Zseni wrote:

Aslaphappyjappywithacrappypappy wrote:

Zseni wrote:

Then the last panelist spoke. He was an Iraqi dissident named Kanan Makiya, and he said, ''I'm afraid I'm going to strike a discordant note.'' He pointed out that Iraqis, who will pay the highest price in the event of an invasion, ''overwhelmingly want this war.'' He outlined a vision of postwar Iraq as a secular democracy with equal rights for all of its citizens. This vision would be new to the Arab world. ''It can be encouraged, or it can be crushed just like that. But think about what you're doing if you crush it.'' Makiya's voice rose as he came to an end. ''I rest my moral case on the following: if there's a sliver of a chance of it happening, a 5 to 10 percent chance, you have a moral obligation, I say, to do it.''

I don't like that reasoning at all. It's creepy. There's a sliver of a chance, five to ten percent, that if we took over any country at all we could bring them about to our way of life. Hey, it could work in North Korea. It could work in Bosnia or Vietnam.

It could work in El Salvador, or in Ethiopia.

It could work in China or Saudi Arabia.

How unhappy do the citizens have to be to qualify for this once-in-a-lifetime offer? Is there an overarching moral obligation to people over nations - i.e. that we can abridge the sovereignty of any country whose citizens are sufficiently miserable? It sounds excellent on paper - a huge-scale version of taking abused children from their abusive parents - but before we rush in on such a basis shouldn't we kinda sit down and figure out first off whether there isn't so way to save the children which doesn't involve blowing up their house and family in the process, and secondly what "abusive" really looks like, and thirdly doesn't this also mean we have a moral obligation to prevent such regimes from ever rising in the first place?

You really ought to forward these arguments to the leading-edge quantum physics experts of the word, because clearly the only way to shut you the fuck up is to build a goddamn Time Machine to go back and undo all the foul, tangled mess that exists as a byproduct of progress.



You don't like that reasoning, eh? Is it about reason, or what they want? Assuming that Iraqi dissident wasn't exagerating about how overwhelmingly his people want war, then I think you have to be willing to accept that they want help. Ahh, but that's not the issue, is it? It's "why them, why now?" Call it a target of opportunity. Of those other countries you mentioned, only North Korea poses an immediate threat to our interests. And since we're getting all theoretical, let's go ahead and assume this situation with NK doesn't improve and we DO have to take military action. You can bet liberating the oppressed people of North Korea would be one of the main stated goals of that operation. It's just a shame they don't have any oil for us to plunder; maybe we could make off with some enriched uranium, perhaps even some dog.

Maybe I just don't understand what it is you'd like to see explained. What other reasons besides oil for an invasion? They're out there if you need them. It sounds more like you're content asking questions that you believe have no plausable answers. It makes for an engaging conversation untill the next guy catches on.

The fundamental bug up my ass is that our nation's leaders are not being forward with the reasons they want to fight. We are instead left to select the ones we like best from the jumble they present or to quibble over the leftist crumbs remaining. I don't like that. It's bad government, it's the kind of shit I pull when I want to score a few extra points over someone stupid. Why is it even a big deal? Because it carves up public opinion, obsfucates public discourse, and allows our leaders a lot of room for politically seemly backtracking. In doing so it disrupts the deliberative and responsive nature of government as laid out in the Constitution and most of its history, and impedes the development of clear and analytical political thought among citizens, and further distracts government from its responsibility to people and distracts us from our responsibility to the government.

But of course they can't state a specific objective which is simultaneously honest and popular.

For my part I am willing to be criminally honest about my apathy and love of luxury, which leaves action in Iraq as sko talking point about which I have generally strong opinions which I am generally unwilling to back up with any action past talking. I have much stronger and more active opinions regarding the present ruling class and its philosphical comings and goings, and I keep trying to talk about that stuff, but everyone else seems to want to talk about Iraq instead so here we are talking about Iraq.

BTW I continue to believe that North Korea is no threat whatsoever, and I won't even bother linking to my previous screeds on the topic. Go dig them up yourself; I'm worth it, baby.