Do the Rules of War...
...need to be declared obsolete?
Janice Stein on Hamas
The meaning of war crimes needs to be better understood since battlefields no longer exist. Combatants deliberately expose civilians to harm so as to raise a hue and cry from citizens who still think in terms of battlefields. And thanks to the poorly informed among us, it works.
Janice Stein on Hamas
The meaning of war crimes needs to be better understood since battlefields no longer exist. Combatants deliberately expose civilians to harm so as to raise a hue and cry from citizens who still think in terms of battlefields. And thanks to the poorly informed among us, it works.
posted by Louise at 4:07 pm
23 Comments:
Hi Louise---
This is a question I've been thinking about for a while---how can we define the "rules of war" if we don't know what "rule" means and what "war" means?
An analogy might be found with the rules of engagement for police chases. Sometimes, while chasing suspects in high speed chases, police cause collateral damage, sometimes even taking the lives of innocent bystanders. Likewise, the suspect may also cause significant property damage or loss of life. Both property damage AND loss of life can be prohibited by simply not chasing the suspect, which is the tack that some police departments in the US have taken, I'm pretty sure. Sometimes the suspect gets away, but a greater loss of life has been prohibited.
So what is justice worth? Is it acceptable to kill innocents if there's a few terrorists mixed in with them? What ratio is acceptable?
And this only begs the question: who's life is worth more? After 9/11, we were faced with a tough choice, which is clear now only with the benefit of hindsight---is it ok to invade a nation and kill 100,000 people to ensure the safety of our nation (i.e., the U.S.) from a future terrorist attack that may kill a few thousand people at most?
Sorry for rambling on your blog. These are just questions that keep me up at night, when I'm not being kept up at night by string theory :)
"is it ok to invade a nation and kill 100,000 people to ensure the safety of our nation (i.e., the U.S.)"
=================
Who did the killing? It's safe to say that the vast majority was done by Saudi, al Qaeda and Iranian proxies.
And yes, in my opinion it is okay to invade a nation to ensure the safety of your own people. That's what WWII was about and that is the primary responsibility of representative democracies. IMHO, one of the biggest mistakes America made was not finishing the job in Gulf War I. But who knows? At that time the Soviet Union wasn't quite yet dead. If you will recall, there was an attempted coup by old guard Soviets yearning to bring back old style communism and who knows how that would have worked out if they had succeeded. Middle Eastern dictators were and are notorious at playing the West off against the East. The war may have been far more deadly than it actually turned out to be.
As far as terrorists mixing in with civilians, I think the rules of war are very clear about that. The blame lies solidly with the terrorists. If that weren't the case, then we've opened up a can of worms with consequences that are unspeakable as all a terrorist group has to do to succeed is hide among civilians. When Hamas fires several thousand missiles into Israeli villages where there are NO strategic military targets every year and uses phony ceasefires just to regroup and rearm, then we have to deal with the new way of doing things. Why should Hamas get away with deliberately targeting civilians?
As far as string theory is concerned, I flunked grade 12 physics, so that's waaay over my head.
>Who did the killing? It's safe to say that the vast majority was done by Saudi, al Qaeda and Iranian proxies.
Isn't that the point, though?
In the police chase analogy, if you're the mother, if your kid is the one who's run over, does it matter if the cop, or the suspect in the stolen car?
>Why should Hamas get away with deliberately targeting civilians?
I agree completely, but, do two wrongs make a right? That is, does the reprehensible behavior of a terrorist organization excuse the Israeli army for targeting civilians, albeit indirectly? Surely not.
It's also quite clear that al Qaida tortures and kills American soldiers which are captured in Iraq. Is it ok for us to torture and kill al Qaida members that we capture?
Again, I don't know how I feel, exactly, about these subjects. On the one hand, I find it very difficult to grant a terrorist the same rights that he is opposing---the same person who would knowingly kill as many of my friends and family as he could, in the name of some perverted interpretation of some religious text.
But on the other hand, I would like to think that we are better than that. In our Declaration of Independence, it says "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The rights of a terrorist are not given by us, and they are not to be taken by us, if we believe this text.
So, I don't know.
I will probably be sleepless again tonight :)
"In the police chase analogy, if you're the mother, if your kid is the one who's run over, does it matter if the cop, or the suspect in the stolen car?"
Yes.
"I agree completely, but, do two wrongs make a right? That is, does the reprehensible behavior of a terrorist organization excuse the Israeli army for targeting civilians, albeit indirectly? Surely not."
I disagree with the premise that this is "two wrongs". International law will back me up on that.
"It's also quite clear that al Qaida tortures and kills American soldiers which are captured in Iraq. Is it ok for us to torture and kill al Qaida members that we capture?"
First of all, torture committed by the American fools in Abu Graib pale in comparison to what like Saddam Hussein did in that same prison or al Qaeda for that matter. No one's eyes were gouged out. No one's hands or tongues cut off. No one had holes drilled through their hands. No one was hung upside down for hours at a time. No one was tortured with electro-shocks. No one was dragged along behind a car until his flesh was ripped from his bones or their foreheads branded or their ears lopped off. None of the prisoners were taken out en masse and executed and buried, just to make room for more prisoners coming in. That was daily business for thousands of prisoners in abu Ghraib prison pre-invasion. And unlike with the American's, under Saddam Hussein, no one was ever brought to justice for these horrific abuses. His regime was aptly described by Christopher Hitchens as a totalitarian abattoir.
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 2/8/2009, at The Unreligious Right
>I disagree with the premise that this is "two wrongs". International law will back me up on that.
Is it ever not wrong to kill civilians?
>First of all, torture committed by the American fools in Abu Graib pale in comparison to what like Saddam Hussein did in that same prison or al Qaeda for that matter.
Agreed, and the standard of care that those prisoners received was infinitely better than our POWs receive at the hands of their captors.
I don't think we disagree on much, I just struggle with innocent people dying any time they are caught in the middle of a conflict.
"Is it ever not wrong to kill civilians?"
Yes, I think there are situations where killing civilians is a price that has to be paid. In particular, when it is a matter of survival and the other side's civilians have not been evacuated by the other guy expressly because they are deemed useful as human shields.
Civilians die in wars. It's unavoidable. There are no international police forces, or at least none that work.
It's especially important that we don't let the use of human shields be a strategy that wins in the long run, otherwise, we are all doomed. I think most wars could be avoided if all parties respected the rules of war, but they don't. In fact, it renders those rules to be little more than a farce, an oxymoron if you will.
Louise
I came to your blog via UNRR's site. First I'd just like to say thanks for posting that video, it was interesting.
Second I agree with you to a certain extent that terrorists who deliberately hide in a civilian population must ultimately bear the blame if those civilians get killed. In the particular case of Hamas, however, I can't help but wonder whether the Palestinians who elected them ever reflect on the idea of hubris.
Third, I think you slightly mischaracterize WWII when you say that invading another nation to protect your own people was the point of it. I know what you mean, but I do think it was more complicated than that.
Last, I disagree with Ben D. that it required hindsight to ask, address, or even answer the question as to whether "[it's] ok to invade a nation and kill 100,000 people to ensure the safety of ... the U.S. ... from a future terrorist attack that may kill a few thousand people at most?"
Cheers
Frodo, I'm curious about your last paragraph. It's not clear which side of that statement you're on, but I want to respond in any case. I assume you are talking about Iraq. You repeat the old meme which suggests it was the US that did most of the killing. This is blatantly untrue, for one, and second, when the invasion took place in 2003, no one knew how it would turn out.
Moreover, many, many Iraqi exiles had petitioned both the American and British governments with a plea to intervene in helping them topple Saddam Hussein's government and they had the belief that it would be easy to do. I would suggest, therefore, that it is you who is working from hindsight.
And as for how many Americans would be killed, I think I need to remind you of a few things. First, 9/11 was not the only attack on American soil or property. The twin towers, in fact, were bombed eight years prior to 9/11. Two American embassies in Africa were bombed and many killed and don't forget the USS Cole. The hostage crisis in Tehran of 1979 is also related. One of America's staunchest allies, Australia, was attached at a night club in Bali. It goes on and on and on.
Only a blind fool could say there wasn't a sickness afoot throughout the Muslim world that had to be confronted. Only someone with a very short memory would believe that the majority of Western leaders, including prominent American Democrats, believed Saddam Hussein had to be taken out. After all, it was Bill Clinton that signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which authorized the forced removal of the Ba'athist regime, into law.
The man intended to resurrect his WMD programs and he only needed to hand the stuff over to any of the multitude of terrorist organizations with cells in most Western countries to get the job done. I mean for chris sake, a small vial of a single toxic chemical or biological agent could kills thousands in a big city, such as New York or Chicago.
Did you know that fewer people died at Pearl Harbour that died on 9/11? That didn't stop FDR from entering the second world war and 72 million died in that war. Hubris, indeed.
...*didn't believe* Saddam Hussein had to be taken out...
Louise,
I'm afraid you put words in my mouth, although as you point out, I wasn't entirely clear what I meant with that last paragraph. Yes I was talking about Iraq. Let me elucidate.
Ben suggested that hindsight was necessary to ask the question whether it is right to invade a nation thereby occasioning the death of 100k people in order to prevent an attack on your own people in the scale of a few thousand. By corollary I suppose he also suggested that hindsight was required to foresee that those 100,000 people would die.
I contest the idea that those outcomes were not reasonably foreseeable before the invasion of Iraq.
Obviously this borders on the realms of historical determinism, which I want to avoid, but I think holding people responsible for what they reasonably could have and should have known at the time is a legitimate exercise.
I don't suggest that the US has done most of the killing. I'm ignorant of the statistics, but I am fully aware of the bitter sectarian violence that's formed the base of much of the instability. However, Middle East experts have long been au fait with the destructive potential of the Sunni/Shia schism. They knew it was kept under control by Saddam, who was far more interested in Arab ethnic superiority than religious squabbles.
I should point out that I'm not saying that Saddam's reign was morally preferable to the instability that reigned afterwards, but I am saying that analysts could have foreseen the mayhem.
The plea from Iraqi exiles is erroneous. If the UK and US intervened on behalf of every disenfranchised exiled group, they would have garrisons in half the capitals of the world. I honestly think that argument was focused more on convincing skeptical Americans and Britons than forming a useful foreign policy rationale.
I agree that there was and still is a "sickness" in the Muslim world, though I don't agree that Saddam represented an element of the real problem. As I said, he was a Pan-Arabist, not a Muslim fundamentalist. Again, scholars and analysts knew there was a difference. As a good deal of the evidence obtained by Western intelligence agencies for Saddam possessing WMDs pre-invasion was dubious and unverified, I hesitate to characterize him as a risk the equal of al-Qaeda and the potentially horrifying creation of Afpakistan as the conflict there tumbles out of control.
All of which brings me to the conclusion that your Pearl Harbor analogy is also erroneous. The US was attacked by terrorists. The link between them and Saddam has never been satisfactorily established. Again, I remember many people loudly wondering in 2003 why the US was so keen to attack Iraq when the threat we'd been hearing so much about was coming from elsewhere.
I fear that this is bordering on a rant. I apologize if that is the case. Please don't characterize me as a "lunatic leftie" because I am not one. I am as cynical of the left as I am of the right. I hope you will see this in my arguments.
Regards
Frodo---
>Last, I disagree with Ben D. that it required hindsight to ask, address, or even answer the question as to whether "[it's] ok to invade a nation and kill 100,000 people to ensure the safety of ... the U.S. ... from a future terrorist attack that may kill a few thousand people at most?"
Certainly at the time, no one in the US imagined the scale of the occupation, nor the extent to which outside entities would become involved. In this sense, then, no one could have predicted the loss of life. If we had accurate figures about the occupation and loss of civilian life, I think that most in the Senate who authorized the invasion would have had serious problems doing so.
I would also like to point out that, in my own struggles with this question, I can't separate the civilian casualties caused by US forces, and those caused by the outside terrorists who turned Iraq into a bloodbath.
The fact is that innocent people died, and this is what bothers me. Perhaps Louise is right---in wars, innocent people died, whether it was in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or in Poland or in Rwanda.
"I am fully aware of the bitter sectarian violence that's formed the base of much of the instability. However, Middle East experts have long been au fait with the destructive potential of the Sunni/Shia schism."
Other than Juan Cole, not too many. You may have noticed that the real "instability" didn't get off the ground until the Askaryia Shrine was bombed in February of 2006. Someone, other than Americans, was stirring up shit.
"The plea from Iraqi exiles is erroneous. If the UK and US intervened on behalf of every disenfranchised exiled group, they would have garrisons in half the capitals of the world. I honestly think that argument was focused more on convincing skeptical Americans and Britons than forming a useful foreign policy rationale."
What do you mean it's "erroneous"? Are you suggesting it never happened? It certainly did and it wasn't just Iraqi exiles who made the case. UN Human Rights Rapportuer, Max von de Stoel, described the abuses in Saddam Hussein's regime as the worst since World War II. Most governments understood this. Even before the war, Iraq was the source of the greatest number of refugees fleeing for safety. It's very easy for you to look back and pretend people should or could have known better.
"he [Saddam Hussein] was a Pan-Arabist, not a Muslim fundamentalist."
Are you suggesting that Islamic fundamentalism is the only source of the problem in the Middle East? I would profoundly disagree with that. Arab Nationalism shares the spotlight equally, possibly even more so, and Saddam Hussein was the Chairman of the Arab Nationalist Board of Directors.
"I should point out that I'm not saying that Saddam's reign was morally preferable to the instability that reigned afterwards, but I am saying that analysts could have foreseen the mayhem."
Not very convincing, I'm afraid. Your arguments thus far seem to suggest just the opposite.
"All of which brings me to the conclusion that your Pearl Harbor analogy is also erroneous."
The US was attacked by the Japanese, yet the Yanks also joined the war in Europe. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini had attacked America. Nor had they, for that matter, attacked Britain or Canada, yet all three countries joined the war in Europe. There is nothing erroneous about my argument at all. The error is yours.
"The US was attacked by terrorists. The link between them and Saddam has never been satisfactorily established."
There is no need to establish it. Your argument would only make sense if Arab Nationalism wasn't part of the toxic stew that created the malcontents in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein was a major funder of terrorism and one of the primary sources of the ideology of hatred toward the West. To reduce the sickness in the Middle East to being simply one of religious extremism is to miss an extremely large part of the full picture. Your "scholars" haven't done a very good job, obviously.
Louise & Ben
I really need to stop picking so many arguments, it always takes so long to respond!
Ben
It's a fair point that it's morally difficult to distinguish between those killed directly by the US and those killed by other parties, when far fewer deaths would have occurred in either category had the coalition not invaded.
Louise
Perhaps my history is a little shaky, but I thought the Sunni/Shia divide was a large feature of the Iran-Iraq War, which killed a good million people. Clearly people were aware that the groups were capable of loathing each other to genocidal proportions, and it was no secret that Iraq's Muslim population was comprised of both. I don't see how post-invasion sectarian violence within Iraq can really be such a surprise.
Re: the plea of Iraqi exiles, by 'erroneous' I meant that it was highly unlikely to have been a motivating factor to the Bush administration in deciding whether to invade. Human rights violations are so rarely the reason why states go to war that the exiles' opinion that toppling Saddam would be easy was unlikely to have carried much weight.
Neither was I suggesting that Pan-Arabism isn't a problem in the ME. Political analyst Paul Berman would agree with you that both it and Islamic fundamentalism are part of the same "toxic stew", or "heads of the same foul beast" in his analogy. However, it always remains important to choose your battles. The US was attacked by fundamentalist terrorists, not Arab nationalists. Removing an Arab nationalist dictator therefore seems only tangentially related to the problem. A bit like putting a band-aid over a snakebite while forgetting to deal with the venom.
What I'm saying is that the US has limited resources. By involving itself in a protracted conflict Iraq, the scale and duration of which I would argue was foreseeable, it reduces its ability to address other, arguably more pressing problems: Aghanistan and Pakistan, for example.
I still think the WWII analogy is somewhat misleading, but that's secondary to the debate, so I won't pursue it any further.
Sorry, Frod, you won't get anywhere with those arguments.
"...when far fewer deaths would have occurred in either category had the coalition not invaded."
This is laughable. I now see where you are coming from. You are a seer, obviously. You can peer into the future and see exactly what will happen. I most profoundly object to this kind of mentality. We cannot know the future. All we can do is examine the past and predict what might happen if we take this or that course of action. You seem to forget that the Arab Nationalist way is to establish dynasties and Uday and Qussay were certainly being groomed, especially Uday. I think one can be reasonably certain the killing fields of Iraq would have continued well past Papa Saddam's lifetime.
"I thought the Sunni/Shia divide was a large feature of the Iran-Iraq War, which killed a good million people. Clearly people were aware that the groups were capable of loathing each other to genocidal proportions, and it was no secret that Iraq's Muslim population was comprised of both. I don't see how post-invasion sectarian violence within Iraq can really be such a surprise."
I don't really know about this. I know that my ex's sister was expelled from Iraq because she had had the audacity to marry a man whose ancestors five generations removed were Persian. My ex's family were Shia, but I think it's too easy to describe that conflict on the basis of religious sects. There were many, many other differences between the two, ethnicity being a big one (ie. Arabs versus Persians). I might add, that being Sunni did not stop Saddam Hussein from invading Sunni dominated Kuwait or from trying to invade Sunni dominated Saudi Arabia. You could also say that border disputes and just plain prejudice played a part, PLUS, and this is a big one, Saddam Hussein's rule represents a minority lording it over a majority with a brutal and bloody iron fist. To describe it as a sectarian dispute is very simplistic, if you ask me. In fact, Hussein's dictatorship was largely secular, which is one (among many) of the reasons it was a good place to start the War on Terror. You can always factor in the larger background of the Cold War and ask what both the US and the Soviets were doing as well.
"Re: the plea of Iraqi exiles, by 'erroneous' I meant that it was highly unlikely to have been a motivating factor to the Bush administration in deciding whether to invade. Human rights violations are so rarely the reason why states go to war that the exiles' opinion that toppling Saddam would be easy was unlikely to have carried much weight."
I don't believe it was the primary motivation, either. But it was a consistent theme in both Bush's and Blair's statements prior to the invasion and it is THE PRIMARY reason why I supported the war and I haven't budged a smidgen on that point.
"Neither was I suggesting that Pan-Arabism isn't a problem in the ME. Political analyst Paul Berman would agree with you that both it and Islamic fundamentalism are part of the same "toxic stew", or "heads of the same foul beast" in his analogy. However, it always remains important to choose your battles. The US was attacked by fundamentalist terrorists, not Arab nationalists. Removing an Arab nationalist dictator therefore seems only tangentially related to the problem. A bit like putting a band-aid over a snakebite while forgetting to deal with the venom."
Nonsense. You seem to keep coming back to this theme that the 9/11 attack was the motivating factor in the decision to go to war in Iraq. No one ever said it was, other than it being the final straw. It's like saying the WWII should only have been fought against Japan. Hitler and Mussolini could be left alone because they didn't attack America.
"What I'm saying is that the US has limited resources. By involving itself in a protracted conflict Iraq, the scale and duration of which I would argue was foreseeable, it reduces its ability to address other, arguably more pressing problems: Aghanistan and Pakistan, for example."
Fair point, perhaps, but it's always good to have another ally in the Middle East. Iraq was liberated, whether you want to admit it or not, and Iraqis are grateful for that. And Afghanistan and Pakistan aren't nearly as strategically important as Iraq. Iraq sits on a massive reserve of oil, the revenues from which, under a brutal dictator bent on war and genocide, could do far worse than anything Afghanistan or Pakistan can do. Frankly, I think next up should be Iran, but evidently no one has the stomach for that right now, and with oil prices now very low, Iran is suffering. There are many strategies other than war that still have not been exhausted. This was not the case with Iraq.
"I still think the WWII analogy is somewhat misleading, but that's secondary to the debate, so I won't pursue it any further."
I think it's the closest analogy there is. In fact, in some ways, it's the unfinished business from WWII.
I really wish you'd stop mischaracterizing my arguments.
The first section of my last response was clearly a response to Ben, and you are taking it out of context. He said:
I can't separate the civilian casualties caused by US forces, and those caused by the outside terrorists who turned Iraq into a bloodbath.
I was merely agreeing with him. How you could take it to mean anything else is beyond me.
I think one can be reasonably certain the killing fields of Iraq would have continued well past Papa Saddam's lifetime.
That I do agree with. I remember reading that the invading forces discovered that Uday had turned the Iraqi Olympic Commission's headquarters into his own personal torture pen. I believe they even found an iron maiden.
To describe it as a sectarian dispute is very simplistic, if you ask me
I agree that describing it as a simple sectarian dispute would be very simplistic, but that was not my purpose. If you remember I was trying to find evidence that analysts and policy makers should have been aware that sectarian violence was a likely result of removing Saddam. I believe that I did this.
Nonsense. You seem to keep coming back to this theme that the 9/11 attack was the motivating factor in the decision to go to war in Iraq. No one ever said it was, other than it being the final straw.
Really? All nonsense? You make yourself an extremely difficult person to converse with when you leap to extremes like that. In any case, a good deal of popular support for the war probably came from people confusing Iraq with 9/11, and the failure of government to correct them because it was politically useful. Among the more educated, you're right, 9/11 shouldn't have been a motivating factor. But if you accept that, how can you say one was the final straw which led to the other?
It's like saying the WWII should only have been fought against Japan. Hitler and Mussolini could be left alone because they didn't attack America.
No, I don't think it is entirely the same, and despite what I said in my last comment about leaving the WWII example alone, it seems like a good point to raise it. You'll notice that I haven't disagreed with you at all about Saddam being a despicable despot. You'll never catch me rue his passing. However - and this ties in to what I was saying about limited resources - the crucial distinction between now and WWII was that entering the war with Germany and Italy didn't require an immediate commitment of resources. The bombing campaign in Europe didn't begin until early '43. Besides Japan, with which it was understandably fully involved from an early date, the US engaged in North Africa - but only in late '42.
This is why, to many, invading Iraq seemed like an exercise in impatience when Afghanistan was far from won. In WWII, war was thrust upon the US from two sides, but it didn't get involved in Europe until the war in Japan was already well under way. Why hamstring yourself by dividing your attention and your capabilities?
And Afghanistan and Pakistan aren't nearly as strategically important as Iraq.
Conventionally, no, but few are worried about conventional threats. The lawless back country of Afghanistan and Pakistan is home to who knows what. It's ironic that unconventional war was originally the subject of your post, albeit in a different context.
In any case, I took a break from writing this for an hour and I've totally lost my train of thought, so that will have to do.
Have at it.
I may respond at length and I may not. I'm on my lunch hour right now and I have a long meeting to attend this evening. If you wish, I invite you to read through my blog starting at or close to the beginning.
I have been through these arguments so many times, I have no patience with them any more. I would also invite you to read my comment policy on the top right hand corner of the blog. This blog is in the private domain. Just so you'll know, I do not owe you or anyone else space on my blog to comment. It is a privilege that I and I alone can extend.
Louise,
Save your breath. While I commiserate that you don't enjoy dealing with the same arguments day in and day out, you seem to construe disagreement as some sort of personal affront. Perhaps if you had addressed my actual arguments rather than those you thought I was making, you would find yourself less exasperated and inclined to point out your comments policy. I had of course already read it before I said a single word, but disagree that I have done or said anything to warrant it being brought to my attention. If these are the circumstances under which you consider it to be a privilege to converse, I'd suggest you honestly ask yourself what you're accomplishing by trampling on all disagreement.
Enjoy yourself.
T'wasn't my fault your "actual" arguments weren't clear, Frodo. And you're right. This is a personal matter to me. My children have Iraqi blood flowing through their veins. I knew about the abuses of Saddam Hussein's reign of terror long before most people knew who he was. Sometime way back in the late 1970s or early 1980s a cousin of my ex visited us (he had come to North America to deliver a paper at some American university conference and dropped by while he was in the neighbourhood). He told us some of the things that were happening. Stark and terrifying, I can tell you.
Even earlier than that, back in 1973, we were intent on visiting Iraq, but my ex's father-in-law met us in Lebanon and begged us not to go. Although Saddam Hussein had not yet become the President of Iraq he was already in charge of the ministry that was visiting terror on the population. The old man (father-in-law) was certain his son would be arrested and perhaps executed had he stepped foot in Iraq, because he had, in essence, deserted the army when he left the country in 1968 and never returned.
So when I hear or read comments that cavalierly sweep aside the plight of Iraqi people under Saddam Hussein I do get more annoyed that the average Jane. To you, it's just academic. To me, it concerns real flesh and blood people that I know, and at least two of their relatives who are likely in one of those mass graves.
So yes, academic arguments are fine for those who live in ivory towers, but they don't do much to shed light on the lives and misery of real people suffering real oppression over the course of 30 or more years. Using words such as "erroneous" are more than a bit offensive when you are talking about real people that I happen to know. If you wish to comment here, you need to understand that. Know that by allowing you to comment here I have invited you into my living room and you need to behave accordingly.
Read this one. It tells you all you need to know.
Perhaps clarity is a subjective matter.
I don't believe I was ever trying to disagree with you about how awful Saddam was. I appreciate your personal connection to the war, especially as I have no proximity to it whatsoever. While I still disagree that I was saying what you think I was saying, I will respect your position.
Cheers
"I don't believe I was ever trying to disagree with you about how awful Saddam was."
Another meaningless meme repeated ad nauseam. If you read the entry at the link in my 2:24 pm comment, you'll read a story of one of those Iraqi exiles, my ex brother-in-law. Every single one of those "disenfranchised exiled groups", at least from Iraq, has a similar story, many of them far, far worse.
Claim what you will about your cavalier dismissal, but if you have a conscience, then surely it must be somewhat pricked when you claim to possess such crystal clear prescience regarding the future, while remaining so ignorant of the past.
You've dehumanized real people while staking absurd claims about man's ability to read the future. That, frankly, is an "academic" exercise bordering on the repulsive.
Why are you so hellbent on twisting my words?
How is my non-disagreement with you about anything a "meaningless meme"? I am trying to agree with you that Saddam was a barbarous fiend and yet, still, that somehow offends you.
Can we revisit what it was I was actually trying to accomplish, back when I first posted? Because it certainly had nothing to do with "dehumanizing real people", or a "cavalier dismissal". I never claimed "prescience" regarding the future, and it was the past which you claim I am so ignorant of that I was trying to use to prove my point.
Please, humor me.
Ben said, way back at the beginning:
"And this only begs the question: who's life is worth more? After 9/11, we were faced with a tough choice, which is clear now only with the benefit of hindsight---is it ok to invade a nation and kill 100,000 people to ensure the safety of our nation (i.e., the U.S.) from a future terrorist attack that may kill a few thousand people at most?"
You answered him with an intellectual argument, totally devoid of the angst and hurt which pervaded every single one of your responses to me. You said:
"yes, in my opinion it is okay to invade a nation to ensure the safety of your own people. That's what WWII was about and that is the primary responsibility of representative democracies"
Fine, that is an opinion I can respect. Now, if you recall, all I said was that I disagree that it required hindsight to address the question. What I meant by that was that a question of such enormous moral import should not be addressed by people after the fact, when they could reasonably have foreseen that an invasion would cause much death and grief.
Let me clarify what I did and did not mean by this statement:
1) At no point did I suggest I could see into the future. By its very nature, war causes death. It's how they are won. It should not have been a surprise to anyone that an invasion of Iraq would cause death. I pointed out that analysts were aware of the sectarian split before the invasion, and also that they were aware of its enormous destructive potential. Nothing in this requires supernatural prescience.
2) Nor did I say that the answer should have been "no" and that the invasion was not worth it to prevent the ongoing harm to thousands, if not millions of Iraqis. Of course I have a conscience, and of course I feel for their plight. I respect that you have a personal connection, and I do not treat a human life so lightly as to see it as a negligible digit in a cost-benefit equation.
3) What I meant by "erroneous" was that I do not believe that the Bush administration was chiefly concerned with ending the persecution of Iraqis under Saddam's reign. I completely respect that this was your primary motivation for supporting the war, and it is a thoroughly noble one. That the US & UK did not place the human rights motive at the top of their agenda in no way diminishes its importance nor does it detract from the gravity of the Iraqi people's situation.
If you still manage to take offense to any of my statements after I have bent over backwards to explain myself, then I shall throw my hands in the air and deplore of every being properly understood again.
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