> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Ritu > Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2006 6:07 AM > To: 'Killer Bs Discussion' > Subject: RE: Iraq Re: "Someone Must Tell Them" > > > Dan Minette wrote: > > > > Only if you share Bush's Manichean world-view. I don't. But we have > > > covered this ground earlier, before the invasion. > > > > We have, and I think there is a reasonable view that might address > > some of what you and some of what JDG argues for. > > Which probably means that neither of y'all will like it. > > Because, of course, JDG and I are the epitome of unreasonableness... *g* > > > I believe that we have responsibility for our actions and for our > > inactions. But, the type of responsibility we have varies with how > > directly we are the agents of the results of our actions/inactions. > > Agreed. > > > Turning back to the question we argued before the 2nd Iraq war, those > > like me who argued against going in needed to accept the consequences > > of Hussein remaining in power as a result of the path we favored being > > > taken. By the same token, those who favored invasion need to accept > > the consequences of that invasion. > > Now this is where you too fall prey to Bush's Manichean world view. The > object was [for argument's sake] the removal of a dictator. Bush's plan > was invasion and re-building. And *no other alternatives* were ever > explored.
I'm not sure why you made the last statement. I'm sure you have at least passing familiarity with the previous 10+ years since the end of the first Gulf War. A number of different alternatives were tried during that time. The first alternative, of Bush I, was to rely on the implosion of Hussein's army in the face of the Americans to provide a spark for an internal revolution. The idea was that after that army surrendered en mass, its capacity would be reduced, along with Hussein's status. The US encouraged the Shiites to revolt, and they were brutally put down by the Republican Guard. After that, the US and Britain enforced no-fly zones in the north and south to limit the carnage. That proved very successful in the north, where the Kurds were able to hold their own. The peace treaty allowed for inspections and sanctions. They had some success during the '90s. But, in late '97 and '98, Hussein stopped/limited inspections at gun point, declaring vast areas "presidential palaces" and off limits to any inspections. At that point, the US decided to bomb the suspected sites and the inspectors withdrew. During the late '90s and early '00, the sanctions leaked more and more. The oil for food program of the UN was rife with corruption. France and Russia, which had lucrative contracts with Hussein, were pushing to end sanctions entirely. It's amazing to me that the French Ambassador to the UN admitted that Hussein paid him >$100,000 for "consulting" work before/during the time he was arguing to end sanctions. At the same time, the people of Iraq were suffering because the money wasn't going to them. >You either had to buy Bush's vision or be declared a supporter > of Saddam's regime of torture. Frankly, I find that nonsensical and do > not buy the argument. But, that's not what I said. Remember _I_ was opposed to Gulf War II. Honestly, I'm not so far gone that I would stoop to an ad honimen attacks on myself. :-) But, at the time and now I agreed that, by supporting containment, I would accept the moral consequences of allowing Hussein to remain in power because I honestly felt it was the lesser evil. There's a difference between that and supporting Hussein. > Let's say I read a newspaper report about a man taking his one month old > baby for a walk by the river. He sees a small kid drowning. He jumps in > with the baby, can't save the boy, and all three die. I read the story > and remark, 'Oh, that's stupid.' Now that does not automatically make me > a supporter of drowning, or of the notion that small kids should drown. > All it means is that I think the dad should have lay the baby down > somewhere before jumping in to effect a rescue, that it is stupid to > jump in with at least one arm already occupied. I understand that. I see that this argument has an obvious easy out....lay the baby down first, stupid. But, there isn't always an easy out. A more realistic true life story would be stopping a parent from going back into a burning building to find their child....knowing that this may eliminate the only chance the child has to live....but also knowing that the odds were strong that all that would happen is that both would die. Someone who did that would have to accept the consequences of their actions....they eliminated the chance of that child living. But, someone who didn't stop the parent would also have to accept the consequences of their inaction...if the parent never came out alive. I think part of being human is the fact that we must make moral choices based on incomplete information. We don't know with certainty the outcomes of our decisions...but we must make decisions in real time anyways. One thing that I heard from Gautam that made sense is that a critical part of this is accepting the consequences of one's own preferred path, as well as the consequences of the path one opposes. I think that the world > Similarly, I find the notion of bombing a people into democracy and > gratitude stupid. I will take this as a metaphorical expression of the more prosaic statement that "one cannot use outside military force to institute a representative government on a country ruled by a dictator." A more generalized statement of this would be "one can not expect to succeed in using outside force to effect a regime change that gives a people a substantially improved government (as measured in terms of human rights, freedom, representation, etc.) Well, we do have historical examples to consider with this. The last time the US was involved with this was in the Balkans. The UN was involved in ineffective peace keeping (including setting up safe cities and then standing aside to permit genocide within those safe cities) for ~8 years. Finally, Clinton pushed a plan on NATO, instituted a massive bombing campaign, and stated that the next step would be American boots on the ground. The genocide stopped, and representative governments were instituted in that area. Now, since the conflict resulted from the break-up of a country (as Iraq probably will do), the conflict was more like a civil war than a nation on nation conflict (like India-Pakistan). The US almost literally bombed the Balkans into a more representative government. I'll agree that this wasn't regime change, but the previous example I was thinking of is. On a pretext of the rape of an American woman by Panamanian security forces, the US invaded Panama and overthrew Noreaga. We set up a representative government, with free elections. That government, while not perfect, is still a representative democracy. Surveys a year after the invasion showed that most of the Panamanians considered the US invasion to be generally a good thing. Earlier than that, there was a small example of success. Reagan overthrew a Marxist government in Grenada. The government after that was far more representative. With respect to genocide, the most recent examples of massive genocide were also stopped by force. In Rwanda, Tutsi forces finally stopped the genocide. IIRC, they had support from surrounding countries to do so...at the very least free havens from which to mount their campaigns. The Pot Pol genocide was stopped by regime change instituted by Viet Nam. The government they instituted was far superior to the Pot Pal, even though it wasn't democratic. Now, I'm not arguing that this sort of intervention always works. I didn't cite examples of the failure of such intervention, but readily acknowledge that they exist. The reason I can accept this is that I see the premise I'm arguing against being "such military interventions don't work...and it's foolish to think they can" The premise that I'm arguing for is "such interventions work, but only some of the time." Sometimes the interventions do work, sometimes they don't. With the exception of Rwanda, none of the cases I cited involved regimes that staged massive attacks on the outside forces. I believe that the Sudan > > > So, I'd argue that those who argue for invading Iraq must accept the > > consequences of that action being taken in the exact same sense that > > those of us who opposed going in needed to accept the consequences of > > the continued rule of Hussein. > > Argue all you want, I'm not buying it. :) Is it because you think that there is no moral responsibility > Now if there had been a serious attempt to find a different, less > destructive way to get rid of Saddam before the invasion and the tarring > of every opposer as a supporter of Saddam you might have had a point. > But there wasn't, and therefore you don't. There was for ~12 years. How many more years would you think have been needed before other options were tried enough? If the previous 12 years if attempts don't count in your book, then I'd very much appreciate knowing why. > > Neither side needed to want the bad consequences of their > > chosen path...they just needed to accept the responsibility > > inherent in choosing those consequences instead of others. > > Yes, and what we are seeing here is an attempt to avoid responsibility > for the choice made by saying 'your choice was bad too!' No, because I am saying "_our_ choice was bad too." >The fact is that no other choice was explored or offered. With all due respect, Ritu, that's a false statement. > > In doing so, "the other alternatives were all worse" would be > > a valid argument. > > Yes, but to say that other alternatives would have had to be explored. Every other alternative, including those I supported, that I saw in the pre-war period were modest variations on what has been tried already. I would argue that it is more reasonable to think that modest changes in technique would most likely result in modest changes in outcome. If sanctions and inspections resulted in a given outcome for the last 12 years, it is far more likely that continued sanctions and inspections would result in a similar future outcome instead of a radically different outcome. The fact is that, to first order, every alternative to war that had been proposed had already been tried. There were, indeed, second order differences in the proposals, minor tweaks if you were. But, _even though I supported going with the minor tweaks myself_, I could not reasonably argue that these would result in the end of Hussein's regime. From my perspective, all I could reasonably hope for was containment. If you have an archive of what I wrote here before the war, that's almost exactly what I said then. Dan M. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
