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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (12297)	2/16/2006 3:48:56 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 543652

Here's a thought - if we weren't fighting them there and devoted a fraction of the same money and resources to keeping them out of here, it's a win-win all around except for the Iraqi people suffering under Hussein, which is not our problem intrinsically anyway, given how we let other populations suffer and do nothing in most cases.

To: Lane3 who wrote (12297)	2/16/2006 3:52:14 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543652

but that doesn't morally elevate the "so that we don't have to fight them there" argument. The main argument could be so we don't have to fight them here, and that argument can be made in the context of conflict with the terrorists and our local allies that is already going on there. If you decide not to fight them there it doesn't mean that the fight there goes away, it just means your local allies are more likely to lose. This wouldn't work much as a justification for invading Iraq in the first place, but it would work as a justification for staying there now. I was trying to think of an analogy. For some reason I came up with a Middle Earth analogy. Rohan was Gondor's ally. In the Lord of the Rings they were both attacked and too busy to help each other, but lets say Sauroman never went bad and Rohan wasn't under attack at the same time as Mordor's forces where moving on Gondor. Now imagine that some in Rohan say "why should we die for Gondor?". The first response might be "They are are allies, we have an obligation."; but suppose that doesn't work. A reasonable argument would be "If we don't fight Sauron's forces in Gondor, we will certainly have to fight them here, and without Gondor's help." Perhaps this is not a justification for Iraq's invasion (or is one that is somewhat morally questionable), because we did after all invade Iraq. We were not responding to the current Iraqi government being under threat, the current Iraqi government didn't exist. But it does work as a justification for staying there now (not definitely a sufficient justification, but not an unreasonable, or morally dubious one). There are of course major differences between the analogy and the real world situation. Most note-ably that Mordor presented and existential threat to the rest of Middle Earth while Al Qaeda, or other terrorist or insurgent groups do not present an existential threat to the US (at least not an obvious or immediate one, and probably not even a hidden longer term existential threat). But the analogy holds for the limited purposes of explaining my point, if not for much beyond that. Tim