saddam is the bravest leader of all

[IdleRich]

"Did the US really make the moral case for war? As I remember it they focused very heavily on WMDs and it was only afterward that I heard arguments in favour of intervention based on human rights and the like."

Well, I kind of thought that they did and that all of those things you mention were part of an over all case that the morally right thing to do was invade. They thought it was the "right" thing to do and I assume that that means they thought it was the morally right thing to do. I actually thought that you were saying that they had indeed made a moral case rather than argued through expediency. In fact you are saying that there is a moral case that the US did not make - I wonder then, does this make their actions ok?

"I think that the EU is a worse culprit, being unable or unwilling to enforce decisions or support its allies, and standing idle because its own interests are threatened."

Of course many of the EU countries have been just as bad over the years. It just pisses me off really, all of the countries pick and choose when they are going to obey international law and when they aren't. Not much more to say about that really is there?

"Unfortunately international law is going to be very very difficult to improve, since you're talking not about changing the law, but the structrue of the UN."

Again, agreed. But why can't we change the structure of the UN? It will almost certainly have to change in the near future to admit more countries but I'm with you in that there should be a more fundamental change. The veto system has always struck me as very strange, I can't imagine anyone thinking that the best way to set up any type of body is to allow any single member the power to block any measure.

 

[crackerjack]

I can't imagine anyone thinking that the best way to set up any type of body is to allow any single member the power to block any measure.

But sadly the UN is only as powerful as the countries supporting it and the superpowers aren't going to do anything that cedes real power to a body they can't control. That is why the most powerful get the veto - otherwise they'd have left it long since. It ain't right, but it ain't gonna change.
btw, when you say "admit more countries" you presumably mean onto the security council. I don't know if the 5 permanent members would allow anyone else to join their little club, except perhaps India (which would piss Pakistan off no end). Brazil might want in too.

 

[IdleRich]

"btw, when you say "admit more countries" you presumably mean onto the security council. I don't know if the 5 permanent members would allow anyone else to join their little club, except perhaps India (which would piss Pakistan off no end). Brazil might want in too"

I thought that there was a real chance that at least one of India, China or Brazil would become permanent members in the relatively near future. I must admit I don't know much about this and I could well be wrong. More to the point I accept that there is a need for a far more fundamental reform than just adding a couple of countries and I also accept that there is very little chance of this happening.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I thought China was already a permanent member?
I was under the impression there were five: US, UK, France, China, USSR/Russia. The five 'old school' nuclear powers.

Edit: yup, China is too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_security_council#Permanent_members

Incidentally, as an adendum to the India/Pakistan rivalry thing, did you know one of the Indin nuclear tests was called 'Smiling Buddha'? I mean, sheesh, even the 'Merkins didn't have the gall to call any of their bombs 'Baby Jebus'...

 

[crackerjack]

china are already in (it's UK< US, France, Russia and China). What you say about India and Brazil rings a bell (not just from my previous post!), and perhaps Japan too. Like you, I'm not up on this and either wway i'm sceptical about the effect it will have.

 

[IdleRich]

Oh yeah. Whoops.
More up than me I guess...

 

[matt b]

Of course many of the EU countries have been just as bad over the years.

not quite:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2828985.stm


with regard to rwanda, i don't think anyone involved can look back with pride (namely the UN, belgium, france and the US):

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=5296

totally agreed on the 'picking and choosing' point

 

[craner]

with regard to rwanda, i don't think anyone involved can look back with pride (namely the UN, belgium, france and the US):

True enough, though I would say that France deserve more blame than anybody bar the actual genocidaires and their leaders. Followed by the Egyptians actually, which is something nobody mentions.

Followed, then, by the UN. And Belgium.

Then the US and others.

There's a pyramid of complicity and culpability in this case, very definitely.

 

[vimothy]

not quite:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2828985.stm


with regard to rwanda, i don't think anyone involved can look back with pride (namely the UN, belgium, france and the US):

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=5296

totally agreed on the 'picking and choosing' point

Actually, I don't think anyone need be as ashamed as France.

Check this out for complete and utter vileness (and note the picture of Hutus carrying banners saying "France" and "Operation Turquiose" at the top of the page):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,,1987596,00.html

When the genocide started, Paris made no secret of where its loyalties lay. The French military flew in ammunition for government forces and, in the following weeks, a stream of Hutu officials travelled to Paris, including Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, who was later convicted of genocide by the international tribunal, for meetings with President François Mitterrand and the French prime minister. Even as the mass graves filled across Rwanda, Paris engineered the delivery of millions of dollars' worth of weapons to the Hutu regime from Egypt and South Africa.

Africa has traditionally been considered such a special case in Paris that France's policy is run out of the presidency. At the time, the "Africa cell" was headed by Mitterrand's son, Jean-Christophe, a close friend of the Habyarimanas. He later said that there could not have been a genocide because "Africans are not that organised". France's president did not deny what had happened, but took a view no less racist: "In such countries, genocide is not too important."

France immediately sent troops and weapons to defend Habyarimana's regime. Politicians and the military top brass cast the conflict as between Francophone Hutus and invading Anglo-Saxon Tutsis - though 15% of Rwanda's population were Tutsis who had not left the country. Some in the French military talked of the RPF as wanting to destroy the Hutus, calling the rebels the "Black Khmers". Despite the growing evidence of a genocide in the making during the early 1990s, and the excesses of Habyarimana's regime in assassinating opponents and organising periodic massacres of Tutsi civilians, France's support did not waver.

Even as the Hutu government was facing collapse in the last phase of the genocide, and no one doubted that there had been a slaughter of Tutsis, France was trying to save the failing regime by sending troops to carve out a "safe zone" in the western parts of Rwanda still under Hutu control. "Operation Turquoise" was billed as an intervention "to stop the massacres and to protect the populations threatened with extermination". But, as the Rwandan commission into French actions has been hearing, the zone proved to be safe for the Hutu Interahamwe to carry on murdering and to protect the extremist government from capture and trial by the RPF. The killers understood this. At the roadblocks, they cheered the first French troops to arrive. Later, General Jean-Claude Lafourcade, commander of Operation Turquoise, admitted that the safe zone was intended to keep alive the Hutu government in the hope that it would deny the RPF total victory and international recognition as the rulers of Rwanda. It was also an opportunity for France to help leading members of the regime to flee. Other killers made their own way to France knowing they would find protection from justice.

[Props to Hyperstition for the link]

 

[craner]

Two good books, this one and this one.

Vis a vis the topic of this thread, you could always start talking about Mitterand, Chirac & Saddam, another secret history that rather diminishes "Rumsfeld sold Saddam chemical weapons" and other lies and distortions.

 

[vimothy]

Oliver, thanks for the two articles. Kegan/Keane plan looks solid (still haven't read the full thing yet). Didn't realise that Petraeus was responsible for the new COIN manual, which is excellent, but it's good to know that the Americans are finally getting sorted.

 

[vimothy]

Well, I kind of thought that they did and that all of those things you mention were part of an over all case that the morally right thing to do was invade. They thought it was the "right" thing to do and I assume that that means they thought it was the morally right thing to do. I actually thought that you were saying that they had indeed made a moral case rather than argued through expediency. In fact you are saying that there is a moral case that the US did not make - I wonder then, does this make their actions ok?

I take the "moral case" to be separate from the WMD case as was made and which was based on fear and self-interest (i.e. that they might attack us). There is a massive literature by now of people who've made much better arguments in favour of Saddam's removal.

I never said that the US government had made a moral case for the liberation of Iraq, merely that one could be made (and this became my argument with Matt b). Blatantly they should have done a lot better, and they should be doing a lot better explaining the WoT in general - we can't afford to lose against Salafism, for everyone's sake, including (perhaps especially) the Muslim Middle East.

And for what it's worth, I support the US intervention for my own reasons, not because I'm convinced about WMDs (though I have no doubt that at least some within the Administration share similar views, despite all the pre-war realpolitik).

 

[IdleRich]

"I take the "moral case" to be separate from the WMD case as was made and which was based on fear and self-interest (i.e. that they might attack us)."

You could argue that the US believed (or claimed to believe) that they had a moral duty to protect their citizens and the rest of the world from the WMD.

"I never said that the US government had made a moral case for the liberation of Iraq, merely that one could be made (and this became my argument with Matt b)."

Fair enough. You were in favour of intervention and you provided that quote that seemed to be a fairly good description of US behaviour in the way they had said that they could override an "unreasonable" veto - presumably because they had right on their side (as I have described above). I therefore took you to be saying that you believed that the US had acted in accordance with the doctrine of moral rightness superseding international law and were in favour of them doing so.
Rather, you were saying that moral rightness can supersede international law (and would have done in this case) but the US did not make that case.
Apologies for misunderstanding you.

 

[Mr. Tea]

You could argue that the US believed (or claimed to believe) that they had a moral duty to protect their citizens and the rest of the world from the WMD.

Having WMDs and having the means to deploy them are two very different things. Even when Blair claimed Saddam could launch missiles at 'British interests' at 45 minutes' notice, he was talking about our military bases in Cyprus, not the UK mainland. No US citizens would have been in danger even if Saddam had had WMDs and the most advanced delivery systems he could feasibly have possessed - it was Israel that would have been the target (as it was in the first Gulf war, with Scud missiles that could easily have been fitted with chemical warheads).

 

[crackerjack]

new poll data:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/19_03_07_iraqpollnew.pdf

in the interests of fairness i should say the Sunday Times published a more favourable (to the US) one yesterday, though i can't see a detailed breakdown
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1530762.ece

 

[vimothy]

"One in four Iraqis has had a family member murdered".

What a statistic - just fucking terrible.

Here's hoping the Americans can finally disarm the militias and restore some sort of order to the country.

 

[vimothy]

The poll discussed in the Times piece can be found here:

http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=67

 

[adruu]

As if this sort of bloodshed and violence wasn't predictable post-Saddam.

From a purely technocratic standpoint, although saddam and his kids were completely lunatic pieces of shit, there was no way that the Iraqi state could be transformed into a peaceful civil society by anyone, much less a bunch of bungling freemarket will save the world types.

 

[craner]

I'm shocked that people still give any credence to any polls, seeing as they are only determined by what is asked in what context to whom, to state something obvious. The reason? Well, they back up a position, which you adhere to or not. If not, there's always another poll. Polls obfuscate, even if their intention is to elucidate. Hence today, when we have two contradictory polls to argue about. Regardless.

Incidentally, I wonder how you can be so sure about this:

there was no way that the Iraqi state could be transformed into a peaceful civil society by anyone

What is that? Historical realism or prejudice? How can you make that call?

 

[vimothy]

As if this sort of bloodshed and violence wasn't predictable post-Saddam.

From a purely technocratic standpoint, although saddam and his kids were completely lunatic pieces of shit, there was no way that the Iraqi state could be transformed into a peaceful civil society by anyone, much less a bunch of bungling freemarket will save the world types.

How did you predict the violence prior to it occuring? Just a hunch?

Who is in a better position than the leaders of the most powerful state in the world, adruu? The Communist Party?

Why is it such a bad thing to want to improve people's lives in any case?