deaths as a consequence of what we do.
Making political decisions involves accepting deaths, too.
How much will we spend on emergency medical care versus home heating subsidies? How much will we spend on food stamps for the elderly versus prescription drugs? How much energy will we spend on creating jobs and how much on preserving the environment? Each decision means deaths; from disease or injury, from cold, from malnutrition (the elderly poor still suffer from that); from uncontrolled illness, from unemployment and descent into poverty, from illness caused by environmental conditions.
I’ve made a point of criticizing much of the modern left because of it’s desire for purity; for the belief that they can, somehow, stand apart from what Sartre called ‘the filth and the blood’ of living in the world. I said:
A long time ago, I talked about the moral importance of hunting… that I felt it somehow wrong for people to both eat meat that they buy in the store and yet somehow they deny their responsibility for the life that was taken for their consumption. For me, having hunted somehow solves this problem…I have taken the responsibility, I have had my hands up to the elbows in the bloody mess, and changed something from an animal to meat for my table.
But when I read much of what comes from the left, I’m left with the feeling that they want to consume the benefits that come from living in the U.S. and more generally the West without either doing the messy work involved or, more seriously, taking on the moral responsibility for the life they enjoy.
We enjoy this life because a number of things happened in the world’s (our) history. Many of them involved one group dominating (or brutalizing or exterminating) another, or specific actions (Dresden, Hiroshima) whose moral foundation is sketchy at best.
“Do you think one can govern innocently? Purity is a matter for monks, clerics, not for politicians. My hands are dirty to the elbows. I have shoved them in filth and blood,” Hoederer says in Sartre’s ‘Dirty Hands’.
Part of political adulthood is the maturity to realize that we are none of us innocents. The clothes we wear, money we have, jobs we go to are a result of a long, bloody and messy history.
I see my job as a liberal as making the future less bloody than the past.
But I accept the blood on my hands. I can’t enjoy the freedom and wealth of this society and somehow claim to be innocent. I don’t get to lecture people from a position of moral purity. No one spending U.S. dollars, or speaking with the freedom protected by U.S. laws gets to.
I want to make the future less bloody than the past; that may mean accepting my responsibility for the blood shed today.
That’s not a nice position to take.
But it doesn’t put me on a par with Islamists, and that matters.
It doesn’t for two reasons. First, because on a basic level, the world is divided into teams. One point I’ve also made in the past is the attachment of the modern left to cosmopolitan values, as opposed to patriotic ones.
On one level, that’s a good thing. Sharing the humanity of the rest of the world means something, and means something good. But as I’ve also talked about, there is a real value in patriotism, particularly the unique patriotism of America, which is based on shared values and not blood and soil.
Many on the left reject it, as Schaar pointed out:
Opponents of patriotism might agree that if the two could be separated then patriotism would look fairly attractive. But the opinion is widespread, almost atmospheric, that the separation is impossible, that with the triumph of the nation-state nation. Nationalism has indelibly stained patriotism: the two are warp and woof. The argument against patriotism goes on to say that, psychologically considered, patriot and nationalist are the same: both are characterized by exaggerated love for one’s own collectivity combined with more or less contempt and hostility toward outsiders. In addition, advanced political opinion holds that positive, new ideas and forces–e.g., internationalism, universalism; humanism, economic interdependence, socialist solidarity–are healthier bonds of unity, and more to be encouraged than the ties of patriotism. These are genuine objections, and they are held by many thoughtful people.
And those thoughtful people, by virtue of their attachment to the wider world, cannot take sides; they can’t view the tragedy of an American soldier’s death as deeply different than the tragedy of an Iraqi soldier’s death. They are one and the same; and so are paralyzed. They can’t make a decision because all deaths weigh the same.
They don’t weigh the same to me.
I value ours more than I do theirs; I value them most of all because they are fighting for me and the values which have created me and given me the life I enjoy. Yes, I value them because they are ‘like me’ as well, but the Pakistani troops who die fighting Al Quieda are, in the context of their own politics, fighting for me and my values as well. I don’t see the sides as morally equivalent, and even if I had opposed the invasion of Iraq – which I almost did – I wouldn’t see them as morally equivalent.
I feel for the deaths done to innocents; to children, woman, and men whose only wrong was to be in the wrong place in the wrong time. To me the enterprise of war is inherently tragic, and that tragedy is nowhere more represented than in these deaths.
But like the deaths we choose when we decide on healthcare policy – which are no less tragic for being less visible and shockingly photogenic – they are an inevitible consequence of the decisions we make. I’ve read a lot of history, some of which was military history, and I’ll point out that in all wars, from Attic Greece forward, innocents have suffered.
I’m proud of our military that they work so hard, and take such risks to minimize that suffering.
I’ll note here that there’s an interesting (if frighteningly depressing) theory that one reason why we will have so much trouble rebuilding Iraq is that we didn’t damage the civilian infrastructure enough, and that the civilians didn’t suffer enough. I’m a ways away from that position, but at some point, it’ll be something worth discussing.
But the reality is that there’s no way to pick apart what we want (and I think need) to accomplish and some quantity of suffering. Personally, I want to minimize the aggregate quantity of it.
But if there is a trade between ours and theirs, I’ll take theirs. Because I do believe that there is a ‘them’ and an ‘us’.
Next, the place of anger.
Dear A. L.:
I trod some of the same path as this post in my semi-response to a question that Andrew Lazarus asked me.
Here’s what I wrote:
First, I don’t think we operate in a world of perfect moral decisions. We live in a world suspended between the realms of the Platonic ideal and the real, limited by our imperfect knowledge. Our inability to make perfect moral decisions doesn’t make us less culpable it makes us more tragic.
Nearly every belief system incorporates this idea in one way or another. Christianity calls it “original sin”. Scientology calls it “the reactive mind”. Other systems call it fate or the work of evil spirits or something else.
I’m not comfortable with a U. S. government that engineered the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran or the Allende government in Chile along with many, many other misdeeds. But the question I ask is “Was it the best of the available options?” And frequently, but not always, the answer is yes.
I don’t know that I entirely agree with you about valuing one life over another. I rather think that we are trying to pick the best alternative of the real alternatives that we have and trying like hell to have it be an alternative that saves both American and Iraqi lives.
are characterized by exaggerated love for one’s own collectivity combined with more or less contempt and hostility toward outsiders.
**************************************************
Love of a group or a person is not equivalent to contempt or hostitlity towards others.
I am quite capable of loving my fiance without contempt or hostility towards Carmen Electra
for one example. 😉
Indeed the world is full of people, I do not love, but also do not feel contempt or hostility towards, I am indifferent maybe but not hostile.
Maybe these folks need to learn what Love really is?
Hi,
First thank you for your site and thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. I agree with many points you made, especially near the beginning of the essay, but since mine is only a comment and not a post, I will exercise freedom of speech to criticize….
I’m confused by your depiction of the left. To me there is a pragmatic, not merely idealistic, argument against the war. Where values are concerned, I feel far more on the left are/were concerned with the trail of lies that lead to Baghdad — somehow indicating a fault line in our political consciousness — more than the absolutist argument against war. To me, the latter are a fringe network, not mainstream politicians as embodied by many Democrats, such as Kerry, Clinton or Kennedy and even Daschle and Pelosi. The war resolution passed if you remember. And I don’t feel in his comments so far that Kerry lacks backbone. All of this leads me not to understand where you are coming from as concerns “the left.”
The second criticism I have concerns your judgment that if someone’s going to die, better a certain type of person that another type of person. It seems to me that this is consistent with what Kos explained in what is now termed an apology (though I don’t think he meant for it to absolve him of his stance). Not having his background, I can’t relate to what he used as justification for his outburst, but it seems to have the same structure as what you’re saying here.
Third, I disagree that patriotism delineates “us” versus “them” — I think that is nationalism, and what passes for patriotism in some other countries. Patriotism for us isn’t a singular notion — it’s an umbrella that covers many topics, including what Schaar discussed: universalism, internationalism, humanism, etc.). Our Constitution is emblematic of this, as is the Declaration of Independence. The founders couched the birth of our nation in universalist rhetoric. No question that the freedoms sanctified in them were born of a certain humanism either. So people who adhere to these concepts, on balance, are as patriotic as others who do so less. Ours is a diverse society which allows a variety of people with differing views across a wide patriotic spectrum, to a large degree. People are free precisely because they allow freedom in others. There’s no way you can stop such notions at national borders or arbitrary boundaries. It is perfectly thus natural that we should apply our worldview to other nations and cultures.
What does that mean? It is in the American character to value the life of children. I don’t believe it stops across national boundaries for most Americans, though it may for some. Some of us — more universalist than others — may not know what to do if they had to choose between the lives of an American child or that of another nationality. I don’t think that makes them any less patriotic. Privilege, I think, is fundamentally not a very commonly abided by concept for Americans. I think that’s what you, and Kos, were arguing here.
It is the trap of partisans, beware!
An intelligent, thoughtful post. I especially liked the hunting analogy. Thanks, A.L.
Kori –
I certainly agree tha there are pragmatic arguments against the war, and I wish to all get out that we’d be having debates around them; if you can start one, please jump right in.
I think you’re misinterpreting Schaar’s real point based on the snippet that I posted; he did (does, as I understand he’s still with us) believe in an American patriotism (and to a certain extent, American exceptionalism. It’s just that it’s not a matter of ancestry or geography, it’s a matter of values. It’s the Founding, the Constitution, the ideals, the process – those are the things that we owe allegiance to. And anyone can play. Anyone can come here and join in, and, in some ways, anyone can stay where they are and join in as well.
There is an us and a them; it’s just that from our side, the boundaries are fluid and permeable, and I take that to be a good thing.
A.L.
An excellent post AL. Very thought provoking. I believe Heinlein mentioned something about war being a form of controlled violence for political means.
Life is full of tough choices. Perhaps the hardest is choosing who will live, and who will die. There is no easy answer to that choice.
Very nice, A.L. One quick point, along your lines. The inconsistency between valuing ours more than theirs is only apparent. I’d save my son and let another man’s son die, if it came to that. But I’d have no objection to his doing exactly the same – saving his son and not mine – if he were in that situation.
Nor do our values demand that an Iraqi mother grieve over our fallen sons as much as she grieves over hers.
There is no inconsistency. People like Peter Singer have made a career out of assuming that there is.
Jim is right on target. More than that his attitude is probably hard-wired in, as it is a VERY good survival trait (genetically speaking).
I think we get into more problems in our belief that “The Other” is monolithic. This also seems to be hard-wired in, but it is LESS valuable because it denies us ways to separate the opponent in to groups some of whom agree with us more than with each other. As an example *This post* is a nice discussion from a Kurdish prospective on the west’s problems with Islam.
OT: I’m not comfortable with a U. S. government that engineered the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran or the Allende government in Chile–
Have you read any of those books or this posting:
The Allende Myth
Val e-dictions 7/21/03 posting???
Interesting read.
—
Wonderful, thoughtful post, AL.
I look at patriotism as somewhat analogous to being a fan of a particular sports team. Now, I take my love of America substantially more seriously than my love of, say, the Lakers, but I’m sure there are people with those priorities in closer competition. 🙂
Do I expect a Kings fan to agree that the Lakers are clearly better? No. Do I expect an Aussie to agree that America is clearly better? No. Can we agree to disagree and still be good friends? Yes, obviously.
Armed Liberal,
I’m exhausted from posting! And still sick, so I’ll abstain from jumping in off-topic. I do believe though that we could all agree if we first agreed to think pragmatically. It’s all the ideology that is leading us astray.
I totally missed Schaar’s link, so you’re right, my comments don’t speak to all of his.
I do agree with you that our side is fluid and permeable, and that this ironically forms the basis of our patriotism. “Us” and “them” suggests an inside and outside. I agree geographically, but not politically — anyone can play as long as they play by the rules “we owe allegiance to”. To be a patriot is to defend and perpetuate the rules. If they’re not patriotic, I guess they’re unruly!
Am I even making sense anymore?
Kori – While I agree that not all on the Left are enemies of an open society, all too often the rational left gives the dangerous part a free ride. The right does this to a lesser extent, probably because much of the lunatic right is religous extremist, while the lunatic left shares a secular view with the moderate left.
Incidentally, there was discussion here at WoC (I think – I visit WAY TOO MANY blogs) on when this enemy of society thing started to invade the left, and I was just recalling that when I was at Harvard during the Cuban missle crisis loads of lefties were screaming about how Kennedy was trying to start WW III !! Poor old Xrushchev was surrounded by US missiles and NATURALLY felt insecure. This is the earliest example I can recall of the vile “I can feel their pain left”.
My personal complaint with the war as an anti-war liberal is that I feel the risk entailed with going to war are unlikely to obtain the supposed gains of democracy in the middle east. While I would like to believe that democracy would be the outcome of the war in Iraq, I think that history tends to tell us something different about how democracy works in relation to ethnically fracticious areas.
While Japan and Germany are constantly evoked as examples of how conquering armies can in fact impose succesful democractic institutions, the qualitative differences between Iraq and the afformentioned countries are significant.
First off, and as was mentioned in your piece, we have not utterly crushed the spirit of the Iraqis. In the case of both Japan and Germany, there was a complete defeat of the military apparatus, and more importantly, a complete defeat of the people’s will to continue fighting. Nothing that has happened in Iraq is remotely comparable to what the Japanese and German people endured during the allied offensives.
In addition, both Japan and Germany were relatively ethnically and religiously homogenous, whereas Iraq has three major ethnic groupings. In a dictatorship, this isn’t so much a problem, because diversity can be brutally suppressed by the state, where as in a democracy, differences are by necessity allowed and often become exacerbated.
We see this in the case of Tito’s Yugoslavia, where ethnic tensions were suppressed by a central state, when compared to the democratic nations of the former Yugoslavia like Serbia, Croatia, and Albania. Ethnic tensions quickly boiled to the surface because divisions and difference were allowed to flourish. People had the lattitude to organize based on principles that were not necesarily to the benefit of the state as a whole, but were rather primarily an expression of long lasting ethnic hatreds. We can look at the history of Afghanistan, the short lived Nationalist China when compared to Communist China, or even post-Soviet Russia (even Russia itself can hardly be called a democracy anymore, let alone most of the Eastern Bloc nations).
I think Iraq ressembles those cases more than it does Japan or Germany, in that we are dealing with fracticious ethnic groupings that were essentially only capable of being grouped together somewhat peacefully (peace being a relative term of course) under the hand of a brutal dictator willing to use force to maintain his power.
Now that Iraq is being transformed into a democracy, the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shiites all have the lattitude to go about airing their pent up angers. From a population based geographical perspective, Iraq doesn’t make much sense as a state, and if Iraq continues to be a democracy, I think civil war is an inevitability. The fallout of the civil war will likely be a few independent states, probably none of which will be democratic since they will be formed through military strength led by power hungry leaders or religious extremists, not champions of democracy.
Given all that, to me the idea of going to war to implement democracy seems terribly unreasonable. If it were thought out better, and executed far better, then I might have some hope for the outcome, but as it stands, all I see is an exercise in futility which, if anything, is probably only fuelling anger towards the US, and therefore harming our geopolitical efforts as a whole. In the end, the only ones I see as likely to benefit are the Haliburtons and the Lockheed-Martins, who stand to gain a great deal.
In essence, I think we aren’t really defending our nation or furthering our Geopolitical or Geostrategic goals, nor are we improving human rights in the Middle East in the long run, and thus aren’t accomplishing much of anything, except maybe to benefit a few corporations for a very brief period.
Even so, at this point, I do feel we have an obligation to see this through as long as possible now that we are already as involved as we are, on the off chance that it does work and democracy does flourish. Needless to say, I am skeptical of that possiblity.
Another difference: if there is a button that the American soldier responsible for the death of the girl can press to magically bring her back to life, I’d guarantee you he would press it. The same cannot be said about the people who killed the contractors.
Interesting. I have to say it’s quite refreshing to see someone come clean about valuing their own dead more than the other guy’s dead.
1 I think the characterization of “cosmopolitanism” vs. “patriotism” doesn’t quite work. That’s not just because of the somewhat dubious cliche of attaching Big Ideas to the amorphous “modern left,” which someone has already noted above. The bigger problem for me is that I think your description obscures a crucial forms of interdependency.
I have some misgivings about the term “cosmopolitan” itself in this context, but to run with it for the sake of argument… cosmopolitanism is necessarily dependent on political conditions that allow it to exist, and a certain form of “patriotism,” of support for the polity, is necessary to it. A big part of where internationalism comes from, for example, is the recognition of the superior benefits a society of laws offers for cosmopolitan life, and the hoped-for pragmatic benefits of widening the net within which cosmopolitanism can thrive. It’s no accident that “liberal hawks” characterized their defense of the Iraq War as a defense of cosmopolitanism — nor that the war’s opponents on the left were often intensely driven by the damage it was doing to structures of internationalism.
Patriotism, in the same way, ideally depends on the redeeming qualities of its state and society for its self-justification — at least, if it’s a form of patriotism that cares to be admired. The entire grounds for Western exceptionalism is that the West has become, over the past century in particular, increasingly cosmopolitan — that its freedoms, tolerance, lawfulness and prosperity are attractive cultural traits. It’s no accident that neoconservatives are fond of the word “freedom” or of alluding to the essential goodness of American society or of the language of “liberation” — nor is it an accident that the anti-war right derived much of its disgust for the war from its apparent trampling of the exceptional values of the West.
Generally speaking, I think either tendency becomes obnoxious or counterproductive to the degree in which it loses sight of its basic dependency on the other.
2 While it’s all very well to acknowledge the existence of self-interest and interest in one’s own group, this is really not that helpful as a guide to pragmatic politics. After all, an important part of political pragmatism is the recognition that the self, or the collectivity on which the self depends, benefits a lot more from being liked than it does from being despised. As it goes for a *prince*, so too, arguably, for a state or regime. When Western states send aid or food or medicine to the Third World, or worry about the ravages of dictators or the perils of instability or the horrors of poverty there, the debate is usually — even when it isn’t explicitly acknowledged as such — about enlightened self-interest, about how these things impact us. On a certain level, empathy is not just about the other guy. It’s about having some basis for figuring out how the other guy will react to what you’re doing, so that you don’t have to waste energy on unnecessary conflict.
That’s why it was entirely proper for people in favour of the Iraq war to frame key parts of their support for it in terms of its benefits to the West: the expected democratization of Iraq, domino effects in the Middle East, “draining the swamp of terrorism” and so on. Similarly, that’s why it was entirely proper for opponents of the war to point out pragmatic inconsistencies: the al Qaedist recruitment bonanza that in fact resulted from Iraq, the large holes in attempts to compare Iraq to Germany or Japan, the spotty track record of most attempts to “democratize” societies by force from outside and the apparent unfitness of the Bush Administration for such a task, and so on.
This is A.L.; I’m deleting this comment. in which the author intends to shut down LGF because a) I’m not in the business of shutting down other blogs, and b) because it doesn’t contribute to the debate at hand.
I’m sorry that the author didn’t see fit to leave a real email address so I could more directly engage him or her.
A.L.
Archdukechocula –
Your argument is much the one I had INITIALLY when I was against going into Iraq. However, I think that the very problems in Iraq may be a good thing as well: It is becoming clearer to me that the main problem is Arab and Persian Islam, not ALL Islam, and the various Kurdish and other ethnic critics of these two groups are getting more voice because of our intervention in Iraq. We are seeing Qadaffi consign the Arabs to the dustbin of history, the Kurds will not support Arab Islamofascists, and the Turks are getting pissed with the IF’s as well. Further, we have managed (unintentionally I believe) to turn the Islamoterrorists methods against them in another way: I don’t think the day is far off when european Muslims are put dead center in the crosshairs, and told to give up their terrorists or die. We tend to forget that one of the most savage wars against Muslims was waged by the French in the 20th century.
First, A.L., my own humble opinion is that it is not an unalloyed good to spend a great deal of time thinking about things like the child in the photo Nathan Newman posted. I haven’t seen the photo and know nothing about the child – I am responding to what appears to be the general point that lots of sad deaths occurred around the world last week, so why did the American security guards’ deaths in Fallujah capture our attention? Point 1 is that, psychologically, dwelling on things you cannot do anything about is not healthy. There is hunger and madness and disease and fear in the world. Some of it you can do something about, in your own backyard. Some of it you can do something about through your collectivity – the U.S. government, for example, which was on the ground fast after the devastating earthquake in Bam, Iran in January. Some of it you cannot do anything about, and to wear yourself out with worry simply wastes another life, yours. I know you weren’t wearing yourself out with worry – the point is that there’s a good reason why you and I and everyone else doesn’t do that. And this point is not inconsistent with wanting to make things better – indeed, it is a prerequisite. Making things better is most likely to be done by psychologically healthy people.
Second, the deaths in Fallujah last week were different, not just because of the barbarity of the attacks but because those men went of their own free will to a place of danger, to fight for freedom. As Louis Renaud said to Rick Blaine, when Rick confessed that he was paid to fight for good causes, “the other side would have paid you better.” You can be paid and fight for a cause at the same time. And commandos from the same security company fought bravely for hours last weekend to protect CPA headquarters. So, there was something special about those deaths in Fallujah.
Third, there is a good evolutionary reason that each of us would say, “if it’s them or us, let it be them.” How would an organism that felt differently evolve? The moral path is not to feel differently, because in a rough world that would lead to your death, not to peace and brotherhood. The moral path is to try to eliminate the choice. That’s what democracy does. That’s what the Europeans have done, more or less since 1945, and the democracies generally. No democracy has ever gone to war against another democracy. But so long as the choice is forced upon us by zealots and madmen, then make the choice the way evolution taught us.
There was a time when all the world was sunk in brutal violence. We are raising ourselves out of that and if we are not yet fully out of that sea, we are no longer fully immersed. And we are raising ourselves out of that violence. No-one is doing it for us.
There’s an old Russian proverb: “When you live beside the cemetery, you can’t weep for everyone.”
I work in newspaper journalism. We, too, have a cynical formula for rating deaths, whether we realize it or not. One version of it used to run like this: 5,000 starved Africans equals 50 Arab political prisoners equals 5 London bobbies equals one local firefighter.
Those are deaths merely observed, however.
I remember that dead child. I have a son the same age. No one set out to kill that child, or Iraqi children in general. But we all knew it was going to happen and that some unlucky ones among the millions in Iraq would die, and they did not deserve to die.
War is always a crappy alternative; even when he feels there’s no other way, a thinking person in a powerful nation should support a war with a private sense of shame. When you support a war (as I did this one), you know that such tragedies will come. You have to weight that against the good outcome that you believe the war will bring (Saddam’s boot off the neck of Iraq, eventually a Mideast democratic society, a potential threat to the world removed).
When I saw the celebratory dismemberment of dead Americans in Fallujah, I looked for the equivalent mental process, and I didn’t find it. I don’t believe those people weighed this as a tragedy to be balanced against an ultimate good (in their case, “good” would be the end of the occupation and the country left to thugs the likes of themselves).
The deaths portrayed in the two pictures were tragic. Perhaps a child’s death always is more tragic than an adult’s.
We search our souls now, at Newman’s bidding. But to me the real problem is not people who feel more grief over deaths that come closer to them than they do over those that are more distant. To me the problem is people who celebrate a death, any death, especially the death of someone who has done no harm. Whether by hacking up the corpse or proclaiming to the world that the victims had it coming.
Nathan Newman challenged those who criticized Kos by posting a graphic image of a dead child and asking why that child’s death didn’t spur the same level of outrage as the deaths of the American civilian guards, and by extension, why the deaths of Iraqi civilians in the crossfire in Falluja last week didn’t outrage us.
The answer to Nathan’s question is, in no small part, that we’re not that nice. We don’t value all lives lost the same way; we value ours more than theirs, those murdered more than those killed in accidents, and so on.
What a bunch of poppycock! What outraged people about the depraved scene in Fallujah was that the bodies of the dead Americans were mutiliated and abused. A picture that I would like to place next to those of the depravity in Fallujah is a Pulitzer Prize Winning Photo of American soldiers helping an injured Iraqi out of gun fire. Or maybe another Pulitzer Prize Winning Phote would be of the Iraqis digging up the remains of the mass graves left by Saddam.
My question for you, KOS and the rest of you is why you hate America so much? Why would you be happy that a fellow American is killed and his corpse mutilated? When Iraqis are killed, do you see Americans dancing in the streets as you saw in Arab countries after 9/11? What i? wrong with you all?
What outraged people about the depraved scene in Fallujah was that the bodies of the dead Americans were mutiliated and abused.
Obviously not. If this were true, then general outrage would have attended the American soldiers who were killed and mutilated in Mosul back in November. Johnson’s response to that incident was… a resounding silence, as if it weren’t worth commenting on. Why do LGFers hate America? What is wrong with you all?
Evidently, there was something else going on with Fallujah. Like, for instance, the fact that it happened during a Presidential campaign season.
AL
Congratulations on a thoughful post. I truly enjoy reading your thoughts and the comments they provoke. The blogosphere was obviously a gift from the gods that allows you to thoroughly express your ideas in a forum that invites debate and feedback like no other. You could never have accomplished so much over dinner, though I have seen you try…;o]
Oscar — this is somewhat related to your two posts — I’m of the opinion that extremists live out their own fantasy, far from facts, at the expense of the vast majority of the people occupying the middle like a bell curve (on any issue). As long as those “middle people” are happy/prosperous, they will work pragmatically, that is with their feet touching the ground and the fringe elements will continue their myth-perpetuation, which in the end, I think, enriches debate in the “middle”. When the middle is unhappy/unprosperous, like in times of war or in times of poverty, there is less tolerance for fringe elements and more tolerance for unpragmatic thinking — I think in the case of after 9/11, we have seen our two parties shaken up with housekeeping (both acceptance and rejection of extremists) and accentuation of their most positive and negative characteristics (leading to partisanship and rancor). The “middle” is the judge of all this, and frankly, I think is unimpressed with this political shake-up. We must cherish our “middle” because they are our stability in all this.
Armed Liberal –
I’m kind of sorry to see you characterize this as a “Kos vs. LGF” issue. Yes, there were plenty of visceral emotions about what Kos said, but they were hardly confined to LGF. And as Slim Pickens said, “A man wouldn’t be much of a man if he didn’t have pretty strong feelings about atomic combat.”
But after the emotional reaction has come some serious debate. No need to recap it here; you and I both posted at TalkLeft about it.
I’d just like to comment on your statement that if we (Meaning the US? The West? The whole world?) valued all human life equally, we would never go to war. Are you sure about that?
Failure to take military action – action that will certainly result in loss of life – can lead to still greater loss of life. I feel that applies to Iraq, but if that’s controversial, think Nazi Germany instead. And many in Rwanda do not feel that we showed equal regard for their lives, when we “gave peace a chance” to exterminate thousands of people.
Failure to act when you have the capability to do so is also a moral choice, subject to moral criticism. Ignorance of this is the error of all pacifism. Pacifism itself can amount to a blatant disregard of human life. It can amount to valuing a supposedly superior moral position more than we value human life itself.
If we adopt an attitude of “all deaths are equally tragic”, in effect we give total license for evil. Any act of violence is immediately excused by pointing to another act of violence (if that is evil, then so is this) without regard to context.
The deaths of Wehrmacht soldiers may be called tragic. But of course it would have been more tragic to stand by and watch Hitler cleanse Europe of “non-Aryan” people. Pictures of German children (and French, and Dutch, etc.) killed by Allied bombs don’t change that.
This is the error of the left in this debate. They play the pacifist only when it suits them. When terrorists and Coalition enemies commit violence, on the other hand, they find the most appalling rationalizations for it. They argue away Saddam’s butchery of the Kurds and Shi’ites by switching moral categories and blaming it on Bush. In their universe evil is endlessly excused as the corpses pile up, but good is discredited the moment a single casualty is incurred.
Why the difference in reactions between the Fallujah incident and the earlier episode in Mosul? One could simply note the vast difference in media coverage, and hence awareness of the situation in Fallujah, as the reason for the general outrage. It has, after all, been front page news.
But then, this would require a level of basic common sense from “Doctor Slack” – and that is not in his interest here.
Re: A.L.’s post.
Sorry, old buddy, but I think it obscures some key issues rather than iluminating them as clearly as it could. The bottom line is that there is a significant practical and moral difference between people who kill civilians as a side-effect of wartime fighting, vs. people who kill the security guards for a food convoy headed into their town, then defile the bodies on camera while throwing a party.
The first situation is tragic but inevitable – civilians died in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and any other war there ever has been. Yet warfare sometimes remains a necessary resort given the fallen human condition, and if we wish to live in the real world we accept these costs.
Seen in that light, A.L.’s post makes perfect sense.
The second example represented by Fallujah, however, is not inevitable at all. It is the result of a very deliberate choice, whose intention is fulfilled precisely in the act, and which is reflective of attitudes that can properly be described as barbaric and evil.
If something like that doesn’t draw a sharper reaction than civilian deaths in wartime, one’s moral compass is seriously broken in a way that has very little to do with the question of valuing one’s own more than “the other”.
Finally, I should also point out that 2 can play at Nathan’s game.
If a dead child as a result of America’s war to depose Saddam is monstrous, what does one say about all of the children tortured, starved, raped, or worse under explicit, deliberate orders of Saddam’s regime, because the U.S. Army was NOT there to depose him? Does this mean that if the war’s opponents had succeeded, we could lay all of those consequences at their feet?
Because I’ll happily take that trade.
“. . .I’ll note here that there’s an interesting (if frighteningly depressing) theory that one reason why we will have so much trouble rebuilding Iraq is that we didn’t damage the civilian infrastructure enough, and that the civilians didn’t suffer enough. I’m a ways away from that position, but at some point, it’ll be something worth discussing. . .”
Great essay. I’ve had a long day so I hope that I shall be fairly coherent.
I don’t think that we could have ever damaged the “civilian infrastructure” of Iraq enough to make it “easy” to rebuild the country into our own image. The reason is because east is east and west is west! We cannot impose democracy on a people who have no concept of what democracy is.
To the average Arab democracy is doing whatever they please at the expense of everyone else. We cannot re-educate and reform a culture that has thousands of years of history in repression and subjugation from one despot or another— from Muhammad to Saddam.
It is a naive position. That lesson will come home sooner rather than later in very brutal form.
One thing that disturbs me about humanity is the constant reference to “our” lives and “our” values as being the only thing that matters. As if the rest of creation did not exist. We are part and parcel of Nature. To vainly attempt to live without “harming” anything goes against all natural laws. In order that one might live another creature dies. It is the natural order of things.
One can even look upon war with Nature’s eye of complete indifference to suffering and therewith simply making the world fall into balance once more. Once there were too many, then there was war or famine or pestilence. Ultimately, things evened out again and returned to the beginning. . .
“if we (Meaning the US? The West? The whole world?) valued all human life equally, we would never go to war.”
IF we valued all life equally, perhaps then we would not go to war. But, since we only value human life and only those close to us, we shall continue to go to war until, as the Muslims would say, “the last day.”
If one looks at this whole thing in geological time, one gains a much more neutral perspective—all the while— all politics are local. And if God does “see the sparrow fall,” perhaps it matters for an instant in geological time.
Perhaps not. . .
Lili
Hi.
I think that the main good that is to be striven for in political life is civilization. (Which is always a particular, distinct civilization, not an abstract notion of “scientific progress”.) And I think Romulus is the father of civilization. Unless a city can say “do not cross this boundary on pain of death,” and make it stick, you cannot have a city or of course civilization. So Remus can be the equal or Romulus and his own dear brother and it makes no difference. “Cross this line and die” is the ultimate law.
That is our licence to kill as far as I am concerned. It is quite an appropriate rationale for a man of the West to have.
Our enemy’s rationale for violence has nothing to do with that. It is based on the Koran, the (frequently aggressive and bloody) deeds and sayings of the Prophet, and the elaboration of Islamic law, especially jihad. “Make war on them until idolatry shall cease and God’s religion shall reign supreme.” There’s no arguing about it, either you believe that this is the word of the one true god or you don’t.
There is no common language except the violently implemented will of Allah that his people must conquer us, and the practical argument of Mars that we will not in fact be conquered. I think the much-derided post-modernists are right about at least this much: there is no “objective” moral judgment to be had. Pick your side and go for it, that’s all there is.
Interesting essay. Though, It do not adress I think a ‘sentimental’ aspect. Modern society value excessively (in comparison with what used to be) individual suffering. The picture of the kid featured on Nathan’s site is brushed aside by many because they didn’t knew him, so to speak. We know the names, the background and histories of the 4 american killed in Fallujah. Their relatives have been inteviewed. A process of identification occurs, that make us feel a (variable) share of the pain their folks are going through.
The iraqi kid has no name, his way of life is unknown to us, he’s just a collaterla casualty, a accident for a greater good. But feed us with stories of his life and his hopes, pictures of him alive and smiling, show us his mother, brother and sisters. He wont be that stranger anymore and I’m not sure we’ll be still so comfortable about him. American or not.
Oh, and as a biker and a father of 2, I don’t think I’ll be able to watch my kid on a race track without agonizing anxiety…
I agree with A.L. some of the time and respect him all the time, but this post smacks a bit too much of liberal hand-wringing. The bottom line is there are people out there who want to kill us. These people are savage lunatics with whom we cannot reason or negotiate. Saddam Hussein was supporting such people (perhaps, and I emphasize perhaps, not the ones who attacked us directly, but certainly ones much like them, and he certainly had connections to the ones who did attack us). The entire world, including apparently the Iraqi army and perhaps Saddam himself, thought he had WMD which he could easily have shared with the people he did support directly or those who attacked us. The death of that child is unfortunate, but put the blame for it where it belongs, on Saddam. And bear in mind that we’re dealing with people who not only don’t care if they kill innocent civilians, they deliberately target innocent civilians and believe the more they kill, the better. They don’t just hate any particular thing we’ve done; they hate who and what we are. And nothing we can do, no amount of hand-wringing over their humanity is going to change that. Any hand extended to these people in friendship will only be bitten off. We can only kill them before they kill us.
Quoth Joe: Why the difference in reactions between the Fallujah incident and the earlier episode in Mosul? One could simply note the vast difference in media coverage, and hence awareness of the situation in Fallujah, as the reason for the general outrage.
It’s more than a bit much for a blogosphere community which prides itself on lecturing Ye Olde Media about its “distorted” picture of the occupation to plead ignorance about an incident as major as Mosul. Sorry, I’m just not buying it. But stick with whatever story you feel you need to.
About wars and “inevitability”:
The thing is, I actually agree with Joe that some wars are unavoidable, and that civilian death in such wars is a cost of waging them. In point of fact, most people would. The only problem lies in determining which wars are inevitable. And that’s a problemm of assumptions.
Pro-wars assumed the Bush Administration were telling the truth about the threat posed by Saddam, and believed that Saddam’s regime represented a horror so absolute that the Iraqi people would happily accept any change. The first assumption was easy to make if one avoided listen to any of the contrary voices during the run-up to war. The second assumption was easy to make if one squinted carefully at Saddam and the Baathists and saw Hitler and the Wehrmacht.
Anti-wars did neither of these things, for various reasons depending on their politics. And without those two assumptions, the war looked stupid, pointless, and unlikely to yield an end result substantially better than leaving Saddam in place would have done. Frankly, to me, it still looks that way. I’ve never been patient with moralizing about how the so-called “left” supposedly “ignored the crimes of Saddam,” and I’m getting less patient with it by the day. That’s an argument that damages the credibility of pro-wars — and hence their wider political agenda — every time it’s made. It’s ignorant of the apparent price of the war and its potential further human costs to an appalling degree.
There’s one key thing that AL’s essay does which I think is very, very good. It’s at least a move away from trying to claim moral superiority to a cartoonishly-imagined “left” — and more importantly, it’s a move away from the “humanitarian” pretext of the Iraq War. The Iraq War was not, at any point, about establishing a standard of humanitarian intervention. Nor was Iraq a leading candidate for humanitarian intervention even when Saddam was in power. There’s a reason for that; defining a standard of humanitarian intervention that would have made Saddam’s existence a casus belli would mean serious shifts in world politics and boots on the ground in dozens of countries, often with as little assurance of long-term success as there was, and is, in Iraq.
Let’s have the discussion of Iraq on the understanding that we’re all discussing primarily how intervention there will benefit us. That’s what I find admirably honest about A.L.’s stance here — far more honest and far preferable to watching people crassly swing the Holocaust and the Rwanda genocide around as cudgels for debating points, while ironically ignoring the building of a genocide in the Sudan. (There’s a clear-cut case for humanitarian intervention — any of the pro-wars game?)
I do not believe the Sudan/Iraq comparison holds water. While we can argue about “imminent threat”, I think most would agree there was a threat there, in addition to the humanitarian reason. Sudan- while a humanitarian outrage, there is little,if any, threat to the US there. Speaking of outrage, what about the UN?
In fact, I am game for going into Sudan- once we have the threats against us taken care of. You know, limited resources and such.
” The death of that child is unfortunate, but put the blame for it where it belongs, on Saddam. “
The death of that child and all the children as well as the adults can be blamed on aggressive, militant, hegemonic, imperialist Islam. Muhammad was above all a brilliant politician. He had a NATO concept in the 7th century. If one of the ummah is attacked, the others are obligated to fight—jihad. Never mind that Islam did the initial attacking. Any retaliation by the “infidel” is a call to murderous jihad for the Islamic ummah.
“Let’s have the discussion of Iraq on the understanding that we’re all discussing primarily how intervention there will benefit us. “
It appears that Mr. Blix has just admitted that:
“In the interview, Blix said the war had contributed to a destabilization of the Middle East and a move away from democracy in the region, adding that even though Iraqis had been spared life under a dictator, it was at too high a cost.
“Bush declared war as a part of the U.S. war on terror, but instead of limiting the effects of terror, the war has laid the foundation for even more terror,” Blix said. ” . . .
*Iraq worse off*
Not only Iraq but the whole world is “worse off.” Of course, what Blix means is that the ME is now a cauldron boiling over and that is bad for us. The “altruistic, peace loving” Euros care just as much about keeping the Islamic ummah under control as does the U.S. Eventually, the whole world will have to do their part. They are already profiling and arresting preemtively in Europe:
*Europe Trying to Act First Against Terrorist Networks*
—
Here’s to thee and here’s to me, but if we both should disagree—here’s to me!
Lili
Not only Iraq but the whole world is “worse off.” Of course, what Blix means is that the ME is now a cauldron boiling over and that is bad for us.
Which sounds like about a billion warnings that came from around the world about the Iraq war to begin with. Including Europe. So why are you trying to pretend that a comment like this is some kind of reversal from a Europe that previously claimed to be “altruistic” and “peace-loving”? And given that at least some of those warnings look to have been well-advised, don’t you think it’s rather past time to can the Euro-bashing?
Phil, glad to see you’re forthright about prioritizing security concerns over humanitarian intervention. Of course, the second part of that argument is explaining, sans the WMDs and terrorist connections, just what sort of “threat” Saddam was supposed to have been that required an immediate invasion. (And what about the UN? Is that an “oil-for-food” reference? A Rwanda reference? The old “Saddam flouted UN resolutions” talking point?)
OK, so Saddam was the stopper on a “boiling cauldron”, which Europe warned us not to unstop.
So then, my question is: What did Europe propose to end the “boiling” part?
My impression was that it all revolved around Israel submitting to world opionion on Palestine. Which strikes me as incredibly naive – the idea that the Palestinian situation is the ONLY thing getting in the way of reducing the boil just doesn’t wash for me.
So … what else could have been done to reduce the boil? I can’t imagine that allowing a succession of Uday and/or Qusay would have done much, especially with sanctions about to lift. And we found out that effectively ignoring the situation didn’t make it go away.
All we can tell is that a) not fighting at all got us attacked; b) fighting a little got us attacked; and c) fighting a lot got us attacked. Which leads me to believe it’s not the fighting or the war part that’s the constant here.
AL,
As someone who hit your site (for the first time) via lgf, I want to Thank you and let you know that I plan to come back often (and try to contribute to the discussion). I find your sight stimulating and quite honestly – refreshing. Having spent some time at other ‘popular’ left leaning sites (to try and get a better sense of the other side of the aisle) – I began to believe that most on the left weren’t just unhapppy with this current administration, but unhappy with their country in general. I would even dare to say that some even hated their country (although deep down I don’t think they do, they just can’t express their thoughts coherently). Again, Thnx.
I’d be up for a military intervention that would split Sudan in two and protect a southern enclave. Absolutely.
FWIW, I’d also put Zimbabwe on the “regime change, please, then partition” list. The OAU would scream – but then, they’re an organization dedicated to preserving at all costs a status quo that has much to do with Africa’s misery.
Either of these outcomes would make me very, very happy. The U.S. is a bit short of troops, alas… but then, I think they need to increase the size of their army.
“Nathan Newman challenged those who criticized Kos by posting a graphic image of a dead child and asking why that child’s death didn’t spur the same level of outrage as the deaths of the American civilian guards, and by extension, why the deaths of Iraqi civilians in the crossfire in Falluja last week didn’t outrage us.
The answer to Nathan’s question is, in no small part, that we’re not that nice. We don’t value all lives lost the same way; we value ours more than theirs, those murdered more than those killed in accidents, and so on.”
I’m not sure I would entirely agree. I think the outrage related to Fallujah was mostly due to the desecration of the bodies. Had they been shot and left alone, there would not have been the massive press coverage (if any at all). So it was the sheer level of violence related to their death that made us pay more attention and bring a more visceral reaction.
As for your larger point, I think Brad DeLong summed it up nicely the other day: “I care about myself and my family first; my friends second; my country third; and the world fourth,” although I’d like to merge second and third into a tie for second.
“First, why is it OK for us to be cruel, and not OK for them?
“Next, what is the place of anger in conflict?
“Finally, is it legitimate for us to be angry at the Arab world or elements of the Arab world?”
First, I don’t think it is ok for us to be cruel. We have to be strategic and we have to make ugly decision (often picking the best of many bad alternatives). But I don’t interpret those actions as cruel. I think it is only cruel if it’s unnecessary. For example, you might need to kill your enemy, but if you can shoot him dead quickly, it would be cruel to torture him before killing him.
As for your second point, you can have conflict without anger, but you usually can’t have anger without conflict. Anger is an impediment to conflict resolution. Not until the anger is dissapated in one way or another will a conflict be finally resolved. And one need not look at geopolitical battles to see the illustration. Just think of inter-family or inter-friend or inter-work fight. To resolve it, I find that I have to figure out why the person is angry. The anger may seem totally unjustified (“You’re willing to ditch this frienship because I wore jeans to your party?”), but I can’t solve the problem until I figure out why the person is mad. Sometimes I can do something about the reason for the other person’s anger and sometimes I can’t, but if I don’t look at the reason for it, then I’m just shooting blind and wasting time.
Thirdly, anger is a feeling of a person, and, whether justified or not, must be seen as legitimate. If you don’t think the feeling is legit, you won’t listen to the person – and that’s worse than not doing anything at all. Expressions of anger, on the other hand, should have a acceptable vs. non-acceptable value placed on them (for example, quietly picketing an abortion provider vs. shooting one dead).
My impression was that it all revolved around Israel submitting to world opionion on Palestine. Which strikes me as incredibly naive – the idea that the Palestinian situation is the ONLY thing getting in the way of reducing the boil just doesn’t wash for me.
The only thing, no. A big, hugely important thing, yes. Frankly, I think any long-term solution to the ME problem is going to have to start by finding some way to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict and effect regional disarmament rather than just trying to unilaterally disarm the Arabs. So in the shorter term, people are certainly right to focus on it, and I think it’s accurate to say that Europe countries have to some degree done so. That’s a Good Thing.
(How all of that actually happens is another question. Without the end of US partisanship for Israel, it simply doesn’t. Ironically, one “positive” side-effect of the Iraq occupation is likely to be that American policymakers are going to find it harder to ignore the massive regional liabilities the US incurs from that little-questioning partisanship.)
The removal of that problem would almost certainly kick out a key pillar of recruitment and “man in the street” political support for the radical Islam generally and the mujahideen Frankenstein in particular. Moreover, it would give the West and particularly the US far more credibility in the region than it currently has. That opens the door for other indirect measures to be more successful: “greater Middle East initiatives” become plausible, for instance.
Of course, just as they found new excuses to go on fighting and new targets after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, they would no doubt find reasons to go on attacking no matter what happens in Israel or anywhere else. But finding and imprisoning or killing the bad guys becomes a lot more effective in the long term when you’ve uprooted their networks, when you’ve drained the swamp of popular support. Those looking to “drain the swamp” of terrorism in the Middle East aren’t wrong to do so — they’re just wrong to see the Iraq War as a step toward doing so.
I’d be up for a military intervention that would split Sudan in two and protect a southern enclave. Absolutely.
What do you know. We actually agree on that one.
On Zimbabwe I’m not so sure — Mugabe is certainly a thug, but doesn’t look to be in the same league as the crowd of psychotics in the northern Sudan, and I rather doubt any significant portion of the populace would welcome intervention. And why partition there, exactly? And why Mugabe as opposed to, say, Karimov in Uzbekistan?
Because Mugabe is in stage 6 of the 7-stage “steps to genocide” ladder. We commented on this before here on Winds… may have to use search to find that one.
Anyway, the other key for me is that the problem in Zimbabwe has a big tribal component, and the genocide will be tribally confined – so partition that separates the 2 main tribes would probably work, and allow food aid to prevent forced starvation. There’s also a democracy movement there that might be able to pick up in some kind of effective fashion, with a bit of help.
Plus, it would be nice to shoot Mugabe just on principle, before he becomes an emulated example that sets Africa back another 200 years. Africa needs this like it needs a hole in the head… so how about a hole in Mugabe’s head instead?
Don’t think we have those kind of helpful dynamics going in Uzbekistan, alas. And if we want to go to Central Asia, Turkmenistan is way weirder as dictatorships go.
My colleague A.L. is absolutely right to tie our different responses to the picture of the girl and to events in Fallujah to differing values on those lives.
That is, in fact, one aspect of the utilitarian argument about extreme actions in war that I cite above, although I skipped typing that part of the entry.
What just war theory generally says about such a “sliding scale” is that it is justified only when we sincerely believe ourselves to be facing a threat that cannot be otherwise averted. (You can follow the argument in more detail in my entry above.)
Don’t want to hijack the direction this particular thread might take, just want to note that A.L.’s analysis is quite in line with the way that many thoughtful ethicists deal with such issues.
“A big, hugely important thing, yes.”
That’s what they want you to believe. Of course, if you believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to be solved in order for the Arab world to get its human-rights/economy/be a good global citizen act together, and the Arab world keeps fomenting war there, then one never has to get to the real problems in the Arab world, which have nothing to do with Israel. File under “attempted distraction by scapegoating.”
“Frankly, I think any long-term solution to the ME problem is going to have to start by finding some way to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict and effect regional disarmament rather than just trying to unilaterally disarm the Arabs.”
Since the only other group in the region are Jews, and since there are about 100 Arabs to every Jew, and since the Arabs have been blatantly advocating dhimmi-izing the Jews for centuries and blatantly advocating eliminating them for decades, and since the UN and similar world bodies repeatedly take the side of the Arabs (simply because they have way more population than the Jews and can turn the oil spigot on and off) basically you are saying “disarm the Jews so the Arabs can get at them more easily.”
There is no other real-world interpretation for what you have advocated. You are such a slimy creature, Slack.
“So in the shorter term, people are certainly right to focus on it, and I think it’s accurate to say that Europe countries have to some degree done so. That’s a Good Thing.”
Financially supporting Arafat’s terrorists and Swiss bank account is a Good Thing?
“Without the end of US partisanship for Israel, it simply doesn’t. ”
Exactly. See above, and stop advocating the destruction of my people. At least on this blog. You can always take your carefully polished oh-so sophisticated venom back to No War Blog where it belongs.
Ironically, one “positive” side-effect of the Iraq occupation is likely to be that American policymakers are going to find it harder to ignore the massive regional liabilities the US incurs from that little-questioning partisanship.”
Actually the opposite will be true. As the dominoes keep falling and ordinary Arabs begin to taste liberty and economic freedom, they will have less incentive to scapegoat Jews or anyone else. They will begin to associate Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred with the religious fundamentalists and dictators who have held them back. Once they actually get to visit Israel and meet Israelis in their own countries, they will begin mutually fruitful trade relationships.
For example, one of the top Israeli ministers is from Iraq, and he does radio broadcasts in Farsi which are listened to by many gentile Iranians, who routinely call his show and beg Israel to invade Iran and free them from the mullahs. (Now, Iran is not Arab, but I am assuming you used the word “Arab” to denote all the non-Jewish majority ethnic groups in the region.)
And the war on terror and its Iraq component have only highlighted the value of the relationship to Americans. For example, who do you think taught the US military how to engage in the surgical urban combat they are now engaging in in Fallujah? or would you prefer that we just JDAM the entire city? (But then you are probably one of those who still believes there was a “massacre” in Jenin.)
LOL D. Slack, I am not trying to pretend that this Euro comment is a reversal of policy. What I am saying is that the Euros are concerned about their own safety (always have been) and don’t give an damn about the ME (other than for business reasons) as they pretend.
As to the “Euro-bashing” that’s a stretch. I left LGF a long time ago BECAUSE of the Euro bashing. I am a big fan of European culture but not many of their recent policies. That said, I don’t think much of the policies of the Bushies either. 🙂
” the idea that the Palestinian situation is the ONLY thing getting in the way of reducing the boil just doesn’t wash for me.”
Steve, Islamic terror won’t disappear if Israel does the right thing and the U.S. pulls out of Iraq. They shouldn’t have an excuse then, but they will. Tribal revenge will be the new jihad war call to the ummah. Wait and see.
Joe, I think the Islamic world is responsible for the Sudan. Let them cough up troops. Although, I do think we should have universal conscription at this point for both men and women for our own security.
The Rwandans are blaming the West, particularly France, for the genocide THEY committed. This is a no win situation. I don’t understand why the U.S. does not use the U.N. as a bully-pulpit and announce just WHY we won’t interfere in certain situations. Like because we are “damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”
Thereafter, they can damned well formally ask us—in writing—to intervene. Then we have a record of having been asked and specifically what they want us to do and why.
Muslims have a short memory for who saved their bacon on numerous occasions. They also forget their aggressions and only remember our retaliations in self defense.
Fallujah will be a shortfall in the Islamic collective memory. They will remember the shelling of the mosque today, but not the reason for why the U.S. did that—body mutilations, uprising will all be forgotten in a flash.
We need to pull out, let the U.N. in and let the rest of the world do their share—Arabs included.
Lili
Lilith,
You are aware that it’s Sudanese _Christians_ that are being massacred, right? _By_ Muslims? Somehow, if the Islamic world could be convinced to send troops to Sudan, I’m not at all confident they would be on the right side….
A.L.,
I’ve done my time on the killing floor. I’ve gutted and butchered enough meat for several life times. Thank you Armor & Co.
I also supported American withdrawal from Vietnam.
Not only am I up to my elbows in cows and pigs. I’ve done my share of humans by proxy. That is one road I intend to avoid in the future if possible.
Lillith,
Let us hope they remember the shelling of the mosque and their impotence.
Policy: Fire from a mosque. Flatten the mosque.
Think of it as a religious test. Which is more important the mosque or the jihad? If it is jihad let us assist more martyrs to their promised rewards. Think of it as our religious duty to devout moslems.
Lilith: Steve, Islamic terror won’t disappear if Israel does the right thing and the U.S. pulls out of Iraq.
Has someone said it would?
Yehudit, my pet: There is no other real-world interpretation for what you have advocated. You are such a slimy creature, Slack.
Good to see your capacity for reasoned debate is still intact. I wonder if you’ll ever figure out how badly it hurts the credibility of Israel’s defenders to go thermonuclear with name-calling at the slightest hint of a non-Likud viewpoint. I doubt it, but stranger things have happened.
The “Jews are outnumbered” line is disingenuous at best — guess what having modern military equipment means? (The “disarmament” comment was about WMDs, in case you lack the wit to have figured this out.) And the broad-brushing of the Arab world as a mindless horde bent on the extermination of Jewry is unconvincing, as you should know by now. This isn’t 1921.
But it’s the job of the IKDF to be as one-sided and blinkered as possible, and I understand that. I don’t even really blame them for it — the Israel-Palestinian conflict has a way of killing reason on all sides. I just don’t think that’s an excuse.
As the dominoes keep falling and ordinary Arabs begin to taste liberty and economic freedom . . .
Ah, still in FantasyLand, are we? The funny thing is, I have a feeling you’ll still be blathering like this even if things in Iraq go further south than they’ve already gone.
They will begin to associate Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred with the religious fundamentalists and dictators who have held them back.
Riiiight. And I suppose Israel Muslim-hatred and Arab-hatred would vanish overnight if every Arab state turned its swords into plowshares and proclaimed itself a “friend of Israel”? Except the Palestinians would still exist, and would still be demographically inconvenient, wouldn’t they? So maybe not.
(Now, Iran is not Arab, but I am assuming you used the word “Arab” to denote all the non-Jewish majority ethnic groups in the region.)
You assume wrongly. Iran is quite distinct from the Arab world, culturally and politically, as I’m sure you know. Not least in that they’ve had their go-round with theocratic government and have evolved their own solution to it.
For example, who do you think taught the US military how to engage in the surgical urban combat they are now engaging in in Fallujah?
Yeah, that’s worked out pretty well for them, hasn’t it? And of course, Israel’s approach to “surgical urban combat” has brought peace, joy, security and prosperity to Israel too, so that’s a fabulous model to follow.
I find myself caring less and less about what you think of as “real-world solutions.” As far as I can see, you ain’t living in it.
(But then you are probably one of those who still believes there was a “massacre” in Jenin.)
I don’t much care. Al-Aqsa is plenty bad enough that quibbling over Jenin is a sideshow.
Couple things I missed:
Lilith: What I am saying is that the Euros are concerned about their own safety (always have been) and don’t give an damn about the ME (other than for business reasons) as they pretend.
Just like most Americans, or most of the rest of us, really. But I’m curious. Who is “they,” and where did “they” “pretend” this? Can you be specific?
Joe: Because Mugabe is in stage 6 of the 7-stage “steps to genocide” ladder.
I’ve seen mentions of the scary genocide and torture training camps, which certainly justify some contingency plans to get rid of Mugabe if he looks to start acting on this. On the other hand, I’m curious as to what the ultimate upshot of the Harare talks might be — haven’t seen anything about that since mid-March. If that pans out it might wind up vindicating Mbeki’s much-criticized stance on the whole issue.
Not that Mbeki doesn’t come off like a twit sometimes. Palestine has had problems since the 1940s, but nobody complains, he said at one point. Jeesh.
Joe,
Read your Sun Tzu again.
It is important to appear weak when you are strong.
This uprising will be very useful in collecting and identifying malcontents. No other way to do it than to let them think they had enough strength for whatever action they desired.
The apparent weakness may be strategic.
It appears that the wole deal we are seeing is a coordinated move. Just as I said at the outset. The “incidents” were manufactured to seem as fortuitous.
Evidently self government is so scary that all factions were willing to work together for a common end.
This is Tet. If we don’t lose our nerve and let the news media dictate our understanding it will be a victory over the forces of darkness. Just as Tet was.
Belmot Club and USS Clueless as usual are on top of the action.
“You are aware that it’s Sudanese Christians that are being massacred, right? By Muslims? Somehow, if the Islamic world could be convinced to send troops to Sudan, I’m not at all confident they would be on the right side….
Of course, I am aware of that, Sam. That is PRECISELY why I want to send the Arabs/Muslims. They claim the moral high-ground. Let’s see them do it—with embedded reporters from al Jazeera et al. 😀 Arab/Muslim troops, under the auspices of the U.N., should also be in Iraq. I am sick and tired of the U.S. getting beaten up each and every time we try to do the right thing. (Er, not that the war was the right thing.) Let others play and pay for a change with blood and treasure. The Arabs and the Euros are good at criticizing. Let them put their money and their sons where their mouths are.
“Let us hope they remember the shelling of the mosque and their impotence.”
They won’t, M. Simon! It is unIslamic not to go for revenge and say that 40 people killed were really 400 or 4000. You can’t kill 1.5 billion Muslims. We need to do this in a much smarter way. Too bad the Bushies had no plan. . .smart or otherwise, for this part of the war.
“As the dominoes keep falling and ordinary Arabs begin to taste liberty and economic freedom . . .”
A complete fantasy! Islamic democracy is an oxymoron. You cannot remake Iraqi society in our image. There will be Hell to pay in Iraq. It will go very,very badly from now on. And I would love to eat my hat on that.
So far everything I predicted with respect to Iraq has come true. I do believe my posts to that effect are still on LFG.
“who do you think taught the US military how to engage in the surgical urban combat they are now engaging in in Fallujah?”
“Surgical”? Hardly! Suicidal perhaps. This will be the end of “good will” (such as it was) for the U.S. Look where the “surgery” has gotten Israel. Nowhere!
“Just like most Americans, or most of the rest of us, really. But I’m curious. Who is “they,” and where did “they” “pretend” this? Can you be specific?”
“They” are the Europeans, DS. They pretend it all the time—the “caring for others” but, in reality Europe is very, very anti-Semitic and racist. Pretending to have the welfare of the Iraqis and the Palis in mind suits their PC agendas against the Jews. However, fortress Europe would prefer to not have to deal with any “other.” I know that because I go there all the time and am an American-European.
“This is Tet. If we don’t lose our nerve and let the news media dictate our understanding it will be a victory over the forces of darkness. Just as Tet was.”
Yea, right the turning point to win the battle, lose the war—”Peace with honor.” This will be worse that Vietnam ever was if we don’t get the U.N.engaged! And even if we do it will still be a mess.
Lili
They pretend it all the time—the “caring for others” but, in reality Europe is very, very anti-Semitic and racist.
Let me put it another way, Lilith: your direct evidence for this is where? I’m looking for something specific, and hopefully something a little less broad than just “the Europeans.”
Anti-Semitism, incidentally, is actually down in Europe according to recent polls there:
Despite concerns about rising anti-Semitism in Europe, there are no indications that anti-Jewish sentiment has increased over the past decade. Favorable ratings of Jews are actually higher now in France, Germany and Russia than they were in 1991. Nonetheless, Jews are better liked in the U.S. than in Germany and Russia. As is the case with Americans, Europeans hold much more negative views of Muslims than of Jews.
M. Simon: This is Tet. If we don’t lose our nerve and let the news media dictate our understanding it will be a victory over the forces of darkness.
Ah, Tet. The birth of the honorable winger tradition of blaming the media and the critics when their follies don’t pan out. I wonder when they’ll figure out just how this habit makes them look.
Lilith,
Just curious. But, what is the UN going to do that we aren’t? Withdraw? Is it the legitimacy question that’s concerning you? Who is going to staff the UN force and who’s going to pay? Those Europeans you were just talking about?
I just flat-out don’t understand how the UN could do anything but make the situation worse.
I just flat-out don’t understand how the UN could do anything but make the situation worse.
Well, the only way a UN force will be at all effective is with the full-bore support of the US (and a US that’s willing to relinquish those hand-me-down Israeli urban combat tactics, about whose likely result I think Lilith is dead right). Europe doesn’t have anything like the military capacity to rebuild Iraq — though Chirac would love to change that, and apparently Lilith agrees with him — and the neighbouring Arab states barely have functioning militaries at all.
A UN mandate is probably the next step for an outside occupation of Iraq to recover any vestige of legitimacy. At minimum it would be a change of pace from the Bush Administration’s cronyism and bipolarity. But the chances of it happening with Bush at the helm are basically nil; even if Bush eventually decides to go there — which would be the most extreme kind of indignity for him — he has a history of doing these things half-assed and the UN knows it all too well. So where’s their motivation?
Dr. Slack,
I don’t wish to misinterpret, but it seems that it’s purely a legitimacy question to you. Does the UN really have more legitimacy with Iraqis? Or are you primarily concerned with other nations?
Bush, or no Bush, I still don’t see the advantage to the US of working through the UN. We’re still going to have to do the heavy lifting, and we’ll still get the blame. Plus, we’ll then have to justify every action to the UNSC, with many members that do not share our goals and others who actively oppose them.
So, can you explain why we should shackle ourselves to the UN at this point? And assuming that you do not share the stated goals of the Bush administration, explain how, if we went ahead and did it anyway, how the UN could provide a better outcome?
I really want to know.
Why Dr. Slack,
You ougt to read your Vietnam Generals. I know you hate war and would never study how it is done but immediately post Tet Giap thought he had lost the war and would have to sue for peace.
I really appriciate your comentary. Given something I can actually fact check I now know what kind of credibility rating to give your pronouncements.
Thanks for the info.
Dr. Slack,
Polls show anti-Semitism is down in Europe? OK.
Expain why anti-Semetic Acts are up?
M. Simon –
but immediately post Tet Giap thought he had lost the war and would have to sue for peace.
In fact, Giap’s strategy of dependence on guerrilla warfare was refuted by Tet. Not only did the Viet Cong fail to achieve their military objectives at Tet, but they were virtually annihilated and ceased to be significant either as a military or a political force in Vietnam. Giap’s influence went into sharp decline after that.
After the fall of Saigon, Viet Cong leaders were shoved aside, and many of them wound up dead or in exile. This was the direct legacy of Tet. Ironic that Tet is celebrated by the leftists who paraded with “Victory to the Viet Cong” signs.
Euro Jew hate:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/413074.html
Lilith,
Let us hope they do not forget and let the story expand to 40,000.
These are the people Osama said would bet on the strong horse.
Eight contractors held off a mob of hundreds. That has got to be real good for the insurgents morale. Contractors. Whipped by contractors.
If we really want to show them who is dominant we need to raze a few mosques and build a few churches on the newly available ground. This is the kind of message they understand because it is the kind of message they have been sending for 1400 years.
In any case the insurgency is not going to last long at this rate. They are burning out too fast to be able to hold on to much. And at the end of another week or three most of the active followers of this Iranian pawn will be dead or in jail.
I’m reminded of what Patton said in his pre-invasion speech.
“Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle.”
So even in that day there were people just like you on the home front saying that it couldn’t be done. You will wind up in the same dust bin of history as the “sources” Patton refered to.
Not only can we succeed, we will. BTW many in Patton’s day thought Germany and Japan were not suitable ground for democracy.
Evidently those people were wrong as well.
Never underestimate America. It is not generally a winning bet.
“Let me put it another way, Lilith: your direct evidence for this is where? I’m looking for something specific, and hopefully something a little less broad than just “the Europeans.”
Here is an article that focuses on some of the problems, Islamic anti-Semitism:
European Group Takes Wraps Off Study Linking Muslims and Anti-Semitism
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/06/international/europe/06BERL.html
However, I can tell you from first hand experience Europe is very, very anti, the “other” where Semites or Turks or Indians or whatever are concerned because, Europe has not made an effort to integrate its immigrants as the U.S. has.
Europe is very careful, of course, in what is said publicly. However, talk to the average Joe on the street in his own language and the oppositon to “foreigners” in Europe will surface.
I happen to be the right color and ethnicity and can speak a number of languages fluently. It is no secret that “Fortress Europe” is pulling up the draw-bridge. And I must say—who can blame them. Except, they need immigrants. . .
I have a ton of articles on Euro policies. But, not tonight.
When was the last time you were in Europe? Do you speak any of the languages—fluently? Do you visit for more than a vacation?
“. . . what is the UN going to do that we aren’t? Withdraw? Is it the legitimacy question that’s concerning you? Who is going to staff the UN force and who’s going to pay? Those Europeans you were just talking about?. . .”
It’s like this, Lurker. Regardless of the incompetence of the U.N. it is not “irrelevant” in the eyes of the world. I would simply rather that U.N. troops also get shot at, than only our own. I don’t feel it is wise for the U.S. to be in Iraq alone. (The “coalition” does not count for much, folks.)
We’re still going to have to do the heavy lifting, and we’ll still get the blame.
Why? Let the others contribute. We certainly will get the blame because we started the war. However, it would be wise to let others share this burden.
The WHOLE civilized world should have an interest in stabilizing Iraq and the ultimate democratization of the Arab world. So, I feel they should send blood and treasure.
This president, with his cowboy politics, has run up the largest deficit the U.S. has ever experienced. I just want the rest of the world to share in the pain because we, our children and their children, will be paying for this folly for the rest of our lives.
“Eight contractors held off a mob of hundreds. That has got to be real good for the insurgents morale. Contractors. Whipped by contractors.”
M. Simon. Please, spare me the cinema heroics. This is not a movie! REAL PEOPLE ARE DYING here. You have apparently never seen what war can do. It is estimated that 10,000 Iraqis have died thus far and hundreds of U.S. soldiers and other sundry people such as contractors and journalists.
War is not a good thing. This war was a very, very stupid mistake by the Bushies! It will come to no good. It is not clear cut like WWII. We shall inflame the whole of the Islamic ummah. We cannot kill 1.5 billion muslims.
And don’t flame me for being a pacifist—because I am not. I am just not as stupid as GW Bush and his, ignorant about other cultures, war mongers!
The U.N. is the only way out for us. And it is not a good way, it is not a “face-saving” way but there is no other alternative. We cannot do this alone. It is a job for the international community not Rambo!
Lili
Lilith: A bit better. But a couple things:
However, I can tell you from first hand experience Europe is very, very anti, the “other” where Semites or Turks or Indians or whatever are concerned because, Europe has not made an effort to integrate its immigrants as the U.S. has.
Well, two things.
First, there’s a sense in which I trust statistics more than I trust anecdotal experience. I say “a sense” because I’m familiar with the many ways in which both can (intentionally or unintentionally) be lied with or be misinterpreted.
For that reason, second, while I’m more than happy to concede that you may have more direct experience of Europe than I (I “speak” only two European languages, both very poorly, and have never directly ventured beyond the British Isles), I’m not necessarily willing to take your word for it that “Semites” are interchangeable with “Turks” and “Indians” as the “others” that Europeans are having trouble making peace with. Admittedly, part of this is due to my own anecdotal experience (I have a number of friends in France, particularly, who are far more concerned about Muslims and sympathetic with Le Pen) — but in general, your proclaimed experience doesn’t reassure me that your impressions are more correct than the Pew research poll about Europeans as a whole.
The article you linked to speaks of increased Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe, which is something of a no-brainer. Given what’s going on in the Israel-Palestine conflict, it seems fairly obvious that some fuel is going to thrown on the anti-Semitism fire, particularly among Muslim youth who have few or no other outlets.
On other points, you’re making good sense and I tend to agree with you.
M. Simon: I know you hate war and would never study how it is done but immediately post Tet Giap thought he had lost the war and would have to sue for peace.
Ironically, Glen Wishard is right. Tet was mostly disastrous for the Viet Cong (as hopefully its contemporary pseudo-counterpart will be for the Sadrists). Unfortunately, that disaster couldn’t reverse the indifference to the US and their allies that both parties had by that time engendered among the South Vienamese. The Viet Cong didn’t “win” South Vietnam so much the US and their allies lost it by failing to put forward a genuinely viable alternative. And that wasn’t because of the media and the critics, but because of a stubborn refusal to learn how to practically fight insurgencies.
(Incidentally, along with the cinema heroics, you should can the speculation about how your opponents feel about or would study war. You’re making a bit of an ass of yourself with that stuff.)
Lurker: I don’t wish to misinterpret, but it seems that it’s purely a legitimacy question to you.
It’s a legitimacy question to the people in the country being “liberated.” The sooner Americans realize that, and their country’s deficiencies in that department, the better. At least for practical policies on the ground.
Of course, Americans have their own domestic politics to deal with, and those are what’s really driving the Bush Administration. The real problem with Bush isn’t that those concerns are a factor; the problem is that in the Bush White House, those concerns are almost everything. It’s an Administration with tons of hacks and virtually no wonks — a recipe for disaster if there ever was one.
So, can you explain why we should shackle ourselves to the UN at this point?
The second part of this paragraph I’ve already answered. As to this, I think the real question is: why should the UN shackle themselves to you at this particular point? I don’t see any compelling reason.
Thanks to everyone for continuing the conversation…
Lilith,
I don’t think you’ve given me anything but opinions here. Though certainly welcome, exchanging opinions is not going to further understanding. Can you also provide some reasons, or precedents why you hold to you opinions?
Who are the primary actors in this drama for whom the UN has more relevance? The Iraqis? China? Who? Oh yeah, besides being incompetent, the UN has now been exposed as corrupt as well.
Certainly we would all want more allies, but true allies share our goals and principles. Any members of the UN that share our current goals are already helping us. Many members of the UN Security Counsel do not share our goals. France, in fact, has articulated a policy of opposing the US, not on this particular issue, but as a general principal.
Given all these issues, plus the fact that the vast, vast majority of troops and financial commitments will still come from the US, it’s not clear how placing US resources under the authority of those who directly oppose the US will be beneficial – for the US at least – or how it would reduce the threat to US troops.
The UN doesn’t count for much either.
Because their contributions wouldn’t come close to balancing their active opposition to US goals.
Doctor Slack,
Is it correct to state that your position is that the UN has more credibility with the Iraqi people?
Are you sure that you don’t want to throw in the argument that Bush invaded Iraq for trying to assassinate his father?
I’m really not interested with defending the Bush administration. Their domestic policies are disaster, but WRT to the War on Terror, I am aligned with most of their policies. If Kerry would somehow, someway convince me that he would buck the UN, France, and anybody else to pursue this war in the best interests of the US, then I’ll gladly support him. Until that day, my vote is sitting squarely on the fence.
Agreed! The UN doesn’t need the US, and the US doesn’t need the UN. Let us all part ways amicably!
Lurker:
Is it correct to state that your position is that the UN has more credibility with the Iraqi people?
Well, by default, mostly. It’s more that the organization isn’t likely to have any less credibility than the current CPA.
Perhaps more importantly, the UN is a proven means to lever support from allies — something Bush & Co forgot in their early rush of contempt for it and their later attempts to intimidate it.
Are you sure that you don’t want to throw in the argument that Bush invaded Iraq for trying to assassinate his father?
I just don’t see any way to explain their behaviour other than to see them as primarily a group of political hacks, that’s all.
If you’re looking for any other American President to “buck the UN, France and anybody else,” then it looks like you’ll be stuck with Bush. It’s getting pretty evident that bucking the UN, France and everybody else is what got him into his current mess.
Lilith:
You say “Rwandans are blaming the West … for the genocide THEY committed.”
I don’t think that’s quite fair. In some senses there are no such people as Rwandans as such; there are Rwandan Hutu and Rwandan Tutsi. The former massacred the latter.
And the turning aside by the West and the UN was a major mistake.
M. Simon:
“Explain why anti-Semitic Acts are up” in Europe when polls show it is down.
I’ll give it a shot.
Anti-semitism is probably lower among the general poulation BUT violent, extreme and overt anti-semitism among a section of the Muslim minorities is up. And people are reluctant to criticise this racism if they do they are accused of racism, or just feel uncomfortable about the issue.
See the recent fiasco over the EU report; it ascribes about 90% of attacks to Muslims, then says the main concern are right-wing white youths.
(Though speaking from the UK, the organised fascists are trying, as ever, to take advantage, with their agitiation against Muslims or Jews as best suit at any time)
For the UK (can’t speak to Continental Europe) I am fairly confident that anti-semitism is a fringe thing; it’s there, and but marginal.
We could quite well have a Jewish PM (Howard) and Chancellor (Letwin) if the Conservatives get elected.
Nobody I’ve spoken too cares a hoot, even if they dislike Howard as leader. (Hardly anyone realised until recently that Letwin was Jewish).
Unthinking anti-Israeli prejudice is growing though, and there is a real risk of that feeding back into anti-Semitism. Comments shading between have been increasingly common in the media.
And there are the Islamists, of course.
Was going to say more, but I think Lurker has already said it all for me, and better.
Or at least, shorter 😉
Dr. Slack,
This assumes that any support was available for the asking to begin with.
There’s nothing I can do to convince you here. Let’s just say I don’t know anything about what the true motivations are for the Bush administration. I just know that any disagreements I have with their policies on Iraq and the War on Terror are move in the nature of quantity not quality – only quibbles
If you can step back from the UN issue and the ‘where are the WMD’s’ issue, and read some thoughtful pro-war commentary (hey try the Winds of Change archives), you may get a better handle on a significant American constituency that is pro-war.
Don’t let your perception of Bush be a red herring. There’s a reason that support for the war remains strong, even though Bush’s popularity is waning somewhat. Support for Bush and support for this war are not synonymous. If you think a change in the US administration will change this, you’d be wrong.
BTW, is your doctorate in divinity with the Church of Slack?
Doctor Slack:
Returning to an earlier matter:
The reports of mutilation of American soldiers in Mosul last November were quickly withdrawn. You linked to one of the early and inaccurate stories.
At the time, warbloggers like Tacitus reacted to the initial news with horror and outrage. But commenters on your side of the aisle accused them of being too quick to believe the worst about Arabs, and seemed to be vindicated when the stories proved false.
Now you are touting this as an instance of how the right really doesn’t care about our soldiers in Iraq.
Too funny.
Vinteuil: The Pentagon disputed the Mosul mutilation story. Witnesses in Mosul did not, as far as I know, retract their account — unless you’ve seen something I haven’t. Nor do I form my opinions based on what “commenters on my side of the aisle” allegedly said or didn’t say. Try again.
Lurker: Believe me, I’m familiar at some length for why there are still supporters of the Iraq War. I’ve spent much of the past year looking over the arguments, from the crude to the more sophisticated. However, you’re gravely mistaken if you think that the Bush Administration’s conduct is any kind of “red herring.” It’s central to how the war has unfolded, it’s central to how the case for the war was made (or, really not made), and it was justifiably central to the decisions of many to oppose the war, including some of the US’ traditional allies. You’re simply not going to be able to understand those dynamics in isolation from the specific policies of the Bush Admin — and I genuinely doubt that you will find many takers for continuation of those specific policies who aren’t Bush supporters, with good reason.
Oh, and no, I don’t have any formal affiliation with the Church of the SubGenius. I’m not really a “doctor” either. Truthfully, I started using the nick a while ago in an inadvisable moment, because it just boiled randomly to the surface of my brain. I actually don’t like it that much — but I’ve kept it for the sake of consistency.
Dr. Slack,
Certainly, the Bush administration is responsible for these issues. Though, I don’t have many problems with how things have unfolded; I do have many issues with how Bush has explained the case for the war. This has been his major failing.
Are you saying that people are making their decisions about whether to support the war or not based on an emotional response to Bush? Is this why France, Germany, and Russia opposed the war? Because Bush is a Cowboy? We can understand, but not excuse, everyday people who let their emotions rule them; however, one would hope that the leaders of nations would have rational reasons to do what they do.
Certainly, Bush’s policies effect the debate. Anyone that takes a firm stand on any topic will draw detractors. What do you think I might be misunderstanding about the dynamics?
You say you’ve been studying these pro-war arguments and I believe you. But why does it always go back to Bush misleading us? Or bush being rude? Or Bush being a cowboy? Ad infinitum. This sure smells like a red herring to me. The facts and arguments stand on their own. You are free to accept or reject them. Do we still have to argue about Bush’s propriety?
If Clinton were still president, do you think we would not have invaded Iraq? And do you really think the UN would have went along? The UN couldn’t even go along with Kosovo.
And what would those good reasons be? You would be very surprised by how many Americans support the war on Iraq, and by extension, Bush – but only as far as that. I see at least two everyday, one in the mirror and the second sitting across the dinner table. I’ll go out on a limb and say that this is Armed Liberal’s position as well. If you continue to read Winds of Change, you will observe many others. We didn’t need Bush to convince us of the need for war. Many of us in fact think he’s done a poor job of making a case for why it’s necessary. So, don’t be so quick to think that support for this war begins and ends with Bush.
Lurker: I have to run, but a couple of last points.
Are you saying that people are making their decisions about whether to support the war or not based on an emotional response to Bush?
No. I thought I just finished saying it was a response to his policies.
Look, I really don’t see why this is so hard to understand if you remember anything of the year running up to the war or what followed it.
1 The Bush Admin made a number of claims and assumptions on which they and their followers based the case for war. (This goes well beyond just WMDs and “imminent threats” and mushroom clouds and absurd dismissals of the inspections process. Remember Paul Wolfowitz claiming Iraq had no history of ethnic conflict? Remember how the reconstruction was supposed to pay for itself with oil money? Remember the assurances that Iraq’s oil would be turned over to “the Iraqi people” and not to American corporations?) Some people believed those assertions, some did not.
2 The Bush Administration tied the war to a wider doctrine of “pre-emption,” which was particularly alarming to other countries given the sketchy grasp Bush appeared to have of the kind of intelligence needed to justify “pre-emption.” Once grudgingly convinced to go to the UN, they also made specific legal arguments for the war which some people believed, and some (like, most international lawyers) did not.
These, combined with the Administration’s bizarre and sometimes comical conduct in making the case for war (which was a case of policy execution) were very obviously and very publicly the reasons for the split, as has been hashed out endlessly.
Now, Bush misleading us is indeed an important part of that disagreement. I find it bizarre that so many pro-wars can’t see why this is a problem; the credibility of a nation and its intelligent services is kind of important in fighting a war on terror, isn’t it? If the Bush White House has no credibility as an intelligence consumer, how exactly is it supposed to convince anyone that its priorities matter and its recommendations will be effective? This is really, really basic.
And what would those good reasons be?
Don’t have time to rehearse the entire argument against the Iraq War right now, sorry. But I think you might find a few people have posted opinions of it here and there… 😉
You would be very surprised by how many Americans support the war on Iraq
Not particularly. I track the waxing and waning of American support for the war with considerable interest.
Dr. Slack,
This is too much for me to digest right now, as I must run also. Hopefully, I can get back to this. Thanks for your time none the less.
If Clinton were still president, do you think we would not have invaded Iraq?
BTW, assuming that opponents of Bush are necessarily fans of Clinton’s foreign policy is a good habit to get right out of. And using Clinton as a duckblind for Bush’s decisions is usually a detour into irrelevancies. It also doesn’t help your case to bring up Kosovo, which is apples and oranges vis a vis Iraq for any number of reasons. (Clinton did have international legitimacy for that action, BTW, through NATO. Not that that whole scenario is panning out too well either.)
Whether or not Clinton would have invaded Iraq doesn’t really matter. (Absent a clear casus belli, my guess is probably no. And that’s to the good.) In any case, we can speculate on plausible scenarios for justified wars and effective occupations of Iraq until doomsday — but the reality we’re talking about is, again, the specific policies of the Bush Administration.
Dr. Slack,
This seems like it can be boiled down quickly, so I’ll give it a try before I must go. Besides, I know how tedious it gets covering the same ground all the time. In fact, you can quit at any point, no hard feelings.. The main reason I engaged with you, is that you seemed to be well read and seemed to look at things in an interesting way.
1. Bush’s diplomacy sucks. Agreed. So, did everyone else’s. The blame for the breakdown in the UNSC can’t all be put on Bush.
2. Bush’s credibility has been damaged. Yes and No. Yes for those that didn’t support the war and with whom he had little credibility anyway. No for those that previously supported the war. Conclusion: Bush didn’t change anyone’s mind one way or another; therefore, he is a distraction to getting to the real issues of the pro vs. anti war debate.
3. Without Bush, he US would not be for the Iraq war. Wrong. There is significant support for the war in the US. In fact, it was Bill Clinton who
first laid out the policy of regime change WRT Iraq.
4. Preemption. That’s another subject. Aside: It can be argued that Iraq really isn’t an example of preemption, since hostilities had been ongoing since the cease-fire of GW1.
Is that all the big issues?
BTW, Have a nice evening.
Thanks for the response, Lurker. This is going to wrap it up for me for a while. Happy Easter weekend.
1. Bush’s diplomacy sucks. Agreed. So, did everyone else’s.
False equivalency. Bush’s diplomacy managed to alienate traditional allies and the bulk of the international community to an unprecedented degree. The pretense that everyone else must somehow share equal blame for such a debacle simply won’t pass the laugh test, I’m afraid.
Bush’s credibility has been damaged. Yes and No. Yes for those that didn’t support the war and with whom he had little credibility anyway. No for those that previously supported the war.
False. David Kay and Andrew Sullivan are only two prominent examples of previously pro-war figures who have openly recognized the credibility disaster that Bush’s deceptions created for the White House and for American intelligence. I’d argue that those who previously supported the war and haven’t admitted this to themselves are engaged in Bush partisanship, not analysis.
And it goes well beyond the intel being wrong — it’s extremely obvious that however mistaken the intel services were (a legacy of the Clinton years), the Bush Admin went to great lengths to, effectively, be even more wrong. The import of this may be lost on you. I can almost guarantee you it’s not lost on the al Qaedists.
Without Bush, the US would not be for the Iraq war.
I find this a little bizarre. Where did I say that any war at all would not have happened without Bush? American Iraq policy was on a disastrous drift for years before Bush came on the scene. However, that says nothing about Bush’s conduct of diplomacy, of the war or of the occupation. All versions of a war-with-Saddam scenario were not created equal, and Bush doesn’t get to say “oops, I screwed up, well, there would have been a war anyway.”
I also don’t understand why you’re repeating that there’s support for the war in the US as if this is news to someone. Who are you really trying to convince? (Support is waning, obviously, as well it should given events on the ground right now. But I suspect for many it’s the support for Bush’s management that’s waning.)
In fact, it was Bill Clinton who
first laid out the policy of regime change WRT Iraq.
*Yes,* and one of his ertswhile staffers, Ken Pollack, added his voice to the cheerleading when Bush picked up that ball and ran with it. The only difference being that Clinton’s version was designed to bolster the case for an embargo of Iraq that was almost as untenable as Bush’s war.
But again… so what? Clinton’s mistakes don’t earn Bush a pass for his, and all the tortured Clintonian intelligence in the world doesn’t have a thing on the antics of Don Rumsfeld or gong shows like the Office of Special Plans. The whole thing strikes me as false equivalency meant to hold Clinton up as a human shield to deflect criticism from Bush, and I’m not buying it.
Aside: It can be argued that Iraq really isn’t an example of preemption, since hostilities had been ongoing since the cease-fire of GW1.
It could have been, but it really wasn’t, so this is basically irrelevant to my point. The great mass of the White House case for war was obviously tied to regime change as the preemption of a threat and the establishment of that principle as a “doctrine.” Specific quotes to this effect are in the public record virtually ad nauseam.
Doctor Slack:
Autopsies reportedly showed that, contrary to earlier stories, the victims in Mosul had not had their throats cut, let alone their bodies desecrated, as happened to the contractors in Fallujah. So more than one warblogger had to back off their initial hyperventilation, under pressure from apologists for the “resistance.” I remember because I participated in the discussions.
Your attempt to treat this as a case revealing that the pro-war side cares more about mercenaries than regular soldiers is beyond intellectually dishonest.
Shame.
Dr. Slack,
Just in case you’re still around….
Actually, I’ve let our conversation devolve into more caos then I intended, likely due to my poor powers of concentration. My appologies. I really have no care to go around and around on the various issues surrounding Bush. All the gotcha games are tedius beyond believe. Let me leave at this for now, I supported the war, and he’s all I got.
What I was interested in originally, was how the UN could improve the situation in Iraq now. I responded to Lillith, then you took it up, and now here we are. I think we concluded the the UN couldn’t help now, but yuou may disagree, since you never actually made a positive statement.
The next bit that I found interesting, was that you seem to imply in a few places that Bush is the fountain of US support of the wa\r in Iraq, and that without his ‘manipulations’ there would be no support in the US for the war. So, one of the things I was trying to show is that there was support for the war that transcends Bush. And that I and many like minded people were not minipulated by him. That’s the other conversation that I wanted to have.
Anyway, sorry again for letting the merry-go-round get going.
I am interested in your perspectives on these other issues, but those will be conversations for another time. By then, maybe I will have learned to focus better.
Enjoy your Holiday as well!
Vinteuil: I can’t find any reports of the autopsies you allege. If you have something to point me to, have at it, and I’ll happily retract the Mosul analogy. You’ll understand if I don’t take your word for it.
Lurker: On the run, but we’ll chat again. Cheers.
A.L. writing here…Yet another comment I’m pulling from this clueless author.
Dr. Slack:
FWIW:
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/11/24/sprj.irq.main/
One of many reports.
But presumably you know how to use Google, when it happens to suit your purposes.
The Saga of “Fritz ” the Dog ” -as it relates to the present world situation .
Fritz was a 60lb.tan pitbull . Fritz was much loved by his owner . Fritz had a bad habit of chasing anyone who came near or passed his “territory” . Fritz’s territory was anywhere Fritz could run to . His favorite pass time was biting the tires of little kid’s bicycles and occaisionaly their legs .
Everytime animal control came around Fritz was securely tied up or not to be found .
Fritz for months on end had terrorised “his street ” .
One day Mrs.Giovanni was returning from grocery shopping .She pulled up on her driveway and began to remove the bags containing her groceries from the trunk of her car .
Fritz spotted her and made a charge . Luckily Mrs.Giovanni heard the growls and bolted towards her front door , dropping the groceries on the front lawn . Fritz , the opportunist , began devouring what was edible and some things that were not . Frantic and upset ,Mrs.Giovanni called her husband Tom , a bankguard , who was just getting off work . He rushed home ,understandably upset . Fritz was still on the lawn , and Mr.Giovanni was packing heat .[ he carried a 9mm for work] Fritz looked up growling and attempted a charge , Mr. Giovanni emptied the 9mm into Fritz .
Neighbors cheered , and the animal people frowned, since the story made the local rags . The owner claimed Fritz had been secure but always managed to go under or through the fence ” .
Trouble is , there was no fence , only a puny metal spike in the ground with a 10 ft leash ,more suited for a poodle than a 60lb. pitbull .
Needless to say ,Mr Giovanni became the villain , the cops cited him for firing a firearm and his job fired him for using their gun . The animal people picketed his house for a day or two and disparaged his name – but Fritz was solid gone – dead – out of the picture .
was Fritz an innocent victim ?
did his owner deserve the same fate ?
how will Mr. Giovanni feed his children ?
what about that “fence ” ?
are the kids on the street happy ?
Is this a paradoxical story ? No , but its true .
Is it ridiculous to post ?
You may think so ,but it is no more ridiculous than the cacophony taking place in the previous posts . I dont think anyone here will have trouble understanding the rationals involved , the reactions , the judgements and lies that came about .
And the consequences and results ?
Are there parralells to todays world situation ? You bet !
Draw your own conclusions , here are mine .
Bad dogs need to be shot .
Elitists need to be bitten by bad dogs .
The owners of bad dogs , who are irresponsible should also be shot -at least in the knee caps .
Kids shouldn’t have to worry about getting their bicycles eaten and their legs bitten by bad dogs .
And the “animal people ” need to recieve at least one good dog bite in the butt .