Just to tell you before a mod comes in and crops your excerpt, lout, you aren’t supposed to repost the entire column of a writer due to copyright considerations. Next time provide a link and then the first paragraph or two.
Welcom to the Board, Lout. It’s nice to see Robert Scheer in the OP. He is about the worst major columnist IMHO. I will be happy to attack his POV.
However, I believe the mods would want you to state the particular point or points in Scheer’s repulsive article that you wish to debate. After you specify the debate topic, I will be happy to participate.
It is a brilliant column. Scheer has it exactly right. The argument for an invasion of Iraq becomes more inane, unsupportable, and transparently political every day.
Well, before the mods edit this, I will respond to this from the silly column you posted:
What he seems to be saying is that Bush’s foreign policy would make sense if we signed an agreement with the North Koreans, even though they haven’t kept the last one we signed with them.
And he is also saying that North Korea is in some sense justified in blackmailing South Korea and Japan with nukes, because the US has refused to give them what they want. So starving your own people while you build illegal nukes makes “twisted sense”.
Why?
Regards,
Shodan
I’ll take a couple of whacks at the column
- Scheer says it’s “embarassing” that the weapons inspectors are coming up empty handed," but he’s too sneaky to say to who he thinks is embarassed? Is he saying that the UN inspectors are embarassingly inept? Maybe, because he says Iraq “doesn’t seem to have” WMDs. If so, he should come right out and attack Blix, as many right-wingers are doing.
Is he asserting that Iraq doesn’t have WMDs, so the US should be embarassed? He’s careful not to pin himself down to that position. After all, Iraq’s failure to prove what they did with their existing WMDs is already damning evidence against them, wther or not the inspectors find more evidence.
I think he’s saying that whatever goes the least bit wrong should be blamed on the US. In short, anti-Americanism is the assumption behind the entire column.
- Scheer’s comparison to North Korea is purile. The falseness of the analogy has been analyzed to death on this Board. E.g., see Sua Sponte’s post.
Nor does Scheer try to tell us what to do about Korea. He has no useful ideas. He’s content to attack the US for supposed lack of consistency. Smarter pundits like Karen Elliot House, can see that the very reason to attack Iraq is to prevent them from acquiring nukes and giving us the kind of insoluble problem North Korea is now.
In fairness to Scheer, she uses the phrase “most of the talking heads,” meaning that Scheer is far from alone in his foolish disingenuousness.
The article does not say that N Korea’s tactic makes sense, only that it makes a bit more sense than Bush’s. The comparison is effective rhetorically in this sense:
N Korea has succeeded in exposing, blatently, shamelessly, Bush’s policy shift to “preemptive war.” It’s quite impossible to argue that Iraq represents a greater threat than North Korea, but we are attacking Iraq and “negotiating” with North Korea.
The lesson is that Bush’s preemption doctrine applies only to “Axis of Evil” nations before they become real threats, and not when they are actual threats. With that, the entire doctrine goes down the drain, which is the reason why it remains a discredited, repulsive and dangerous strategy.
The article does not say that N Korea’s tactic makes sense, only that it makes a bit more sense than Bush’s. The comparison is effective rhetorically in this sense:
N Korea has succeeded in exposing, blatently, shamelessly, Bush’s policy shift to “preemptive war.” It’s quite impossible to argue that Iraq represents a greater threat than North Korea, but we are attacking Iraq and “negotiating” with North Korea.
The lesson is that Bush’s preemption doctrine applies only to “Axis of Evil” nations before they become real threats, and not when they are actual threats. With that, the entire doctrine goes down the drain, which is the reason why it remains a discredited, repulsive and dangerous strategy.
It is also worth emphasizing that North Korea’s tactic makes good sense as a matter of principle (if not as a pragmatic matter).
Bush made the idiotic move of declaring N Korea part of the “Axis of Evil.” (a purely demogogic politically motivated label)
Bush is about to preemptively attack another Axis nation, Iraq.
Bush has declared that he accepts the principle of preemptive nuclear war.
In light of those facts, why should North Korea not (again as a matter of principle only) choose to arm itself with nukes? N. Korea is simply following the logical framework that Bush himself established (without thinking about it), and now it makes Bush look like the irresponsible moron he really is.
—Bush is about to preemptively attack another Axis nation, Iraq.—
This has been said before, but Bush is not acting pre-emptively. That would imply that there is a current threat against a nation he is responding to. What he is planning on doing is a preventative action: attacking a country before it can even gain the capacity to threaten others (in this case with nukes or other restricted weapons)
—Bush has declared that he accepts the principle of preemptive nuclear war.—
Can you elaborate on where and how he said this? I don’t doubt that he’s said something along these lines, and it is pretty scary to think that we would respond nuclear to just a threat against us… but it depends on what sort of threat.
We use the options available based on the nature of a threat. Someone who does not yet have nukes but who seeks them is infinitely easier to deal with than someone who already does. To say that the entire doctrine goes down the drain implies a lack of understanding on your part of what the doctrine says.
Further, to denounce the Bush administration as being devoid of logic is both intellectually lazy and extremely foolish. If you want to oppose the war movement, take some time to understand the strategy, and point out where you disagree. Don’t just say, “Well, it’s stupid and makes no sense.” It’s the argumentative equivalent of saying someone has cooties. Even if you write off the effort as being a War For Oil, or a War For Revenge, at least you’re acknowledging that there is a motivation other than the random machinations of the administration.
If he’s responding to the same speech of Bush’s that I’ve seen misinterpreted before, then what Bush actually said is that, in a nutshell, he would consider all options against Iraq, which seems pretty sound (and pretty vague) to me. This was immediately turned around by the media into “Bush threatens to nuke Iraq.” AFAIK, Bush has never explicitly said that he would consider nukes.
Also, consider that using a nuke against Iraq doesn’t necessarily mean a Hiroshima-type event. There are the proposed “bunker buster” nukes, that basically drill deep into the ground before detonating, destroying anything underground, but having very little in the way of surface damage or fallout.
Jeff
That’s not what I was referring to. I refer to a policy paper published by the Pentagon about 6 months ago wherein the Dept. of Defense officially reversed America’s long-standing policy that we will attack only if attacked, and furthermore, that the limited use of tactical weapons was part of that strategy. I don’t have a url at the moment, but I’m surprised you did not read about that.
The current situation in North Korea allows no unflawed option. Any action we take or fail to take has the risk of leading to disaster. Under those circimstances, it’s easy as pie for a lazy pundit to find flaws in whatever course of action the President has set upon. Maybe it’s an ego boost for some to pretend that they’re smarter than Condolleza Rice, because she failed to find the (non-existant) perfect policy option.
On the contrary, North Korea has shown the wisdom of Bush’s position on Iraq. We need to stop them from obtaining nukes; once they have nukes, the risk of attacking them will be too great NK has or soon will have the capability to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Seoul, SK with a single atomic bomb. Given NK’s fairly advanced missiles, cities in Japan or even farther away may also be at risk.
The Bush position is that it’s better to attack Iraq before they have the means of killing hundreds of thousands of people. Your position seems to be that it’s better to wait until Iraq develops a nuclear capacity, and then attack them. Is this really what you believe, lout? If so, can you explain why your strategy makes more sense?
From what I’ve been able to dig up:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22374-2002Jun9
Of course, it should be noted those are the words of the journalist, not the policy or any officials. At any rate nukes might possibly be considered a last resort only against certain types of weapons plants. As I said, a far cry from Hiroshima, and not what was implied by the tone of the OP.
Jeff
Moderator’s Note: As has already been pointed out, lout, please review the rules on posting copyrighted material. I have replaced the text of the copyrighted article you posted with a link to the author’s web page; that article is on his front page, at least at the moment.
(ElJeffe, I edited your link, as it didn’t seem to be going anywhere before.)
Couldn’t this logic apply to any country which might get nukes? We better invade Iran, too, and Libya, and Upper Volta, an the Greater Antilles. Iraq’s chances of ever acquiring the capability to attack the US with long range nuclear warheads are about the same as GWB getting into Mensa. The administrations justifications for an invasion are a pretense and a sham and everybody knows it. Attacking a country which has not and cannot harm the US, and doing purely for cynical political reasons, would rank among the most depraved acts ever perpetrated by any US president.
What? Are you suggesting that a vigorous bit of international Darwinism, the stern application of our superior ethical position, that this is somehow more depraved than a knob job in the Oval Office?
Boy, you liberals and your moral relativism.
Oh, but it wasn’t the knob job, it was the lying about it. Now if GWB were to get caught lying about, say, Iraq’s nuclear capability…
For someone who’s quick to accuse the administration of authoring an incoherent policy, this Scheer guy’s pretty incoherent himself.
I mean, what, precisely, is he advocating? Is he suggesting we immediately attack North Korea? Why doesn’t he say so? What useful alternatives is he proposing?
If we go to war with North Korea, then does a war with Iraq somehow make more sense than if we follow our present course of action with North Korea? Why?
Or if we don’t go to war with Iraq, will our present course of action with North Korea make more sense to this guy?
If we blink with Iraq, then what will the North Koreans make of that? What does that do to our negotiating position at any bargaining table with North Korea?
Why in God’s name do we need to follow two parallel policies in two completely different nations in two completely different parts of the world? Why is this Scheer guy immolating himself upon the alter of consistency?
Countries who don’t have nukes, who have zero access to resupply and reinforcement for their armies, who are known to export terrorism, and who have attacked three neighboring countries within the last 20 years, and who already have umpteen U.N. Security Council resolutions against them need not be treated the same way in U.S. policy as nations which probably DO have nukes, are capable of popping downtown Seoul or Tokyo with a nuke out of pure spite, who have a relatively powerful army in a mountainous country, who may have recourse to Chinese support and reinforcement, who have not already been found in repeated violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, and who haven’t attempted a mass cross-border invasion for fifty two years.
So why does this idiot think they SHOULD be treated identically?
Countries who don’t have nukes or armies do not require pre-emptive invasions. I don’t think scheer is saying to attack NK. He’s saying that if we can look for a nonviolent resolution with NK (which is a threat, then why can’t we do it with a country which isn’t a threat. Junior wants the political currency of appearing to win a war, but he doesn’t have the sack to fight a country which can actually fight back.
I think that december et. al. have come up with some good reasons as to why the US should attack Iraq. Forgive me, but, as SuaSponte pointed out on the other thread, what these reasons come to is not the Bush foreign policy, but rather other reasons why such attacks would be good ideas. Who can say the actual reasons for which Bush wants to attack Iraq? I can’t. I think this is what the “logical inconsistency” of the Bush doctrine actually points to: not that an attack on Iraq is inherently wrong without an attack on North Korea, just that the reasons for attacking Iraq, as given by Bush, are probably not perfectly congruent with the actual motivations of the administration. This really shouldn’t come as news to anyone.
But this is not to suggest that the administration’s motivations are necessarily sinister, vengeful, or petty. It could just be that “we want to gain the upper hand in a region critical to our general foreign policy concerns” probably sounds like a lamer casus belli than “Saddam Hussein is a very very bad man” to the general public; they might want to let foreign-policy experts in journals do the critical analysis for them; I have no idea.
I happen to be opposed to an invasion of Iraq from mainly a foreign-policy perspective: namely I think that the upper hand in the Middle East can be more effectively, firmly and humanely be gained through other means. Slow, steady pressure to contain and control Saddam; pressure on Israel to begin rolling back settlements and other embarassments; and so forth. This is another debate, though.
I am also opposed to an invasion of North Korea, because I can’t see that being anything but a 5-year-long keel-hauling.
I am opposed to an invasion of Iran because it would be insane. Iran is actually one of the most liberal of Middle Eastern states, and it’s been reforming, so I don’t really think it poses much of a long-term threat at all; be watchful, but not a vigilante.
In the end, I think Bush probably shot himself in the foot simply by mentioning Iran and North Korea along with Iraq as part of an axis of evil. I think that the reasons he’s given for attacking Iraq sound very close to North Korea’s circumstances, but the two countries aren’t really that analogous.
-Theo