Scylla - a question. Are you differentiating between opposing war pre-invasion and calling for an immediate withdrawal now that it’s started?
I think there’s an enormous difference in the two positions, especially with respect to the question in your OP.
No. But I certainly wouldn’t argue against the desirable results.
And, it doesn’t really matter anyway.
If I dive into a lake and save somebody what do my motivations matter?
If I do it because I’m a generous and altruistic person and value human life, well that’s great. If I do it for no other reason than I want to impress girls, brag about it in bars, and get in the newspaper for being a hero does that make it bad? If it’s the latter should I then not dive into the lake? Should I let the person drown because my motives are dishonorable?
I don’t think it matters much to the person. If I was drowning I wouldn’t really care that the person saving me was an asshole. Saving me is good enough.
But by no means am I suggesting that if you feel our reasons and leaders are wrong that you should excuse them or not hold them to task. You should.
But, if their actions are right and desirable in and of themselves why not support the action itself for the right reasons while denouncing the leaders who are doing it for the wrong ones?
It seems illogical to denounce the action itself if it is worthy and desirable.
You seem pretty interested in the idea of the inherent lack of bravery of peace protestors. While interesting it’s kind of outside the point of this particular debate.
I really don’t have anything further to say about it, other than I respectfully disagree with you.
If you’re unsatisfied with this another thread may be in order.
I have a feeling a lot of people will be more than happy to argue with you?
The “action itself” is not, by any stretch of the sophist imagination, “worthy and desireable”. The action is war, which is vile and detestable. I rather thought you understood that.
Yes, war is vile. Sometimes other things are worse.
Indeed so. All wars are vile, even one in self defense. An aggressive, pre-emptive war is worse. Far worse.
I quite agree.
Yes there is, and I haven’t defined it here. I haven’t defined because it hadn’t occured to me until you mentioned it.
Now that you do, I shall have to think. It took me a while to come up with this thesis, so I hope you’ll allow a provisional answer that I may change later as I ponder and the debate evolves.
I would have to say that provisionally that I’ve argued here is pretty rock solid an argument as it applies to those calling for an immediate withdrawal.
I would also say that it is pretty rock solid for those who oppose war in this matter under any circumstances on a pre-invasion timeline.
I would think that it’s pretty solid, but not rock solid for those that simply opposed war pre-invasion but not under any circumstances.
It would be weak if one could argue an alternative to war that either toppled the inhumane regime, or ceased the genocidal policies and ongoing human rights atrocities.
I think that’s a tough argument to make, though not impossible. It may be moot as well, because I don’t beleive there was any significant protests against the Iraqi regime and its violations proposing an alternative course to forceful expulsion.
I for one might have been persuaded to support entry into this “fiasco” if it had been presented to me in an honest, forthright manner. I believe the previous actions of this administration have shown me that they are very self serving and willing to waffle at a moments notice if they decide if it is in their best interest.
I was not and am not convinced of the abilities and motivations of this administration. The level of expertise and sheer honesty that would be required to pull this off in a manner that I could support was never ever shown by our president.
I support human rights but detest hypocrisy from my government. If the case would have been made by the previous republican administration and supported by the country that Saddam needed to be taked out, it would have been a good time to do it. I heard none of the rhetoric that is thrown into my face today as “commen sense” coming from the previous administration. We blew the timing and the chance. The damage we are self-inflicting now by our arrogance and bully tactics do not justify the war at this time. We are acting like an injured dog after the 9/11 attack and just want to bite somebody. Time for level heads to prevail. Is it human rights we are doing this for or for the “War Against Terrorism”? I’m confused and so are a lot of countries in this small world.
Let me clarify: Wars are vile because of the pain and damage they cause. Sometimes they are necessary. Self-defense is one of those times. Pre-emptive war, IMHO, is not necessarily worse. I am sure, however, that I will not convince you of that. In the currennt situation, I think that all reasonable efforts were taken first. Again, I am sure that there are many people I could never hope to convice of that.
Lots of things are vile but necessary. Amputations are vile. Sometimes one is necessary to prevent gangrene from poisoning the entire body.
Scylla, you have raised a serious issue, and it’s one that I think keeps many of us up at night. I would very much like to see the people of Iraq free from repression, but I’m fairly sure that an invasion absodamnedlutely ought to be a last resort. I will try to provide a more substantive arguement tomorrow.
I would like to expand on your drowning person anaolgy, though. First of all, its not just us and them. The water is full of sharks, too. It does no one any good to dive in if we’re both just going to get eaten. It might be a good idea to look around for a stick or a rope, or something. As to your point about motives not mattering, I can see some situations where it might. If I see a drowning woman and I save her because I want to rape her later, well, I may have saved her life, but I’m no hero either. I worry that a post-Saddam Iraq won’t be much better for the average Iraqi.
The “action itself” referred to is the removal of the regime. The means are war, which is in and of itself no more vile and detestable than is surgery.
The conduct of our soldiers and their actions in the removal of this regime have neither been vile nor detestable, and it is most certainly war.
…and I see no reason for you to imply sophistry.
What Saddam does to his people is their problem. Let them fight their own battles. It is none of our business. America is for Americans. All our taxes should be spent within our own borders. Once we have a decent educational system and free health care for all Americans, then maybe we can think about taking over the world. What good is it to have a global empire when your own country is crumbling?
We’re getting closer. Indeed, self-defence makes the vile necessary. A war against Japan was unavoidable after Dec. 7th. No argument. A war on Dec. 6th would have been equally acceptable, if we had discovered the Japanese Navy steaming for Pearl Harbor. But not a year previously, since I do not accept clarovoyance as a valid pretext for armed intervention.
For another example, you have Operation Urgent Fury, our perfectly ridiculous assault on Grenada. The pretext for that bit of bloody foolishness was the presumption that Cuba was building airfields in Grenada for the convenience of Soviet bombers. If no one had died, it would have made a rather good international April Fools joke. If.
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Our metaphor may be breaking down at this point. I’m not sure what the sharks are, and it clearly seems to me that we’ve looked for a stick or something over the last 12 years. I don’t know if that means we should have looked harder are not.
I don’t know.
I think the metaphor still holds here, and I’m still correct. Even in the situation you suggest, you would not denounce the rapist for the rescue You would not protest the rescue. You would not seek to stop it.
The thing you would protest denounce and stop is the rape, right?
If only that were all we were doing. I consider purchasing an entire generation of America-haters, and wholesale destabilization of muslim regimes to be an extremely poor use of tax dollars. Will the people of Uzbekistan, or the squashed “free press” of Kazakhstan ever rise up to thank us? How about the Fillipinos with their escalating sectarian violence ? Having sown Iraqi freedom, will we now reap the whirlwind of global instability and hatred ? That’s not a harvest I want to pay for.
Elucidator: Good. I will still disagree with you in that I think the evidence available was tantamount to seeing the Japanese navy on the horizon, and we will definitely continue to disagree on that interpretation. What we’ve seen already in the torture chambers the coalition troops have found, combined with accounts made public earlier and those being told by refugees and surrendering Iraqi conscripts demonstrates to me that the only mistake we made was in not moving in sooner.
What I find infuriating are statements implying that war is NEVER right, that violence is never justified, etc., etc.
I am deciding to ignore Roger Mexico.
Scylla, you have raised a serious issue, and it’s one that I think keeps many of us up at night. I would very much like to see the people of Iraq free from repression, but I’m fairly sure that an invasion absodamnedlutely ought to be a last resort. I will try to provide a more substantive arguement tomorrow.
I would like to expand on your drowning person anaolgy, though. First of all, its not just us and them. The water is full of sharks, too. It does no one any good to dive in if we’re both just going to get eaten. It might be a good idea to look around for a stick or a rope, or something. As to your point about motives not mattering, I can see some situations where it might. If I see a drowning woman and I save her because I want to rape her later, well, I may have saved her life, but I’m no hero either. I worry that a post-Saddam Iraq won’t be much better for the average Iraqi.
There’s also the question of what you do with the drowning man after you’ve gotten him out of the lake. Do you leave him on an island? Take him to the hospital and hand over your credit card, saying “do whatever it takes?” Pull him out of the lake only to toss him into a pool?
As you said, Scylla, your argument depends partly on the nature of people’s opposition to the war. I don’t think that the Bush administration exhausted diplomatic efforts before resorting to invasion. In justifying the use of force, Bush set forth several goals - regime change, compliance with U.N. resolutions, evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and state sponsored terrorism to name a few. These justifications emerged almost as a fluid, stream-of-consciousness foreign policy with a single overriding goal. Rather than a coherent, well-thought-out plan, it seemed more like a back-room brainstorming session. The single thing that bothered me the most was that it seemed to be a public rationalization - “well, we’ve decided what we’re gonna do, so lets see which of these possible reasons gets the most public support and go with that one.”
Emilio Lizardo is correct - it’s a serious and disturbing issue. At some point, the human rights violations have to be weighed against other factors in this decision - the repurcussions (both domestic and in the international community), the responsibility of nation-building following an (presumably successful) invasion, the appearance of American imperialism, and the credibility of the United States as a world power.
In other countries rife with human rights violations, we work with the existing government to improve conditions. I’m not so naive to think that that would have worked in Iraq, but I’m not willing to use force without even trying it. The same thing applies to the non-cooperation with the United Nations. I think that the obvious motives and belligerent attitude of Bush had an incredibly negative effect on the negotiations with the UN, and effectively precluded a diplomatic solution, but it was the administration’s position that did that.
Human rights violations in Iraq are terrible, and I hope, now that the invasion has commenced, that they can be ended swiftly and with as little loss of life as possible. However, just as there are acceptable and unacceptable ways for people to behave, there are acceptable and unacceptable ways for nations to behave. In this case, I believe that the United States has behaved unacceptably. There may be good consequences, but that possibility does not justify what we’ve done.
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I would agree. You don’t know whether that will happen or not, and neither do I.
I would expect that whether or not such a thing will occur will be dependant upon our actions following the war, not the war itself.
But that’s my opinion to your hypothetical.
The fact is that we are bringing to an end a regime that is probably as bad as any that has ever existed.
Seeing as this regime is so clearly at odds with what I assume are the concerns and motivations of peace protestors I see a disconnect in arguing to in effect preserve that regime, and in denouncing an action that will end it.
Scylla,
If there was a significant uprising and a political force viable enough to claim to be a legitimate voice of the Iraqi people asking for us to come in, I might be in favor. I believe, they did not want us invading their country, Saddam or no.
How nice of us to make the decision for the innocent civilians or, “collateral damage”, that their lives were worthwhile to get rid of Saddam without even asking them. How noble and glorious is it for us to risk their lives as well as our own against their will?
I am also rather dubious about our genuine intentions of letting them have a democracy. It will still be a military regime when we’re in control, and we will only let it go when we find it politically expedient. And if the Iraqi’s vote in someone we think is too dangerous, I don’t think we’ll let it stand.