The estimable Stephen Pollard writes that the sheer shamelessness of parts of the anti-war crowd means they are unlikely to learn a good lesson from the fall of Saddam’s regime. Hence we (by which I assume he means pro-war types) should be prepared to get nasty against our opponents, launching personal attacks, emplying savage ridicule, and the like.
This is mighty tempting, but it causes me problems. Yes, taking the p**s out of thugs like Michael Moore, Ted Rall or the latest Hollywood lame-brain is good fun and occasionally worth the effort, but I am not sure that simply using the very same tactics used by our opponents (such as character assassination, etc) is really going to work. Others may disagree (please comment below) but I think that part of the reason why our libertarian meme is spreading is because of clear-cut events like the collapse of the Berlin Wall, globalisation, etc, as well as decades of hard intellectual slog by folk with weird surnames like von Mises or Rand. I also think that being decent human beings actually helps, although by “decent” I certainly don’t mean we should be meek or not jump to anger in the face of obvious idiocy.
I must admit – and I share the frustration of Perry de Havilland, Stephen Pollard and others – to being annoyed by the moral and intellectual bankruptcy and sheer brass neck of those who even now decry what the Americans and British forces have achieved in Iraq. But I am keeping my cool (well most of the time!). We are better than our opponents, and I suspect, deep down, they know it.
And I also think it worth pointing out that although many of those who opposed the military campaign in Iraq are motivated by hatred of the West and its freedoms, many inside the libertarian parish had doubts or opposed it outright for good and honorable reasons (fears about civil liberties, public spending, deaths of innocent civilians, etc). Let’s not forget that.
I do not agree JP… the dreadful mistake in the aftermath of the Cold War was for classical liberals such as us to just assume that the argument against socialism was now so clear and irrefutable that any person of good faith could just be left to make the obvious conclusion. We took our ‘peace dividend’, put our feet up and let it all just slide.
Well a great many of our enemies are not people of good faith.
The fatal error made in Eastern Europe was to forgive the former communists because “we won and we can afford to be magnanimous”. Let bygones be bygones.
Wrong.
Forgiveness comes not after victory but after repentance (which is why I have forgiven former idiotarian Christopher Hitchens).
As for the rest? Unforgiven.
So let’s put the boot in hard and unrelentingly. No prisoners this time. By their own words, let them be revealed… and reviled.
I’m with Mr de Haviland on this. The Fisks and Moores should think themselves lucky that the worst they face is ridicule.
Perry is absolutely right. There MUST be consequences for being wrong, and for being morally bankrupt, and for being hypocritical. If there are not significant consequences (as after the Cold War), these people’s behavior actually becomes reinforced rather than inhibited.
When you fight against a dirty opponent, you must give him no quarter. You don’t have to sink to his level (though in certain ways you might, like total war), but you at least must punish him for misdeeds.
To not do so just encourages more.
Hey gentlemen, it is matter of nuance. Don’t think for a nanosecond that I shall be sparing the rod when it comes to tossers like the folk mentioned above. And we certainly need to ram home the lessons of what has happened, repeatedly, in loud voices. I shall be in the thick of it, no question.
I was just sounding a note of caution about being careful in terms of our tone and choice of targets.
JP
Speaking as a former Leftist born and raised, I have to say that my journey to sense was not helped along by people insulting me. Leftists thrive on blind emotion and stoking that emotion is not helpful. People posing thoughtful questions and speaking of ideas only — minus backhanded swipes or loaded adjectives — did help. Getting the Leftist to *think* and sparking them to begin their own inquiry is the main thing. Calling them names usually does not accomplish that.
Aaaaaaaarggghhhhhhhhh….Johnathan just used the word ‘nuance’!!!!
He’s turning French I tell you…….. -:)
Kirsten: When I said “Well a great many of our enemies are not people of good faith”… I did not say all. For example, Brian Linse of Ain’t no bad dude is a benighted leftie but he is also a gentleman, of considered opinions and an all round splendid guy.
I have had many reasoned discussions and, yes, arguments, with him. But then he is certainly a person of ‘good faith’ and although I think my world views are more correct than his, I do not claim to have a monopoly on truth or insight.
However the Fisks and Michael Moores and George Galloways of this world deserve no such consideration. I assure you if the situation was reversed, they would be stamping on our heads.
The Joy of Looting
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
…Alas, this [Iraq] was not a case of a regime collapsing in the same way East European dictatorships collapsed at the end of the Cold War. What we have here is a case of the bigger fish eating the smaller fish—one large invading state employing large machines to crush a small state with only small machines to defend itself. Ten years ago, the U.S. railed against Iraq for taking this same approach in its dealings with Kuwait. The point of the first war against Iraq was to deter such aggression wherever it might occur. But who deters the deterrers?
To celebrate the victory of a mightily armed imperial power over a small despotism is not a libertarian impulse. From under the rubble of buildings demolished by bombs, the corpses of tens of thousands of dead, the billions and billions spent by government, and the whole world impressed at the effectiveness of raw power, symbolized by millions of Americans raising their fists in the air at this equivalent of the ancient Roman games, we can detect some very bad omens for the future.
Victory celebrations are inevitable but dangerous. They rejoice in destruction, not creation, cheer violence, not cooperation, herald the doings of mass armies, not the creativity of individuals, and glorify the actions of bureaucrats and politicians, not the productivity of society and enterprise.
Waging war is no greater achievement than any other act of destruction. It involves a government grabbing as much as it can get from its own population through taxes and borrowing and inflation, turning those resources into machines that kill and wreck, and then unleashing those machines on an enemy country.
Governments may not be able to create wealth—which is why socialism cannot work—but they can destroy it, which is why wars do work. Bombs, built on the backs of taxpayers, destroy not just military targets but the products of genuine human creativity: houses, markets, restaurants, schools, and hospitals. Take this model far enough and you can wreck the whole world. For this reason, the wars of the nation-state, even if just and necessary, should never be celebrated.
Successful wars send the message that our freedoms are secured only by armed agents of central power, and many are tempted to cede control of their lives to the executive state that prosecuted the war. We look to the top for leadership, which in the aftermath of an easy victory, is punch drunk with power. Already, we see every high official citing the alleged achievements of war as a basis for trusting the government to provide for us in every way. If we can overthrow Saddam, it is said, surely we can overthrow illiteracy, poverty, sadness, and social dysfunction right here at home! Clear the way for the total state.
As the warmongers cheer not only the war and its destruction and death, but also the new D.C.-run military dictatorship being set up in Iraq, lovers of liberty need not regret their support of peace and trade. In the ancient contest between power and liberty, power has long had the upper hand. But it is to the few shining moments when liberty overtook power, when trade and contract prevailed over looting, when peace prevailed over war, that we owe civilization itself.
I think there’s a fruitful balance to be struck.
“Fisking” grotesquely awful pronouncements is, I think, still a very good idea. Think of it as fact-checking with a humor bonus.
Descent to ad-hominem slurs and invective is just that… a descent. THAT we need not to adopt from our opponents.
Bill: I agree
Scott: Thank you for reminding me why I no long even bother reading Lew Rockwell.com. And to think I used to admire them. Better that we leave them to Ba’athist Socialism than subject them to the horror of America, right Lew?
And it would have been better if Ba’athism had collapsed like Communism in Eastern Europe eh? Yeah, that way former Ba’athists, like former Communists, could just rebrand themselves and stay embedded within the body politic without ever having to “ooops, sorry for those decades of repression”.
Yeah, that would be much better, Lew, much more likely to lead to some libertarian nirvana.
Human Shields in Iraq call US soldiers murderers:
“Some American and European “human shields” were there, antiwar activists who had come to Baghdad and placed themselves in front of power plants and other potential targets. They chastised the Marines for attacking Iraq and promoting war.
That angered some of the soldiers. “I didn’t bury two of my fellow Marines just so someone like that could call us murderers,” said one, angry and teary
”
Human Shields in Iraq tell troops: “Nazis go home!”
Video 6MB encoded using DivX
Arabs claim war not happening, simply American propoganda
“The Iraqis shown on television tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein were not really Iraqis, he said. They were just actors, part of a U.S. ploy to convince the world they had won the war.”
The conclusion: They have learned nothing.
Damned right, Perry.
There are lessons to be learned in this, and they are pertinent to reality. The case of the USSR is instructive, because of this point: the left did not want to know the lessons in that, just exactly the same way that they don’t want to know the reality of Iraq, now.
That — a deliberate desire to not know — is a very different thing from simple ignorance, and it is not something to be dealt with civilly.
I second everything Perry, David, and Alfred said. The enemy are slippery bunch, much like the tyrants they support. Their methods of character assassination and defamation are one of the oldest communist tricks in the book, and the only way to combat it is to fight fire with bigger fire. Never let such people off the hook.
Kirsten, you were obviously never a true leftist. You are a thinker who was born into a leftist environment yet thought your way out of it. Congratulations. However, as you say, true leftists thrive on blind emotion. Reason and logic will have no effect on such people.
I am going to be very annoying here and declare that I can see merit in both methods.
I agree with Perry that, after the collapse of the USSR, we made the strategic error of believing that our foe was finally vanquished. So we took our collective foot off the pedal and switched to cruise mode. Big mistake in hindsight. It simply allowed the buggers to regroup and launch another assault. We must not make that mistake again.
However, I am also impressed by Kirsten above. She is clearly an intelligent person and was therefore open to rational debate and searching questions. I suppose the trick lies in being able to identify the Kirstens of this world and impress them with our techniques of seduction rather than savage them with rape.
On the the other hand, the ‘Moore-ists’ must be shown no mercy. We must relentlessly hunt them down in their shadowy hiding places and then drive a stake through their hearts.
No, we just serve freedom better as an example than as a presence, propping up a government the local population may or may not like, like we did w/ Saddam in the first place.
At what point will Iraq be permitted (if it wants to) to vote in a government that demands all US and UK troops leave? Can they open “rebuilding” to bids from anyone they see fit, and if a French company has the best price, to give them the business (or are the rebuilding contracts spoils of war)?
And during how many of those decades did Saddam rely on our support? Do we free every country run by a mass murdering thug or do we use our support of men like Saddam in the past as our justification for wars in the future (i.e. “we’re just undoing our own mistakes, honest”)? Do you support an invasion of Iran? If not, will you break w/ the War Party if that happens, and admit you were wrong about them?
You’ve claimed that freedom only comes from the outside (since nobody inside a totalitarian country can do anything about their situation). Since nobody in Eastern Europe supported their communist parties (as their power was based solely on fear), how do these ‘former’ communists keep enough political power to be “embedded in the body politic”? Why haven’t they been shot like Ceausescu?
…It was, by any measure, an astonishing coincidence. As the biggest statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was pulled down “spontaneously” in front of the world’s media, the Stars and Stripes which flew on the Pentagon on 11 September was at hand to be draped over its face.
The US army denied that the toppling of the 20ft edifice by a tank tower was stage-managed. It was a coincidence, they said, that Lt Tim McLaughlin, the keeper of that flag, happened to be present….
(Parody) Radio Statement by the President to the People of Iraq
…Secondly, I want to thank the statue-defacers among you. …The way you managed to stir up nearly 500 people in a city the size of Los Angeles, then cheer so telegenically as my Marines just happened to be tearing down the only Saddam statue in the shadow of the hotel where the Pentagon put all the TV reporters and their cameras. That was golden. Well done. …
Scott: how is this last comment relevant to this article or the thread of comments?
But seeing as you mentioned the incident… I watched about four hours of more or less raw unedited video live that day, by channel surfing on cable, and so saw the first Iraqi attempt to pull down the statue manually with a rope, which they got from a group of US soldiers, who declined to help them directly. The soldiers were initially very edgy and shouldered their weapons several times whrn people ran towards them. Only after the growing group exuberant Iraqis failed to make much impression on the statue and returned to the US troops to ask for help did they turn up with the ARV. As the ARV started to set up, there was a sniper scare due to some nearby gunfire (this was all on live TV, please remember) and it was clear that the crowd, which temporarily scattered when the shots happened, was not ’rounded up’ by the Americans, it was truly spontaneous, with people coming and going the whole time I was watching. The idea it was stage managed is frankly ludicrous.
Likewise, the statues of SH are being torn down everywhere. I am puzzled why people feel the need to deny what should be obvious to anyone with half an eye open. Perhaps I have misunderstood you but are you unhappy that the Iraqi people are resolutely not singing from the hymn sheet filled with the anguished Rothbard-via-Chomsky dirges that ‘Justin’ Raymondo expected everyone to hear?
Sorry Scott but the only song I am hearing people in Iraq singing starts with the refrain “From the Hall of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli…”
Scott,
I just want to make it clear I am not denying it happened. I just thought the quote was an interesting window into the minds of certain sectors of Arab society and the Left. It shows how if reality is proving to be too challenging they can just shrug it off, and either just ignore reality or rustle up some conspiricy theory to explain it all.
It was in response to Della’s post, which I blockquoted at the start of mine.
Funny how the same people gloating that any bad news on day one of the war didn’t mean it was lost seem to believe that good news today means total victory. We’re being cheered now so indefinite occupation will be a breeze.
The lesson of Lebanon: ‘Don’t forget to leave’
The central aim of the military operation was to smash the looming terrorist threat, but it was also a stab at refashioning the Middle East by installing a pro-Western government. The first troops in the south took Shiite Muslim towns, where locals were relieved to be rid of an oppressive regime. Some cheered the foreign invaders.
That may sound like a description of the current war in Iraq, but the military in question was Israel’s, the invaded country was Lebanon, and the date was 1982. It would be 18 years before the last weary, despised Israeli soldier left.
… Israeli troops pushed through the northern border, smashing PLO bases. Shiites had suffered terribly under the PLO’s cruel and arbitrary rule, and they were thrilled to see it broken. Israeli soldiers reported that locals welcomed them by throwing rice.
…David Kimche, who was a senior Israeli official during the Lebanon war, is watching events in Iraq with apprehension and bad memories. “We thought we could change the regime in Lebanon,” he said. “We thought it was going to be much easier than it was.”
Ze’ev Schiff, an Israeli journalist and co-author of a book on the war in Lebanon, said it was Israel’s decision to stay that caused the biggest problems.
“I remember early on, I was in Jezzin in southern Lebanon,” he said. “I was talking to an old man, a Shiite, who was very happy about what Israel had done. He grabbed my arm and said, ‘Don’t forget to leave.’ But we did. There is just no such thing as an enlightened occupation.” …
I didn’t take your quoting it that way, and I don’t deny it happened either. The parody I posted was an exaggeration (being a parody and all), but I don’t 100% believe our governments’ spin on what happened regarding those statues. It was probably some combination of honest hatred of Saddam on the part of lots of Iraqis and later hype from us.
“There is just no such thing as an enlightened occupation.” …
I don’t think that actually bears scrutiny. British occupation of Hong Kong was very enlightened. Similarly US occupation of Japan and Allied occupation of Germany.
How did we get onto this? I thought this article was about tactics in dealing with the left. Has that fizzled out now? Pity, I was enjoying it.
We’re still there 60 years later, and neither country thought enough of the experience to share the joy w/ ‘liberated’ Iraq. My part of this thread started w/ a response to
instead of the part about dealing w/ the left.
Tactics on dealing with the left: Systematic refutation of their selective and discriminatory logic (read: rubbing sense into the face of prejudice)
Scott: “we just serve freedom better as an example than as a presence, propping up a government the local population may or may not like, like we did w/ Saddam in the first place”
First: we did not ‘prop’ Saddam up; our dealings with him were limited to weapons sales during the Iran/Iraq war. If this is ‘propping’, why do you not mention that France, Germany, nearly every mideast country with weapons to sell, England, and the rest of the known world did the same, at the same time — and did not stop, for the most part, after the Gulf War, as America did? The names of the companies involved are here:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/corp/iraq-suppliers.htm
The countries in which these companies are based must be looked up, but that is not difficult, simply time intensive. Now that you have access to the facts, it is incumbent on you to no longer use this ‘weapons sales’ bat as a weapon with which to beat up the only country with balls enough to put a stop to his dictatorship. As for ‘propping up’: Ask France, specifically, based on the mute testimony of the recently produced anti-aircraft missiles found in the bunker most recently searched as of about 11pm on Friday evening, local time. One of these missiles is believed to have brought down a fighter during these last 3 weeks.
On the subject of freedom as an example: We have just exemplified all that is best about a free society. We are free to refuse, as a society, to allow ourselves or an innocent populace to continue to be threatened or oppressed by a coalition of lawbreakers. Please see the web address posted above.
Scott: “At what point will Iraq be permitted (if it wants to) to vote in a government that demands all US and UK troops leave?”
This is a straw man, as you well know, since it has been repeatedly stated that our troops are on their way out. We aren’t even picking the Iraqis who will fill the most vital posts, but putting an American in as administrator, who will obviously leave the country along with the rest of us as soon as the Iraqis have built the structure of their government. Iraqi expatriates are returning to the country as I write, and the last of the death squads are being cleansed from the countryside. When those people are free to send delegates, the meetings to choose the members of a new government will be held, so as not to disenfranchise those who lived with Saddam all this time. If you think you can do better in three weeks, have at it.
Scott: “Can they open “rebuilding” to bids from anyone they see fit, and if a French company has the best price, to give them the business (or are the rebuilding contracts spoils of war)?”
Why the scare quotes around “rebuilding”, Scott? You don’t believe that your country, in which you live by choice, would have enough honor to build up that which we had to break? And as for the French getting business in Iraq, I leave it to you to have enough intellectual honesty to research just how deeply the French have been in this whole business. If it were mine to say, I would put in the strongest possible terms that Iraqis’ best interest depends on keeping the supporters of their dictator out of their business.
Scott: “Do we free every country run by a mass murdering thug or do we use our support of men like Saddam in the past as our justification for wars in the future (i.e. “we’re just undoing our own mistakes, honest”)? ”
Were you asleep for these last 12 years? You know, I’ll bet the multiple UN resolutions didn’t slip your mind so easily four weeks ago. How convenient for you.
Scott: “Do you support an invasion of Iran? If not, will you break w/ the War Party if that happens, and admit you were wrong about them?”
This shows with chalkboard-scratching clarity exactly what Perry discussed earlier — the dependence of the blind left on emotionally based images on which to make their decisions, rather than fact. The use of the term “War Party”; the nonexistent invasion of Iran (Syria and N. Korea are the only countries to have shown aggression toward us, and Syria has — as quietly as possible — begun to listen to our warnings); the couching of Republicans as “them”. Funny, I thought we all ran this country together. This “us and them” stuff is really childish.
Scott: “You’ve claimed that freedom only comes from the outside (since nobody inside a totalitarian country can do anything about their situation). Since nobody in Eastern Europe supported their communist parties (as their power was based solely on fear), how do these ‘former’ communists keep enough political power to be “embedded in the body politic”? Why haven’t they been shot like Ceausescu?”
Because nonsuspicious everyday folks like us believed them when they left office and claimed they wanted to live peaceably. That, if you didn’t notice, is the exact diametric opposite of the Leftist position, which is that all non-Left leaders are automatically suspect and the conspiracies they are members of need but to be smelt out — and failing that, created of whole cloth because We Know They Are Lying. –And on top of that (probably more importantly) people as a society don’t rise up and rip their leaders limb from limb if they aren’t under daily brutal oppression. (Ceaucescu didn’t run Rumania nearly as craftily as Saddam ran Iraq; Saddam had death squads living in everyday Iraqis’ homes.) No, mostly people who live in moderate economically based oppression tend to counter it with measures which are on an equal basis — say, the black market rather than wholesale murder of governmental officers.
I expect that you will post a response. I await it with bated breath, to see whether you have included reason and excluded emotional knee-jerk reaction anti-republican/democracy/americanimperialist bullshit.
There’s much to be said for demolishing screamingly stupid ideas with a vengeance. The dumber the argument the less you need precision tools to crack it. I don’t think there’s any need to hold back on the really grotesque ones – no quarter!
Other arguments need screwdrivers not hammers, so maybe it’s best to have both within reach. Venom doesn’t work, and wry humour always beats sneering invective.
Perry de Havilland writes:
“So let’s put the boot in hard and unrelentingly. No prisoners this time. By their own words, let them be revealed… and reviled.”
Precisely.
One of the most potent weapons used by the Left-liberal axis of imbeciles is, indeed, the smear and ridicule approach. It’s not new, but it’s an old favourite that still plays well – probably increasingly so now that, unlike our 18th Century forebears, we have weapons of mass dissemination so that even those too lazy (or uneducated) to read intelligent newspapers can giggle along with The Now Show or some rubbish on TV.
And that is, I would suggest, the point. While I admire and applaud Kirsten’s journey to reason and entirely accept that being ridiculed would have hardened her resolve to stay on the Left, that isn’t why its leading lights should be ridiculed. The reason for mocking figures like Pilger, Fisk, Snow, Morgan and Moore isn’t to convert them – they are beyond reason – but to show them to be fools in the eyes of the undecided.
The depiction of John Major by Spitting Image did far more than make people laugh – it convinced them he genuinely was a grey, ineffectual idiot. Similarly, the synchronised sniggering of Leftist comedians the moment George W. Bush was elected (I wonder what day the memo went round?) succeeded almost immediately in convincing much of the British public that the man is an idiot. On what grounds? None at all – people soak up their impressions with their beer and their cornflakes. If someone makes them laugh with a ‘George Bush is a moron’ or ‘Margaret Thatcher was a monster’ joke, the endorphins trigged by the laugh create the association of the idea with pleasure and rightness. And so it becomes, to the hard of thinking, the truth.
Sorry, Kirsten. This isn’t about winning over those who are already committed to Leftist ideas. It is about showing the uncommitted that the Left’s leaders are as stupid, corrupt or idiotic as they try to portray their ideological enemies.
In America, some 80% of the population is now pro-war. We don’t need to convert the rest. We do need to neutralize the ability of the more extreme ones to regain lost ground, and to impede our advance.
They must be defanged or turned into objects of ridicule (eg Scott Ritter), they must punished economically via boycotts (eg Hollywood), and they must be removed from positions of power (eg Cynthia McKinney). The most radical elements (eg Vandenburg infiltrators and Oakland blockaders) must be handled via law enforcement.
The leaders of this group are trying to undermine liberal Western society. Treat the rank-and-file with kindness, but the leaders deserve no quarter.
Fascinating post, and discussion.
You might be interested in my response, here:
http://www.stephenpollard.net/viewstory.php?ID=0794
I just LOVE the lefty argument: If you’re pro taking out Saddam’s brutual regime, does that mean you’re going to wage war against EVERY evil regime.
It not only discounts complexity and priority, it is a worthless argument. Since we will NEVER wipe out poverty, should there be NO programs to try to alleviate it? Since there will ALWAYS be disease, should we not invest in research to conquer CERTAIN diseases? You get the idea.
What an amoralistic, nihilistic view — only, it’s NOT their viewpoint on a number of other topics. Following the above argument, we would NEVER BEGIN to establish nature reserves, humanitarian assistance or literacy programs, because we can’t jump in from the get-go and immediately solve the entire problem with a single initiative.
Such a stance is logically incorrect and intellectually dishonest. As is the belief that we (we, being thinking humans) can never learn from past mistakes — or that correcting mistakes is a BAD thing (blowing apart the “I told you so” argument). Or that a “presence” (military, political, or administrative) of several years equates to failure.
Such arguments seem exceedingly short-sighted and ignorant.
I agree, a constant stream of REASONED opposition to illogical arguments convinces those capable of analytical decision making — there is little one can do to convince others. But if one is vitriolic, it closes the ears of the audience, negates an opportunity to persuade, and serves to solidify the opposing opinion.
Not that I haven’t been vitriolic on occasion, sometimes one just can’t help it, but it probably achieves very little — other than relieving one’s blood pressure.
I don’t think that is an illogical argument at all, CJ. It is perfectly fair to ask what is so special about Saddam’s regime and not every one of the other brutal dictatorships in the world. The answer is his weapons of mass destruction and his being sufficiently dangerous to use them. Without him possessing them, we’d have no special reason to fight him above, say, Mugabe or Castro.
As for the original post, I think it depends who you trying to win over. If you are trying to convert someone strongly on the left, I doubt rudeness or insults will do anything but harm. But if you are trying to win over the waverers in the centre, portraying the left as personally and morally corrupt as well as wrong would probably help.
I do tend to agree with what Brian Micklethwait once wrote that when the left says “Our ideas are nice!”, the right just says “But our ideas work!” (I paraphrase). We also need to show that the left’s aims and objectives are not particularly nice either, and at least to call into question their intentions the way they always call into question ours. We need to beat them more on moral as well as practical grounds. To do that we first have to fight them on moral grounds, which is something the right is too keen to avoid.
Peter — “we first have to fight them on moral grounds, which is something the right is too keen to avoid.”
My experience has been that the right has been the MOST willing to fight on moral grounds. What are you thoughts here?
Well, maybe ‘moral grounds’ is a bit ambiguous. What I mean is that no one seriously doubts that the left’s intentions are good. Whereas everything the right does, no matter how selfless, is called into question for being based on greed, self-interest and selfishness.
I don’t happen to believe the left does always intend the best – they aren’t all blind to the fact that their policies create family breakdown and the resultant misery – they just don’t care enough to do anything about it.
For every right-winger who just wants to keep hold of his wealth, there are ten left-wingers who believe what they do because they don’t want to have to earn a decent living, and because they want to avoid the consequences of their actions.
But so confident is the political right that its ideas work best in practice (and justifiably so), that we are happy to concede that the left’s ideas are nice and decent, but sadly mistaken. I have seen a staunch Thatcherite refer to Marx’s “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” as a wonderfully good idea that sadly just doesn’t work out. I suggest we drop such rhetoric, and instead give some focus to the moral case for the free, capitalist society. We should perhaps say that leftist policies aren’t just horribly impractical – they are immoral in theory and intent, too.
Here is the aforementioned Micklethwait column, by the way.
First of all, G Cooper was right to identify the use of comedy in painting broad-brush impressions of political ideologies and personalities. Satire is the most powerful tool in the arsenal of any group.
Isn’t this the time to redirect your gaze towards the domestic agenda, given that this brief war has demonstrated the distance between the liberal left and almost everyone else? There’s a whole host of targets: the BBC, Europe, NHS, Labour, Liberal Democrats, regulation….
Philip Chaston writes:
“Isn’t this the time to redirect your gaze towards the domestic agenda…”
I must say how strongly I agree with Mr. Chaston on this point. It sounds callous to say it, given that lives have been lost, but the conflict in Iraq is a small event in a very long war.
The hegemony exercised by the liberal-Left over great swathes of society (worse in the UK than the USA, I accept) is ultimately more damaging to us as free people than having an external enemy. It is like an auto-immune disease and it is every bit as deadly.
To the usual suspects (academics, broadcasters, unionists, thespians and so on) one has now to add the products of one of the most sinister developments of the past couple of decades – the taking of the legal system by the Left.
The law is regarded (probably rightly) as one of the great engines whereby the Left can enforce changes on society – and with the growing use of judicial review, do so without the tiresome necessity of working through Parliament. Smart radicals don’t bother becoming MPs – they follow the likes of Cherie Blair and Mr. Justice Collins (son of ‘ban the bomb’ Canon Collins by the way) and operate through the law.
To revert to the original theme of this discussion, isn’t it time these people were treated to exactly the same the sort of scorn and derision to which figures on the other side have been subjected since the 1960s?
Just to show you what we’re up against here is a picture of the anti-war demonstrations in London today. There were a suprising number of pictures of Karl Marx, and some people were waving hammer and sickle flags but I didn’t manage to get a picture of them.
It appeared to be a combination of commies with their Karl Marx plackards and hammer and sickle flags and muslim radicals waving Palastinian flags. Shouts I heard were “Tony, Tony, Tony, out, out, out”.
A wide angle pic of the statue incident we’ve mentioned earlier:
I don’t mention it because its irrelevant. My point was that his being armed and gassing Kurds was just peachy 20 years ago, and is just being used as an excuse today. If France and Germany start using they weapons they sell as an excuse to start wars, the exact same argument will apply to them.
You haven’t demonstrated Iraq was a threat to ourselves or given any standards for who gets invaded for threatening their own people and who doesn’t.
Anyone ever tell you that you’re just so cute when you’re being naive? At best, we’ll leave Iraq only when we get bored w/ the media coverage, and it will revert to what it was before, just like Afganistan is doing. At worst, we’ll spend a generation there engaging in low level killing (but we’ll only kill Iraqi terrorists who oppose our installed government, while Saddam killed Iraqis who opposed his illegitimate government).
Don’t confuse patriotism with a business deal.
In other words, we’re only limiting reconstruction contracts to US companies for the Iraqis own good.
Um, Iran was part of Shrub’s “Axis of Evil”, or have you forgotten? Its a fair question.
How can I possibly stand up to such wit, such wisdom, such pure intellectual horsepower as that. I bow before you. I’ll go enlist so I can be there when we bomb Tehran.
Which is why we were immediately gassed when we invaded Iraq with the goal of removing and hopefully killing him. After all, he had the weapons and no good reason to hold back.
Oh, and Shana, about who we’re installing to run the place:
Baathist appointed to police Basra
BRITISH officials were compelled to defend their choice of a former brigadier-general in Saddam Hussein’s army to help to restore order in Basra yesterday as looting continued in the southern city.
…The British official added: “We have asked Sheikh Tameemi to identify similar people from across the ethnic spectrum in the region to form a council of elders so they can all use their influence on different groups.
“You are not going to find anyone in the country who is relatively senior who has not got some sort of linkage with the regime in some sort of way. But all his links are historic.
“He is clearly not to everyone’s liking but you are not going to find one person around whom this whole community will coalesce. He has influence over a sphere of people which is why we are recruiting others from other spheres.”
News of the apointment caused a near riot by members of the rival Sadoon tribe, according to The Washington Post, whose reporter saw them throwing stones at Sheik Tameemi’s home in the suburb of Zubair.
A doctor who watched the protest said: “We are seeing the future of Iraq right here, and it is not good.”
“Forgiveness comes not after victory, but after repentance.”
I don’t agree. As one example, consider still living concentration camp survivors. Following your logic, every last one should die embittered and aggrieved, waiting for the bended knee repentance of their twisted nutcase persecutors that is never going to come.
By all means, fight the good fight; but if you won’t rest until every idiotarian on Earth sees the light, then you are going to die railing against them. Forgiveness, IMO, comes from inside yourself to the benefit of yourself, no matter whether others change. Having no hatred and no bitterness in your heart is what peace of mind is all about.
Every adult with the will and access to a variety of information makes his own political decisions in his own time, and no amount of prodding from outside forces is going to change that. “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”
Perry, you yourself once wrote, “The moon in silence goes its way and heeds no yelping cur”.
You seem to be heeding the curs rather a lot.
Oh, and Shana, about who we installed to run the place previously:
Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot
By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
From the International Desk
Published 4/10/2003 7:30 PM
View printer-friendly version
U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.
United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report.
While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.
In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as “a horrible orgy of bloodshed.”
According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.
…In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed “close ties” with Qasim’s ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party “as its instrument.”
According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim’s office in Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim’s movements.
Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of “Unholy Babylon,” said the move was done “with full knowledge of the CIA,” and that Saddam’s CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish’s account.
Darwish said that Saddam’s paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.
The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim’s driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm.
…Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam’s apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said.
…One former senior U.S. government official said: “In Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your basic dive.”
But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.
Saddam’s U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his Egyptian handlers to raise his monthly allowance, a gesture not appreciated by Egyptian officials since they knew of Saddam’s American connection, according to Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S. diplomat in Egypt at the time.
In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F. Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly denied this.
“We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around asking what the hell had happened,” this official said.
But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq’s communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions.
Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.
A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: “We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business.”
A former senior CIA official said: “It was a bit like the mysterious killings of Iran’s communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed.”
British scholar Con Coughlin, author of “Saddam: King of Terror,” quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of Qasim and the communists was regarded “as a great victory.” A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence operative and friend of Critchfield said: “Jim was an old Middle East hand. He wasn’t sorry to see the communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps.”
Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath Party.
The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq’s armed forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a U.S. interagency intelligence group.
This former official said that he personally had signed off on a document that shared U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an attempt to produce a military stalemate. “When I signed it, I thought I was losing my mind,” the former official told UPI.
A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a top team of three senior officers from the Estikhbarat, Iraq’s military intelligence, to meet with the Americans….
Great thread, but I must have gotten up on the wrong planet… Why do so many say that we won?
Our clearly stated reason for invading: Iraq’s threat to other nations, its WMD and large army.
No WMD found yet. The army, 400K strong, has not fought (mostly small units only), surrendered, or died. Prisoners <10k, dead aprox same. No long columns yet seen of soldiers returning home.
Unless new evidence found soon, our moral justification for the invasion lies tattered. The ex post new reason -- liberation -- creates serious new problems for a hegemonic state.
A thousand years of western history suggests that the other major powers will unit to oppose us. Probably inevitable, and already happening.
Bill Bonner gave the short version in the 4/11 DailyReckoning.com :
"...Last week, we wrote to express our disappointment in George W. Bush. Today, we write to express our admiration. We now see more clearly the genius of the Bush Administration's hawks: threaten your enemy with war if he fails to disarm...send inspectors to make sure he has disarmed...and then attack him because the weapons inspectors failed to turn up anything.
The tactic was worthy of the ancient Romans. No one likes to be the first one to attack; the gods of war do not favor an aggressor. But if you must attack first, you usually try to find a good reason...or pretext...for taking action.
The Romans would send over the sacred chicken... to the barbarian tribes as a 'peace gesture'. Of course, the barbarians - not realizing the chicken was sacred - would eat it. Then, the Romans felt they were justified in going to war - because their enemies had eaten the sacred chicken! ..."
Nancy: I’m going to die railing against them.
My epitaph: “I never liked any of you sonsofbitches, but I always wished I could have.”
Here is one other aspect of full fire-for-effect attacks on commies idjits: they brace others in the fight. There can a be a lot of heart to be taken from the sight of a splendid blast landing mercilessly on target. The cheers along the length of the battle lines are worth it.
How about we just deny the government the welfare/warfare power everybody fights to control and winds up hating each other over?
Nancy: By all means, fight the good fight; but if you won’t rest until every idiotarian on Earth sees the light, then you are going to die railing against them.
Well… yeah. That is the general idea. I do not expect some final victory because life rarely works that way.
Forgiveness, IMO, comes from inside yourself to the benefit of yourself, no matter whether others change. Having no hatred and no bitterness in your heart is what peace of mind is all about.
I really do not see it that way and I do not feel in any particular need of peace of mind. Also, hate and bitterness are not the same as scorn and contempt. I recomend the latter two.
Why? You got the war you wanted, and are currently doing the happy dance at the result (as of today, at least). Surely you’re confident enough that you’re right that you don’t feel guilty at the carnage when somebody says it wasn’t justified. Then again, you admit you don’t particularly need peace of mind.
Are you just afraid that if all sides are heard people might not go along with you?
Nicely said, Scott.
The moral justification for the war remains unproven. Until then we celebrate only the raw exercise of force.
And no, liberation is not enough. Most of the people on this world have aweful rulers. Will we invade and smash all these States?
We’ve picked up the sword to deal with our problems. it might not prove so easy to put down.
CJ:
“Since we will NEVER wipe out poverty, should there be NO programs to try to alleviate it? Since there will ALWAYS be disease, should we not invest in research to conquer CERTAIN diseases? You get the idea…. What an amoralistic, nihilistic view — only, it’s NOT their viewpoint on a number of other topics. Following the above argument, we would NEVER BEGIN to establish nature reserves, humanitarian assistance or literacy programs, because we can’t jump in from the get-go and immediately solve the entire problem with a single initiative.”
Hmm. So you think it is the job of the Government to:
1. Alleviate poverty
2. Conquer disease
3. Look after the environment
4. Give foreign aid
5. Teach people to read
and
6. Bring freedom to people in other countries like Iraq.
Res ipsa loquitur.
Cydonia