The US, UN & Iraq III

For what it's worth.



http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial.htm

Craven

I too have found myself arguing positions which others often consider unbalanced or immoral, positions which can even surprise myself. I got in a fair bit of trouble last week when I expressed to someone that the single event which effected me most deeply was the protection of the Ministry of Oil while the National Museum was looted. The lady thought I ought to have been more concerned with those who'd died.

I think war is the most despicable of human activities, planned and perpetrated by individuals who are completely insulated from personal risk and whose children almost always are too. Scowcroft was right - Richard Perle ought to have been in the first wave of foot soldiers.

These people gain from war - they gain financially, or in ego gratification, or in temporary social stature. In the prosecution of war, they don't look tired or regretful or horrified the way Churchill often seemed. Instead, we see them ebullient and chest-puffed. They ARE Sadaams and Mussolinis, but in Western three piece suits. Amost to a man, they have lived lives of enormous wealth and priviledge. There are no plumbers or bakers in this crowd.

Given all of this, I am deeply relieved that more fathers and brothers and children and women didn't get blown to ****. But it seems to me, as I know it does to you, that is one of the few slivers of light in all of this, yet it is deeply shaded with the knowledge that it occured mainly for reasons of PR - to avoid repetition of the Viet Nam experience where the nation and the world SAW THE REALITY AND SAID "STOP!"

Gel

Thank you kindly for the link.

How can it be (and this is not directed at you Craven) that we, and particularly you American citizens, can abide such deceit by those who rule?

Thank you Blatham for expressing my rage

Blatham -- What you say is exactly right. The administration is so bad that it's virtually impossible for me to feel, much less express, any fellow feeling with those who support it -- here in these pages or elsewhere. I was reading early this morning some reviews of the Sidney Blumenthal book about the Clinton administration (which I don't plan to read!) and was connecting the dots between the hounding of Clinton and the continued hounding of any entity which stands in the way of the right wing or which might serve their interests or self-glorification in any way. These are not reasonable people who the left is being rude about, but ruthless bastards who need to be rooted out before they do any more damage. So I don't hold to the "let's be nice" to their supporters. Their supporters are either thoughtless or ruthless themselves.

Indeed Bush should be impeached -- except that, along with everything else, the right has degraded impeachment.

Craven - Yours is a reasonable point of view and I respect your opinion, though I wonder whether it is a given that collateral casualties are greater when relying on smart-bombs than they would be with more protracted ground combat.

Tartarin

I know. I too am uniquely alarmed by not only these people, but the social and cultural factors which they utilize (eg, nationalism and xenophobia). It's a despicable combination of forces and it IS authoritarian in its coloration.

There was a wonderfully sophisticated statement about democracy from a West Wing episode. In that show, the administration is liberal democrat and as well-intentioned as we might hope an administration ought to be. When a key election fell to the opposition, one administration figure was bemoaning the loss and it's seriousness to their hopes and programs. A second character responded, "Democracy means that sometimes the wrong guys win."

I think we can safely assume that the present RNC would not agree with this statement.

An ethically run democratic election always means the right person wins.

It also always means that some people are unhappy with that result.

(This is a very different thing than the wrong person winning.)

and the reason for the electoral college was?

How do y'all get your avatars to move???

Uhhhhhhh Snood, you've been seeing moving avatars? For how long?

!!!! I always knew Snood was nuts!

I think you know the answer, but if you don't, it sounds like a good idea for a new topic.

Snood - I don't know about some of the talented techies, but I have a couple sites that have avatars and gifs with action. If you're interested, I can let you have the info. Although, if you go to google and type in animated atavars or animated gifs, you'll hit some sites.

Anything but Spike Jones in that hat.
Denzel, removing his shirt.......?

Did he change his name from Lee?

Tatarin - I'm deeply offended. Stupid, maybe. But not crazy.

Definitely Denzel removing his shirt, please. Snood, you're not in Texas if you're not nuts. Ergo...

Dang.
My bad.

Hey, if its worth any points, I was certain you knew the secret of the moving avatars...

While I agree that war is awful and generally undesirable, I doubt that one could rationalize the notion that it is the MOST despicable of human activities. That would imply that there is no such thing as a just war. Was France right in signing an armistice with Hitler? Should Britain have continued the fight after the fall of France, or should it have capitulated?

The fact is that Winston Churchill was hardly regretful about the necessity for war, whether to preserve the independent existence of Great Britain or merely to extend the empire. Indeed he was the principal advocate and planner for the ill-fated Galipoli campaign of WWI.

My objection to Blatham's views is that he assumes the necessities that; the intent of the U.S. government is objectively wrong; the motives of its leaders are equally wrong on a human level; the public utterances of its spokesmen are uniformly deceitful; its execution of the recent war was carelessly wasteful of Iraqi lives; its motives in allowing reporters unprecedented continuous access to combat units were to hide and deceive; etc.

On the other hand he also assumes the necessities that; his views are objectively correct; his subjective motives and those of the leaders of other governments which opposed the war are free of human foibles and frailties; newsmen freed from the shackles of the U.S. government would deliver complete, accurate, and objective reports of the conflict; other available means of carrying out the war could predictably lower the cost in human lives; and so on.

The profound bias here should be self-evident. It goes beyond the facts and beyond reason. Of course there are elements of truth in nearly all of his accusations. However the critical reader should recognize that his conclusions flow directly from his basic beliefs, and not from either the facts or a balanced view of history.