DSW

Or was that not your point?

P.S. Kvetch: you’ve long since demonstrated that your notion of intelligence is entirely a matter of angry ideology. So, right back at you, tough guy: no point wasting my time.

First, I wish you wouldn’t bother. The war in Iraq has made us all patently less safe.

Second, I’m a citizen of this country. With all due respect, my only response to “kindly keep the hell out of our way” is a hearty, Dick-Cheney-approved Go Fuck Yourself.

[I won’t even get into the question of people like abb1 and myself expressing our opinions constitutes “getting in the way” of your lovely war. Frankly, I don’t want to know.]

“To have continued the operation would have been a fundamental mistake. To go to Baghdad to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime would have put us in a very, very murky area…Presumably, you’d have to install a new government. Would it have been Kurdish, Shiite, Moslem? How long would you have to stay to get it propped up? How would it be perceived by the Iraqis? How long would it last once we left? All these are questions which led us to conclude it was very important not to get involved with that.”

Are you kidding me?

A few years ago, the notion that violent thugs will concede to any argument other than overwhelming force directed at them personally smelled exactly as it does today: like horse pucky of the very first water.

It isn’t about trying to fix a radio with a hammer, abb1. It’s about putting down a dangerous maniac with a hammer. Until you can get your metaphors straight, perhaps you’d be better off using plain English.

Nobody’s asking you to compromise your delicate sensibilities by taking up arms and manning the ramparts with the rest of us bloodthirsty knuckle-draggers. We’re just asking you kindly to keep the hell out of our way while we protect our own families and way of life… and, incidentally, yours.

You’re very welcome.

These things are as likely to be prevented by force as gang violence in LA by more SWAT teams.

This idea that force is some sort of panacea against bad behavior is an odd utopian concept. You’d have to believe that, say, Mr. Karimov and his government are some kind of evil creatures whose only goal is to inflict suffering on ‘their people’. In fact, it’s nothing like that; there are real economic, religios, ethnic, political, cultural and other reasons for these people to act the way they do, just like there are reasons for the LA gangs to exist. That’s why force is not likely to solve anything, you can’t fix a radio with a hammer.

These things seemed obvious to almost anyone until just a few years ago, I don’t know what’s happened…

Well, yeah. But since the international community does not in fact use force reliably, soft power does not in fact work well against genocide.

Which is a large portion of my point.

When a nation is invaded and occupied, it’s not analogous to a goon trying to beat you up; it’s analogous to a goon trying to enslave or kill you. You’re quite justified in using a knife or a gun or anything else, but I don’t think it’s your moral obligation; if you prefer to lose your sovereignty and become a slave (perhaps in exchange for money, like, say, American Samoa) that’s your choice. Few do, though.

Kragen, according to relevant UN GA resolutions, they pretty much have a right to resist by any and all means at their disposal…When you acknowledge fundamental right to self-defense, you don’t advocate violence, correct?

I wasn’t asking what the UN advocated, or what you thought I might advocate; I was asking what you advocated, because your original post seemed self-contradictory, but it was too vague to be sure. In the followup quoted above, you’re no less vague. So I will ask again, at much greater length in case my previous post was unclear. Do you hold the position that people living under foreign domination have the right to resist by means including the use of force against the agents of this foreign domination? If so, do you also hold the position that they should exercise this right?

To answer the question you have posed to me, acknowledging a right for someone to do something is advocating the position that they do not have a moral obligation not to do something, but it does not necessarily entail a belief that they have a moral obligation to do it. For example, a person who acknowledges a fundamental right to self-defense by means of violence may believe that such self-defense is permissible but not required. So that is one possible way to “acknowledge a fundamental right to self-defense” without “advocating violence”—by arguing that violence is permissible but not required.

People mean many different things by “self-defense,” and not all of them are violent. For example, fleeing, looking confident, bribing an attacker, verbal arguing, and deception are nonviolent methods of self-defense. A person could actively advocate these kinds of self-defense without advocating violence.

But in the common case—- where “acknowledging a fundamental right to self-defense” means arguing that if you are attacked, you have not only a right but a responsibility to engage in violence against your attacker in order to protect yourself, at least under some circumstances, it self-evidently constitutes advocacy of violence. For example, if a goon is trying to break into my house to beat me up, and I have a knife, and you tell me that I should use the knife to cut the goon in order to avoid being beaten up, that is clearly advocacy of violence; cutting the goon with the knife is an act of violence, which may or may not be justified for reasons of self-defense.

Do you mean “advocate violence” in some sense that does not include arguing in favor of cutting the goon in the above scenario?

This is basically a case of self-defense against an existential threat, only on the national level.

When you acknowledge fundamental right to self-defense, you don’t advocate violence, correct?

I agree that interventions have been very arbitrary and selective. UN Veto holders and the UN’s general inertia have seen to that. Still it is the agency that should coordinate such efforts.

I believe that if the international community had intervened more robustly in the past then there would be less need for more interventions now. If the thugs knew the international community would take action more reliably then soft power would work better.

Interferance is selective and it always appeals to decency, but there is a blatant cynical game in these heart rending outbursts over Kosovo or Iraq. Not that I doubt the accuracy of the matter, but ALMOST EVERYONE who makes these appeals as though it is some moral duty to do something about some revealed pain is immoral, they have ignored all the rest and now suddenly when it is in their interests to feel compassion they accuse those who don’t share their interests of inhumanity.

As for central Asia. Uzbekisatn is a member of SCO (Shangahai Coopperative Organization) which includes Russia, China and 3 other central Asian nations and very likely will soon include Iran. This area seems to be passing out of our sphere of interests. Hopefully as the powerful client states evolve, they will pressure for more humanity as the Us and Europe have done imperfectly with their allies. Various pressures on the bigger players may also have effect, but essentially it is more brutality in a brutal region.

The United States is losing it’s game around there. We’ve handed a good chunk of Iraq to Iran and Iran is having the nerve to institute an oil bourse next year which may succeed in taking a bit of the trade, weakening Bretton Woods 2 and opening up other commodities for trade in currencies besides the dollar.