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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: miraje who wrote (5386)2/27/2003 11:35:55 PM
From: Wildstar  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 13056
 
It won't end with Iraq

samizdata.net

Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Brian Micklethwait (London)International affairs|
It won't end with Iraq

This Iraq business. Every few weeks I sit down and try to write something short and sweet on the subject and it soon grows long and ugly. Yesterday I did it again. Today I'll try it yet again. (And hurrah! Here it finally is. But long and ugly, I'm afraid.)

So. Iraq. Blah blah blah, cut cut cut. And then this:

The USA is not just squaring up to Saddam Hussein because he is a big bad threat, although I'm sure that's part of it. It is also going to take out Saddam's Iraq because it is a good place to set about influencing other important places from, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, and because it is takeable. Iraq is nasty, but it is also weak. Saddam Hussein is a monster and is known to be a monster, which makes him weak. Arabs aren't nearly as opposed to the USA taking out Saddam as they would be if it attacked another of their countries, which makes him weak. Even the UN has resolved various things against Saddam over the years. So he's vulnerable as well as threatening. The benefit of taking him out is big, while the cost of taking him out, by the standards of your average piece of conquest is quite low. I mean, imagine if the USA was instead trying to conquer Iran, or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. Nightmare. Couldn't happen.

The point is: USA thinking isn't only about the rights and wrongs of invading Iraq, liberating the Iraqis, and stopping Saddam-bossed or Saddam-assisted future terrorist attacks. They have many other dishes on their menu besides him. The purpose of taking out Saddam is not just to take out Saddam, but to wrench the whole balance of power in the Muslim world into a different state, a state far less helpful to Islamofascist (and other) terrorists.

The key questions are: Will the USA setting up shop right next to the very heart of the Muslim world like this enable it to take out terrorists and terrorist infrastructure more efficaciously than before? Will it persuade potential terrorists that, what with the USA getting so exercised, maybe they'd be better off forgetting about terrorism and becoming accountants and computer consultants? Or will it provoke now reasonably "good" Muslims into becoming terrorists the way they wouldn't have done if the USA had just carried on Clintonising about it all? Presumably President Bush reckons that the answers to those questions add up to a big gain to the USA if they go into Iraq, and although I am definitely open to persuasion about all that, at the moment, for whatever difference it might make, I strongly agree with him.

Asking "Why Iraq?" and "Why not somewhere else?" is like asking "Why France?" and "Why not somewhere else?" in 1944. Lots of reasons, and meanwhile: be patient. They'll get there. Basically, Iraq is the next big step that makes the most sense. But don't confuse taking out Saddam with the endgame of this thing. Oddly enough, in Europe at any rate, it's the opponents of Bush who are now being rather more public about this than Bush's supporters. "It won't end with Iraq", said the protesters last Saturday. They're right.

Tony Blair's problem is that his public support for Bush is based on a diminished idea of what Bush is up to, which comes over as dishonest because it is. But, if Blair were publicly to support what Bush is really up to, that would be honest, but very probably even more unpopular, especially with his own Party, than what he is saying now. A lot – and I mean a lot – of British people think that the USA is quite assertive enough in the world now, thank you very much, without it getting an order of magnitude more assertive. I hope Americans realise what a public pickle Blair is getting himself into over this.

Meanwhile, whatever Blair or the Brits or the French or the Timbuktooans might say or think, the USA plan is to take Iraq, and following that, over the next few years, to make itself a lot safer than now from terrorist attacks by (a) chasing terrorists, absolutely everywhere on the planet, and by (b) putting whatever pressure is necessary on any government anywhere which is now not chasing terrorists to switch to chasing terrorists with comparable zeal to the USA, thereby making the USA, and the West and the World in general, massively safer from terrorist attack than we all are now. And if that also makes the USA a whole lot more of a force in the world even than it is now, well, the Americans can live with that.

Ah, the irony of it. The idea of 9/11 was that it would bring the Great Satan to its knees. Now it looks as if this attack, breaking the Machiavelli rule that if you attack your enemy you had better be in a position then to finish him off, is actually going to result in the Great Satan becoming a lot stronger. By launching that astonishing assault, the Islamofascists have turned the world into a place that the USA now feels it has to control far more completely than it ever has before, in sheer self defence, and in particular it has turned the Muslim world into something that the USA is now determined to plunged into the middle of and severely re-arrange.

I know, I know. Is what the USA is doing right? Well maybe it is and maybe it isn't. But me? - I sympathise with the USA. If I'm right about what it's doing and why, well, I think it all makes perfect sense. Plus, frankly, in situations like this, I'm far more interested simply in trying to work out what is happening than I am to inform the world of what ought, in my opinion, to be happening instead if I do not approve.

One final point, which strongly tilts me towards the USA in all this.

The USA is now powerful enough to influence large tracts of the world in a big way, provided it does mostly nice things (like squash terrorism, spread capitalism and spread democracy) and that will be mostly very good news for the world, in my opinion, even for most of the people who will never admit this. And the USA may also be stupid enough to do serious damage to itself in the process. War is the health of the state, etc. But what the USA is not capable of doing, now or for the foreseeable future, is to tyrannise over the world. The USA can't, in other words, do to the world what Saddan Hussein and his cronies have been doing to Iraq for the last two decades, whatever the USA's enemies now say. The USA is simply not constituted to do such a thing. It's not in its nature, flawed though that may be. It doesn't have either the will or the power to do this. Had the old USSR ever had the power of the current USA, who knows what it might have done, and how many more millions it might have slaughtered in the process? But the USA, no.

If the USA had two billion people in it and an economy twice its present size and growing really fast, and if all its internal checks and balances had either been castrated out of it by a succession of Julius Caesars (and there are some who say that exactly this last bit has already happened or will shortly happen) or else if the USA had never had any checks and balances in the first place – instead of a mere three hundred million (??) people and an economy chugging along okay, and a Constitution and a democratic political tradition that still counts (in my opinion) for a hell of a lot – then I wonder what I would think about the USA hegemonising in all directions the way it is now doing? Power corrupts, and absolute power, … etc. With a USA like that, I might regard even the occasional serious terrorist stunt in places like my own London SW1, even with WMDs, as a price worth paying to avoid such a world.

But as it is: go Uncle Sam. And then keep on going. Just don't fuck up.



To: miraje who wrote (5386)4/2/2003 2:21:28 PM
From: Ron  Respond to of 13056
 
This is it; I've had it, I quit, no more. I've rearranged my thoughts and they have decided I'm never voting again. It only encourages politicians. It's like feeding French fries (oops, sorry, Freedom fries) to one of those obnoxious yappy little dogs; if you feed them they're going to keep begging, and if you quit they growl and give you dirty looks and tell you all the awful things that are going to happen to you... but never do. My response: the same as in the movie Something About Mary when Ben Stiller ducked and the family-jewels-chompin' dog flew out the window and then found he had several vertical stories to travel down to the hard, hard horizontal ground.

I voted for Dubya even thought I had serious reservations about the rather simian cast to his inbred head. The whole family appears to have been pithed and is now retro-evolving right before my eyes, which is good, because in a few dozen years they'll all be harmless amoebas, although with narrow, rudimentary heads and squinty eyes. Then they can sit on their tiny little microscopic couches with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other, and curse at whatever episode of Spongebob Squareturban they wish.

I cringe every time Dubya squints his eyes and wrinkles his forehead like he's giving birth to thoughts that are really hurting him as they shoot down his brain-canal. Is that what foreigners really think Americans are? A bunch of gooneybirds flying over to the Middle East and whacking hornet's nests?

Dubya looks as if he could be one of the bit actors on Planet of the Apes, only with the minimum amount of makeup. At first he appeared to be just an amiable, aimless sort of guy, with a puzzled expression that reminded me of an organ-grinder's monkey who vaguely knew something was wrong, but hadn't yet realized someone has stolen his cap. If it hadn't been for the war, I believe Bush would have been a happily mediocre President, pushing though a tax cut that would give me enough money to make one-and-one-third car payments. And that's for a Chevy Cavalier, which is sort of a glorified go-cart. Now Dubya's turned into a self-appointed Prophet of God.

When someone talks to God it's called prayer. But what's it called when the President of the United States thinks God talks to him? I don't have a punch line because it would have to be a joke to have a punch line.

My vote wasn't so much for Dubya as it was against the Gorebot, whom I truly believe to be a one-foot-over-the-line-and-the-other-slipping, not-quite-certifiable lunatic trapped inside a mutant version of Pinocchio. Gore is a perfect example of what the word "preposterous" really means: having your front where you back should be. It shows where Gore's head is located as a permanent fixture. Let's just say he can't sit down without smushing his nose. Just as bad, he appears to have been born with his brain not only put in backwards, but also upside down. Unless some wiseguy-joker aliens did it, and that wouldn't surprise me at all.

I knew there was only about .00000000001% of a chance my vote would make any difference, but who knows? The election could have been a draw, and my vote could have been the one that tipped it! It's one of those fantasies I have, like winning the lottery or being the star of Revenge of the Nerds, Part III.

Now, I've decided I'm never going to vote again. Since the State is a vast, disorganized criminal enterprise, I've decided the only people who make it to the top are A) criminals, and B) clueless knuckleheads who the criminals put up to be President. These are the kinds of people with whom I certainly don't want to share a Kodak moment. Why should I encourage criminals by voting for them?

Bah, I'd rather be ruled by the Mafia. Even if Marlon "Mumbles" Brando did have tissue stuffed in his mouth in The Godfather I'd still rather deal with him than Dubya or the Gorebot. Or Hillbillyboy and his big-booty Satan-girl wife. Ah, decision, decisions. It's like choosing between thumbscrews and a cattle prod.

I've decided politics is a rat-race. The problem with it is that whoever wins is still a rat. Even if the rats do wear suits and ties.

If the only choices I have are John Dillinger or Bugsy Siegel – or Mortimer Snerd or Alfred E. Newman – why should I vote for any of them? From now on, I'm going to assume all politicians have cooties. No, wait – they are cooties. I'd like to stuff nearly all of them into a spaceship and shoot them to a planet where they would be treated like the Zanti Misfits in the original Outer Limits. You remember the one – the episode about the big ants with human faces? Where people were stomping on them with their size-12 Army boots?

I used to say that the only people worse than politicians were child molesters. I've decided politicians are worse. They harm hundreds of millions more people. Child molesters are immoral and illegal; politicians are immoral but unfortunately still legal. I keep having all these weird thoughts, like God was really hung over when he created politicians. And then the next day He goes, "Oh, Man...did I really do that?"

As for the difference between child molesters and the leftist, chickenhawk, armchair-general warmongers known as neocons, child molesters at least have equipment that the neocons lack, which accounts for the cowardice that compels neocons to stand on the sidelines and babble worthless advice while others fight and die ("Okay, now throw the ball here. Now, throw it over there."). These are the kind of sleep-walking weenies who could accidentally destroy the earth, then say, "Uh, sorry...I didn't mean for that to happen." That wouldn't be good, because the earth is where I keep all my stuff.

I have ceased watching news or talking-head programs on TV, because every time I did this is what happened: "(Expletive)! (Semi-Blasphemous Expletive)! (Physically Impossible Self-Referential Expletive)!"

I've decided that the State is much like a runaway train with no brakes. Sooner or later it's going to crash. For example, the ancient Greeks noticed that republics turn into democracies, democracies turn into tyrannies, and tyrannies turn into monarchies. Right now, we appear to be in between democracy and tyranny. I plan on hiding if this happens, and if it does happen, will pass the time doing something useful, like turning a canoe into a grandfather clock, a trick I learned from the "Red Green Show."

Whenever politicians start bursting with ideas, the country always suffers. Is that phrase in the Bible? It should be. And now we've got the neocons coming up with what they think are completely foolproof plans to conquer a double-digit percentage of the world. They are clueless to the fact that complete fools (which is what they are) cannot come up with completely foolproof plans. And they have no idea of the ingenuity of the complete fools they are attempting to conquer! As Yogi Berri said, "It ain't over till it's over, baby." And apparently this war isn't going to be over for a long time.

The people supporting the plans for an American global policeman – an American Empire – are a big ugly Critters-like mass of self-deception, hubris, and blindness. Tell them they're wrong, and they won't believe it. Prove them wrong, and they still won't believe it. It's like trying to talk to one of those stuffed, mummified cats under glass at an Egyptian exhibition at the museum ("Sorry, but my brain was removed 2500 years ago.").

They think they can violate Natural Law and change the cultures of other countries through mass murder, mass destruction and mass theft. They think the invaded aren't going to fight back and instead welcome us with open arms as liberators? ("Yeah, I know, you killed my family, but, ah, what the heck, it was an attempt to free them from tyranny.") Violating Natural Law and saying "It's for a good reason" is the same as someone religious thinking they can bribe God. ("Ah, come on, it's for a really noble cause. Hey, now wait just a minute!" ZZZZOTZ!)

Our "government" is getting way too big. That's what always happens when States follow the Empire route (which is the Road to Hell. And that's not a movie with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.). And it doesn't even matter anymore who you vote for. The State just keeps getting bigger and badder. And what happens with the big, bad State? Well, in 300 BC Mencius wrote, "When good government prevails men of little worth submit to men of great worth. When bad government prevails men of little power submit to men of great power."

Or, if you want to take a hop over to ancient Greece, this is what Dionysius of Halicarnassus said in 20 BC: "A good government produces citizens distinguished for courage, love of justice, and every other good quality; a bad government makes them cowardly, rapacious, and the slave of every foul desire." Hey, William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Perle, don't you try to run! Smack.

Speaking of smack – as in smackdown – the story is that Norman Podhoretz once cornered Jackie Kennedy and professed his infatuation to her. If you've ever seen Podhoretz you'll realize he wasn't beat with the Ugly Stick – he is the Ugly Stick. Apparently she fixed him with the icy eyeball, and like a pin through a bug, skewered him and put permanent holes into his deluded self- importance with, "Mr. Podhoretz, exactly who do you think you are?" I'm going to have to think of a new word to describe people like Podhoretz – gork, maybe. A combination of "dork" and "geek." Soon after Podhoretz was involuntarily enlightened with the truth about himself, he begins his trek to the right, only taking his leftist baggage with him. What next? Maybe William Kristol thinking he has a chance with Julia Roberts? He wouldn't stand a chance with Rosanne Barr. He was, after all, beat with the Norman Podhoretz Stick.

Oh, yeah, this is just great. We're now being ruled by the tribe of monkeys that Rudyard Kipling called the Bander-Log. Every once in a while they got together, shook the treetops and yelled, "We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the Jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true!" And of course reality falls right into place if you just yell at it long and loud enough.

Dang it, I should be King. I'd follow the wisdom of what King James I said in 1620: "I will govern according to the common weal, but not according to the common will." Democracy – ugh. Democracy's what put Clinton and Bush into office, and almost saddled us with Gore.

My being King might just happen some day. It's on my list, although pretty far down. Way far down, actually. The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes said it best: "God put me on Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die."

But voting? Forget it. From now on I'll give the answer that the cowardly, warmongering chicken-hawk armchair-warrior Dick Cheney gave when asked why he avoided military service during Vietnam (with four deferments!): "I had other priorities."
by Bob Wallace
lewrockwell.com