Invading Iraq is completly justified using this criteria:

SUPPORT: America needs oil, and a place to move Arby's...Arby's is gross, and those Eye-raqis are far too thin
AGAINST: Those Hindus don't eat cows, do they?

Not even cow pads

In my experience, morality is for individuals. When groups of individuals are collected together, morality naturally and inevitably gravitates to the lowest common denominator. The larger the organization, the more slack in it's principles and operation. The more ruthless it's nature.

The U.S. invaded Iraq for the same reason a deer eats a rose. Right or wrong, good or bad, benefit or detriment, justified or not, we did because someone thought of it and nothing prevented us. All the rhetoric and placating excuses are just noise to distract the high-minded intellectuals. In nature and in politics anything goes. Internationally there is no law, freedom, ethics or justification.

We do because we can. If we can, then we will.

As a thinking individual I may strongly disagree with this cynical approach, but as a dirt-grubbing animal I believe we all know how it is.

CodeBorg, you may well be right, and if you are, it would certainly explain a number of recent events.

On the other hand, I consider America to be a country founded on and governed by a code of law.

Is this wrong?

dlowan should take this quiz and see if she gets the rabbit....

http://hope.falling-star.org/donnie.html

Re: Invading Iraq is completly justified using this criteria



gozmo,

I did not say that criteria is not subjective. It is. I often stated that the same criteria can lead to two different positions on this issue. So in that we seem to agree.

Intellectually, a code of law is the best way to found a country. It sounds nice, and makes everyone enter the game equally pretending that things are fair. Everyone is thus preoccupied with the image of the thing. They are taken by the rules of the game. Everyone participates. As if hypnotized. It's a good way to found a country.

But in real life, I've never seen one thing that is fair. Ever! It's always an approximation of apples to oranges. Also, a code of law is not our source of motivation -- that causes things to happen. People will still pursue revenge, whim, ambition, grandiosity or manipulative power, regardless of what the "code of law" claims is happening on the surface.

Is it wrong to think we have and use a code? No, it's not erroneous to consider the country was founded on a code. The intent was there. The words were said. The code of law was announced. What happens after that, however, is up to nature. The nature of human animals. In politics and business, if it's cost effective then it happens just because it gets the job done with a profit.

As an individual, I want things to be "right". But nature doesn't care what's "right" and as a rational thinking person I have to acknowledge that. The world is not an intellectual place but a visceral, practical and ruthlessly experimental place.

Any justification for war at all is just a distraction from the human reason why the President WANTED to invade Iraq. How do you rationalize ambition, determination, or personal style? The best justification is whatever you would tell a parrot to keep it really busy.