From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Tue Sep 02 2003 - 07:12:49 MDT
Robbie:
I'll be increasingly short of time as the week progresses and will be gone
over the coming weekend (I have to attend a high-level planning meeting of
the opressor class from Friday to Sunday), so my responses will be
increasingly telegraphic; and thus probably of diminishing value, but here's
a quick note:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robbie Lindauer
> Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 8:47 PM
>
> Greg:
>
> Thanks for your reply. Let's stick to Iraq for now, talking about two
> wars at once is almost as hard for me as watching them.
OK, but at a level I think is important, Afghanistan and Iraq can and should
be seen as two elements of the same conflict.
> You allude to a few reasons for attacking Iraq that I will paraphrase
> here to make sure I've got a good understanding of what you're saying:
>
> 1) Iraq is a threat to the values of liberty and progress.
> 2) Saddam Hussein's regime had reneged on commitments.
> 3) It was time for a major social-upheaval in Iraq and we had to be
> the catalysts.
> 4) Our "Enlightenment-based" culture is fundamentally in disagreement
> with Iraq's culture.
>
> ___________________
>
> Going from our point of agreement, that nations shouldn't bomb other
> nations unless "Forced" to and your apparent contention that it was
> forced, we need to get some agreement on what is meant by "forced":
>
> A nation is "forced" to do something if all other options would cause
> more pain, death and violence to their population than the one in
> question.
Agreed, but the question is the time frame of decision: how far into the
future does one look when comparing the death and violence of action versus
inaction?
> I know that jumps through quite a few hoops - the concept of
> nationhood, the responsibility of the ruling class to its population,
> etc.
It does, and I suspect that a significant potential for misunderstanding
between us exists by glossing over these important concepts. For instance,
I think you're exactly right in identifying "nationhood" as an important
waystation in our discussion. Too often people talk about the moral actions
of nations and states as if they were people, a problem of language as much
as anything else. We say "America wants this" and "China did that" when the
truth gets obscured by linguistically treating governments and people and
ethinicities as if they were the same thing as individuals. I don't think
you're really making this mistake, but I note that there's great potential
for trouble in using such shorthand. I know I use this shorthand all the
time and then I go back, review my words and flinch at the hidden
implications of what I've said or written.
> I'm also not taking into account the "Enlightenment" additions
> that there should be universal responsibility of people making the
> responsibility broader than just the population of the nation in
> question.
Again. I appreciate your noting this, because one of the glories of the
Enlightenment (which was quickly muddied by the Romantic reaction to the
Enlightenment) was the realization that culture can and should transcend
national boundaries or state control. We musn't forget this as we discuss
such incendiary questions as war and peace.
> In any case, I think the above definition should be
> relatively uncontroversial.
>
> Regarding your reasons (1), (2), (3) and (4), it's pretty clear that
> the counterfactual:
>
> (5) "There were other things we could have done to
> promote those goals
> which would have been equally or more likely to cause less pain, harm
> and death to Americans."
>
> or the "Enlightenment" and quite stronger version:
>
> (5e) "There were other things we could have done to
> promote those
> goals which would have been equally or more likely to cause less pain,
> harm and death to Humans."
>
> Is true barring any a priori determinism which would obviate the whole
> moral question. That's assuming for the moment that the goals outlined
> above are clear or worthy of pursuit about which I'm not sure.
>
> It wouldn't take a tremendous amount of imagination to review those
> alternate scenarios. I believe that the French had a perfectly
> reasonable proposal before the UN to step-up the effectiveness of the
> (now apparently completely effective) UN inspection regime and the
> economic pressure that the US and its (at least prior to the war)
> Allies can put on a nation is tremendous (if we're interested in
> controlling the economic growth of another country which strikes me as
> an illegitimate goal - what we've found is that wealthy people are less
> inclined to go to war than the poverty-stricken).
My disagreement seems to stem from the judgment that the alternatives to war
were in fact better, when viewed with a time horizon that encompassed the
over-all trend of violent sectarian struggle in the Middle East. I'm flat
out of time to write this morning, but this is the sticking point. I'm
sorry to not be able to explore it further, but to state my general view,
I'd say that the U.N. inspection process was insufficiently forceful to have
an impact *in the wider arena of Middle Eastern sectarian (Islamic) and
personal (Ba'athist) politics* to avoid another, ultimately more violent war
in the time frame of ten to twenty years. Explanation of how I see that
that was the case will have to await another day -- I'm sorry.
GB, THHotA
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