The US, UN & Iraq III

Scrat, Are you telling us that this administration has always been telling us the truth? It's just that they can't prove it? c.i.

I can't for the life of me even imagine what a 'real historical truth' is. History is nothing more than the interpretation of events. Nothing in the human world exists as a single, observable event with predictable outcomes.

This debacle (not a legalism) is the result of a number of pressures within the USA that are both uncontrollable and unpredictable. First and foremost is that there is no capacity within the present administration to recognise (let alone use) diplomacy as a method of dealing with other nations - military solutions are the only way it seems.

he other is the bizarre notion that what works in the USA must automatically work elsewhere. So "American Democracy" is dropped onto populations that have no connection with the USA except that they have been a trading partner or a site of military interest. Thus Guatamalans and Nicaraguans are the reciprients of truckloads of 'democracy' and Ugandans aren't.

Tartarin - Excellent points. I can certainly see how--given your point of view--you might interpret Wolfowitz' statements that way. I am inclined to believe that what he was saying was 'of course there were many reasons we wanted to do this, but we focused on WMDs because we believed we could sell it on that reason alone'. That doesn't mean (in my opinion) that the WMD reason was false, but simply that it was one of many legitimate reasons, but the one they chose to trumpet.

It's unlikely whether we will ever know for sure whether they had sufficient, credible intelligence to justify making that "the reason", so your opinion on this is just as valid as mine (which probably means neither is worth squat).

Craven,

You use words carelessly and sometimes incorrectly. Your use of the word sycophancy, as you just explained it, was incorrect. "Expansionism" is properly taken to mean an expansion of the territory one rules over the long term. It does little good for meaningful discourse to, after the fact say you meant it in a different way. An act is legal or illegal based on its own merits, and not on whether there is disagreement about them. You say that the French action in Ivory Coast was legal because there "was no controversy". That is palpably false. In a similar way the existence of controversy does not make our act illegal.

I note that you no longer claim to speak for all the nations in the world. Instead you now claim to speak for all the people in the world. You also imply that those nations which opposed us did so for "pure" reasons while those which supported us did so for lesser reasons. On what basis do you make that claim?

We both agree that Kofi Anan chose his words very carefully. Bottom line is that he did not - for whatever reason - accuse us of violating the UN Charter. Yes there was some deliberately crafted ambiguity in resolution 1441 - and ambiguity cuts both ways.

Decades from now historians will begin to analyze these events and, armed with a knowledge of how events in the Gulf, the Mideast and in Korea played out, begin to make judgements about them. The complex of factors which pedantic historians deal with after the fact are essentially the same ones political leaders must estimate while the action is going on - and without all the information needed to deduce perfect solutions. That was my point.

Will the historians see anything incriminating in the Freedom of Information Act on the Bush administration? I think not. c.i.

Blatham - I'm not so sure that this line of Bush's will find such wide acceptance. There is increasingly more skepticism about the validity of the WMD claim in Europe, and apparently here, too. I understand Great Britain is really questioning Blair on this. And the story of the Jessica Lynch saving was a mistake. The BBC had questioned the validity of that, and now more and more reports are coming (from the Toronto papers, as well as more and more here) that verify the BBC story. Which puts the WH into the position of having to defend some stuff they have lied about, when more and more evidence comes out about the lies. And each revelation adds to the skepticism, and also apparently to the media suddenly getting brave enough to actually question and verify.

And it is a simple marketing technique - basic advertsing. Known to Goering as well.

I remember when Bush came in, promising not only a dress code but also a sense of personal responsibility. I wish he knew what the words meant. In the Bush admin catechism, prime is "it's not my fault, the fault lies elsewhere." And in this, it's easy to see why scrat is such an ardent defender of Bush and his policies.

I did NOT say i meant them a different way. You state in stark terms what is right and wrong about subjective matters. I corrected your interpretation of what I said. I did not change my use of the words.

I did not use sycophancy incorrectly. I consider your admonition to dissenting opinion to be a request for servility. Despite your claims that you only have a qualm with certain dissent.

You are most certainly not the final authority on words, not even the most famed lexicons can make that claim and this is a silly attempt at reducing this to a logomachy.

Expantionism to me means the desire to expand a nation's sphere of influence. Be it acheived through territorial conquest or by other means. I do not accept your silly definition of expantionism as meaning only territorial gain any more so than I expect the term "expand your mind" to denote physical change.

In any case the words I have selected in this case do not change the substance of the argument. To avoid this ploy I will reprase them.

Forget sycophancy. It was a description of you and as no meaning to the argument except in eliciting the responses you have already given.

As to expantionism replace that with "the ideals set for in the 'New American Century'".

Now take the argument on it's merit and don't expect a dictionary to make you right unless the argument is a logomachy.



Here you make a valid point. There is no stated law against military action without UN approval.

But i did not say the lack of controversy was the sole reason for the legitimacy of said action.

The lack of ontroversy is due to the fact that many consder it a reactionary military intervention and it was not pre-emptive in any way.

I consider the action there to be justified because the need was obvious.

In Iraq the need was not obvious to the majority. So much s that it was not possible to sell udner the need for security and hence was considered a breach of sovereignty by most.

That would be the illegal factor. A breach of sovereignty is acceptable in conditions that did not exist in Iraq and the case made for the need was not won.

I still thinkyou have a good point here but I'll let you find it on your own (since you are sharp enough for me to be sure you will).



I note that you are full of it and I never claimed either despite your rhetorical ploy.

I have never claimed to speak for the world here. This is something you tack on to my arguments to avoid debating them on their merits. You tried the dumb trick and I call you on it. I did not say that.



I do not think the motivation for supporting or rejecting the war can be characterized as pure or not. In fact I gave enough in way of a caveat by stating the arguments of your side as well. If I was unclear let me restate.

I do not think the desire to go to war was based on evil intent. Nor do I find it entirely straightforward.

I do not think the opposition to the war was devoid of financial and strategic concerns. Nor do I think they were soley based on said concerns.

In short I did not and do not draw the world in black and white, that is something I have consistently rejected in political discussion.

I said that there was enormous pressure to support the war in the form of carrots and sticks. This is true (one pre-emptive example, Turkey's package).

There was also substantial (and in my opinion just as unsavory) pressure to oppose the war (example: this would be France dangling the E.U. carrot).

There are also two lines of thought about the nations whose support for the war was ambiguous. Thee is that of my lien of thinking that says they resisted till it was inevitable and then made sure they were on the winning side. There is the other very valid argument that many nations supported the war in secret but had to controll their street.

I suspect a mix of both.

Again, I do not characterize the pro and con as evil and pure. I have steadfastly rejected such simple thinking in the pst and continue to do so.



Another good point. To be pendantic Kofi spoke before it started and phrased it in hypothetical and ambiguous terms.

Yes, ambiguity does cut both ways. And in the middle of this ambiguity is the question of whether it was legal or not.

I am willing to concede that there is no interpretive body and where ambiguity exists differing interpretation will not be solved by a final word. As there is none.

The legitimacy in the minds of the peoples of the world is something I made quite a windy poit about.

Do you think the world, in its majority, thinks the war was justified legally and ethically?

Feel free to answer that without worrying that i'll accuse you of speaking for the world. :-)



It's the same point you tried to make earlier. I still disagree with it. Historians disagree all the time and i do not think that time will lend a final word to this anymore than I think time will change what you think about this (this is based on the assumption that nothing drastic and negative will result from this).

Any chance of getting past the logomachy and the "let's see in decades"?

This is both fun and interesting and I'd hate to stall on a logomachy and I really don;t want to wait a few decades either. :-)

From 1441:

From 678:

Now, perhaps you see it differently, but it seems clear to me that 678 authorized the Gulf War with the phrase "to use all necessary means", and 1441 recalls the exact same language. Somehow you would have us believe that in 678 the phrase "to use all necessary means" included military action as one possible means but that in 1441 the same phrase did not.

??

mama, "Ardent Defender" seems such a tame word for our friend, Scrat. I just wonder what thousands of lives and billions of dollars are worth - forcing the interpretation for war on ambiguous words? Is there some ethical imperative at play here? When Colin Powell said the Iraq has tons of chemical and biological weapons that are ready to be used against America, was that ambiguous too? Wasn't the message "immediate and present danger?' We had no more time for the UN Inspectors to continue? I'm really having problems about "truth" and "creditbility." But Scrat said; "That doesn't mean (in my opinion) that the WMD reason was false." Even if it wasn't false, we surely had a better option by letting the UN inspectors continue rather than being responsible for thousands dead and billions spent. Lies or no lies, there WAS a better option. Who's responsible? There's only one answer that I can come up with. c.i.

come on, war is bigger than scrat. how negative a term for him you come up with is not as interesting as your thoughts on the events in question.

Scrat,

about the resolutions people differ greatly in their understanding of "necessary means".

To many, myself included, "necessary means" did not include war at the time it was launched.

I wish the UN had been given the chance (second resolution) to weigh in on what the "necessary means" were.

I think we can agree that the result would differ from your interpretation.

I have not seen a single report where anyone has claimed they might be used for anything else. I'd ask you to show me some, since you claim to be aware of them, but I know better...

Burden of proof scrat.

sorry scrat, it really is time for you to extend yourself

It seems patently obvious that 678 authorized military action and that 1441 explicitly encompasses it. (You seem to get personal when anyone challenges your opinions. Why is that?)


I understand that you think inspections were a better option. That is your opinion. (You state it as if you think it is a fact, so I felt the need to point that out.)

Let me state for the record that I think CI stole the "indefinite inspections" idea from me. :-)

Craven,

Well I had to look up logomachy, but, having done so, I am now prepared to accuse you of logorrhea.

It may well be that the U.S. has not justified its Iraqi intervention sufficiently to persuade many people and nations of the merits. However that doesn't make the act either illegal or wrong in any sense, moral or otherwise.

The popular justification of an act doesn't make it right, and the lack of it doesn't make it wrong.

All of the nations of Europe enthusiastically supported their governments in the descent into war in 1914. They were all wrong. The appeasement of Hitler by England and France at Munich and before was well justified in the popular mind in England and France. That didn't make it either right or wise. The capitulation of France in 1941 and the subsequent cooperation with Germany was well justified to the French people (at least until 1943 when the war's eventual outcome became clear). That didn't make it right. Indeed one of the central lessons of history is that popular contemporaneous judgements of key events are very often wrong.

Yes, I love this game you like to play...

You: "I could at this very moment produce thousands of reports to prove my point."

Me: "I read and pay attention to the news 24/7 and I've not read or heard what you claim to have. Would you show me?"

You: "No. Find it yourself."



Suit yourself, but it is not out of laziness that I ask you to show me what you know. It is simply logical. You claim to be privy to information I have not come across. I ask you to share it, and you tell me to piss off. Fair enough. I'll draw my own conclusions from your unwillingness ever to back up your claims and leave it at that.

George that was one of the funniest come-backs I have read. Thanks. I'm inclined to agree. I wax sesquipedalian on many an occasion and have been accused of wanting to have logomachy's babies by dlowan.

I simply love the word.



Certainly. But I'll nuance this after the next part.



I agree, taht would be an argumentum ad numerum. But let me do the nuance/be slippery thing.

Each entity has it's own definition of morality, are there certain circumstances that you think are best determined by the collective morality?

A philosopher once said (don't ask me to cite cause I'd have to look it up) something along the lines that morality is always collective. In a society where canibalism is morallya ccepted it is a moral act.

But I sense that I can lose you by circle thoughts and abstract philosophy.

So let me put it to you this way:

Do you think our strategic objectives (by our I mean the ones we share) are best served by legitimizing our acts as much as possible? I deviate from my moral/legal position to see if we can reach common ground.

Is it not strategically desireable to have people agree with our act?

And the next qestion is whether we could have done better in the salesmanship.

Timber, a conservative, said he thinks this war was the right war at the right time (something i disagree with) but went on to say that the way it divided nations and peoples was indicative of a fumble on our part.

Are you inclined to agree and if so/not to what degree?



Agreed. I am no fan of argumentum ad numerum. By stating the substantial opposition for the war I do not in any way seek to use that fact (well, you dispute it so I use the word fact liberally here) to determine the justification for the war.

I simply seek to make the case that it is clear from an open and shut case.

I also seek to make the case that the war was not well sold and that is my major qualm. What people believe is reality in politics (old saying) and if we could ahve made people believe that it was just then it would, to me, be prefferable to a just war that nobody thought was just.

In keeping with your diagnosis of logorrhea I want to add the jargon "facts on the ground" somewhere in the preceeding paragraph. Hopefully I will work it in next time. :-)

Edit: finished a sentence i had left hanging, decided the typos weren't worth it

Craven - If I may jump in here, I would respond that it depends on what we are required to sacrifice to gain that legitimacy.

In the Iraqi equation, I believe those who chose to go to war believed that they would have been sacrificing the best interests of the American people to do otherwise. (I understand that many here do not share that opinion, but lets not rehash it if at all possible. Thanks.) That sacrifice was deemed to great to make merely to have our actions deemed legitimate by others, many of whom do not share our interests nor desire what is best for us.