First up, Lusatian, I agree with an earlier comment you made about our world views being so different - it IS a bit like calling from planet to planet - so I won't respond a lot more - but I did just have a few comments on parts of this post of yours.
Dlowan wrote: You were, as far as I was able to gauge an argument from your rather purple prose, arguing that the USA was RIGHT - not whether it was STRONG!
My opening thread wasn't as in depth as it should have been due to time considerations, but my position was reasonably alluded to by your own words. The fact is that in essence might does make right, especially if wielded with a keen eye on its legacy. The victor not only writes the history books, but if the victor reigned responsibly, even if horrific measures were used to come to power, history and the rest of the world commend him and remember only the battlefield success and not the methods employed.[/quote]
So, it is fair to say that, in your view, that it is not only true that the victor's view of history is the one that dominates (though this is, in fact, changing in current historical discourse, but never mind), but that the victory itself, if it leads to a reasonably long period of domination by one state, is therefore made morally right, no matter the means? So, therefore, moral right is always with the strongest "if they reign responsibly" because "history and the rest of the world commend him (sic) and remember only the battlefield success and not the methods employed"?
Would the moral right STILL be with them if they reigned irresponsibly? Does the moral right alter as the historical view alters, so that what was right, in your view, in one decade becomes wrong in the next? I am confused about your view because on the one hand you seem to imply that ONLY power decides rightness, and n the other hand, that there is is some further yardstick - that of whatever is implied by "responsible" rule.
You then go on to illustrate your point by discussing Charlemagne and the Pax Romana, which I will not comment on - but then you go on to discuss the British Empire - and something interesting happens in your language:
Lusatian wrote: 3. The Pax Britannica, an era when imperial Britain maintained a planet not up till then known for order, that also sheparded the Industrial Revolution into its modern stage, was possible by force of arms and definitely not by morally correct diplomacy. (Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchner successfully surpressed the guerrilla and terrorist tactics that followed the Boer War by destroying property and livelihood of the sympathetic population at large, and herding women and children into concentration camps.) History judges by success and not by political correctness.
There is a very interesting segue here from "morally correct diplomacy" to "political correctness", I was expecting it as soon as you used the term "morally correct" - since, given the current extreme political incorrectness of even mild political correctness, the word "correct" is instant code for passe, old-fashioned, effete, wrong and a whole parcel of other pejorative associations.
Is it your view that any form of collective political morality is all these things? That, if we take political correctness to be all the bad things that the nouveau right say it is, (I would launch a major argument re this, by the way, though I acknowledge the reasonableness of some of the criticisms of "political correctness", but I digress), that morality is the same shabby beast?
Again I am confused - you COULD choose to argue this - but later you are again using the terms of the morality you seem to be condemning.
Quote:Dlowan wrote: Does this mean that Nazi Germany - the actions of which seem to meet your criteria for lack of hesitation and timidity - was "right" until Stalingrad?
Lusatian wrote: No, but not for any love lost for the Nazis. It does not due to the Nazi lack of hegemony in the military or political world, and the Nazi blatant disregard for any code of conduct and common values. Had the Nazis unilaterally defeated all the major military powers, namely the Allies, and dominated their cultures, the concept of their actions would be profoundly different now than it is.
Yes - the concept would, of course, be different if they had won - well, unless a successful revolution against their power had been waged. And by some of your arguments it would seem that, if they had won, they would also be right - but later, we find you condemning political correctness, or morality - (they seem to have become fused by then) - because its effects rendered possible - (by crippling the League of Nations and/or Western Europe) - the slaughter of millions of people whose slaughter, had it not been rendered "bad" by the eventual defeat of the Nazis, would have been, by what I can make out of your moral code, "good" if the Nazis had triumphed!
Can you see why my ears are spinning?
Lusatian wrote: The United States is a responsible behemoth, as far as it can be. In fact, that is one of my main complaints with our system. We always attempt to avoid civilian casualties, resolve the most extreme situations through diplomacy (Serbian genocide, etc), almost in what seems to be denial of our own power.
Dlowan wrote: Also, Lusatian, I wish you would respond re my question about Syria and Iran? And - since much of your post was about how wrong the peace people were because of the apparent response of the Iraqi people to the success of the invasion, I would be interested to hear your response as to whether the motive of theinvasion was to liberate the Iraqi people?[/quote]
Lusatian wrote: My reply to this is simple. Should we fight wars of liberation in Syria and Iran? Not unless this proves to be in our interests enough to justify the political and monetary capital required for a war. Do I think liberation was the primordial objective of the war, hell no! Our motives were selfish as they always are and should be, but the fact that the Iraqi people embraced our arrival should be cause for the question: For who are you mourning?
You probably are not mourning Saddam, the same for the regime, could it be that you regret the loss of face for the U.N.? The United Nations is an exercise in what Aristotle called "mob rule", mob rule has never worked throughout history, (look at the League of Corinth, they debated and argued while Alexander of Macedon simply swept through their entire world).
Er - well, the LAST thing I would consider a US attack (I would HOPE that Britain and Oz would not join in, but I suppose anything is possible!) on Syria and Iran to be would be a "war of liberation" - good grief!!! And you appear to agree that the attack on Iraq was not such. Yet, you are talking about these things as "wars of liberation" even as you acknowledge the motives were, and would be, entirely selfish - "as they should be". Now my HEAD is spinning!
Lusatian wrote: Another example of the pitiful failures of "politically correct" diplomacy. The U.N.'s predecessor, the League of Nations, was one of the causes of World War II as the powers of the time, Great Britain, France, etc, chose to try to "contain" Hitler, then pacify him, and did not go to war when they may have easily destroyed him, but rather allowed him to occupy Austria and Czechoslovakia without barely a hiccup.
History has judged the governments of Britain and France at the time to have been ineffectual, feeble, useless and irrelavent. They hoped that condemnation in the League of Nations would deter the Nazis. Milions of Jews, Gypsies, Russians, and others died in what essentially became the outcome of an exercise in diplomacy.
Just one final comment - I really do think that the comparison of Saddam with Hitler (while probably domestically, for Iraq, reasonable) is, internationally speaking, hyperbole and dormative rhetoric at its most purple.
This will be my final comment on this one - Lusatian heaves a sigh of relief! These are loooong posts, aren't they?
