STEVE ROGERSGlenn Greenwald finds a bunch of apparently liberal commenters falling all over themselves to proclaim that Obama's commitment to bombing other countries proves that he believes in American exceptionalism. Oh, good.
Special people?
DAWN WEINER
Yeah.
STEVE ROGERS
Do you know what "special people" means?
DAWN WEINER
What?
STEVE ROGERS
Special people equals retarded. Your club is for retards.
Daniel Larison makes a, um, not-unrelated observation:
Supporters of a military action are always supremely confident that the administration responsible for taking that action did not rush to war and had no other choice. It’s important to point out that these are not impartial observations or balanced descriptions of the situation. They are rhetorical devices designed to make outrageous, reckless, controversial decisions seem well-reasoned, careful, and unavoidable. When opponents of the war in Iraq described Bush’s relentless push to attack Iraq as the “rush to war,” advocates of the invasion emphasized how long, careful, and well-aired the period before the invasion was. Compared to Libya, those defenders of the Iraq invasion have a point.Oh, good.
One of the more common errors I see my fellow-travellers make is the desire to find conspiratorial and malevolent motives behind the aggression of the empire, and while it is true that some wars and some campaigns and some interventions are indeed moved by design, it is equally and likewise true that many of its actions really are dumb and reflexive. I mean, the old Albrightian axiom is the most accurate insight into the relevant mindset: what is the point of having this magnificent military if you're not going to use it? And these things do not have to exist in mutual exclusion. The US invasion of Iraq can be a viciously deliberate expansion of the global garrison while the Afghan invasion can be a war of retribution that metastasized into a cryptocolonial exercise of semipermanent occupation while the Libya kintomagnetoelectrodynamicalimited military prestochangeo whathaveyou can be a hastily conceived exercise in happytime goodluck bombing. At the same time! There is no reason at all to presume that some cabal of Illuminati are actually directing all of these things along a single axis of intention toward a singular evil end. There is a certain "exceptionalism" in the imputation of omnicompetence or even consistent design--and this is not to say that America can never be malevolent, but that it is just as likely merely malicious, and that its rulers really do believe in bombs for peace even as they believe in bombs for democracy and bombs for American material interest and bombs for first-dibs-on-oil and bombs for The Women. They believe in bombs for everything as surely as Joanne down in the copyroom believes in the universal curative powers of fish oil or vitamin C.
137 comments:
Yawn. Mencius Moldbug has long talked about the organic, evolutionary nature of the USG. Pity you don't take his writing on, and instead settle on ... mediocrity. /shrug
Someone line up the next barrel of fish - IOZ is sure to be reloaded tomorrow.
Right.
http://lhote.blogspot.com/2010/03/green-zone.html
Yeah, but the fish oil thing is true.
Who let you out of your barrel?
IOZ... IOZ! You missed one!
So that Afghanistan thingy is all about a pipeline?
A fish oil pipeline, yes.
Thanks Monsieur for consistently pointing out the utter ignorance that drives those high up in the government. I try to explain this point to people but most of them are convinced that although the president and those around him might not have chosen the right course of action, it was at least done with the highest level of intelligence and forethought possible. Most people cannot believe that the President of the United States of America might be just as dumb and unworldly as the rest of us. Alas, he is. Although he travels the world in the mighty Sky Eagle 1, he visits those places while encased in a bubble. Pakistan is like Indonesia is like Sweden is like Detroit. It's all the same. And when he Decides to have someone launch some missiles at somewhere, it's done with the casualness of ordering a meal. It's not like after he decided to get the US involved in Libya that night he skipped dinner and slept on a cot in the Oval Office. No, he said let's get Ghaddafi, his people took their orders and he went and had dinner, watched "The West Wing" on DVD to get some pointers and went to sleep after arguing with Michelle over what they want for breakfast.
Hey man, nobody predicted VCU would be in the Final Four. Nobody.
To underline this point:
I've taught fairly elite MBA students and, on occasion, law students. They are for the most part well meaning (by conventional standards). But they are completely prey to intellectual/policy fashion and jargon. Nothing I have done has ever dented their ability to ignore the actual reality of the outcomes partially obscured by the latest bullshit.
Additionally, these asshats have a hard enough time getting together to produce group projects, let alone "upholding the empire."
The imperial function of capitalism does not reside in the heads and intentions of its moronic functionaries. It has slowly accreted, institutionally, over time to create "normal" channels of communication and response.
I fight against this idea: that there is always a solution. What's the "solution"? No, oftent there's just the problem and that's what grownups realize. Oh, here's a problem! Well, we could do X, but it has a lot of problems, We can't do nothing!! X is our solution!
No.
Anonymous 12:54pm,
Perhaps stepping aside from problem and solution limitations is healthy.
As is setting to fire the structures which make those pathways by embanking them.
I'm not even sure it's a war. It could be a squirmish.
http://wonkette.com/441676/sarah-palin-is-libya-a-war-or-is-it-a-squirmish
I was just making this exact argument back in the other thread, though I think only two of us are still reading that.
If you're right, then, it comes down to an empirical question: is any given intervention actually going to reduce or increase human suffering in the long term? Strict non-interventionists would argue that military intervention always increases human suffering, regardless of motive. I would argue that it is at least plausible that military intervention doesn't always lead to an increase in human suffering.
I do agree, however, that there's no way to be sure, in advance. Some would say that uncertainty means that avoiding action is always the ethical choice. I don't think that's obviously true.
coming to terms with this is far more depressing than imagining the cabal in smoke filled room
Strict non-interventionists would argue that military intervention always increases human suffering, regardless of motive. I would argue that it is at least plausible that military intervention doesn't always lead to an increase in human suffering.
Then please argue it. If you want to go for the bonus points challenge, don't use WW2 as an example.
Incidentally, the argument you (SZ) describe is not the argument being engaged in this post.
At the risk of repeating my arguments from the other thread: it seems to me that there are a number of conditions that would tend to make intervention at least *potentially* worth doing. For example, if there is a large civilian population under imminent threat of mass death at the hand of a massively superior military force and if there is an opposition movement already in place which has broad popular support, so our intervention can be limited to supporting that opposition movement. More realpolitik considerations would be whether it is in our national security interests to intervene, though that's of course a criterion many (including perhaps myself) would reject as a prerequisite.
The first condition changes the calculus of intervention, because it's not a simple equation of "bombs = more death", since doing nothing would also mean lots of people being killed.
The second condition is important because if there isn't a credible opposition movement already, then we would likely have to invade, commit ground troops, etc., which, aside from the cost to us in money and lives, would likely also mean a lot more civilian casualties caused by such a massive invasion, not to mention the negative political fallout of an invasion by us.
And the little piggy cried "We! We! We!" all the way home.
Oh, that really makes me rethink my position. Thanks for that, IOZ.
Your phrase, "rethink my position", contains an unnecessary prefix.
If Obama hadn't started bombing people when he did, Ghadafi would be bombing people right now. Wait, Ghadafi would be bombing MORE people right now.
Morality!
BURN.
Your rhetorical technique would have worked well in the court of Louis XVI, IOZ.
Flattering the less critical thinking will get you votes every time.
I think very few would seriously contend that "military intervention always increases human suffering". I certainly don't. (The statement is far too globally quantified to be true.) Rather, anti-interventionists tend to think that:
(a) Almost all, or even all, American interventions, and in particular the recent ones, have increased human suffering, or at very best not decreased it. This is particularly the case in the third world.
(b) There is a substantial moral difference between inaction and action. C.f.: "not in my name". That is, I'd rather that some distant murderer kill two distant strangers, than to kill one innocent man with my own hands. Murders in a distant land are regrettable, but they have nothing to do with me, and their solution -- if there is any such to be found -- is something foreigners should work out for themselves. Whereas, murders that I might commit would be my fault, and, as I strive to live a moral life, I refuse to do them. Also, of course, the problem of "Leonard killing people" does have a solution: I should act in ways that do not kill people. This I find it easy to do.
(c) Interventionism in any place sets a precedent, encouraging people everywhere to act differently in the hope of similar intervention. Let us accept arguendo that Obama intervened to stop a massacre in Bengazi. (Certainly that is the propaganda line.) The danger is that people may believe it, not only here, but elsewhere in the world. So not only must you predict Libya's future to know whether intervening there is offers more utils to the people, you must predict how everyone else in the world may act with the new knowledge that America can be induced to intervene if there appears to be potential massacre about to happen. (I leave the exploits, both by people within USG and those in foreign countries, as an exercise to the reader.)
if there is a large civilian population under imminent threat of mass death at the hand of a massively superior military force and if there is an opposition movement already in place which has broad popular support, so our intervention can be limited to supporting that opposition movement.
So you mean like China's declared reason for "intervening" in Tibet in 1950?
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/photo/2010-10/23/c_13571850.htm
Or like the U.S.'s declared reason (erm, third declared reason) for invading Iraq in 2003?
These are the glosses that are applied to military action. You appear to have accepted at face value the administration gloss that this is a humanitarian mission to save helpless rebels, and that the only question is how effective a mission will this be. But there are alternate glosses we might apply - e.g., that the Administration wants to redeem the notion of low-cost, low-impact intervention, made popular under the Clinton administration (see Kosovo, see Bosnia), and that throwing a few bomber jets at an unpopular Libyan dictator is a convenient test case.
Note that both of our theories explain U.S. presence in Libya equally well!
it's not a simple equation of "bombs = more death", since doing nothing would also mean lots of people being killed.
This doesn't hold up. Standing idly by while a house burns means the occupants may die in that fire. Spraying the burning house with an M2, however, doesn't count as a useful intervention. And while that may sound silly to you, bombing and strafing a country in the name of "humanitarian aid" sounds silly to me.
if there isn't a credible opposition movement already ...
"Credible" to whom?
I should add:
Note that both of our theories explain U.S. presence in Libya equally well!
... but your theory doesn't explain U.S. inaction in Syria, Yemen, Egypt, etc, etc.
Good points.
a) I'd argue that it is debatable whether or not the Kosovo intervention increased human suffering (over the long term), and that's currently the only example of a war that really meets the criteria I set out above. Afghanistan was a retaliatory war, not a "humanitarian" war. At the very least, the end game of Kosovo has been a return to relative stability in the region and relatively stable democratic states. It, along with NATO intervention in the Balkans, brought a fairly definitive end to that conflict. It's impossible to know for certain how long it would have gone on without our intervention. It's certainly true there were a lot of civilian deaths caused by the airstrikes; I think that, so far, we've been much better about that so far in the Libyan conflict, either due to better technology and intelligence or more restraint on the part of NATO. Probably a combination.
b) This is a theoretical ethical question. I'm not as convinced that inaction vs action are so clearly differentiable, particularly when you're the only one who can intervene. I.e., if other, more local powers could have intervened on their own, that would have been better, I agree, but that was not practically possible. We at least waited until the Arab League asked us to intervene.
c) I think you're right to think in terms of long-term consequences. However, I think there's another dynamic, which is the deterrent power this intervention will have on dictators attempting to use massive military force against their own population. I don't think it's entirely a coincidence that the leader of Yemen started to back down once the UN resolution passed, for instance.
>China's declared reason for intervening
But that was a transparent lie. Obviously truth matters.
>Iraq in 2003
I don't believe even the Bush Administration was arguing that Saddam was at that very moment killing thousands of people with tanks and bombs. He had in the past, of course, but even in that case you didn't have the second criteria I think is crucial to justify intervention.
>Spraying the house with an M2
Your analogy doesn't make any sense. Obviously the analogy is more akin to, say, shooting someone who has an automatic weapon and is killing innocent people in a public place. You might accidentally shoot innocent bystanders. But is it justified if you stop the shooter?
Here's armed intervention, working its benevolent magic:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327?page=4
>... but your theory doesn't explain
>U.S. inaction in Syria, Yemen,
>Egypt, etc, etc.
My theory would certainly exclude US action in those cases. In none of those cases were massive numbers of civilians being bombed, attacked, shot by artillery, threatened with death "with no mercy" and so on. They were and are being attacked mostly on a smaller scale, by police and security forces, sometimes by the army but not literally, for example, invading tank forces trying to take over rebel cities under the threat of mass killings.
The basic idea is, if there's any option short of military intervention that might work in the long term (diplomatic pressure, sanctions, etc.), then that ought to be the choice. In all of those cases, military intervention would clearly not fit the criteria I've suggested above.
Afghanistan was and is a retaliatory war, not an intervention in the sense we're discussing here.
There's that pronoun again.
So there was this guy who would go around chopping people up with his chainsaw. No one could stop him because he was so much bigger. Then one day, this smaller guy with a smaller chainsaw starts terrorizing his family. Of course, everyone realized that the only course of action was to go ask the big guy with the big chainsaw to chop up the little guy.
No, Paul. Those other people the big guy chopped up with his chainsaw, those were retaliatory chainsawy choppings, not chainsaw choppings in the sense we're discussing.
The other chainsawy things happened before the guy went to an anger management class.
(well, most of them.)
Okay, is Synth0 gonna turn every thread into an unchaperoned chatroom for two?
If that's not proof of successful anarchy, I don't know what is. Still, I'm not convinced that the Illuminati don't have all of our interests at heart. I heart the Illuminati.
That sort of snarky remark about the Illuminati is exactly what a member of the Illuminati might say, to divert attention from themselves...
Yo Synth: how's that willing to die if they make you goin'?
But that (re: China) was a transparent lie. Obviously truth matters.
One billion people disagree with you.
I don't believe even the Bush Administration was arguing that Saddam was at that very moment killing thousands of people with tanks and bombs
Yes, but it's been a fairly common line among neocons since (Weekly Standard, National Review, etc). So I think that's too fine a line.
Your analogy [re: murdering people to help them] doesn't make any sense.
It's an absurd analogy, but I'm trying pretty hard to show the absurdity of "humanitarian intervention" via AC-130 gunship. We know what humanitarian intervention looks like! We saw it in Haiti. We're seeing it in Japan.
You might accidentally shoot innocent bystanders. But is it justified if you stop the shooter?
That same argument validates a Pakistani immigrant blowing up a Navy recruitment center in Times Square, on the grounds that it'll save lives in the likely event of a bombing campaign against Pakistan. Are you pro-terror as well as pro-intervention?
Look, Larry. Have you ever heard of Vietnam?
Chainsaw? What is needed is a guy with a shredder to wipe them all out.. Ah, the old days.. when we had the chance... We could all be on the Boardwalk, sipping iced tea.. riding those great big bicycles..
Are there no means for which the combination of odiousness and uncertainty leave an absolute ethical bar as the best "solution" to problematic, but highly unclear situations?
1)Torture- say especially of children- even in tightly construed circumstances like the infamous "ticking bomb" scenario?
2)The death penalty- say as in Illinois- where the combination of its egregious history and the odiousness of executing an innocent person combined to result in an absolute bar.
Is not imperialism- foreign violent military intervention- just such a case? It is morally odious on its own terms as a means to achieve an ostensibly desirable end, it has a history at least as brutal and repeated (i.e. systemic, not incidental) as the death penalty and is subject to necessary and massive uncertainties.
Can even a couple of cases where it *seems* the particulars of certainty and effect have been met to your satisfactions really end the absolute prohibitions on means that are so wrong when they go wrong and are necessarily taken- in the long term and in aggregate- under conditions of heightened uncertainty and with grave, and ethically abominable consequences for error?
How do we know what is the right thing to do? This is a true story.
The scene: Buffalo, New York, late 1970s or early 1980s, the campus of Buffalo State College. The Philosophy Department sponsored a talk by Robert Nozick open to the general public and scheduled in the early evening. Three or four dozen people showed up, as I recall, including myself, a graduate student in a different discipline from a neighboring institution of higher learning. Nozick was wearing a blue wool blazer, a white turtleneck sweater, and blue jeans.
During the question period, I asked, "You've mentioned two ways of examining the morality of an action - whether it corresponds to a received code of conduct, and what its effect will be on those who are the object of the action. But what about its effect on the person who DOES the action?"
Nozick thought for a minute before replying (an actual minute - I don't mean 10 seconds that felt like a minute), said, "I need to consider that more", and went on to another question.
How did I feel? Triumphant, in having shut up the famous author? Amused? Heartbroken?
As I recall, I was saddened.
In my current view, the problem that Nozick had in answering my question comes from the fact that, in his tradition, all the heavy lifting is done by the intellect, and life's persistent questions are treated as academic exercises. The last two paragraphs of Erich Fromm's The Heart of Man are relevant here:
Man's heart can harden; it can become inhuman, yet never nonhuman. It always remains man's heart. We are all determined by the fact that we have been born human, and hence by the never-ending task of having to make choices. We must choose the means together with the aims. We must not rely on anyone's saving us, but be very aware of the fact that wrong choices make us incapable of saving ourselves.
Indeed, we must become aware in order to choose the good -- but no awareness will help us if we have lost the capacity to be moved by the distress of another human being, by the friendly gaze of another person, by the song of a bird, by the greenness of grass. If man becomes indifferent to life there is no longer any hope that he can choose the good. Then, indeed, his heart will have so hardened that his "life" will be ended. If this should happen to the entire human race or to its most powerful members, the the life of mankind may be extinguished at the very moment of its greatest promise.
torture: it don't work and its disgusting
the empire: they are naive and criminal
our feller mmmmmmmerican people: stupid and evil
like Althusser said, its overdetermined!
I, for one, would love to hear a fully articulated ethic of violence from SZ.
When, by whom, and under what circumstances is violence ethically and morally acceptable?
Why?
Zero: I agree with you that Afghanistan started as a retaliatory war. But the justification for that war ended with the defeat and destruction of the Taliban regime, in late 2001 or at latest March 2002. Everything since that time is an intervention which does indeed fit your criteria.
There was "a large civilian population" -- the puppet regime, and more broadly, the people -- "under imminent threat of mass death at the hand of a massively superior military force" -- the Taliban, the only organized and cohesive military force in Afghanistan (excepting the US forces). And the puppet state is and was "an opposition movement already in place which has broad popular support". Its support is and was broad, but shallow, because it is based on ability to tap American wealth -- whereas the Taliban's is narrow but deep. It is based on the hope for power, and their threat to kill anyone who opposes them.
Of course, "our" intervention was, for some curious reason, not "limited to supporting that opposition movement"... so maybe you've got something to think about, there.
No weaseling out of Afghanistan. You don't have the blood of the perhaps 20000 people killed during the conquest on your virtual hands. You do, however, have the blood of some 2000 people per year in the years from 2002 'til now. Intervention just keeps on keeping on. When does it end, do you think? Your conditions still hold true.
mistah charley, that's a great story. I say that as a grateful student of Anarchy, State and Utopia.
Wow, Mr. Synth is on good form here!
Apart from the staggeringly naive premise that US might actually be trying to help poor, dark-skinned folk in former colonial world, it's neat how skepticism re: the predictability of the consequences of (US military) actions is used as an argument in favor of inflicting violence against what will mostly be civilians--"After all, we can't really say for certain dropping bombs on people (or whatever) wont, you know, help those people."
Also, in case we haven't all been obsessively following the news, the U.S. has probably already been breaking U.N. law:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/30/us-libya-usa-order-idUSTRE72T6H220110330?pageNumber=1
I can't even feign shock. My cynicism muscles must be weak today.
In the complex calculus whereby 'human suffering' is quantified (with and without military intervention) and then compared, to determine which moral set has greater ordinality, is any consideration given to the fact that those whose labor value is appropriated under threat of force to fund such kinetic action might not agree with said action? Or is that jejune?
You know what? I'm gonna inject some positivity into all this doom and gloom of late. Obama may turn out to be a blessing in fucking disguise. You want to talk about long-term cost/benefit analysis, well, Obama has turned out to be so much more hopelessly inept than any of us imagined that if he wins a second term, he may just run the whole fucking empire into the ground by the time it's over. If that happens, then this whole goddamn Libya will have been worth it for everyone!
^[thingymajigger]
Oh, that really makes me rethink my position. Thanks for that, IOZ.
Why would IOZ try to make you (re?)think your position? Are you under the impression that what takes place in this thread, or indeed in the larger "political dialogue", is the riotous give-and-take of democracy, the free-market ferment of policy? Have you lived here very long?
The government conspired to blow up WTC7 while the other towers fell in a genuine surprise attack. At the same time!
wait, what does zero times synthetic zero equal?
"I agree with you that Afghanistan started as a retaliatory war."
No Afghanis were involved in that 9-11 Kulturkampf. Also it may be wise, though less entertaining, to stop enticing the troll.
Somewhat OT, Ron. It doesn't matter how you classify "Enduring Freedom" for the purposes of my argument w/ Zero. (If you really care about my view of international law, maybe I'll blawg about it for you. But you have to beg.)
As for enticing old Zero: he's not a troll. He is persistent, I'll certainly grant. Bullheaded, yes. But you devalue the label when applying it to his ilk.
Crikey. This is why I love political blog debates. So much.
The funny thing is that this exact structure (huge pileon of large number of people with precisely the same political point of view) is what happens when I tried this on a conservative blog, except everyone in that case being far to the right of me.
I will attempt to address some of the points people are making, in the spirit of dialogue, though the vitriolic atmosphere seems to make the possibility of real discourse rather remote.
But that (re: China) was a transparent lie. Obviously truth matters.
One billion people disagree with you.
The official justification China made for invading Tibet was to overthrow a feudal government which they claimed was oppressing the people. I'm not aware that they actually were claiming the Dalai Lama was about to imminently massacre thousands of Tibetans. If they were, it was obviously a lie, obviously, no matter how many billions of people may believe it.
That same argument validates a Pakistani immigrant blowing up a Navy recruitment center
Most terrorism kills primarily civilians, and it kills them intentionally. It seems to me intentionally trying to kill civilians not only is ineffective as a strategy to stop conflict, but nearly maximally unethical as well.
A policeman shooting someone who is in the process of killing civilians, on the other hand, it seems to me is relatively justified. I don't think it's impossible to distinguish these two cases.
Is not imperialism- foreign violent military intervention- just such a case? It is morally odious on its own terms as a means to achieve an ostensibly desirable end, it has a history at least as brutal and repeated (i.e. systemic, not incidental) as the death penalty and is subject to necessary and massive uncertainties.
Can even a couple of cases where it *seems* the particulars of certainty and effect have been met to your satisfactions really end the absolute prohibitions on means that are so wrong when they go wrong and are necessarily taken- in the long term and in aggregate- under conditions of heightened uncertainty and with grave, and ethically abominable consequences for error?
You make a strong argument here. However, let's consider the case of self-defense. Some external enemy invades the United States: presumably at least some of you would consider self-defense a reasonable justification for war. However, inevitably, there will be atrocities, most likely, committed by our side, even in that case, excessive use of force, deaths to civilians, and so on. War always tend to be a bloody, murderous affair, no matter how justified.
But if it is justified for self-defense, despite this, then the question becomes, is it ever justified to protect weaker people in a foreign land? If you were a citizen of Benghazi I think you'd likely have been desperately hoping for help from the UN, despite the terrible history of imperialism. Weighing the risks of being bombed by NATO and being bombed by Qaddafi, I think most people there would much rather be bombed by NATO. Because they're aiming at different targets.
This is not to dismiss your argument, but only to say that I cannot see that this is such a black and white situation.
More responses to follow, since there are so many posts above.
I, for one, would love to hear a fully articulated ethic of violence from SZ.
I don't know that I can provide that. But my rule of thumb is that violence is something one ought to engage in only when it seems very likely that every other nonviolent option will lead to a worse outcome (more deaths and suffering in the long term). It is always a terrible, regrettable thing, but something that is, I believe, occasionally the least worst option.
Afghanistan... Everything since that time is an intervention which does indeed fit your criteria.
I believe Afghanistan started as a retaliatory war, but it was a war that we never finished. The Taliban were never fully defeated. We then withdrew our attention in order to engage in a war of choice in Iraq, the consequences of which are still to be felt into the far future. What we should have done instead is focus our attention on Afghanistan to try to reduce corruption and stabilize the entire country, not just the parts around Kabul, and not divert our forces to Iraq.
I don't believe the war in Afghanistan was carried out well at all. However, even today it is not a "humanitarian" intervention because we are still there because we fear terrorists who still have safe havens in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. However badly it has been carried out, it remains a war primarily in reaction to the attack on 9/11. Whenever you have troops on the ground in such a situation, there are going to be atrocities and so on. That is why we should have focused our attention there and pulled out once the job was done and the country was fairly stable. We didn't do that and we may never be able to do that at this point.
skepticism re: the predictability of the consequences of (US military) actions is used as an argument in favor
I'm making two separate arguments. One, that I believe it is possible that foreign military intervention can result in less suffering, and two, that because inaction in some cases may cause more deaths and suffering than action, there are cases when one ought to use a preponderance of the evidence standard rather than beyond a reasonable doubt.
Greg Cochran is pretty eloquent on the idiocy of our leaders here. Though it doesn't contain a line as good as these.
That's one pretty complete article, well done! I really need to fix my commenting system once I have time - It works pretty good, but looks really ugly.Will use this article for inspiration, thanks!
Giving this one more go then I'm calling it:
If the U.S. were to conduct an illegal war in, say, Pakistan, would China be justified in sending armed forces to attack Washington D.C. in order to get the U.S. to stop? Even though these attacks by China would likely result in civilian deaths?
Under your theory of intervention, SZ, where stated intentions appear to have an equal weight with likely outcomes, would China be right to intervene?
You seem to like to come up with strange analogies that aren't really similar to the case in question.
First of all, what is an "illegal war"? Do you mean a war in which we are intentionally, as a matter of policy, targeting and killing thousands of civilians on a massive scale, in order to impose our own imperial hegemony on them? In that case, of course I would agree that we ought to be stopped via military means.
However, clearly the intervention ought to be aimed at minimizing civilian casualties, and be as directed against military forces as possible. So, of course an attack on civilian populations of Washington DC would be excluded. Instead, what would be justified would be an attack on US military forces engaging in the civilian atrocities in Pakistan.
So... what, four hundred comments' worth of threads have been spent so far attempting to explain a single, fairly basic idea to one imbecile.
And yes, SZ, you are that imbecile. I know you're a bit slow, so you might've missed that.
First came the movement.
Then the expansion.
Next thing you know, you have to hire janitors.....
An omen of the beginning of the end.
The inertia of empire is irresistible.
--delbert doggrel
It seems to me intentionally trying to kill civilians not only is ineffective as a strategy to stop conflict, but nearly maximally unethical as well.
I wonder how that Kosovo thingy ever came to an end.
>a single, fairly basic idea
You might not realize this, Christopher M, because perhaps you only spend time talking with people you agree with, but your views on this topic are not universally accepted by everyone on the planet. The notion that one ought to adhere to a standard of strict non-interventionism in all cases is, I agree, a defensible view, but it's hardly the only view that reasonable people can entertain.
If you think that you are vastly smarter than everyone else in the world who disagrees with you, well, congratulations. That's quite an achievement.
SZ, if they haven't cried uncle yet I think maybe you should cut your losses.
Look guys, just accept the fact that hypothetical situations can be conceived where a monopoly agency of force in a geographic region engages in large-scale attempts to kill people who are located in another geographic region (which is under a smaller monopoly's control), and such killing turns out to be better off in some conceivable moral measuring system that could be devised by someone who is obviously not a golfer.
SZ,
Your mistake is in assuming that Monsieur hosts a "political blog."
Well, one of your many errors...
I like the mysterious introduction of golf there. Almost as intriguing as the bowling reference, earlier.
>political blog
Whatever you want to call it, it's a blog where nearly all the readers share a specific political world view.
I actually find this one of the sad side-effects of the Internet, regardless of the ideology.
First of all, what is an "illegal war"?
Only in America! Good night, folks; see you on the bread lines.
I am asking you: what is YOUR definition of an illegal war? Not questioning whether there is a concept of an illegal war in international law.
There are obviously many different conflicting opinions about what constitutes legal and illegal wars. I would certainly NOT, however, approve of foreign military intervention in the case of EVERY illegal war, regardless of the definition one uses. Rather, I would again go back to the basic principle I outlined earlier, which is that one ought not to intervene except in the narrow case where it appears strongly likely that not intervening would lead to more death and suffering in the long run. I put forward a hypothesis about conditions under which this might be the case (i.e., civilians under imminent threat, etc.) though that's just a first attempt.
Of course the USG "finished" the initial war. USG defeated the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, occupied every city, and drove the survivors into Pakistan. This was plenty sufficient to satisfy the American casus belli, namely, that the Taliban state was sheltering criminals. That state had been shattered. Catching all of the actual criminals (leaders of al Qaida and Taliban) would have been nice, but it was immaterial to the justice of the war. And certainly, the prudence of it.
By December, most combat operations were over, and it had become an intervention for humanitarian reasons. See the wiki if you don't recall. (I'd give a link, but my comments with links seem to no longer appear at this site. Pity.) Or you might read stuff from the time. Read the NYT!
The USG could and should have simply packed up and left in December, possibly as late as March. Simple. If USG needed to conquer Afghanistan again, it doesn't lack JDAMs, and neither is there a lack of local warlords on the ground to ally with. It is true that the option to pull out ("cut and run") was barely discussed at the time. But that is because utterly conventional people who think like you run USG.
Sorry, you can't escape it. Afghanistan after the initial war was a humanitarian operation. "Nation building". "You broke it you bought it." This wasn't just the Bush adminitration -- it was the NYT. Progressives may have hated the war, but once it was won they were united with the Bush administration in wanting a new puppet/client state -- flooding the place with money, and keeping troops there indefinitely.
It matches your "humanitarian" war criteria. It's a big fat fail for your "humanitarian" war criteria.
No weaseling out of Afghanistan. You don't have the blood of the perhaps 20000 people killed during the conquest on your virtual hands. You do, however, have the blood of some 2000 people per year in the years from 2002 'til now. Intervention just keeps on keeping on. When does it end, do you think? Your conditions still hold true.
BTW, I am far to the right of you. Not left. There are fights at Chez IOZ all the time between right-wing realists like myself and the left anarchists here. The reason you see a united front is that your position is untenable.
Heh, you guys are battling an appeal to authority founded on cultural conditioning. You will not get through. This is an infinite loop. Even if he's not copy/pasting directly, I still see nothing but endless repetition. A tape loop, nothing more. But hey, knock yourselves out
This was plenty sufficient to satisfy the American casus belli, namely, that the Taliban state was sheltering criminals
Your narrative about the Afghan war is simply false. The goal of the war was not simply to "defeat" the Taliban state, it was to eliminate a safe haven for terrorist groups who want to attack the United States. This goal was NEVER achieved, and probably never will be achieved at this point.
The Taliban remained and remains an active insurgency in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. If you're not aware of this, then it's very difficult to even begin to have a sensible discussion of that war with you. Furthermore, intelligence reports have consistently shown that as time has gone on, cooperation between the Taliban and Al Qaeda and affiliated groups grew over time (though this might be reversing due to recent losses they've suffered).
Even if one accepted your account that we were merely staying in Afghanistan to do "nation building", that is still not a "humanitarian intervention". To the extent we are nation building in Afghanistan it is in order to prevent a failed state which would again give more safe havens for enemies of the United States. We have little or no humanitarian interest in Afghanistan per se, aside from this.
John, I appreciate your psychoanalysis, and I wouldn't say there's nothing to it. However, I am not simply "appealing to authority." My view of the world is a networked one, with many interconnected power bases, as I've stated before. If anything, I think many of you have a much more hierarchical vision of power structures and authority structures than I do. I get the sense that many of you have a kind of fear of the powers that be; I don't share that same fear, because I don't believe that the "powers that be" are unified, or act with coherence. Instead I see feedback systems, forces, political, psychological, economic, physical.
These forces can lead to dramatically "evil" outcomes (as we engaged in especially during the Cold War) or less "evil" outcomes when the forces and feedback systems change. It's not about whether one ought to "trust" authority or not --- it's about, in my view, looking at what's actually in the interest of the various forces in a system, including their underlying psychological motives. So in that sense I don't "distrust" authority reflexively either, because sometimes it is in the interest of various power centers to be responsive, rather than oppressive, as no power center is omnipotent, but they exist in a network of other forces and powers.
The "group" is your authority. You go with the flow instead of thinking for yourself. You really are just a mimic. I see nearly identical posts in so many places. I'm not going through that sockpuppet routine again. I'm just saying you're being a zombie.
It's very simple. We are in Libya to plunder Libya. This is the only reason to make offensive warfare anywhere. To steal their treasure and impregnate their women. There is nothing else, and never has been. It doesn't matter if it's "evil" or not. It's pure Animal Planet. All this.. "stuff" you dream up is pure illusion. It is a continuation of over 300 years of African - European relations. The savagery has not diminished one whit. And nothing about this will change that.
go with the flow
Yet I didn't and don't "go with the flow" when it comes to many other wars, conflicts, covert operations, etc., going back through history. I support some, opposed many others, some launched by Democrats, some by Republicans. I have agreed with pacifists in some cases, and with liberal interventionists in others, and disagreed with both as well.
I do agree that there's a base motive for most war and violence: but I think it is more, at its core, based on fear. Even aggression is a form of fear. Fear that one's resources will be taken away, or you'll be attacked.
We're in Libya because we're afraid Qaddafi will win, which will increase the power of petty dictators, which will heighten terrorism. That's what I think is the primary motive for this. The humanitarian motive is secondary: if pure humanitarianism were enough, we would have intervened in Rwanda and Darfur as well. We're also afraid, in this case, and that's what I think is driving it.
(I might add: my support or opposition to a given military action isn't really dependent on what motivates it. It can well be that a given action is motivated by something base, but because of all the network of forces in a situation, the end result turns out to be morally defensible, relative to the criteria I set out above. If that's the case I support it even though I agree the motives may be suspect or base.)
See, you're not even hearing... It's like you're responding to somebody on a different channel. This is exactly what I'm talking about. I may as well be talking to Malibu Stacy. Ah well.. I just thought I'd make another stab at it. It's been a slice..
That's an intriguing comment, John, and I really am interested to try to hear what you're trying to say, if I don't understand it.
My understanding of what you're saying is that offensive war has only one motive: conquest of resources. I believe that attributes far too much rationality to human behavior. I think people are fundamentally far more irrational.
No, I'm talking about instinct. The drive to dominate, or perish. Nothing to do with rational or otherwise. Not to say humans aren't suffering some mental disorder or something.
Okay, but don't you have to factor in what other people are going to do to you if you try to dominate? I.e., there's the possibility of retaliation. All of the dynamics I've been talking about exist in a world where everyone in the world, all the powers at various levels, have to think about the possibility of retaliation.
(Once you factor in the possibility of retaliation, things get really complicated really quickly, it seems to me. There's a desire to form alliances. To deter attacks. Yes, to conquer and dominate. But also to defend, and so on.)
Then we are doomed to perpetual war. There can be no other way.. All this talk about peace, love and respect is a bunch of hooey.. We can do nothing but spend our days discussing it like mere weather observations..
Therefore, make peace with your god, whatever you perceive him to be: hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin. With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal, the world continues to deteriorate. GIVE UP!
but that it is just as likely merely malicious, and that its rulers really do believe in bombs for peace even as they believe in bombs for democracy and bombs for American material interest and bombs for first-dibs-on-oil and bombs for The Women.
SZ seems to have distracted everyone from the substance of IOZ's post and a good thing too, since it's pure horseshit.
This war has all the usual reasons.
Not necessarily, because fear of retaliation can lead to forming alliances, or trying to make peace treaties, as well. Attack is not always the optimal strategy.
I think that's why we have a distribution of "hawks" and "doves" in any given population. Game theory models suggest that neither an all-hawk nor an all-dove population is stable. In fact the stable population is a mixture:
http://www.dayofthenewdan.com/projects/evolution-simulation
It turns out that an even better strategy than either hawk or dove is: be a dove, until you get attacked, then retaliate.
Fuuuuck! Like whatever.. You win
SZ: so didactic, so persistent. A real fighter, and by "fighter" I mean the last wobbly guy standing at a pumpkin-pie-eating context.
Ah, but what about the networked morality of pie-eating while brown children die under dictatorial bombs...game theory suggests We should attack, nuancedly, and not lose our heads while all around us are losing theirs. Don't We have to soldier on, not change horses in midstream, because America has been called to defend Freedom? Nonviolence is the best policy, until We have to do It. While, of course, minimizing civilian casualties.
"First of all, what is an "illegal war"?"
Idiot.
Has anyone ever seen SZ, Gary Ruppert, and Wiggles in the same room at the same time together? I'm getting suspicious...
Now we are up to a game theory justification to bomb people (so much for a 'moral' calculus). Mutually Assured Destruction trumps tit-for-tat: quick, someone provide Libya with nukes (worked for North Korea).
Enlightened anarchists should advocate that every government on Earth develop a massive nuclear program, and then trust in their basic humanity not to use it.
At least the Spambot got something useful out of this thread.
Anybody ever hear of the season staring this early? Is this a daylight savings thing?
Go Cubs!
I think MLB got a bit shook by the World Series going into November. Also, they plan to add a Wild Card round to the playoffs, probably next year.
The Taliban remained and remains an active insurgency in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.
Yes, I am aware of that. That is why I mentioned the Taliban as one element fulfilling your requirements for humanitarian war.
Even if one accepted your account that we were merely staying in Afghanistan to do "nation building", that is still not a "humanitarian intervention". To the extent we are nation building in Afghanistan it is in order to prevent a failed state which would again give more safe havens for enemies of the United States. We have little or no humanitarian interest in Afghanistan per se, aside from this.
I agree that "we" have no national interest in Afghanistan. That is, where "we" means "the American people". But "we" don't make decisions. USG does. I am not USG. You are not USG. We are not USG.
I strongly disagree that "we" have no humanitarian interest in Afghanistan. Or anywhere else. Words have meanings. Wiki: "humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings." The very definition of the word belies you. If "we" are humanitarian at all, then "we" have a humanitarian interest in Afghanistan by definition.
And "we" are humanitarian. That is the problem. Well, that in combination with the USG's self-conception as humanitarian world goodforce. USG, in case you are not aware, conceives itself as on a mission to do good, to everyone on Earth. "Doubtless if aliens were found on Jupiter, concern for their welfare would soon be felt on the Potomac." Its humanitarianism is quite sincere. That is to say, USG thinks just like you. "Our" job is to do Good, where ever we can give rice to starving peasants, buy expensive medicine for HIV victims, educate girls, post a Marine guard or bomb a village to save it. That "our" interventions may do more harm than good is unthinkable. "Our" intentions are good!
It is a symptom of your epistemically closed worldview that you cannot admit "nation building" as humanitarian. Ha ha! Thus you progressively define away all wars which might, possibly, be a problem for your ideas. No true Scotsman!
And yes, I agree with you that "fighting al Qaeda" was the propaganda line about "nation building". But propaganda is just that. The point is that the Taliban had been nearly destroyed by late 2001. Little more was possible -- at least without invading Pakistan, which USG did not choose to do. It was obvious what would happen if USG did not intervene -- a civil war in Afghanistan. It was already starting. But the Taliban per se would not have a been a major player in that, since USG had just set a precedent that they should not be allowed to rule. USG could have enforced that easily enough with at most a few airfields and a few marines guarding them. (This appears to be what was in the cards militarily speaking in January 2002: wiki: "As of late January 2002, there were somewhat over 4,000 US troops in Afghanistan, of which about 3,000 were at Kandahar airport, and about 500 were stationed at Bagram Airfield.") A few Predators and JDAMs are all you need to tilt the playing field in a huge way away from any given fighting force that has no weapons more advanced than assault rifles and RPGs.
USG could have easily played kingmaker in the civil war without any "nation building". But, of course, they did not. They barely even considered the option. Why? Because, again, USG is composed of people who think exactly as you do. Humanitarian intervention. "We" can cut off the civil war by main force, and "we" can build them a democracy, and democracies are Nice by definition.
I declare the war is over
It's over It's over
I don't know why they don't start the season a couple weeks earlier. It would help fill the boring gap after the Super Bowl while hockey and basketball are in the winter doldrums of mid season play. Actually they have to shorten the hockey season significantly.. Going into June is a bit much.
>humanitarian
I think we're definitely reaching the end of the usefulness of this debate; we'll just have to agree to disagree, Leonard, if we can agree that much. But I do want to clarify one thing: the reason I'm saying Afghanistan isn't a humanitarian war is not to define away the problem with that war, but just because if it's not humanitarian then there are different forces driving our presence there. I still maintain that retaliation/self-defense is the reason we're still there, which is to say, we're still afraid of the Taliban (not because we're afraid they'll attack Afghans, but because we're afraid they'll attack us). And so we don't have a totally free choice whether to withdraw or not (at least in the minds of the policymakers who care about the threat from the Taliban and terror groups associated with them). You might argue this threat is overblown or not real, or perhaps some will argue that it is a cover for some other imperial scheme, but I still disagree with those interpretations; I think the Afghan war, like most of American foreign policy, is driven by fear and self-protection.
I don't really want to spend that much more time defending this view, however; I'm just stating it for clarification. I accept that it may be wrong, and reasonable people can disagree.
>state of continuous war
Anonymous and I have been discussing this in a separate thread, Montag, and I will say I certainly can see that there probably is a strong feedback loop of incentives to maintain a military-industrial complex or whatever you want to call it, for purely economic reasons, and this system requires some external enemy which may well be overblown in order to justify its existence. My argument is different, which is that when the (manufactured or real) threat is a terror threat as opposed to a state actor, the types of overseas engagements tend to be different because the internal logic of that conflict is different; with a state enemy, we were willing to do more "evil" things because we didn't care as much what people thought of what we were doing, because it was a large state we were afraid of. With a terror threat we have to care how it's perceived. There are other factors as well but I won't repeat all that.
The fact is the military industrial complex doesn't really care if the wars it engages in are ethical or not. Which is to say, most of our wars and covert actions during the Cold War were manifestly unethical and unnecessary and in most cases brutal and oppressive. Since then, I'd argue that they've been a mixed bag, but that almost all of them have taken into account how they are perceived, which tends to moderate the level of evil, so to speak. So I argue that it does matter what the motive is, and who the perceived threat is.
However, I will agree that there is a problem when we have this giant military industrial machine which requires continuous war, because at some point if there IS no just cause for war for a certain period, that creates a tremendous economic pressure to manufacture one. I don't think this particular case of Libya is one of those. However, I see that in the future this could well be the case. We are certainly in agreement on that point.
Last clarification: it may be that the terror threat is overblown, but I don't think the terror threat is a fake cover reason for our war in Afghanistan, as many on the left do. I think for the most part this is the actual reason policymakers still think Afghanistan matters, whether they're right or wrong.
Haven't they been listening to Ron Paul? Or Robert Pape at the University of Chicago?
Foreign Military Occupation produces the terror threat, it doesn't ameliorate or attenuate a substantial pre-existing phenomenon.
Can our complex-network semi-responsive elites be so obtuse and innumerate?
That's certainly one dynamic. I don't think it's the only one. Iraq 2003 totally ignored this factor, which is one reason it was so idiotic. Policymakers aren't ignoring it, however, so far, with this war in Libya, in fact it's explicit that we won't be sending in an occupation force. I don't think this factor is totally lost on policymakers, as it's pretty obvious.
WHOA!!! The amount of trust you place in the in the "explicit" pronouncements from "policymakers" in Washington is astounding! This isn't to say that there will be an occupation or anything approaching one, but there won't be an occupation unless there is an occupation and you'll be right there gulping up the justifications if and when it happens. THIS IS DIFFERENT! THEY'VE LEARNED THEIR LESSONS!
Did you look closely at Prof. Pape's research and the percentage of suicide terrorism driven by foreign military occupation?
Is "one factor" a fair characterization of the dynamic at work here?
Isn't the terror threat overwhelmingly an effect of US and Western foreign policy- and a fairly easily knowable one- rather than a genuine factor whose minimization as end goal drives such foreign policy?
It's the Occupation, Stupid
Extensive research into the causes of suicide terrorism proves Islam isn't to blame -- the root of the problem is foreign military occupations.
BY ROBERT A. PAPE | OCTOBER 18, 2010
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/18/it_s_the_occupation_stupid
military-industrial complex or whatever you want to call it
M ilitary
I ndustrial
C ongressional
Fi nancial
Corporate media complex
MICFiC
a conspiracy to milk, shear, and slaughter the sheeple, metaphorically speaking (the milking and shearing are metaphorical, the slaughtering somewhat less so)
"Pape and Feldman are the world's experts on suicide terrorism. In this carefully researched yet highly readable book, the authors lay bare the causes of suicide terrorism and demonstrate that our current military strategy serves only to breed a new generation of terrorists. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about America's role in the world."
Steven D. Levitt, author of Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics
Stupid or Evil
>THIS IS DIFFERENT!
It has nothing to do with trust. It's simply because it's not in the interests of any of the people in power to occupy Libya, for reasons I've stated before. If we do end up sending in an occupation force, it will be unbelievably stupid; almost as stupid as the Iraq war. If I have any "trust" in them, it's simply that I don't think they're quite as stupid as the neocons.
It's in the interests of those in power to remain occupying Afghanistan? Or keep Guantanamo open? Or any other number of examples? So is bombing Libya in their interests? Is that why they're there? Or is it because of the pronounced humanitarian goals? Are humanitarian goals beneficial to those in power? How so? Karma points?
I like this game by the way!
its has to do with who gets to make life-and-death decisions in "challenging" situations
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/world/africa/01civilians.html
“This is a challenge,” said a senior alliance military officer. “The problem of discriminating between combatant and civilian is never easy, and it is compounded when you have Libyan regime forces fighting irregular forces, like the rebel militias, in urban areas populated by civilians.”
Yes, I've already set forth all my arguments on this already, Paul.
My theory is that American foreign policy is mostly driven by fear. Sometimes this fear is somewhat rational, often it is an irrational overreaction. The thing they're afraid of (state vs terror) changes the dynamics of how the fear plays out (i.e., it changes what happens in the case of overreaction).
Afghanistan is obviously (it seems to me) a war to try to eliminate safe havens for terrorists. Whether it is causing more harm than good at this point is a worthwhile question to ask. However, that is, I believe, the main motive.
I believe the reason for the Libya conflict is we want to support the "Arab spring hoo-ha" because it is in our national security interest for Arab nations to be more democratic, because it tends to tamp down Islamic extremism as an alternative to Islamic dictators. Occupying Libya would not only totally undermine this, but would engender so much resentment and hatred that it would be 10x worse than letting Qaddafi brutalize his own people and regain power (from the point of view of US national security). This is why it is not in our national interest to do so.
Of course, the 2003 Iraq war also wasn't in our national interest, but that's because neocons are stupid. They thought the advantages of forcefully imposing democracy would outweigh the negative impact of occupying Iraq. I think that is totally absurd. In the case of Libya, we're hoping an internal uprising will succeed in creating a stable democratic state, and we hope that by aiding the rebels we'll engender enough goodwill that this state will be reasonably friendly to us. Occupation force would totally undo this, for obvious reasons: the rebels themselves have said they do not want us to occupy Libya, for one thing. The Arab League is against it, and so on. It would be idiotic to go against that, for national security reasons.
Zero, I totally spanked you for using the phrase "humanitarian interest in Afghanistan", which is a tell on how you are thinking. To you our "national interest" and "humanitarian interest" are the same. This shows that you have internalized USG propaganda.
Or, closer to the point: even though I indicated what in my opinion would have been a far superior strategy for dealing the the remnants of the Taliban in Afghanistan (namely, to withdraw all ground forces and let the natives fight it out with only USG air support against Taliban, if necessary), you don't even notice it. I suggest that you think that way because those are the only two options the media and USG discuss. To you, there are only two options: (a) complete and total withdrawal, and (b) "nation building". But there were and still are many other possible strategies. I indicated one: let the civil war play out to find out who is the strongest and nastiest warlord, intervening only to ensure it isn't the Taliban. Another would be to establish a colonial regime in Afghanistan. Both of these would have worked, if they could have been tried. "Worked" meaning they'd have resulted in a regime that would not be the Taliban, thus making Americans feel safe from the Taliban. But of course neither could be tried, because they aren't even on the radar -- good progressives and NYT columnists can't even think of them -- because they aren't humanitarian. (You are a good progressive.)
So we have three "inhuman" strategies -- total withdrawal, almost total withdrawal, and colonialism. We have one humane strategy: "nation building". The one picked was, no surprise, yours: the humanitarian one. It is based on the idea that we can get people to love us even though we are utterly alien to them, occupying their country and bombing them. (Plus, you know, perpetrating the occasional atrocity against them.) This strategy is, strangely, the only ineffective one. Curious, that.
Leonard, you are completely misreading my argument. Of course our national interest and humanitarian interests are not the same. I've been saying they're not the same, over and over again. You then simply assert I think they're the same, which is directly in contradiction to pretty much everything I've been arguing.
>let the civil war play out
I'm not necessarily agreeing with the strategy being used there, but I think your proposal would not have worked. At the time the Taliban were defeated the Afghan government had no national armed forces to speak of. There were local militias under the control of local warlords, but the Army was more or less nonexistent. Local warlords had little incentive to go after the Taliban in the south, far from their territories. You can't hold territory with air support alone, obviously.
So the idea is, you have to have a ground force. Ideally, it's an Afghan force. We're supposed to be there until the Afghans can do it themselves, and then we pull out. In reality, the whole strategy seems to be going not so well.
But keep in mind here we're not talking about optimal strategy. I'm open to the argument that our being there is doing more harm than good at this point. I'm merely arguing that this is the rationale for the occupation, and that the rationale is based on fear of terrorism. You seem to think we want to be there for the good of the Afghans, which just seems ludicrous.
Sooooo, let's go back to 1:33 -- "it comes down to an empirical question: is any given intervention actually going to reduce or increase human suffering in the long term?"
Empirical? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
I would love to see your empirical study demonstrating the net difference in measured human suffering between hypothetical non-intervention scenario A and hypothetical intervention scenario B. Or maybe not.
But is it possible you're basing your analysis on historical precedent?
2:51 -- "I'd argue that it is debatable whether or not the Kosovo intervention increased human suffering (over the long term), and that's currently the only example of a war that really meets the criteria I set out above."
Hmm, so historical precedent is less than convincing too? Well, fuck me!
A question can be empirical even when there isn't yet enough evidence to settle the question. Your view might be that if we cannot be certain based on prior evidence, we should never intervene, and I argue that this is not a neutral question when inaction can lead to mass death as well.
Synthetic Zero, how many utils does a killed civilian subtract from the net sum of human happiness? How about a killed government soldier? A rebel? How many utils for a rape? And how can we translate physical damage into utils? Also, how many positive utils does "regime change" produce? An election?
My personal estimate is that Obama's Libyan war is going to cost a total of 10,380,002 utils. That is why I oppose it. (There are error bars of +- 20 million.)
Your comment implies that you don't care if people die because you did nothing, because you'd rather not try to balance the costs of action versus inaction. And I think that's a cop out.
Oh I care! That "inaction versus action" distinction is completely immaterial to a good utilitarian. Dead civilians cost 1,982 utils, regardless of who killed them or how they die. (It must be pro-rated according to age, as I am sure you know, but that's too much detail for a blog comment.)
(Note that I'm not saying people opposed to this intervention don't care about the people who might die. I'm simply saying that ridiculing the idea of even trying to weigh the costs of the choices implies you think inaction is always morally defensible no matter the cost.)
I'm not a utilitarian. I'm opposed in general to thinking which assumes you can decide the best action just by looking at the surface of the problem. Utilitarians think you can assign utility value to things, which is just one step slightly more sophisticated than looking at the surface (i.e. "bombs can't save lives").
In this case like every other, I think the best course of action has to come from a complex assessment of the whole situation, using human judgement. There's no set of hard and fast rules you can use, like some sort of computer program or game. But, you can put forward principles, rules of thumb, etc., i.e., don't intervene if it seems likely there's a non-violent alternative that will work. How to determine this? Not by any kind of simple cookie cutter rule.
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whee
Maybe he meant he'd die for the invasion in, you know, the Elizabethan sense.
I want all of you to note the power that one person has to monopolize a "thing".
SZ - If Japan could build a seawall out of your obstinance, they would never again have to fear another tsunami..
Conversely, good job. I hope you get a promotion
They're paying me in Mentos
They're laced with amphetamines.
A question can be empirical even when . . . Your view might be . . .
My view is that you're kind of an idiot and haven't presented a coherent argument (and seem to get off on having this demonstrated to you repeatedly). But please don't let the "lack of enough evidence" stop you from attempting to settle the "empirical" question; I'm equally willing to mock your as yet incomplete empirical findings, when presented.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/19312/saturday-night-live-you-mock-me
SZ is a 'honeypot' sent by the CIA to bring down this blog. They know no one who reads this blog can help themselves from trying to crack the riddle that is SZ. So while everyone is trying to get SZ to see the light, their attention is diverted from the rest of IOZ's posts. FUK'N SNAEKS!!!
Actually there's plenty of time to read all the good stuff and come back and take a couple of pot shots and call it a day. It'll keep him occupied copying and pasting.. for about 30 seconds.
Epic
srrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroulsy and ferociously!!!!!1
Zero, you seem to think that there is (can be?) only one rationale for intervention. No. There are always many overlapping rationales and motives.
In the case of Afghanistan, I think the humanitarian motive was most important. "You broke it, you bought it." "Nation building." I think the "we're scared" motive was also present, just significantly less important.
You seem to think we want to be there for the good of the Afghans, which just seems ludicrous.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/keyword/afghanistan
for example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/opinion/stabilizing-afghanistan.html?src=pm
or
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/19/opinion/afghanistan-s-marshall-plan.html?src=pm
You may think it is ludicrous, yet that was the most salient motive for progressives, and also I think for the Bush regime. (Fear may have been the most salient motive for the mouthbreathing right, but who takes them seriously?)
Zero, here's another interesting quote, from April 2002:
We are failing in Afghanistan: we ought to be providing far more security and support for democratic processes there. Yet again we're making the same mistake: thinking that it is merely a matter of morality to help the Afghans --- it is a matter of morality, but it is also needed for our own long-term security.
The author says that USG is not doing enough in Afghanistan, because it is motivated by "morality" (humanitarianism), and insufficiently motivated by "security". Thus, this analyst supports my view of things, not yours.
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