Religions > Atheism > OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"G-Ride" |
| Date: |
30 Aug 2005 07:46:08 PM |
| Object: |
OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength |
http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=8d187cda-6e7c-46bc-af30-fcb819c848a1
or
http://tinyurl.com/cfavm
The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength
By Peter Daou
The unbridgeable divide between the left and right's approach to Iraq and
the WoT is, among other things, a disagreement over the value of moral and
material strength, with the left placing a premium on the former and the
right on the latter. The right (broadly speaking) can't fathom why the left
is driven into fits of rage over every Abu Ghraib, every Gitmo, every secret
rendition, every breach of civil liberties, every shifting rationale for
war, every soldier and civilian killed in that war, every Bush platitude in
support of it, every attempt to squelch dissent. They see the left's
protestations as appeasement of a ruthless enemy. For the left (broadly
speaking), America's moral strength is of paramount importance; without it,
all the brute force in the world won't keep us safe, defeat our enemies, and
preserve our role as the world's moral leader.
War hawks squeal about America-haters and traitors, heaping scorn on the
so-called "blame America first" crowd, but they fail to comprehend that the
left reserves the deepest disdain for those who squander our moral
authority. The scars of a terrorist attack heal and we are sadder but
stronger for having lived through it. When our moral leadership is
compromised by people draped in the American flag, America is weakened. The
loss of our moral compass leaves us rudderless, open to attacks on our
character and our basic decency. And nothing makes our enemies prouder. They
can't kill us all, but if they permanently stain our dignity, they've done
irreparable harm to America.
The antiwar critique of Iraq is that it is an immoral war and every
resulting death is a wrongful one. Opponents of the war view the invasion
and occupation as a dangerous and shameful violation of international law.
Iraq saps our moral strength and the sooner we leave the better. Opposing
the invasion on the grounds that the administration lied its way into it,
they see every subsequent death, American or foreign, as an ethical travesty
and a stain on America's good name.
They have held this view consistently since 2002. Millions marched down the
streets of our cities before the invasion, believing that the administration
's claim that Saddam Hussein constituted a dire and imminent threat to the
US was absurd on its face (whether or not the exact word 'imminent' was used
is a semantic exercise, the implication was clear). Where the hawks screamed
that Saddam gassed his own people, the war's opponents countered that there
is no shortage of murderous tyrants. Where the hawks said that Saddam
wouldn't hesitate to arm terrorists, the war's opponents argued that there's
no lack of regimes that will help terrorists obtain lethal weapons.
For the less gullible among us, the administration's alarmist rhetoric in
2002 was a grim farce, and the unfolding of the nightmare we see today was a
foregone conclusion. Saddam was no greater or immediate a threat - and
arguably a lesser one - than North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia.
Hindsight has proven these war critics correct. Few dispute that the threat
from Saddam was over-stated - to put it mildly. And evidence continues to
mount that the invasion was a fait accompli by 2002 if not 2001. Calling for
an immediate pullout from Iraq has nothing to do with capitulation and
everything to do with righting a moral wrong and undoing the damage done to
America's moral standing.
Yet to many of Bush's supporters, anything short of 'victory' is a weakening
of America in the eyes of its enemies. They believe we are "taking the fight
to the enemy," with the word 'enemy' defined so over-broadly as to conflate
Iraq and the attacks of September 11th. It's the "kicking ***** and taking
names" mentality, moral justifications be damned. Revenge for being attacked
is rationale enough. Material strength trumps moral strength.
Bush plays to the basest instincts of this crowd, but he and his handlers
know it's not enough. If the left values moral strength over material
strength and the right values material strength over moral strength, the
common ground between the two, and the place where Bush would find his
widest base of support, is a case where material strength is put to use for
a moral cause. Bush et al want desperately to prove that Iraq satisfies both
conditions. That's why the Sheehan-Bush battle revolves around the words
"noble cause."
Faced with the disintegration of the original rationale for war, Bush and
his supporters are scrambling to find the elusive moral ground to undergird
America's presence in Iraq. But when you're on the record invading a country
because it was a grave threat and the threat never materializes, you're left
with little but a means-ends argument to justify it. In the eyes of the war'
s opponents, Bush and his apologists are mired in an ethical swamp trying to
justify the mess they created. Judging from recent polls, what they've come
up with so far is inadequate:
MORAL JUSTIFICATION #1: Bush and his administration may have knowingly
exaggerated the threat but still had a hidden, righteous agenda: the removal
of a murderous dictator, liberating the oppressed, etc. They simply used the
most "marketable" story to gain the support of the American public.
This borders on the absurd. I'm no fan of slippery slope arguments, they're
easy and ubiquitous, but this leads to the slipperiest of slopes: if it's OK
to fib the country into war as long as the fibber has "good" intentions,
then it's OK to lie about any policy so long as the president believes he or
she is aiming for some secret "good."
MORAL JUSTIFICATION #2: Ends justify means. In other words, pick and choose
your preferred version of the following argument: "Despite the shifting
rationales and lack of WMD, removing Saddam ... free elections ... an Iraqi
constitution ... spreading freedom and democracy justifies the death and
destruction."
This point is often made in the form of a challenge: "Would you rather
Saddam still be in power?" But rhetorical questions can go both ways.
Estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties range from the low tens of thousands
to the hundreds of thousands. Taking 50,000 as an arbitrary number, who
tells those 50,000 families that they have to suffer and die to prevent
100,000 other families from suffering and dying under Saddam? Are Iraqi
lives fungible? Who plays God? Without an iron-clad moral justification for
war, aren't we callously and capriciously toying with matters of life and
death?
Again, why Iraq? If the hyped up threat was bogus - which we now know it
was - and it wasn't about self-defense, why are we there? What is it about
the Iraqi people that requires Cindy Sheehan to give her child for their
freedom? Why not liberate the people of Darfur or North Korea? Who tells
them that an Iraqi deserves liberation but not them? Bush crows about
"progress" in Iraq as though Americans had some unique obligation to ensure
progress in that particular country. But if it's simply a matter of "doing
good," why not spend $200 billion on cancer research or alleviating poverty
or educating the uneducated or boosting safety and security at home so young
girls don't get raped and buried alive?
Why spend precious lives and money in Iraq? If the answer is freedom and
democracy for the Middle East, one could easily argue that a cure for cancer
would be infinitely more beneficial to humanity. Spending $200 billion to
find a cure for cancer may be a long shot, but judging from the news,
there's a distinct possibility that our $200 billion experiment in Iraq may
leave it in a worse state than when we invaded. Wouldn't it make more sense
to apply those resources to research that could potentially save tens of
millions of lives? And we'd have thousands less Americans killed and
wounded, and tens of thousands less Iraqis slaughtered.
The problem with the Bush apologists' reasoning is that using an infinite
time horizon - which they are so fond of - virtually any action, no matter
how egregious, can be shown to lead to some positive results. It's the
bastardization of utilitarianism; asserting a causal relationship between a
pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign nation and all future good developments
in Iraq and the Middle East may swell the hawks' breasts with pride, but
it's a dubious and dangerous way to conduct foreign policy.
Which is precisely why we need to adhere so strictly to the rule of law, to
basic moral precepts, and to established principles of international
relations, something that this administration has failed to do, and that the
administration's supporters can dance around but can't justify.
While bumper-sticker patriotism may have anodyne effects on Bush and his
followers, the retroactive ethical justifications for the invasion and
occupation of Iraq are flimsy at best. And for so many on the left, the
undermining of America's moral strength under this administration is more of
a "grave and gathering danger" to America than Saddam Hussein ever was.
--
Aloha, G-Ride
"Like a quarrelling group of monkeys on a leaky boat, armed with sticks of
dynamite, we are now embarked on an uncertain journey."
.
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| User: "Fred Stone" |
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| Title: Re: OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength |
30 Aug 2005 08:45:39 PM |
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"G-Ride" <gride42nospammotherfucker@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:3njrcvF1ufvpU1@individual.net:
http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=8d187cda-6e7c-
46bc
-af30-fcb819c848a1
or
http://tinyurl.com/cfavm
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/995phq
jw.asp?pg=1
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X23B514BB
A War to Be Proud Of
From the September 5 / September 12, 2005 issue: The case for
overthrowing Saddam was unimpeachable. Why, then, is the administration
tongue-tied?
by Christopher Hitchens
09/05/2005, Volume 010, Issue 47
Larger type view
Increase Font Size
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Respond to this article
LET ME BEGIN WITH A simple sentence that, even as I write it, appears
less than Swiftian in the modesty of its proposal: "Prison conditions at
Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of
Coalition troops in Baghdad."
I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human
Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none
of them could challenge it, let alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu
Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp.
Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword for Yankee
imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the
difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates
of a post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner?
And where should one begin?
I once tried to calculate how long the post-Cold War liberal Utopia had
actually lasted. Whether you chose to date its inception from the fall
of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, or the death of Nicolae Ceausescu
in late December of the same year, or the release of Nelson Mandela from
prison, or the referendum defeat suffered by Augusto Pinochet (or indeed
from the publication of Francis Fukuyama's book about the "end of
history" and the unarguable triumph of market liberal pluralism), it was
an epoch that in retrospect was over before it began. By the middle of
1990, Saddam Hussein had abolished Kuwait and Slobodan Milosevic was
attempting to erase
the identity and the existence of Bosnia. It turned out that we had not
by any means escaped the reach of atavistic, aggressive, expansionist,
and totalitarian ideology. Proving the same point in another way, and
within approximately the same period, the theocratic dictator of Iran
had publicly claimed the right to offer money in his own name for the
suborning of the murder of a novelist living in London, and the
génocidaire faction in Rwanda had decided that it could probably get
away with putting its long-fantasized plan of mass murder into
operation.
One is not mentioning these apparently discrepant crimes and nightmares
as a random or unsorted list. Khomeini, for example, was attempting to
compensate for the humiliation of the peace agreement he had been
compelled to sign with Saddam Hussein. And Saddam Hussein needed to make
up the loss, of prestige and income, that he had himself suffered in the
very same war. Milosevic (anticipating Putin, as it now seems to me, and
perhaps Beijing also) was riding a mutation of socialist nationalism
into national socialism. It was to be noticed in all cases that the
aggressors, whether they were killing Muslims, or exalting Islam, or
just killing their neighbors, shared a deep and abiding hatred of the
United States.
The balance sheet of the Iraq war, if it is to be seriously drawn up,
must also involve a confrontation with at least this much of recent
history. Was the Bush administration right to leave--actually to
confirm--Saddam Hussein in power after his eviction from Kuwait in 1991?
Was James Baker correct to say, in his delightfully folksy manner, that
the United States did not "have a dog in the fight" that involved ethnic
cleansing for the mad dream of a Greater Serbia? Was the Clinton
administration prudent in its retreat from Somalia, or wise in its
opposition to the U.N. resolution that called for a preemptive
strengthening of the U.N. forces in Rwanda?
I know hardly anybody who comes out of this examination with complete
credit. There were neoconservatives who jeered at Rushdie in 1989 and
who couldn't see the point when Sarajevo faced obliteration in 1992.
There were leftist humanitarians and radicals who rallied to Rushdie and
called for solidarity with Bosnia, but who--perhaps because of a bad
conscience about Palestine--couldn't face a confrontation with Saddam
Hussein even when he annexed a neighbor state that was a full member of
the Arab League and of the U.N. (I suppose I have to admit that I was
for a time a member of that second group.) But there were consistencies,
too. French statecraft, for example, was uniformly hostile to any
resistance to any aggression, and Paris even sent troops to rescue its
filthy clientele in Rwanda. And some on the hard left and the brute
right were also opposed to any exercise, for any reason, of American
military force.
The only speech by any statesman that can bear reprinting from that low,
dishonest decade came from Tony Blair when he spoke in Chicago in 1999.
Welcoming the defeat and overthrow of Milosevic after the Kosovo
intervention, he warned against any self-satisfaction and drew attention
to an inescapable confrontation that was coming with Saddam Hussein. So
far from being an American "poodle," as his taunting and ignorant foes
like to sneer, Blair had in fact leaned on Clinton over Kosovo and was
insisting on the importance of Iraq while George Bush was still an
isolationist governor of
Texas.
Notwithstanding this prescience and principle on his part, one still
cannot read the journals of the 2000/2001 millennium without the feeling
that one is revisiting a hopelessly somnambulist relative in a neglected
home. I am one of those who believe, uncynically, that Osama bin Laden
did us all a service (and holy war a great disservice) by his mad
decision to assault the American homeland four years ago. Had he not
made this world-historical mistake, we would have been able to add a
Talibanized and nuclear-armed Pakistan to our list of the threats we
failed to recognize in time. (This threat still exists, but it is no
longer so casually overlooked.)
The subsequent liberation of Pakistan's theocratic colony in
Afghanistan, and the so-far decisive eviction and defeat of its bin
Ladenist guests, was only a reprisal. It took care of the last attack.
But what about the next one? For anyone with eyes to see, there was only
one other state that combined the latent and the blatant definitions of
both "rogue" and "failed." This state--Saddam's ruined and tortured and
collapsing Iraq--had also met all the conditions under which a country
may be deemed to have sacrificed its own legal sovereignty. To
recapitulate: It had invaded its neighbors, committed genocide on its
own soil, harbored and nurtured international thugs and killers, and
flouted every provision of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United
Nations, in this crisis, faced with regular insult to its own
resolutions and its own character, had managed to set up a system of
sanctions-based mutual corruption. In May 2003, had things gone on as
they had been going, Saddam Hussein would have been due to fill Iraq's
slot as chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. Meanwhile, every
species of gangster from the hero of the Achille Lauro hijacking to Abu
Musab al Zarqawi was finding hospitality under Saddam's crumbling roof.
One might have thought, therefore, that Bush and Blair's decision to put
an end at last to this intolerable state of affairs would be hailed, not
just as a belated vindication of long-ignored U.N. resolutions but as
some corrective to the decade of shame and inaction that had just passed
in Bosnia and Rwanda. But such is not the case. An apparent consensus
exists, among millions of people in Europe and America, that the whole
operation for the demilitarization of Iraq, and the salvage of its
traumatized society, was at best a false pretense and at worst an
unprovoked aggression. How can this possibly be?
THERE IS, first, the problem of humorless and pseudo-legalistic
literalism. In Saki's short story The Lumber Room, the naughty but
clever child Nicholas, who has actually placed a frog in his morning
bread-and-milk, rejoices in his triumph over the adults who don't credit
this excuse for not eating his healthful dish:
"You said there couldn't possibly be a frog in my bread-and-milk;
there was a frog in my bread-and-milk," he repeated, with the insistence
of a skilled tactician who does not intend to shift from favorable
ground.
Childishness is one thing--those of us who grew up on this wonderful
Edwardian author were always happy to see the grown-ups and governesses
discomfited. But puerility in adults is quite another thing, and
considerably less charming. "You said there were WMDs in Iraq and that
Saddam had friends in al Qaeda. . . . Blah, blah, pants on fire." I have
had many opportunities to tire of this mantra. It takes ten seconds to
intone the said mantra. It would take me, on my most eloquent C-SPAN
day, at the very least five minutes to say that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who
mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center attack in 1993,
subsequently sought and found refuge in Baghdad; that Dr. Mahdi Obeidi,
Saddam's senior physicist, was able to lead American soldiers to nuclear
centrifuge parts and a blueprint for a complete centrifuge (the crown
jewel of nuclear physics) buried on the orders of Qusay Hussein; that
Saddam's agents were in Damascus as late as February 2003, negotiating
to purchase missiles off the shelf from North Korea; or that Rolf Ekeus,
the great Swedish socialist who founded the inspection process in Iraq
after 1991, has told me for the record that he was offered a $2 million
bribe in a face-to-face meeting with Tariq Aziz. And these eye-catching
examples would by no means exhaust my repertoire, or empty my quiver.
Yes, it must be admitted that Bush and Blair made a hash of a good case,
largely because they preferred to scare people rather than enlighten
them or reason with them. Still, the only real strategy of deception has
come from those who believe, or pretend, that Saddam Hussein was no
problem.
I have a ready answer to those who accuse me of being an agent and tool
of the Bush-Cheney administration (which is the nicest thing that my
enemies can find to say). Attempting a little levity, I respond that I
could stay at home if the authorities could bother to make their own
case, but that I meanwhile am a prisoner of what I actually do know
about the permanent hell, and the permanent threat, of the Saddam
regime. However, having debated almost all of the spokespeople for the
antiwar faction, both the sane and the deranged, I was recently asked a
question that I was temporarily unable to answer. "If what you claim is
true," the honest citizen at this meeting politely asked me, "how come
the White House hasn't told us?"
I do in fact know the answer to this question. So deep and bitter is the
split within official Washington, most especially between the Defense
Department and the CIA, that any claim made by the former has been
undermined by leaks from the latter. (The latter being those who
maintained, with a combination of dogmatism and cowardice not seen since
Lincoln had to fire General McClellan, that Saddam Hussein was both a
"secular" actor and--this is the really rich bit--a rational and
calculating one.)
There's no cure for that illusion, but the resulting bureaucratic chaos
and unease has cornered the president into his current fallback upon
platitude and hollowness. It has also induced him to give hostages to
fortune. The claim that if we fight fundamentalism "over there" we won't
have to confront it "over here" is not just a standing invitation for
disproof by the next suicide-maniac in London or Chicago, but a coded
appeal to provincial and isolationist opinion in the United States.
Surely the elementary lesson of the grim anniversary that will shortly
be upon us is that American civilians are as near to the front line as
American soldiers.
It is exactly this point that makes nonsense of the sob-sister tripe
pumped out by the Cindy Sheehan circus and its surrogates. But in reply,
why bother to call a struggle "global" if you then try to localize it?
Just say plainly that we shall fight them everywhere they show
themselves, and fight them on principle as well as in practice, and get
ready to warn people that Nigeria is very probably the next target of
the jihadists. The peaceniks love to ask: When and where will it all
end? The answer is easy: It will end with the surrender or defeat of one
of the contending parties. Should I add that I am certain which party
that ought to be? Defeat is just about imaginable, though the
mathematics and the algebra tell heavily against the holy warriors.
Surrender to such a foe, after only four years of combat, is not even
worthy of consideration.
Antaeus was able to draw strength from the earth every time an
antagonist wrestled him to the ground. A reverse mythology has been
permitted to take hold in the present case, where bad news is deemed to
be bad news only for regime-change. Anyone with the smallest knowledge
of Iraq knows that its society and infrastructure and institutions have
been appallingly maimed and beggared by three decades of war and fascism
(and the "divide-and-rule" tactics by which Saddam maintained his own
tribal minority of the Sunni minority in power). In logic and morality,
one must therefore compare the current state of the country with the
likely or probable state of it had Saddam and his sons been allowed to
go on ruling.
At once, one sees that all the alternatives would have been infinitely
worse, and would most likely have led to an implosion--as well as
opportunistic invasions from Iran and Turkey and Saudi Arabia, on behalf
of their respective interests or confessional clienteles. This would in
turn have necessitated a more costly and bloody intervention by some
kind of coalition, much too late and on even worse terms and conditions.
This is the lesson of Bosnia and Rwanda yesterday, and of Darfur today.
When I have made this point in public, I have never had anyone offer an
answer to it. A broken Iraq was in our future no matter what, and was a
responsibility (somewhat conditioned by our past blunders) that no
decent person could shirk. The only unthinkable policy was one of
abstention.
Two pieces of good fortune still attend those of us who go out on the
road for this urgent and worthy cause. The first is contingent: There
are an astounding number of plain frauds and charlatans (to phrase it at
its highest) in charge of the propaganda of the other side. Just to tell
off the names is to frighten children more than Saki ever could: Michael
Moore, George Galloway, Jacques Chirac, Tim Robbins, Richard Clarke,
Joseph Wilson . . . a roster of gargoyles that would send Ripley himself
into early retirement. Some of these characters are flippant, and make
heavy jokes about Halliburton, and some disdain to conceal their
sympathy for the opposite side. So that's easy enough.
The second bit of luck is a certain fiber displayed by a huge number of
anonymous Americans. Faced with a constant drizzle of bad news and
purposely demoralizing commentary, millions of people stick out their
jaws and hang tight. I am no fan of populism, but I surmise that these
citizens are clear on the main point: It is out of the question--plainly
and absolutely out of the question--that we should surrender the
keystone state of the Middle East to a rotten, murderous alliance
between Baathists and bin Ladenists. When they hear the fatuous
insinuation that this alliance has only been created by the resistance
to it, voters know in their intestines that those who say so are soft on
crime and soft on fascism. The more temperate anti-warriors, such as
Mark Danner and Harold Meyerson, like to employ the term "a war of
choice." One should have no problem in accepting this concept. As they
cannot and do not deny, there was going to be another round with Saddam
Hussein no matter what. To whom, then, should the "choice" of time and
place have fallen? The clear implication of the antichoice faction--if I
may so dub them--is that this decision should have been left up to
Saddam Hussein. As so often before . . .
DOES THE PRESIDENT deserve the benefit of the reserve of fortitude that
I just mentioned? Only just, if at all. We need not argue about the
failures and the mistakes and even the crimes, because these in some
ways argue themselves. But a positive accounting could be offered
without braggartry, and would include:
(1) The overthrow of Talibanism and Baathism, and the exposure of many
highly suggestive links between the two elements of this Hitler-Stalin
pact. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq before
the coalition intervention, has even gone to the trouble of naming his
organization al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
(2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point of weapons
of mass destruction--a capitulation that was offered not to Kofi Annan
or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.
(3) The consequent unmasking of the A.Q. Khan network for the illicit
transfer of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.
(4) The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform is necessary
and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-criminal network within its
elite.
(5) The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor Schröder,
when confronted with irrefutable evidence of cheating and concealment,
respecting solemn treaties, on the part of Iran, that not even this will
alter their commitment to neutralism. (One had already suspected as much
in the Iraqi case.)
(6) The ability to certify Iraq as actually disarmed, rather than accept
the word of a psychopathic autocrat.
(7) The immense gains made by the largest stateless minority in the
region--the Kurds--and the spread of this example to other states.
(8) The related encouragement of democratic and civil society movements
in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, which has regained a version
of its autonomy.
(9) The violent and ignominious death of thousands of bin Ladenist
infiltrators into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real prospect of greatly
enlarging this number.
(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen
and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism,
which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future
combat.
It would be admirable if the president could manage to make such a
presentation. It would also be welcome if he and his deputies adopted a
clear attitude toward the war within the war: in other words, stated
plainly, that the secular and pluralist forces within Afghan and Iraqi
society, while they are not our clients, can in no circumstance be
allowed to wonder which outcome we favor.
The great point about Blair's 1999 speech was that it asserted the
obvious. Coexistence with aggressive regimes or expansionist,
theocratic, and totalitarian ideologies is not in fact possible. One
should welcome this conclusion for the additional reason that such
coexistence is not desirable, either. If the great effort to remake Iraq
as a demilitarized federal and secular democracy should fail or be
defeated, I shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching
myself for doing too little. But at least I shall have the comfort of
not having offered, so far as I can recall, any word or deed that
contributed to a defeat.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
"The usual cause of evil in the world is that at any given time
half the people in the world are awake. "
- Dean Rusk
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| User: "G-Ride" |
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| Title: Re: OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength |
30 Aug 2005 09:37:54 PM |
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"Fred Stone" <fstone69@earthling.com> wrote in message
news:1125434740.80bef92fbad7c38a5ef9fae430865d72@teranews...
"G-Ride" <gride42nospammotherfucker@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:3njrcvF1ufvpU1@individual.net:
http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=8d187cda-6e7c-
46bc
-af30-fcb819c848a1
or
http://tinyurl.com/cfavm
Fred's irrelevant "response" snipped.
I guess Fred missed this part (and Hitchens would do well to take note):
The problem with the Bush apologists' reasoning is that using an infinite
time horizon - which they are so fond of - virtually any action, no matter
how egregious, can be shown to lead to some positive results. It's the
bastardization of utilitarianism; asserting a causal relationship between a
pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign nation and all future good developments
in Iraq and the Middle East may swell the hawks' breasts with pride, but
it's a dubious and dangerous way to conduct foreign policy.
Clap louder, Fred! Keep trying to polish that turd.
You're such a joke.
--
Aloha, G-Ride
"Like a quarrelling group of monkeys on a leaky boat, armed with sticks of
dynamite, we are now embarked on an uncertain journey."
.
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| User: "Fred Stone" |
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| Title: Re: OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength |
30 Aug 2005 10:48:49 PM |
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"G-Ride" <gride42nospammotherfucker@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:3nk1uiF1r8jhU1@individual.net:
"Fred Stone" <fstone69@earthling.com> wrote in message
news:1125434740.80bef92fbad7c38a5ef9fae430865d72@teranews...
"G-Ride" <gride42nospammotherfucker@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:3njrcvF1ufvpU1@individual.net:
http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=8d187cda-6e7c-
46bc
-af30-fcb819c848a1
or
http://tinyurl.com/cfavm
Fred's irrelevant "response" snipped.
I guess Fred missed this part (and Hitchens would do well to take
note):
The problem with the Bush apologists' reasoning is that using an
infinite time horizon - which they are so fond of - virtually any
action, no matter how egregious, can be shown to lead to some positive
results. It's the bastardization of utilitarianism; asserting a causal
relationship between a pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign nation and
all future good developments in Iraq and the Middle East may swell the
hawks' breasts with pride, but it's a dubious and dangerous way to
conduct foreign policy.
One or two years is not an infinite time horizon, and the sovereign
nation *is* Iraq, and the terrorists involved are causally related to
the ones operating elsewhere in the mideast, so the relationship is more
than mere coincidence.
Clap louder, Fred! Keep trying to polish that turd.
You're such a joke.
You're such a waste of good electrons.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
"The usual cause of evil in the world is that at any given time
half the people in the world are awake. "
- Dean Rusk
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| User: "G-Ride" |
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| Title: Re: OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength |
31 Aug 2005 12:02:56 AM |
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"Fred Stone" <fstone69@earthling.com> wrote in message
news:1125442132.f2c52d7a5228be4d22e167ab7c3a1690@teranews...
"G-Ride" <gride42nospammotherfucker@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:3nk1uiF1r8jhU1@individual.net:
"Fred Stone" <fstone69@earthling.com> wrote in message
news:1125434740.80bef92fbad7c38a5ef9fae430865d72@teranews...
"G-Ride" <gride42nospammotherfucker@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:3njrcvF1ufvpU1@individual.net:
http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=8d187cda-6e7c-
46bc
-af30-fcb819c848a1
or
http://tinyurl.com/cfavm
Fred's irrelevant "response" snipped.
I guess Fred missed this part (and Hitchens would do well to take
note):
The problem with the Bush apologists' reasoning is that using an
infinite time horizon - which they are so fond of - virtually any
action, no matter how egregious, can be shown to lead to some positive
results. It's the bastardization of utilitarianism; asserting a causal
relationship between a pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign nation and
all future good developments in Iraq and the Middle East may swell the
hawks' breasts with pride, but it's a dubious and dangerous way to
conduct foreign policy.
One or two years is not an infinite time horizon, and the sovereign
nation *is* Iraq, and the terrorists involved are causally related to
the ones operating elsewhere in the mideast, so the relationship is more
than mere coincidence.
You must get dizzy from all the spinning you do.
Clap louder, Fred! Keep trying to polish that turd.
--
Aloha, G-Ride
"Like a quarrelling group of monkeys on a leaky boat, armed with sticks of
dynamite, we are now embarked on an uncertain journey."
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| User: "eyelessgame" |
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| Title: Re: OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength |
30 Aug 2005 08:57:44 PM |
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I think the article Fred has provided contains fair evidence that
George Bush is not as evil as Saddam Hussein. If that's our moral
standard, we certainly ought to be able to continue to live up to it.
I know I'm certainly proud as punch to live in a country whose
president has not tortured to death as many Iraqis as Saddam Hussein
did. Nor has he put as many people in concentration camps as Stalin,
nor started as large a war as Hitler. Why, there are literally dozens
of people Bush is less evil than.
eyelessgame
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| User: "Fred Stone" |
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| Title: Re: OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength |
30 Aug 2005 09:35:17 PM |
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"eyelessgame" <aamp@oro.net> wrote in news:1125435464.574600.14220
@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
I think the article Fred has provided contains fair evidence that
George Bush is not as evil as Saddam Hussein. If that's our moral
standard, we certainly ought to be able to continue to live up to it.
You certainly won't be able to live up to the moral standard of
perfection that G-Ride's citation requires. There will *always* be some
fault or other of ours that would prevent us from acting against moral
evil that is *far* worse than our own.
I know I'm certainly proud as punch to live in a country whose
president has not tortured to death as many Iraqis as Saddam Hussein
did. Nor has he put as many people in concentration camps as Stalin,
nor started as large a war as Hitler. Why, there are literally dozens
of people Bush is less evil than.
If you're prepared to ignore moral evil like Saddam's because you might
have to get your hands dirty, you have no moral standards worth standing
on anyway.
And if you think that since we cannot address all the evil in the world
at once then we cannot address *any* of it, you're a moral cesspool
waiting to overflow.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
"The usual cause of evil in the world is that at any given time
half the people in the world are awake. "
- Dean Rusk
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| User: "Mark Richardson" |
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| Title: Re: OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength |
31 Aug 2005 11:27:00 AM |
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On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 09:46:08 -1000, "G-Ride"
<gride42nospammotherfucker@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=8d187cda-6e7c-46bc-af30-fcb819c848a1
or
http://tinyurl.com/cfavm
The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength
By Peter Daou
Well presented inteligent analysis.
Mark.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength |
31 Aug 2005 01:36:14 PM |
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Mark Richardson wrote:
On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 09:46:08 -1000, "G-Ride"
<gride42nospammotherfucker@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=8d187cda-6e7c-46bc-af30-fcb819c848a1
or
http://tinyurl.com/cfavm
The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength
By Peter Daou
Well presented inteligent analysis.
What do you think would happen if the US decided tomorrow
to just summarily withdraw?
I'm not a "true believer", but I think there's a moral issue
there as well.
Sunny
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| User: "Richo" |
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| Title: Re: OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength |
02 Sep 2005 05:01:33 AM |
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wrote:
Mark Richardson wrote:
On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 09:46:08 -1000, "G-Ride"
<gride42nospammotherfucker@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=8d187cda-6e7c-46bc-af30-fcb819c848a1
or
http://tinyurl.com/cfavm
The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength
By Peter Daou
Well presented inteligent analysis.
What do you think would happen if the US decided tomorrow
to just summarily withdraw?
I'm not a "true believer", but I think there's a moral issue
there as well.
Getting out - will be difficult.
That's what happens when you start wars without thinking about
consequences - without any realistic idea of the dynamics of the place
you are attempting to "bomb into democracy, freedom and peace" - the
latest justification for the war.
The greatest potential benifit of withdrawl is that the "insugency"
would fizzle out - without the presense of foriegn troops as fuel for
their fire.
If civil war imeadiately follows - Kurds vs Shia Vs Sunni - then that
could be disasterous. It may of course happen *anyway*.
It's a mess.
Remaining in Iraq is the most potent encouragement to the growth of
Al-Quaeda.
As a recruiting strategy/training ground for extremists its exactly
what the nutters want.
It's Osama Bin Ladens wet dream - to have a war between Arabs and
USA/Israel.
Stop giving him what he wants.
That's what I would do.
Leave or stay - a choice between bad alternatives.
If you can think of a plan without negatives - please let me know.
I think leaving is the "least bad" option in the long term.
Mark.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: OT: The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength |
02 Sep 2005 03:35:33 PM |
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Richo wrote:
stillsunny1@yahoo.com wrote:
Mark Richardson wrote:
On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 09:46:08 -1000, "G-Ride"
<gride42nospammotherfucker@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=8d187cda-6e7c-46bc-af30-fcb819c848a1
or
http://tinyurl.com/cfavm
The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength
By Peter Daou
Well presented inteligent analysis.
What do you think would happen if the US decided tomorrow
to just summarily withdraw?
I'm not a "true believer", but I think there's a moral issue
there as well.
Getting out - will be difficult.
That's what happens when you start wars without thinking about
consequences - without any realistic idea of the dynamics of the place
you are attempting to "bomb into democracy, freedom and peace" - the
latest justification for the war.
The greatest potential benifit of withdrawl is that the "insugency"
would fizzle out - without the presense of foriegn troops as fuel for
their fire.
If civil war imeadiately follows - Kurds vs Shia Vs Sunni - then that
could be disasterous. It may of course happen *anyway*.
It may happen, true -- but I think it is almost certain to happen if
withdrawal is early.
It's a mess.
It's a damn mess.
Recent parallels are fairly striking.
In both Baghdad and New Orleans, no immediate measures were taken to
impose/restore civil order, to prevent looting, to secure critical
areas and borders, which led directly to the breakdown of society and
the increase in lawlessness.
Remaining in Iraq is the most potent encouragement to the growth of
Al-Quaeda.
As a recruiting strategy/training ground for extremists its exactly
what the nutters want.
It's Osama Bin Ladens wet dream - to have a war between Arabs and
USA/Israel.
Stop giving him what he wants.
That's what I would do.
You have a point I've considered.
On the other hand, withdrawing gives him a victory, does it not?
Which is also what he wants.
It's a win/win for him either way.
On the other hand, the only way he "loses" is with a stable Iraq, where
some sort of human rights are protected, and one strong enough to
handle internal and external threats. Which, as it happens, is a win
for the US and a win for the Iraqi people in general.
And I'll freely admit that I am not at all certain that can be
accomplished, though I think it has a chance. It has no chance at all
with a sudden withdrawal.
I went and looked up the philosophy of a moral war the other day.
One of its criteria is that there be a reasonable expectation of making
a situation better instead of worse; ie, a reasonable expectation of
victory.
It seems to me the converse in this situation is withdrawal must
accompany a reasonable expectation of the same thing, of making a
situation better instead of worse.
I don't want to argue about the war, or Bush, or who's good or bad or
WMD's or any of that. I have a son who's in the military. I'm
terribly anxious to have this thing over there finished.
But I do see a moral problem with leaving the place in chaos, knowing
full well that a power vaccum is an invitation to a lot more bloodshed
and upheaval, both from internal forces and external ones. In a
nutshell, we made this mess, and I'd find it horribly immoral to leave
a destitute people to clean it up.
Leave or stay - a choice between bad alternatives.
I agree. Of course, that's most choices in life -- and nearly all of
them on an international level.
If you can think of a plan without negatives - please let me know.
I can't.
I think leaving is the "least bad" option in the long term.
I know.
I think we both want our soldiers out.
Sunny
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