From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Jan 20 2003 - 15:15:10 MST
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>>So, should America go to war with Iraq? I honestly don't know...
>>I can tell a no-war message will be worthless as soon as I read a few
>>key phrases like, what right do we have to... or how would we feel if...
>>or we were just as bad when...or we helped Iraq by...
>
>
> I, too, am still undecided on the issue, but there's a heuristic I'd
> suggest for evaluating the worth of an anti-war argument, and that's
> the poster's view of Afghanistan. I'm no hawk, but I'm also not a
> pacifist, and I can't for a minute imagine a war more totally
> justified and fabulously successful than ours in Afghanistan. An
> illegitimate government knowingly harboring a criminal responsible
> for a direct attack on the US was removed from power with minimal
> collateral damage, and replaced with one more pro-freedom (though
> certainly not as much so as we might like), and the organization
> responsible for the attack was routed.
>
I see no point in the entanglement of the two conflicts or
attitudes toward them. I do not see that unmitigated good came
from the attack on Afghanistan. I would not call it "victory"
when the people are left massively impoverished and at the mercy
of the old warlords. I don't see how it was a "victory" when
our stated objective kept shifting to attempt to make it one and
we still never captured or accounted for the state objective,
bin Laden. I don't see how it is an unmitigated good to go
attack any/all nations we feel like are "evil" and install a
government by force more to our liking. That is the
international initiation of force and using such force to
rearrange the world and its governments to our liking, even
giving ourselves permission to do so preemptively is
international agression and is uniformly condemned by us when
other do it.
But whether you agree with my thinking there or not does not
make or action in Iraq per se a better or worse proposition.
> Those who wish to convince me that we should not attak Iraq (and
> frankly I'm leaning toward that conclusion) must be able to tell me
> exactly how Iraq differs from Afghanistan, and why those specific
> differences justify the latter but not the former. The opinion of
> peaceniks who would not have invaded Afghanistan either have
> precisely zero weight with me.
>
I don't believe either one was or is justified. Calling me a
"peacenik" adds nothing meaningful to the conversation. I am
not interested in a foolish argument evaluation technique of
only valuing an argument if it is not presented by someone you
disagreed strongly with on some other matter.
- samantha
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