Lorelei Kelly reminds me of Jeffrey Record's excellent monograph "Appeasement Reconsidered" done for the Army War College's Institute for Strategic Studies (a noted hotbed of anti-American sentiment), a survey of the misuse of "appeasement" rhetoric to sell people on foreign policy boondoggles in the post-war era. John McCain and George Bush should check it out, they might learn something.
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"Appeasement Reconsidered"
18 May 2008 12:20 pm
Comments (52)
"John McCain and George Bush should check it out, they might learn something."
Why would they want to take that risk?
The well-written and pithy conclusion to the study:
Invocations of the Munich Analogy to Justify Use
of Force Should Be Closely Examined.Such invocations have more often than not been misleading because security threats to the United States genuinely Hitlerian in scope and nature have not been replicated since 1945. Though the Munich analogy’s power as a tool of opinion mobilization is undeniable, no enemy since Hitler has, in fact, possessed Nazi Germany’s combination of military might and willingness—indeed, eagerness—to employ it for unlimited conquest. This does not mean the United States should withhold resort to force against lesser threats. Nor does it mean that Hitlerian threats are a phenomenon of the past; an al-Qaeda armed with deliverable nuclear weapons or usable biological weapons would pose a direct and much more lethal threat to the United States than Nazi Germany ever did.
The problem with seeing Hitler in Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Saddam Hussein is that it reinforces the presidential tendency since 1945 to overstate threats for the purpose of rallying public and congressional opinion, and overstated threats in turn encourage resort to force in circumstances where deterrence, containment, even negotiation (from strength) might better serve long-term U.S. security interests. Threats that are, in fact, limited tend to be portrayed in Manichaean terms, thus skewing the policy choice toward military action, a policy choice hardly constrained by possession of global conventional military primacy and an inadequate understanding of the limits of that primacy.
If the 1930s reveal the danger of underestimating a security threat, the post-World War II decades contain examples of the danger of overestimating a security threat.
It should be recalled, though, that we also referred to Manuel Noriega as a little Hitler, and we sure showed him!!!
A read over at Talking Points Memo wrote the following on the vast difference between "appeasement" and "negotiation", something that George and John should be forced to read since they obviously don't understand the basic concepts of foreign policy (as evidenced by their Iraq fantasies, both past and present):
When President Bush decries "the false comfort of appeasement," and John McCain raises the spectre of Neville Chamberlain, they're deliberately advancing a fallacious line of argument. Appeasement - the acceptance of conditions imposed by an aggressor in lieu of open conflict - is not the result of negotiation, but of capitulation. And the inverse proposition - the rejection of all negotiation even at the price of open conflict - is just as rigidly obtuse. We call it war-mongering.
I don't particularly mind that our President has chosen to air a domestic dispute abroad - that's his perogative. And I've always been miffed by the notion that foreign policy is for the experts, and too delicate a matter to be subject to public debate or the people's will - what the establishment terms 'politicization.' But I'm incensed that the coverage has focused on whether or not Obama's support of negotiations constitutes appeasement, as if this were subject to dispute. It's not. He has never proposed giving in to our enemies. His support of negotiation constitutes, ipso facto, a rejection of appeasement.
There are not two valid sides to this dispute. For the media to accede to this kind of slander, just because it's what the GOP demands, well, it borders on appeasement.
Key graf, missed by Matt:
"Appeasement failed because Hitler was unappeasable. He sought not to adjust the European balance of power in Germany’s favor, but rather to overthrow it. He wanted a German-ruled Europe that would have eliminated France and Britain as European powers. "
The problem is, that's exactly what Hamas and Hizbollah (both backed by Iran) want to do with repect to Israel - eliminate it, not come to some compromise. Thus American talks with either (or Iran) are constrained by that reality. Until the left realizes that simple truth, they'll continue to spout the kind of nonsense Obama does about Lebanon - i.e., that some kind of electoral/patronage "reform" will work magic.
It won't. The only "compromise" available with Hamas and Hizbollah are American acceptance of the destruction of Israel. Get that through your head, and start considering how useful that makes any talks with either, or both.
Iraq is a separate matter altogether, and reasonable people can disagree as to whether it was a good idea to invade in 2003. Which doesn't really matter much now; we did, and we can't go back in time for a do over. All we can do is figure out what the likely impact of leaving would be. If a state like Afghanistan (poor, disconnected, no oil) could become of a pre-9/11 source of radicalism dangerous to the West, what do you suppose Iraq could possibly become now, in the wake of an American abandonment? And don't get into mumbo jumbo about "international forces" - the UN isn't doing anything to constrain the slaughter in the Congo, or Darfur, and it's not doing anything useful in southern Lebanon, either. Accept the reality that it's the US, or no one.
James Robertson: I would really like to think you're intentionally being that stupid.
Key words missed by dummy who compares Hamas and Hezbollah to Hitler, presumably not because both begin with the letter "H":
...no enemy since Hitler has, in fact, possessed Nazi Germany’s combination of military might and willingness to employ it for unlimited conquest.
Maybe your problem is with those who don't think a will to power is the same thing as power. Green Lantern only lives in the comic books, and the Nietschean superman is a device of philosophical argument.
Guatemala's genocidal army did far worse things than Hamas or Hezbollah ever dreamed of doing, but had they wished to, they could not threaten the U.S. as Hitler did.
On the other hand, they didn't begin with "H", so, there's that.
I never said that they were the same level of threat to the US that the Nazis were; they are, however, and existential threat to a US ally, Israel.
Now, you may not think it matters, but the international position of a country is affected by how we do or don't support allies. The fantasy notion that we can constructively talk with Hamas or Hizbollah does damage to Israel - both entities are bent (with Iran's help) on destroying Israel.
Exactly what do you think will be achieved by talking to either entity? With respect to their goals in the middle east, they are not appeasable, period. While they may not be a serious threat the the US, they are a serious threat to an ally. The left is always on about how we have to take alliances seriously - so how about you either
-- take the one we have with Israel seriously
-- be intellectually honest and state that you're ok with their destruction because you think the US has no interest there
Pick one, because there really isn't a third way - Matt's and Obama's fantasies of patronage reform are just stupid.
James Robertson: "If a state like Afghanistan (poor, disconnected, no oil) could become of a pre-9/11 source of radicalism dangerous to the West, what do you suppose Iraq could possibly become now, in the wake of an American abandonment? "
??? one of the main reasons that afghanistan became dangerous was because the west was funding
islamists against the communists.
we're currently funding a shite group with ties to iran. we're also funding "awakening groups"
of sunnis. do i think that either of these groups would threaten america is we left? no. i do believe they'll have the money and the arms, thanks to us, to have one hell of a civil war, though.
p.s. actually the county that was the biggest threat to america pre-9/11 was saudi arabia.
i believe that that's still the case today.
James Robertson,
Can you explain how Hamas or Hezbollah could end the existence of Israel, or are you just using the phrase "existential threat" because it sounds kind of cool?
Appeasement in International Politics
I suggest you give this book a read. Appeasement is a normal part of international politics and not only a place occupied by Chamberlain. We, the professionals in this field know this, but those amateurs we vote for haven't a clue.
We should make the president take a course in IR theory.
Wait -- surely James Robertson can not be so insane as to argue that either Hamas or Hezbollah can conquer Israel militarily? Or can he be?
Or does he mean by "existential threat" something more like "continued killings of civilians and military members"?
Strangely, I have not yet heard any Israeli military analysts making comparisons of the destabilizing border threats of Hamas or Hezbollah to the sort of threat France faced from Hitler's massive, industrialized, militarized Germany, which did in fact roll over them.
When they say that Hamas or Hezbollah pose an "existential threat" to Israel, they don't actually mean that the existence of the State of Israel is threatened; rather they mean that it's a really nasty threat. You know, "existential" as an adjective that means "really really bad".
It's like the lying, scared p*ss-pants who allege that the United States faces an "existential threat" from Al Qa'ida, because they knocked down two buildings with airliners by taking advantage of the Republicans' blissful dismissal of any warnings of terrorist threats.
But that's the reason malicious right wing turds use the Nazi and appeasement analogy whenever they can -- because they are hoping to avert any rational discussion of the actual situations being faced.
"The problem is, that's exactly what Hamas and Hizbollah (both backed by Iran) want to do with repect to Israel - eliminate it, not come to some compromise. Thus American talks with either (or Iran) are constrained by that reality. Until the left realizes that simple truth, they'll continue to spout the kind of nonsense Obama does about Lebanon - i.e., that some kind of electoral/patronage "reform" will work magic."
David Koresh (sp?) thought he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and that we should all follow him, yet I don't see him leading anything. For such bogeyman talk to make sense and mean the speaker isn't a crazy person, organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas have to be in a position to destroy Israel. However, they objectively lack that power and capability. Organizations often strike a more radical pose than they are willing to accept once negotiations start as a bargaining tactic. The leaders of Hamas (as opposed to their lackies who blow themselves up) have shown the ability to be rational and to follow their own organizational self-interest in the pursuit of power, even if that has often been done in violent and immoral ways. However, moral posturing doesn't get anything done. The real work of such politics involves getting your hands dirty and dealing with thugs like Hamas, especially when they have electoral backing. If Hamas was allowed to come to power on their own merits after winning electorally, they would have been shown the govern incompetently and lost popular support, thus becoming rather marginal in Palestinian politics. Instead, when the US and Israel tried to shuffle them out of power, they got to blame everything on us and had a point in doing so. Hamas is there, they aren't going to go away, they aren't going to be militarily defeated anytime soon and whoever would replace them would likely be even more radical (just as Israel's earlier support for Hamas against the PLO helped bring the more radical Hamas to greater prominence). More radical groups like the LTTE use suicide bombing more than any other terrorist group in the world, yet they have moderated their stances partly via negotiations.
Like all apologists for the Bush’s disaster in Iraq James Robertson wants us to just “Move On” from the issue of whether we should have invaded. To let useful idiots like our Mr. Robertson define the debate is a bit like letting terrorists define our actions.
Who, Mr. Robertson, is better off after Bush butchered thousands of Iraqis? Is it those dead? Is it those who were killed by their fellow Iraqis in the ensuing chaos that still rules their land? Is it the millions of displaced Iraqis? Perhaps it is the United States whose military is enjoying the fruits of their labor in the form of stop-loss programs? Or is it because we can be assured that this operation has won the hearts and minds of the Arab world and so ensured a more peaceful, less terror filled world?
These are the questions that you are attempting to avoid by saying, “oh well, no use crying over spilled blood.” Butcher.
As for the notion that Hambola (he can’t tell the difference between them) will destroy Israel the less said the better.
One gets the feeling that James Robertson represents the best of the conservative argumentation, a rather sad thought and one that demonstrates just how intellectually lightweight the entire movement is.
A little OT but pertinent is the following from former ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer who joins Lawrence Wilkerson and Douglas Feith in demonstrating that the Government of Israel was not instrumental in causing the US Iraq adventure, despite the lies perpetrated on this blog by Mr. Don Williams. Since Mr. Kurtzer, like Mr. Williams is supporting Senator Obama, it would appear that calling him a liar also is a nonstarter.
http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2008/05/ambassador_kurtzer_a_jewish_vi.php#more
"I was in Israel when this was being contemplated and when it started. And, as part of my job as American ambassador, I pulled together, on numerous occasions, Israeli officials and academic experts on Iraq and on the Middle East, to try to understand what we all knew was intended. There was no secret about his administration's desire to go to war with Iraq, so I wasn't giving away a secret by asking the question of our Israeli friends.
Now, you've heard the nonsense which is out there which suggests that Israel or the Jewish community or the Israel lobby pushed this war on the administration. And I can tell you it is nonsense, because there was not one Israeli official and not one Israeli academic who suggested that this war was going to end well. They all warned against exactly the problems we have experienced since this war started, because Israel experienced many of those same problems.
The unknowns of occupation, the likelihood that occupation is going to yield resistance, you can call it insurgency, you can call it civil war - whatever the euphemism is - it is resistance to occupation, which takes on its own dynamic and becomes a self-justifying and self-perpetuating reason for being there in the first place.
And so Israel understood far better than the wise neocons who brought us this war, that this was going to be dangerous not only for the United States but also for Israeli security. And if you doubt those words, look at the nearly one million Iraqi refugees in Jordan and take a measure of Jordanian stability. Jordan, which is a bedrock of Israel's security on its eastern frontier. "
The fantasy notion that we can constructively talk with Hamas or Hizbollah does damage to Israel - both entities are bent (with Iran's help) on destroying Israel.
Uh, I guess James Robertson doesn't understand that Israel talks to Hamas on a regular basis. As a result, according to his logic we should abandon Israel as a bunch of "appeasers", right?
Some people have no concept of what happens at the diplomatic level. JB seems to belong to that club, along with Bush, Cheney, and McCain.
BTW, JB, Sec. of Defense Gates and Sec. of State Rice disagree with you. Time to throw their asses out of the Bush administration as "appeasers". Funny how Bush and McCain don't even seem to be aware of what their own people are doing.
SLC: If it makes you feel any better, I was not convinced that there were many actual Israelis who thought that a U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq would be good for their security, given any sort of game-plan thought.
However, that in itself does not in any way bar that lunatics in the U.S. could easily convince themselves that the metaphorical goal of "removing Saddam Hussein" was crucial to Israeli fortunes.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0329-11.htm
But then, there are all sorts of crazy people in the U.S. who think they're acting in the best interests of Israel and think they know how U.S. foreign policy could best help the Israeli Jewish population, and who regularly advocate the most insane and harmful nonsense in the pursuit of their obsessive delusions. A group to which you proudly belong. Hama Rules!
Re El Cid
My comment was aimed at Mr. Don Williams and others who specialize in demonizing the State of Israel with their lies (I don't count Mr. Hack who is clearly insane). Obviously, the neo-cons who pushed this war (and who criticized Dubyas' father for not going to Baghdad in 1991) weren't talking to the Israelis who Kurtzer was talking to, not that it would have made any difference because they don't listen to anybody other then the their inner voices.
Hitler succeeded in getting the appeasers to leave him alone because he sold himself as a bulwark against Stalin's Soviet Union. He explained that it was unavoidable to eliminate German democracy because his people would elect communism if given the repeated chance.
What the appeasers missed what Hitler's earnest political rhetoric about the superiority of the German race and the inferiority of the Jews and Slavs.
What is missed today is that Hamas, Hizbullah, and many Arab governments make it an ideological principle to Wipe Out the Jews.
I haven't seen any indication that the Democrats are willing to deal with this reality and the threat it implies. Simply popping by Tehran for tea and crumpets will only serve the mullahs' aims of strengthening and arming Israel's neighbors' abilities to complete the Nazis' job.
Yet again, it demonstrates the mistake of conflating 'Israel' the state and 'Israel' the US policy plank, which are very tendentiously related. That's to say, PNACers defend the latter, and don't give a flying fuck about the former. Perhaps it might be better to use the term 'schmIsrael' to distinguish the latter.
Of course, as El Cid notes, SLC typically has trouble separating the two as well.
MarkG another idiot who cannot tell the difference between diplomacy and appeasement. There's really nothing to say to someone so thick.
On the other hand, beating up on nitwits like James Robertson is a bit of fun.
Let me ask you something sir: what part of being massively, stupidly, and bloodily and wrong about the most important issue of the use of military power by the United States in the past decade gives you the arrogance to lecture those of us who were right? Don't you think a heaping helping of crow and a hearty mug of shut-the-fuck-up would be more appropriate for you and those like you who have so degraded America's position in the world?
The insightful analysis of the Circus Freak perfectly lives up to expectations...
Once again, SLC tiresomely pushes the same old lies.
He deliberately ignores the known fact that Israel wanted the US to attack IRAN, not Iraq, which is why they lobbied against attacking Iraq early in 2002. They then switched to lobbying FOR attacking Iraq once the neocons assured them that Iran would be next.
As Don Rickles, a thoroughly Jewish comedian, would have said, "What, that's better?"
Well, we'll find out since Bush once again discussed attacking Iran with Olmert in meetings during his visit.
Meanwhile, Israel is demanding the UN ban the use of the term "Nakba" to describe the Palestinian ethnic cleansing. There is no lower limit to the intellectual dishonesty of a Zionist freak, as SLC demonstrates here daily.
One of the claims in the artical is that WWII could only have been prevented with a preventive war. Maybe we should keep Bush and McCain away from this one.
Wow, MarkG imagines I picked the name Circus Freak by accident and that I will be offended by his inane blathering. Sorry sweetie.
The past decade has shown us what happens when idiots are in charge of our foreign policy. People like you who see Hitler behind every bush. Well, of the two nations, Iran and the United States, which one brutally slaughtered thousands? Which one planted hundreds of terrorist bombs in a single day in an attempt to assassinate the ruler of a sovereign state?
There's an analog to Hitler all right, but you won't like where reason will take you. Which does explain your flight from it.
"The insightful analysis of the Circus Freak perfectly lives up to expectations..."
It made a hell of alot of sense compared to your sky-is-falling blather, Rev Hagee.
I find it intersting that McBush called Obama reckless??? While he stands firm in support of what is arguably the most reckless man in history. It is an odd world we live.
People like you who see Hitler behind every bush.
But I don't see Hitler behind every Bush.
We must brush up on the latter half of the compare-and-contrast discourse.
Violent Islamic fundamentalists do not get a free pass for bad behavior and blanket inhumanity just because the modern left has declared them to be modern-day "noble savages."
As he wonders why he is outclassed on world affairs by a simple Circus Freak, MarkG never stops to reflect that his violent racism might be blinding him to the nature and size of the threats facing the world.
And by the way, twit, violent American racists don't get a pass for their bad behavior and blanket inhumanity because the right-wing-nuthouse has declared that the Arab (and Persian) peoples are savages.
When someone slits your throat, you die. When someone drops a bomb on your head, you die. When hundreds of bombs are planted in your city because an asshole has lied about your leader being a threat to the security of people thousands of miles away - that's terrorism.
Are you positing that Islam is a race, or that Arabs and Persians are racially bound to Islam? Is it one, both, or neither that results in the "racist" proclamation?
Also, it has so far been my understanding that Iranians prefer not to be called "Persians."
Ha ha! I iz smart rite winger! I wil say dat leff thinks vilent Moozlm terrist iz no-bull savij and they hav no reespons. Ha ha! I win! I sav world by talk big bout how my big words sayv wurld fum vilent Moozums!
El Cid,
I doubt that your talents for one-liners would do much good for the Chaldean Christians who are being driven out of their homes in Iraq by Islamist aggression. Or for the uncountable victims of Islamic aggression for the last 1300 years.
Is it really a matter of indifference to you whether Christianity or Islam shall triumph over the other in the end?
Wayt i hav posted my chalinj an' it haz bin 5 minit an' stil teh leff hav not stopd vilent Moozlim so they mus luv thim and want to marry them I win!
It frequently annoys me when people act like Muslim is a race. Nothing annoys me more than when people ask if I'm a Muslim because of my skin color.
Hector: I am actively pulling for Islam to take over the world. By doing so, I willingly sacrifice as a martyr from which you may make stern and moral denunciations, since obviously otherwise no one will pony up the 5 to 10 million troops which would be needed to actually stabilize the Chaldean Christians' life in reality. The Chaldean Christians life, for example, were measurably better under the more measurably murderous tyrant Saddam, not because he was Saddam, but because there was a functional state.
In all seriousness, take your stupid debates about "Which Is Better, Christians or Muslims" and shove it up your ass with the other useless nerds debating "Superman versus Hulk" or some such.
If you want historical debates about how history might have turned out better had some tyrannical or oppressive force been defeated, I'd be glad to engage in such fantasies. But since you think this has something to do with today, you're just an obsessed sick freak like all the other pseudo-humanitarians who think they have figured out that the nation which controls magnesium controls the universe.
El Cid,
No, the debate about whether Christianity is better than Islam is exactly the debate that we need to be engaging. It is a fascinating debate and boils down to a number of theological questions. Was Jesus Christ just a man, or was he God Incarnate? Is God a Unity or a Trinity? Can God command what is contrary to reason? Does God choose to be good, or is goodness His very nature? Do we have free will? These are the issues on which the future of humanity rests, not just in this world but in the next. They need to be addressed and debated. Pope Benedict began this debate a couple years ago, specifically pointing out that the problem with evangelical Protestantism, Islam, and secularism is the divorce of faith and reason. Sadly, you don't appear to have heeded his message.
Exactly Hector. You've got it all thunk out.
What We Need To Keep America Safe Is To Settle Once And For All Is The Question "Was Jesus Christ just a man, or was he God Incarnate,", Because Once We Settle That All Else Will Be Easy And The Damn Muslims Will Finally Get Theirs For What They Done For The Last 1300 Years.
By the way, if your god is worried about whether or not I believe in him, then he's an immature little shit and he needs to grow the fuck up. I'm really sick and tired of people whose gods are just as immature as the pathetic humans who believe in them.
Impressive. El Cid makes the case for secular inhumanism. Rarely has the case for human bondage under a totalitarian neofascist like Hussein been more clearly stated. For those of us non-fundamentalist, non-Muslims, he would seem to suggest we lie down and prepare for decapitation.
Sorry, but that's not my plan.
MarkG: If you don't like the fact that life for most Iraqis was measurably better under the terrible and murderous Saddam Hussein, that's not my fault. And I'm not advocating for such a state.
I'm just simply pointing out the extreme level of ignorance you exhibit at not understanding the need for modern humans to live under actual functioning states as opposed to the cellular fascism we have left them in their little warlord clique hells.
If you don't like that state of affairs, stop blaming the people who point it out. It's not like I'm some David Horowitz type who worked with the Black Panthers to solve my ego problems until it got a friend of mine killed, and then I tried to wash my ego of guilt by condemning everyone who even smelled as though they might make the same horrible choices I had.
If you don't actually care about the conditions under which people live, and what matters more to you is setting up global conflicts which allow you to sort out how you morally feel about this or that tyrant, then, by all means, say so, have the guts to clearly say it.
But don't get all neurotic and ashamed of yourself because someone else pointed out the actual results of the Crusade (hi Hector!) you yourself demanded.
MarkG,
It is certainly a fact though that Iraqi Christians were a lot better off under Saddam then they are today.
MarkG, having been spanked on his idiocy is now trying to distract from his promotion of violence by digressing into whether the people he wants murdered constitute a "race." This after he called them "savages."
It doesn't matter, dumbfuck, whether I agree with your implication that these people were a different race. What matters is that you imagine that your violent surrogates using cluster bombs to commit mass murder are moral. What matters is that your surrogates tortured human beings to death. Your surrogates have imprisoned humans, without trial, for the crime of being not your surrogates.
In other words, your surrogates are exactly what you claim to want them to fight. And yet somehow you think that you have contributed something other than the stench of decaying flesh emitted by your rotting brain to the argument.
As for your plan - we've seen it: use your fundamentalist belief in violence for the sake of violence to murder people halfway across the world.
Okay, folks, we're not going to convince each other to convert. For my part, I'll sum up -- yes, only for my own point of view -- that I was for the removal of Saddam since the end of Desert Storm. There are a number of similar despots I'd love to see deposed under threat of US force, if need be, because no other country has the balls to stand up for universal human liberty -- certainly not that despicable Despot's Club of the UN.
That said, we're mostly not in a position to be able to handle such challenges, because those despots receive plenty of support for various reasons, some of them even due to our own Cold War legacy foreign policy approach of supporting any sonovabitch as long as he's ours.
Yes, warfare produces lots of death and suffering. But over the long term, totalitarian dictators have time on their side to perpetrate violent atrocities that are much worse.
I'll try to keep my gripes with the liberal views to a minimum. I promise. For now, sayonara and farewell. =]
MarkG, for all of your moral hectoring, you actually don't have an actual policy proposal to put forward. All you've done it bitch and moan like a child. Adults have to deal with the world as is. That means engaging in diplomacy when possible and force when necessary. Confusing the two, like Bush has done, has made radical Islamists more powerful, not less. Part of the reason bin Laden and al-Qaida did the 9/11 attacks was so that we would overreact and get caught in a shooting war in the Middle East that would drain our treasury. Conservatives are doing exactly what bin Laden wants them to do. That's why the CIA admitted that the reason bin Laden released that tape right before election day in 2004 was to get Bush re-elected. Hell, well over half of Israelis think their government should be negotiating with Hamas. Are Israelis just a bunch of appeasers as well? Your neocon ideology isn't drawn from reason and logic, but from the murderous philosophy of Trotsky.
Your arguments, such as they are, aren't convincing because you start by lying about what you've done. You and yours said we were facing an existential threat. We were not. You and yours claimed that this would improve our national security. It did not. You and yours now claim humanitarian motivation. There was none.
Yes, it is possible to have a war for humanitarian reasons. Yes it is possible that some innocents will die for a greater good. But there's nothing like that in Iraq. What we have is an arrogant know-nothing supported by violent assholes who have raped the nation of Iraq, left it bleeding by the side of the road, and are now condemning those of us smart enough to know not to have even started down that path as "unserious."
Over the long run Saddam Hussein killed fewer people than the chaos unleashed by George W. Bush's unprovoked assault on the Iraqi people. That's the reality and that's why you cannot be taken seriously. Not because you oppose "liberal" ideas, but because your ideology has led to this disaster.
Hector, no one cares about your little obsession except for you. Most people want to just live their lives, not be involved in some epic struggle over faith. You just have the zeal of the newly converted, which just makes you the religious version of those kids who go to college and adopt a new persona and act like they were always like that when in reality they are just a poseur.
BTW: Hector, I'm certain Hussein would have gotten around to scapegoating the Christians in Iraq eventually after leveraging French and Russian oil interests to get himself off the international hook. He would have found it as easy to murder Tariq Aziz as his role models Hitler and, especially, Stalin did their surrogates during their own purges.
And that would have gone down with the international whimper voiced over the slaughter of the modern minority ethnicities of Burma, the Polish intelligentsia, the Jews of Europe, the Iraqi Kurds and Shiites under Hussein, or the Ottoman Armenians.
MarkG, actually when Hussein was slaughtering the Kurds, it was American liberals who voiced opposition. However, when Congressional Democrats wanted to condemn the genocide, it was Reagan who killed the proposal because he didn't want to piss Hussein off.
Well, it took MarkG less than 30 minutes to start making shit up about what "would have happened."
Look you bloodthirsty moron - we know what did happen: hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been slaughtered. More than in the entire reign of Saddam Hussein. Millions are displaced. The violent death rate is up. The electricity production is down. The oil production is down. Healthcare has become a nightmare.
All of which can be traced to a single event: George W. Bush's assault on the Iraqi people.
The reflexive use of American military might by simpletons like George W. Bush and his lackeys is a more destructive force than all of the terrorists combined. Show me a terrorist who can create the kind of carnage MarkG's ideals have unleashed in Iraq and I will show you the lithium you missed with your last meal.
Does a nation simply have to "stand up" and "have the balls" to depose dictators in order to do the moral and right thing?
Or does it actually have to do something which results in a measurably, objectively, demonstrably better life for those presumably at the other end of the beneficence?
And who decides? Is it just the USA, and maybe Britain? And for that matter, to what degree do the citizens whom we're presumably saving have a say? If they're suffering under a tyrant, is the default answer that we have permission to intervene?
What if China decides that some Latin American regime is simply intolerable, and must be dealt with? What if India decides that some particularly venal kleptocratic state in Africa must be relieved of authority for the good of its citizens?
And then, say, China and India happen to disagree about one of those interventions, and happen to get into a perilous journey toward a war with each other?
I mean, if we're going to disregard all these corrupt and inefficient mechanisms of resolving disputes based on moral arguments of which tyrants must be removed now by whom, we've also got to start thinking of those good ol' fashioned worldwide major power crises again.
MarkG,
I will try to stop you and your ilk from further destroying the value of my currency and running up public debt on ventures of dubious moral and economic value. All of these neo-con adventures had terrible risk/reward profiles from the outset. The post-911 bender may be wearing off...I hope!
Hector said... Pope Benedict began this debate a couple years ago, specifically pointing out that the problem with evangelical Protestantism, Islam, and secularism is the divorce of faith and reason.
Wow. A lesson on morals, faith, and reason from a man who protected child molesters.
Pope Benedict is a flaming a**hole who has much to answer for. The man could be a poster boy for hypocrisy. But he does look JUST FABULOUS in those red shoes and pretty dresses.
Hector (on important questions): Was Jesus Christ just a man, or was he God Incarnate? Is God a Unity or a Trinity?
It reminds me incomparable Steve Colbert: "George W. Bush -- a great president, or the greatest?"
Is it possible that a symmetric debate is raging in Iran -- should one talk with the Great Satan (or The Lesser), or would that be unworthy appeasement?
By the way, I understood that Iranians do not mind being called Persians, provided that they are. About half is not. It is like Afghans are not the same as Pashtoons.
Comments closed June 01, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
The use of facts and words, in fact the very notion of logical inquiry, with regard to the Appeasment of the Nazis by those Appeasers, is contrary to what Great American Patriot Conservatives should do and I learned all I needed to know about Appeasing from brilliant minds like Jonah Goldberg because fascism is about either making politics a religion or believing that government can do everything or something.
Posted by El Cid | May 18, 2008 12:47 PM