From: Kevin Freels (megaquark@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Sep 02 2003 - 11:33:33 MDT
This is the best argument I have seen against the war on Iraq. Until now I
have fully supported it.Now I have to re-think it.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robbie Lindauer" <robblin@thetip.org>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 8:46 PM
Subject: Re: would you vote for this man?
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> I know that jumps through quite a few hoops - the concept of
> nationhood, the responsibility of the ruling class to its population,
> etc. 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. 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).
>
> If you like it might be a worthy exercise in international diplomacy to
> take a few minutes to rehash those alternate scenarios, or we can just
> take that as a given.
>
> In any case, in light of (5) and (6), don't you think it's false that
> we were "Forced" to invade Iraq? Or do you really think there was
> absolutely no other option? If so, I'm interested in hearing more on
> why there really were genuinely no other options. I admit, it sounds a
> bit complicated, but I sense we're at least making progress on
> identifying the source of our disagreements.
>
> Best,
>
> Robbie
>
>
>
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