12/15/03
Great conversation going on in the "comments" section of yesterday's blog, but my friend Steph reminds me of a larger point, namely, did the eradication of Saddam Hussein actually save hundreds of thousands of lives down the road, and if we don't really know, wasn't it worth it, just in case?
The specific case of Saddam is interesting, since one thing cooler heads said before the war was this: he may be a paranoid, psychotic murderer, but he isn't crazy. Namely, he'll try to get away with a few things (gassing Kurds, invading Kuwait), but he wouldn't actually use nuclear weapons on anybody, fearing his own Mutually-Assured Destruction.
I think his capture has borne this out; there he was, lying in a hole, trying to scratch out an existence. This is one man with a Life Wish. He could have launched missiles at Israel and gone out it a Islamist blaze of martyric glory, he could have sought help with an Al Qaeda or two, he could have even pulled a Hitler and shot himself before the infidels found his bunker. Instead, he sighed, gave up, and promptly submitted himself to a dental exam. There's something very human about his capture, don't you think?
So, to answer the specific question, no, I don't think we saved millions of lives by nabbing this guy. But the question is much more interesting when thrown into the macrocosm – do we, as a nation, have a pre-emptive right to alter the course of what we see as a possible destiny? My own experience is very hawkish; having grown up in an environment full of school beatings, constant humiliation, and friendlessness, I felt as though I worked for every success I had. To me, life had been mostly arbitrary and cruel, and I took every possible chance to ensure that I would survive. I was not about to leave that kind of shit up to fate.
But a dawning exhaustion – and the adoption of my own brand of dime-store Buddhism – has taken the burden of "controlling things" away, and I have never been happier. Sure, I still hurl epithets at God during basketball, and my basement is full of emergency supplies, but I have largely let other things go. It's the only way I could have coupled with another human being, and it's the only way to deal with the rejection and frustration of a life in art.
So, in a bigger picture, the idea of American pre-emption fills me with horror and shame. It's one thing to duck when someone throws a punch, but another to poison somebody who may punch you someday. Being so sanctimoniously sure about how history will unfold – has anybody had such hubris in the entirety of written history? Especially the Bush administration; if these guys are divining the Fates, then it's time to move to Mars.
I just don't think we have a right to control world history. Fate has some lumps to give, and you have to take them. The less you force your control, the more positive things you get back. That is the history of control, from the Roman Empire to our own parents. Control is a short-term comfort, but a long-term disaster. Life is way too brilliant, complicated, beautiful and labyrinthine to assume anything.
Posted by irw at December 15, 2003 11:07 PM
Eloquently put.
In addition to the bigger picture perspective you presented, I'd like put forth the perspective that had G-Dub attacked Iraq purely on the premise that we were removing at ruthless dictator from power before he caused any more harm and so that we could bring him to justice before a tribunal, the international community would have unanimously condemned us and possibly stepped in to oppose us on the basis that we have no right to preemptively remove a foreign leader from power. The only thing that made our actions anything but imperialistic warmongering is that we could claim that Saddam's regime was a clear and present danger.
Given that our basis for attacking has proven unfounded, the entire action should be seen for what it really is, an unjustified act of aggression against a sovereign nation.
What alarms me most about our administrations actions is that we no longer seem to feel any responsibility to participate as an equal in the international community, but have taken the approach that we're the largest superpower so everyone must kowtow to our will. That reckless disregard for other nations and cultures is what has made us a target and has necessitated the global war on terrorism.
OK, I just read Bud's last entry in yesterday's comments and I think he said what I wanted to say far better than I did or could. I'll just sit back and let the eloquent people type for awhile!
This to "Liberal Ed":
"Sitting back" is what has made the U.S. a nation full of sleepwalkers, unschooled in the process of critical thinking, and numbed by propoganda and political spin. We have not become the "informed electorate" the founding fathers envisioned. Your mini-essay was wonderfully eloquent, as was Bud's, as was Ian's blog. And everyone has to speak up and be heard. The nation, even the world, needs our voices, all of us, to rattle the shell of complacency and wrong thinking.Ian's brother wrote an impassioned e mail to the family last night, howling at the fact that a "smart and accomplished" friend had rejoiced in the capture of Saddam, because he was involved in 9/11. This "smart" person had obviously been swayed by the constant linking of the two--in subtle ways, to be sure---by the prez and his posse. Someone else pointed out that Bush had, at some point, actually declared that Saddam was not responsible. But by then it was too late. It was like a correction for a mistake, buried on page 43 of the newspaper. "Smart" people (as well as those less than capable of critical thinking) had somehow put the two together in their minds.
It means that those of us who feel we know better need to speak out and never "sit back." Otherwise the country is going to be completely sucked into the undertow of the spin and arrogance and imagery--and enough people are going to be pumped up by a vision of the heroic cowboy to keep him in the oval office another four years.
Thanks Mom -
I only intended to say that I would not reiterate points already made in this forum, especially since I'm mostly preaching to the chior here. I absolutely won't stop letting my feelings be known to those around me.
The real reason I need to spend less time posting here is that I'm ADD and I use this comments area as a landing spot (one of many) every time my mind wonders away from the work I should be doing. I'm guessing from Sean's blog that you can relate...
There's a very fine line between humanitarian intervention for humanitarian purposes and military agression dressed in humanitarian intervention's clothes. I don't think 800,000 Rwandans would appreciate your dime-store Buddhism nor your musings about fate. I wouldn't put it in the context of fate, nor would my friend Amra, a Bosnian Muslim who lived in her neighbor's one-room basement for 7 months with 35 other people in northeast Bosnia in the early 90's while Serbs in the surrounding hills shelled the town, ripping several of her classmates to shreds and leaving only shoes and earrings to identify them.
I don't believe the invasion of Iraq was justified. I said so, and my Kurdish friend Brusk and I got in a fight. He hates Bush with a passion, but he hates Saddam more. That doesn't justify illegal military intervention, I said. What does justify the gassing of 5,000 innocent people, he asked.
My point, which is getting further and further away from me, is that I'm not sold on the fate argument. Intervention is one of the most painstaking dilemmas in internation law right now and it will undoubtedly get uglier in the future, especially after the precedent our administration just set in Iraq.
I'm against the war in Iraq. But I'm not against intervention all together.
Jiffer, I'm not against intervention when it is based in something positive, and the threat is either obvious or already happening. The Rwanda genocide and the Serbian massacres were already in progress, and American intervention was imperative (in fact, we were late).And if the Sudan, say, had a looming starvation guaranteed to happen in 10 months, the U.S. obviously needs to step in.
But militarily pre-empting what you think an adversary MIGHT do? Like I said, it's short-term security with long-term disaster. Bush & Co have tried to sell the war on terror in terms of "they hate our freedoms," but this is a lie. What terrorists really hate is us being in their religious homeland, and secondarily, the rest of the world hates us because we are a fucking bully unwilling to so anything for the greater good of the planet. Take away those reasons, and your "war on terror" ends.
What LibEd, Budster and others are pointing out is the difference between a good act and a legal one. Me kicking the shit out of Ian and Tessa's fake backer would be good (at least that's what Salem told me when I finished my last dishwashing shift), but it wouldn't be legal.
Liberating the Iraqi people is likewise a good thing, but wouldn't hold much water in the arena of international law, the bulk of which was written after centuries of the kind of wars where the English would claim to liberate the people of Calais and Brittany from various cross-dressers named Louie. Whether the cause was more just than annexing a nice bit of France or not (and it was), you can't go around doing that sort of thing, because then the Russians will want to do some liberating, and the Tutsi, and the Pakistanis--and they might not be as sure of the distinctions between our just wars and theirs.
The WMD line was not much of a casus belli, but it at least built upon some real UN resolutions and long-post deadlines about weapons inspections. If you start to claim that liberation was the real motive instead of involuntary nonproliferation, you lose that thin tissue of legality.
I'm still glad they got Saddam, and think it was a big deal. I'd also love their to be a third democracy in the region (why does everyone forget about Turkey?). But everything about the war was planned badly except for the small matter of the main offensive, the details of which were planned by generals. Just because things work at least as often as they don't ("we got 'em!") when you spend billions does mean I want to extend the contracts of the people who did the planning.
Ian, you need an edit function.
I meant "long-past deadlines" and "doesn't mean I want to extend contracts. Sorry.
Ian, could you do another blog on Hall and Oats!
Please?!
Or even Hulling Oats or Boat Hulls, or Brett Hull, Or Bobby Orr... Anything to break the tension!