A war supporter has a change of heart

A bit of background: 'Stupid' is a person that writes into Eric Alterman's blog on Fridays. He supported the war on humantarian grounds from the offset (even when the Bush line was WMDs).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
Hey Eric, it's Stupid. Since I last wrote you about Iraq, the war has gone to hell in a hand basket. What I'm about to say echoes a recent New Republic column by Peter Beinart, but I have a slightly different take.

First, a political lesson for the left. I've done a lot of soul-searching over whether, in hindsight, the war was a good idea. I keep concluding, barely, that it was, but am I simply not willing to admit that I could have been so wrong? If I'm deluding myself I'm not alone (see Dubya's decent poll numbers) -- until the election is over don't underestimate the power of cognitive dissonance and keep those "we told you so's" in check.

Ok, so given the immense damage to our national image (to me the hostage abuse/Geneva-convention trashing far exceeds the damage caused by unilateral intervention) and the future negative impact on the economy, are there any good reasons for supporting the war (besides foolish pride)? No, not the sanctions. While they still count, they have to be weighed against the realistic threat of interminable civil war in Iraq.

I'm almost 40 and during my life world history has been largely a story of fatalism. Chronic starvation in Africa? Well, the Bible says the poor are always with us. Maoist killing seasons in Asia? We can't get involved. Women subjugated in the Middle East? Don't go imposing our culture on others. People forget how revolutionary President Clinton's "humanitarian interventions" were -- the first true manifestation of "never again" in foreign policy. As Beinart wrote, what is at stake in Iraq is the principle of universal liberal democracy. If we fail in Iraq, the American zeitgeist will be that we offered Iraqis freedom but "those people are different." Already some on the right are mumbling this, and if the left thinks the U.N. will fill the void, note that their reaction to the mini-genocide of Sudan has been to elect the genociders to its human rights panel. Maybe saddest of all: Kerry seems to understand all of this and yet he is attacked on both sides for the sin of a nuanced opinion.

I think he does have a very cogent point in the last paragraph. I'm curious what others think?

I had for a long time followed the atrocities committed by Hussein and thought that ousting him was imperative and that it could only be done by intervention since he had a stranglehold on the population. Friends violently disagreed with me and pointed out the difficulties that would follow his ouster even though they agreed that Saddam is a true monster.

My mistake in supporting the war was not taking into account the people in the administration who would be running the show.

"You can't make a silk purse from a cow's ear."

I must say that I reversed my support when Gen Shinseki was effectively silenced. When I heard that I realized that arrogent incompetents had the upperhand and there were going to be disasterous conseqences.

Or a progressive? I'm truly curious, so I hope you won't think I'm setting a flame trap for you.

I've been listening to Michael Ignatieff on Al Franken's show's repeat, and he also supported the war. I'm sure many here on DU would consider him no better than Friedman and Hitchens and other "center-leftists," as an enabler, all the worse for being non-neocon and thus a legitimizer of a fundamentally illegitimate enterprise. But Ignatieff, who based his support for the war precisely on Saddam's abysmal human rights record, now says that the Bushists committed every mistake it was conceivable to make and have made the world much less secure than it was before the war.

So my question for you, as it would be for him, is, how did you convince yourself that the Bushists were capable of not fucking this up? Did you think their membership in the Establishment was sufficient to signal their basic "decency," competency, professionalism, capability? Were you thinking they couldn't screw up any worse than any other administration? Did you trust them on some level, in other words? And what did you think of their refusal to get the approval of the UN? Did you think they had truth on their side and the UN did not?

As America was responsible for installing Saddam they I believe were obligated to remove him. The US supported the coup in the 1950s that overthrew the democratically elected gov't because the US didn't want Iraqi oilfields to be publicly owned.

They also backed Saddam and supported him for many years. America had an obligation to remove this scum.

I never thought the admin would overrule generals as they did with Shinseki. I still believe that if there had been enough troops and if it were a unilateral force the outcome would have been different especially if troops from Mideast countries were involved from the getgo.

As for the UN they have proved unwilling to intervene: Bosnia, Rwanda, even now in Sudan.

As I have admitted emotions perhaps overruled cynicism. I absolutely hated Saddam and without outside help I didn't see a way Iraqis could free themselves.

I'll have to dig up my notes on 'smart sanctions' one of these days.

Basically, the sanctions made the Iraqi people completely dependant on Saddam to survive. That makes it very difficult to start up any sort of rebellion.

I do agree that the UN can be quite hesitant as a body to intervene in instances of genocide or human rights abuses; I believe that it's more of a symptom of the countries on the Security Council than any inherant part of the institution, however. For instance, there was no UN approval for a Kosovo intervention because of Slavic sympathies in Russia.

I also agree with your assessment that we did have a responsibility in removing Saddam; I think we, as a nation, are obligated to make penance for the sins of our past, such as propping up dictators like Saddam. However, I could see the writing on the wall when people like Brent Scrowcroft were completely ignored by this Administration. The Bush Administration didn't care what the consequences were - they were going into Iraq. They weren't going to condition it on UN approval - hell, they weren't going to condition it on Congressional approval.

Perhaps the one bright spot is that the utter idiocy of the neo-cons and their agenda are laid out in the open. Yes there are hardcore devotess who will refuse to see the light of day but for many others this mounting fiasco will give some pause to think.

an idiot, you most be one of the smarter ones. At least, you are willing to change your mind and reconsider your opinions. We need more people like you to, as they say, see the light, in order to turn things around here.

We now know, for example, that Rumsfeld was determined to use Iraq as a test for his occupation-lite theory of combat, which was meant to complement the Bushists' gutting of the treasury with permanent tax breaks for the corporations and ultrawealthy individuals making up the base of the Republican elite. We also know that the Bushists and neocons had been planning this for years, and humanitarianism had nothing to do with their ulterior motives, which were to relieve the stress on Israel by taming the Arab world and to wrest control of Iraqi oil reserves from OPEC. Were you aware of these motives?

Incidentally, I want to thank you for sticking your neck out here, and to welcome you to DU.

If the humanitarian ground for going in had trumped the rational reasons for not going in, I would have felt that the war was justified. It still would have been wrong to lie about the reasoning for the war.

But that wouldn't make the war unjustified. It doesn't matter how many lies one side or the other tells in advocating for their cause - a policy must be separated from its supporters. In other words, if it were in fact a good idea to go into Iraq (and I'm not saying that it was), no number of lies told by the Bush Administration would change that.

whether or not the action is ultimately justified, because the intention drives the action. Otherwise the end would always justify the means no matter how awful the means, and well-intended efforts to do good would be less readily taken if their ultimate failure discredited them.

(And I know you're not trying to excuse the Bushists.)

No, I'm not trying to excuse the Bushists; at this point, I'm talking in abstractions. The Iraq War, to me anyway, was not a remarkably complex moral question. Factoring in the sanctions makes it a bit more difficult, but I still don't believe that it presents a useful case study for discussing morality.

Anyway - it is wrong to do the right thing for the wrong reason. But that wouldn't change that it was the right thing to do. To argue via analogy: imagine that the Iraq War Mark II had been the morally correct thing to do, but that Bush and his Administration chose to do it for political gain. That would be doing the right thing for the wrong reason, and criticizing the Bush Administration for doing it for political gain would have to be separated from the war itself.

because it usually detertermines the outcome. If the intention is humanitarian and the action succeeds, the outcome can reasonably be expected to be humanitarian. If the intention is driven by greed, however, the outcome will reflect that. This is why it's important to have the right leaders in power and to keep illegitimate ones out.

I admit that I wasn't as aware then as I am now of the issues you mention.

;) :hi:

:toast::toast::toast:

to be used as staging points to control more OIL.

"what is at stake in Iraq is the principle of universal liberal democracy"

This individual should lower their dosage.

or with Democracy. This should be evident to anyone if they weren't deeply in denial.
Same with Afghanistan...nothing to do with 9-11 or freedom. Same scam to steal resources and impose our will on a country, but people will not admit that they have been conned.

Their OIL!!!

Its for the SUVs dagnammit

The writer impies that the only way to promote democracy is through war.

If democracy were the real motive, there are lots of countries which would accept US dollars in exchange for democratic reforms.

Sometimes you can get a situation like Turkey; the nation's desire to join the EU provides enough of an impetus not to abuse its citizens. But in most cases, especially in situations like Kosovo, there is no option to reason with the government in question.

The problem in Iraq is that we didn't tailor the sanctions correctly. There were better ways to target them, so that the people would not become completely dependant upon Saddam. Since they needed Saddam to provide for them, chances of internal revolution became slim to none.

I disagree with the author of this piece, in that I didn't see the humanitarian grounds for going in as significant enough to overwhelm the cost.

And I still can't understand the gullibility of those who did and do.

Our intentions, greedy or altruistic were never relevant. Never. Not unless we were willing to kill millions, yes MILLIONS, of people. Failing that, there was and is no way to keep and hold Iraq or any other part of the Middle East, Caspian Basin, or Stans.

Putting it in high school economics terms: it ain't our sphere of influence.

If we attempted to hold or guarantee to ourselves the output of the oil lands so far from us and so near to China and India, they would eventually have to rectify that mistake. And it would be easy for them, with endless excess population, to keep taking us out one by one by one by one by one by one with the complete cooperation of the natives of the MidEast. Or they could simply funnel enough money and guns to the MidEasterners to let them take us out while diminishing the MidEast population satisfactorily for both America and China or India or the European Union.

Even if we set up a democracy, there's interest and money enough for other powers to subvert it deliberately. As we have done often enough. We have acted throughout as if no other nation had a dog in this hunt. That's both arrogant and stupid.

A world war might be worth it to China if we continue with our aggressive empire-building policies. That's not a war we want. We're going to have enough economic grief from them without being further beggared by a shooting war. Unless any idiot here thinks nukes would be useful?

We are about to be overwhelmed by giants. Instead of making ourselves as self-sufficient and secure as possible, we have sent every vital industry overseas, in the pathetic delusion that saving a dollar would have no effect on our health, wealth, or security.

Between the war and the tax cuts, foreign powers own our debts. We are a beggar country now, NOT a superpower. Not only has George destroyed us economically, he has exposed every military weakness we have. (My favorite weakness is our dependence on foreign parts for our high tech equipment. Way to go, Pentagon.)

But here we still are, debating whether worthwhile goals and lofty intentions were worth the loss of life and wealth and reputation. The floor of hell has been repaved and we are going to walk it for eternity.

And if it comes to a war with Red China now, the party is over for us! We have been making the same mistake that crushed the USSR! Spending the bulk of our wealth on guns instead of butter! Outsourcing is a direct threat to our national security!

These criminals are intent on a one world system of the super wealthy dominating and enslaving the masses worldwide! They want to go back to the "Happy Times" like in the pre Civil War South or the Dark Ages!

We want to go forward, they want to go backward!

You can't tell people they have the right to choose their own government and then tell them which form of government they have to choose.

Likewise, you can't go into a nation to protect its people from human rights abuses when there is no viable alternative to the government that is committing the abuses. All governments are democracies to some extent, in that all governments are chosen or accepted by enough of their people to prevent change. In a democracy like ours, around half the people have to agree with the government for it to remain. In some countries the number of people is lower, but their influence is weighted by their control of wealth, or some form of power, whether religious or military or whatever.

For instance, in Iraq. Hussein was an unpleasant ruler, and not many people liked him personally. But he brought a sort of peace to the nation. He controlled the thirteen rival factions, often brutally, and kept them from rebelling, or from using their own force, led by their own strong man, from overrunning the other twelve factions. Without Hussein, the other factions would have fought for control, forming alliances amongst themselves until one side got enough support to control the others. Any such alliance would be ephemeral until a strong, ruthless leader like Hussein arose and forced everyone to obey him. And that leader would have to have some control as an outsider to each factor, or as a leader of all the factions, otherwise the excluded factions would turn, and civil war again would emerge.

At some point the form of leadership, or the concept of a leadership outside and above each of the factions, becomes set in people's minds, and expectations. At that point, when people begin to see that the factions are bad for their individual desires, even for the existence of the factions themselves, people begin to worry about how that overall, federal, government should be best run. But until there is a peace that allows them to grasp that concept, a tyrant rules best, because he rules most effectively.

The other option, of course, are for the thirteen factions to rule themselves, but if that faction were viable, it would have already occured. Because these different factions each feel the need to unite with some and conquer the others, the factions are predisposed to remain together.

If Hussein was really worse than the alternatives, he would have been overthrown. But each of the factions were more comfortable with his leadership that with that of an alliance of the other factions, or else they would have allied. Again, that doesn't mean Hussein was good, or that anyone liked him. They just didn't like the alternatives enough to die for them. Hussein was thus the leader that worked, that they agreed on.

The point of all of that, is that you can't invade a nation to stop human rights abuses, when the abuses are internal. All you do is kill a lot of people, overthrow what leadership does exist, and set up non-effective governments until you finally leave and a new leader emerges to do exactly what the old leader was doing. Want proof? What are we becoming over there? When we become exactly as brutal as Hussein was, then we will bring peace to Iraq. Until then, we aren't strong enough.

Most leaders realize this. That's why we should elect leaders who are smart enough to think. When you elect idiots like Bush with no learning, and no innate morality, he doesn't see the big picture. He even scoffs at the big picture. He tries to solve the problem one step at a time, and each of his steps create new problems that he didn't imagine. There is a reason the old boss becomes the same as the new boss.

Iraq may one day have a better government. Once we leave, they may even build a democracy, or some form of coalition that works peacefully. But if that is possible, it only means that we could have achieved it in more peaceful ways. It means Iraq was ready, and all it needed was a boost. Don't forget that Hussein in the end offered to leave, and we turned him down. The right pressue could have had the results we wanted, without resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. And if the pressure wouldn't work, it meant that Iraq wasn't ready for a different government.

THAT's why I opposed the war from the very beginning, and to me, everything that has happened has proven that I was right.

One final note: None of this applies when an outside nation invades and oppresses another. In Kosovo, for instance, the Kosovars were being persecuted and killed by an outside force. That force did not come from within, it was not the result of a needed coalition. It was an invasion, and therefore, force could alter the situation. That's the opposite of Iraq.

One final note: None of this applies when an outside nation invades and oppresses another. In Kosovo, for instance, the Kosovars were being persecuted and killed by an outside force. That force did not come from within, it was not the result of a needed coalition. It was an invasion, and therefore, force could alter the situation. That's the opposite of Iraq.

One of the instances where I would have supported the war was if Saddam had invaded the Kurdish autonomous zone and started up another campaign of ethnic cleansing / genocide. Would this, in your estimation, fall under an "outside force?" If that's the case, and I'd wager it is, then I think you and I are pretty close on this.

That would be an outside force, and would be justification for a defensive war, assuming you mean a live, hot war when we intervened. I opposed the first Gulf War, for instance, because the battle was over and Kuwait was quickly stabilized. Sanctions could have worked, and there was no genocide.

But even if Hussein had invaded the Kurdish region and was actively slaughtering them, our response should have only focused on that region, and on stopping the military. Nothing justifies what we've done in Iraq, or even most of what we've done in Afghanistan. Those were the actions of a bloodthirsty madman with no regard for life.

and he is still mischaracterizing the position of those who opposed it. Democracy isn't discredited because you can't impose it at gunpoint. Imposing it on people was never the liberal ziegiest to begin with. Most of the people who opposed this war opposed it because it was unnecessary. Not because of pacifism. Furthermore the people who believe in wars against dictatorships in the middle east are mostly motivated by Israeli propaganda. Who knows why Israelis think they will be more secure. I think they are quite ignorant about Arabs actually. Both Beinart and this "Stupid' fellow are just being obtuse.

No pats on the back for these despicable losers. I will say it again: If the Sears tower was flown into tomorrow by a jet hijacked by "Saudis" under circumstances more strange than the 9/11 LIHOP scenario, and the next day Bush and Cheney said it was now apparent we had to invade Syria, people like this "Stupid" would surrender to the rhetoric and lustily support opening the gates of hell even wider than they currently are. People like "Stupid" only need the smallest psychological jolt to their tiny brain to get it to shut down and be overridden by primal bloodlust. They are not "changed". I don't buy their "regret" for one second. Because they cannot be trusted for the reasons I illustrated above. They would LOVE to do it alllllllll over again.