Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Diane_Keaton
Rwanda was a sovereign nation too. Under your reasoning, it would be morally unsupportable for a nation to invade Rwanda as the government ordered the slaughter of its own people. And why you say? Because the Rwanda government's proclamation that all members of the minority group, the Tutsi's, must be raped and slaughtered (to the point where the citizens were so exhausted from using their machetes they'd chop the achilles tendons of their victims and then leave them to cry all night while they went and slept and came back in the morning to finish chopping at them) is simply "behavior that is not in accordance with our standards". I wonder how this little guy, one of the survivors who has to take a rest from the food line, feels about your cultural relativism?

Rwanda cannot be compared to Iraq. We did not invade Iraq to liberate Iraqis. We said that AFTER we invaded. Prior to invasion, the reason for the invasion was WMD.

Had Bush argued initially that we should invade Iraq for humanitarian reasons, rather than merely default to that basis as an after the fact excuse, your comparison would be valid. But that didn't happen.

[Replaced_Texan]

Having read the headline that 380 tons of explosive are missing from Iraq, lost during the initial looting after our conquistadorial efforts, I came up with a new slogan for the Bush campaign:


Bush-Cheney '04

We make the world more dangerous so you need us more

Burkean

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Adder
So basically you are now completely abandoning your original position. Fine with me.

You are a total clown. My bad, I forgot.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Had Bush argued initially that we should invade Iraq for humanitarian reasons, rather than merely default to that basis as an after the fact excuse, your comparison would be valid. But that didn't happen.

He made this argument pre war. People forget that, pre war, the NYT (and Ty) chided him because he had too many rationales for going to war. That said, WMD was the primary one sold to the country/world.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Burkean

Doesn't it seem a bit ridiculous that Cheney and Bush are running on the platform that we're at war, only tough guys like them know how to get us through wars, when its only as a result of their own pre-emptive strategy that we're in war at all?

9/11 was not the start of a "war" (the "war" on terrorism is like the "war" on drugs - its a misuse of the word). It was a very successful terrorist attack. There were a variety of response available to us. Going into Iraq was a textbook "war", and it hasn't turned out to be a terribly successful war so far.

So when Cheney and Bush claim they're the only ones who can guide us through this "war", aren't they really saying "We took you into this war, so we're the only guys qualified to get you out."

[sgtclub]

U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred . . ."

"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.

Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."

But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/natio...0609-9428r.htm

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by sgtclub
He made this argument pre war. People forget that, pre war, the NYT (and Ty) chided him because he had too many rationales for going to war. That said, WMD was the primary one sold to the country/world.

True. I misspoke. But he did not get into the humanitarian thing until way late in the game, after the scant WMD evidence did not appear to justify a war.

The bottom line is that Bush supporters should not go into the humaritarian argument because it just smacks of desperation.* It ain't the reason we went over there. We do not engage in actions of that size for humanitarian reasons. Look at what's gone on recently in Sudan. We're tsk tsking it, but we are not starting a military action there.

I cannot laugh enough when I hear Cheney say "Kerry is weak... were he in office, Saddam would still be in power!" Yeh, and that would be a direct threat to us how? Don't tell me because Saddam paid terrorist bounties. He paid them to Palestinian bombers. That's Israel's problem, not ours. And don't tell me because AQ was in Iraq. They weren't.** No secular dictator gets in bed with religiuos nuts who seek governance by mullahs. Saddam marginalized killed the mullahs. I think a great case could be made that it would have been strategically wiser to KEEP Saddam in power to offset the power of the religious loons. We could've brought him back into the fold, but that wouldn't have been too popular with our friends in SA or Kuwait.

* When I make this argument, my GOP friends call me a heartless ogre who'd be complicit in Saddam's crimes against humanity. Notwithstanding the comedic value of hearing such heartless free-marketeers/life-is-tough-deal-with-it types suddenly turn into bleeding heart humanitarians, this argument usually ends when they're reminded who Saddam's largest patron was during the late 70s to mid-to-late 80s.

** Ansar Al Islam operated solely in the area of Northern Iraq controlled by our allies, the Kurds. Now they operate throughout Iraq.

[Not Bob]

Rufus on running with lawyers blog got a response to his "why W?" question that I reposted here last week. A guy by the name of Jack said in part

• As to George W Bush - it's an American thing. You ain't ever gonna understand it ... Real America that has saved your sorry asses time after time after time only to have us rednecks that give our lives on foreign shores for a flag we love and cherish as much as we cherish our Nation's profoundly Christian heritage roots and foundation spat upon so you can practice the Law that enslaves and buggers and corrupts.

Rufus's response answers the question that club had the other day -- why are you (me) so worried about the social conservatives? Rufus made the case much better than I did:

• Jack seems like a guy with a lot of resentments. I won’t speculate as to why that is. But let me make this very clear, I don’t look down upon Jack, nor do I hate Jack. I am, however, afraid of Jack. The problem is that the reason I’m afraid of Jack is that he’s trying to impose his values on me, but that if I resist and my values win out won’t those values be imposed on Jack? I guess. Maybe. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? Well it is. You see, I don’t want to force Jack’s daughter to have an abortion, but he wants to prevent someone else’s daughter from having one; I don’t want to force Jack to listen to Howard Stern, but he wants to stop me from listening to Howard Stern; I don’t believe that Jack is going to hell, but he believes that I am. So on the scale of who is closer to American ideals of individual liberty, my values win. Sorry Jack.

http://runningwithlawyers.typepad.co...and_.html#more (emphasis supplied)

Money or liberty, sebby. It's that simple.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Not Bob

Money or liberty, sebby. It's that simple.

I think Rufus hits the nut of what I've been so inarticulately struggling to explain. There's a letter to the editor in the NYTimes this morning that says roughly the same thing very well (I recall its in response to the Bishop of Denver's OpEd piece last week wherein he demanded all Catholics vote based on setm cell/abortion policy).

I notice "conservatives" hate when this argument is raised because it drives them nuts to have to admit that they're actually in favor of increased govt regulation of people. And worse, the "conservatives" are not just favoring business regulation, like the Dems, they're demanding regulation that gets almost all the way into the bedroom. They want business to have more liberty than you or I have in our personal lives. Except as to our private gun ownership...

The best, however, is Bush's "flipping" of the abortion issue. Instead of saying "I favor a culture of control over other people's choices" he says "I favor a culture of life" and cleverly argues that abortion is robbing the unborn of a choice. You gotta hand it to him - thats a nifty retort. Of course, its Achilles' Heel is that it tees up the issue of who's choice should take priority - the living breathing woman or the gestating tissue or fetus (depending on what stage the pregnancy is at). In that argument, Bush loses. But alas, he still gets to claim the moral high road by claiming he's the voice of the voiceless.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Doesn't it seem a bit ridiculous that Cheney and Bush are running on the platform that we're at war, only tough guys like them know how to get us through wars, when its only as a result of their own pre-emptive strategy that we're in war at all?

WAR IS PEACE.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

That last one scares me. If only b/c pre-president Bush was never very curious about the rest of the world.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by sgtclub
We've been arguing about a lot of things, and this is one of them (i.e., whether we should have gone to Iraq). The moral case for going is pretty clear. This writer's claim is that there is no moral case for NOT going, and I'm wondering whether anybody cares to make the argument.

I'd bet that Mahatma Ghandi and most Quakers would disagree with that writer.

I can't make the case convincingly, because I am neither a pacifist nor well-schooled in the philosophy, but that is one example of a moral case against the Iraq war.

S_A_M

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Rwanda cannot be compared to Iraq. ....your comparison would be valid...

I used Rwanda to show how TW's general statement about going to war in a foreign country does not work because the rule he/she proposed would have rendered any U.S. support in Rwanda "morally unsupportable." To the extent one thinks some intervention in Rwanda would not have been immoral, then my example worked to show the uselessness of TW's simple proposed rule. From herein, I will refer to Taxwonk as "The Twit".

[Replaced_Texan]

Rehnquist (80(!)) is being treated for thyroid cancer

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Do you realize that implicit in this sort of charge is the requirement that Tony Blair be a fat idiot? for all our fights, I still admit you don't drift into the conspiracy side of town, til this.

Not really, Hank. There were reasons for invading Iraq, much as there are reasons for cleaning up the genocidal and crazed sociopathic acts of any number of dictators in any number of countries. Plus, Iraq has oil. A whole shitload of oil, which the North Sea is starting to produce less of every day.

All of the above were reasons for Blair and the rest of the coalition of the willing to plunge on in. What I meant by calling it a smokescreen was that invading Iraq really did absolutely nothing to reduce the terrorist threat to the US, but it did provide Bush with an opportunity to declare victory over something.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Disagree.

I can live with that.