Whom will they blame this time?

Regarding this comment: “if a government’s policies bring a situation into being in which crazy fanatics take the opportunity to slaughter innocents, a situation that would not otherwise have obtained, then that government is sure as hell implicated.” Absolutely — but let’s try applying that to the current situation. Presumably, Chris, you wouldn’t say that under the Saddam Hussein regime a situation “in which crazy fanatics take the opportunity to slaughter innocents” did not obtain. Under Saddam, said “crazy fanatics” were the government itself, rather than opponents of the government. (Though no doubt some of today’s Iraqi terrorists were yesterday’s government officials.) Your way of describing the situation assumes a peaceful status quo ante bellum that doesn’t fit the Iraqi case; your “would not otherwise have obtained” clause is the problem. The ethics of the case are a hell of a lot more complicated if the status quo ante bellum was a regime that “slaughtered innocents” as a matter of course. Yes, different innocents are being slaughtered, and sometimes by different agents; but the misery and suffering of the Iraqi people as a whole were not “brought into being” by Bush administration policies. The real question is whether the American forces in Iraq are doing enough to prevent or at least limit the murder of innocents. And the answer, if course, is no. But let’s frame the issue properly.

Well said. I am on record as of early 2002 as asking that much greater resources be developed and deployed for the war in Iraq, including the revocation of tax cuts and steps toward a draft or new army divisons thru stepped up recruitment.. I have also, without I think adequate response, asked if the United States is(was) in violation of relevant Hague conventions concerning civilian security during occupation to a degree that in my opinion constitute war crimes. Cites and further argument upon request.

Those who disagree have stated that 100% security was not possible. I ask whether a good faith effort was in evidence, and whether all possible resources were deployed. I think not. I have been told that no further resources were available, a point I dispute. But if adequate resources were unavailable, then the action should not have been initiated.

Gee, I’d like to know who Gene blames for the deaths of these Iraqi children:

The dead bodies of four children are seen at a hospital in Fallujah, Iraq, Thursday Sept. 30, 2004. The children died when the car they were travelling in allegedly came under fire from U.S. forces, whereby the driver lost control and the car fell into a stream near Fallujah, Thursday . Eyewitness Hussein Alwan said that the U.S. military personnel stopped locals from assisting the drowning people, leading to the death of the four children along with two other women travelling in the car. The wounded driver was later rescued. The U.S. military media liason personnel said in Baghdad that they were unaware of any such incident. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

I guess it would be expecting too much to hope that the contributors to Harry’s Place desist from making this kind of heavy-handed point every time something nasty happens in Iraq.

Yes it is too much to expect.

As long as we have to put up with psuedo-leftists in the Guardian every other day expressing support for this resistance then you won’t get me apologising for Harry’s Place pointing out exactly what it is they are backing.

It may indeed be a ‘heavy-handed’ approach but then if you don’t support the resistance it shouldn’t bother you too much.

Hey, he referred to it as “resistance.” Not “insurgency” or “terrorism.” Is he implying that their behavior is legitimate? Does he support them, does he want us to lose?

Why hate you America do?

Well, I wonder what the Iraqis think. I imagine, from news reports, that they think: our rulers for fourteen months prepare a ceremony to which they especially invite kids, and don’t secure the area enough to protect those kids.

And then I would think: these people have to go. It can’t be worse.

A government that compounds illegitimacy with criminal neglect is a government that will fall.

I knew a kid in high school whose parents were religious fundamentalists of an earlier iteration, isolated, almost covert, shades-drawn, their house had an aura like a black hole. He was 15 and beginning to step away from what most of us would call an insane repression of his human instincts and freedoms. There wasn’t anything out there to guide him though, really, just the chaotic turbulence of other adolescents thrown together in school.
They were beating him for infractions. Somewhere it hit the point of no return, and their violence drove him further into the behavior that caused it. He lost. I lost just from watching.
They won, in every sense but the biological one, and even there…
The glee with which many observer/participants watch and comment on the sadistic attempts at the breaking of Arabic/Islamic culture that’s underway now marks them out, but you have to look and listen carefully. Ethnicity plays its part, and taboo.
Car bombs were recently employed by the most innocent of all people in the Middle East, and deceptive sacrifice isn’t alien, even in the Holy Land.
The kidnapping of the two Simonas was a total failure, too obviously an act of dis-information and deceit.
American public support for the empire-building, that Iraq is just one step of, must be maintained at all cost. So maybe a new Beslan, because that worked so well last time. Virtually no one connects Beslan with the natural gas under the Caspian Sea, and who’s financing that extraction?
Darfur, and its oil, is now headed for “independence” from the “Islamist” government of Sudan.
A terrorist is anyone who violently resists submission to the will of empire.

by the way, I would quite like the name and address of the idiot who thought it was a good idea to invite a load of kids for a fun day out at the sewage works.

Harry, you supported an administration whose actions have directly led to the current chaos and death. So while I hold insurgents responsbible, I also hold the administration responsible, and I also hold YOU responsible. When you’re as wrong as you’ve been for as long as you’ve been, you don’t get to cast aspersions any more. So shut the fuck up.

I vote with Roger.

A big problem with all this is that the term “resistance” is being used very loosely.

At its narrowest, it refers only to Zarqawi and other terrorists engaged in kidnappings and bombings. At its broadest it refers to the majority of the Iraqi population who want an immediate end to the occupation. In between, there are groups who are engaged in armed resistance to the occupation but who condemn terror attacks on civilians. It’s silly to lump them all together either to support or condemn.

Insurgencies always involve this kind of confusion to some extent, but Iraq more than most.

Zarqawi – who claimed responsibility for this atrocity – is, of course, linked to Al Quaeda.

Once again, we get Harry’s Place using an attack by the most vicious, sociopathic, horrendous, evil forces… to try and discredit the entire Iraqi armed resistance movement. Sorry, it won’t wash.

Gene specifically indicated that his remark was levelled at those who lionize the “insurgents” (ie. Pilger et. al.). By ignoring this, Chris changes Gene’s meaning.

Well, yes. The most egregious example is that of John Pilger, who said the anti-occupation movement “can’t afford to be choosy” about supporting the resistance. My anger is with those for whom the actual perpetrators are less to blame than the Americans. They remind me of those who blamed the US for provoking the 9/11 attacks. There’s always someone else you can blame for provoking even the most dastardly acts. Just once I would like to see the Pilgers, the Chomskys, the Tariq Alis, place full responsibility for terrorism on terrorists. Full stop.

“The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not “insurgents” or “terrorists” or “The Enemy.” They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win.”

Maybe I’ll repeat that line at the Oscars when my friends at the commanding heights of the global entertainment industry give me the best-picture award for my $100-plus-million-grossing movie “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which you will be able to purchase on DVD surprisingly soon!

Once again, we get Harry’s Place using an attack by the most vicious, sociopathic, horrendous, evil forces… to try and discredit the entire Iraqi armed resistance movement. Sorry, it won’t wash.

Hear, hear.

Moreover, what Bushits’ misguided policies achieved is giving these most vicious, sociopathic, horrendous, evil forces a righteous cause and, consequently, support of the masses. For example, Osama bin Laden’s popularity was at 60% in Pakistan in the last poll I saw; probably higher now. And that’s what this discussion has to be about.

eve garrard – “Do you agree that governments which relax abortion laws are responsible for pro-lifers who take potshots at staff in abortion clinics; that those in South Africa who overthrew apartheid are responsible for the soaring murder rate there”

Huh? how on earth does that compare?

Chris made a comparison with the amnesty on sex offenders scenario, the concept is failing to provide security, failing to contain something, failing to exercise your control of a situation you are supposed to be managing. Failure, out of deliberate intent or incompetence or mismanagement or just having a set of priorities that led to that scenario.

Not “unintended and unrelated consequences of good actions”, as you very slyly turned it around.

Failing to provide security also means leaving the borders open for terrorists to come in from neighbouring countries, failing to capture terrorist leaders when there was the chance to do so, failing to avoid giving terrorists more pretexts to strike, failing to control entire areas you’re supposed to control, etc. If you’re going to do an invasion you’re supposed to do it properly, I don’t see how even supporters of the war can avoid seeing that unless the entire point of interest for them is terrorism as a retro-active justification for war in the first place.

You want everyone to agree with you that the intervention in Iraq was indisputably good and that the rise of terrorism after it is only an accidental unfortunate side-effect with no relation to how the military intervention has been managed initially, ok, let’s stretch that far – but it still doesn’t mean that because terrorists are obviously directly responsible for what they do, the government and military who is supposed to deal with that situation *now* is blameless or unaccountable or uncriticisable. Get out of that either/or trap or at least, don’t put everybody else in it.

“‘Western supporters of the Iraqi “resistance”’ Who the bloody hell are these people supposed to be?”–rea

“As long as we have to put up with psuedo-leftists in the Guardian every other day expressing support for this resistance . . .”–Harry

You note he responds with more of the usual general hand-waving in the direction of the left, not any concrete example of anyone who actually supports such terror tactcs.

Mona, you say ‘ the concept is failing to provide security, failing to contain something, failing to exercise your control of a situation you are supposed to be managing. Failure, out of deliberate intent or incompetence or mismanagement or just having a set of priorities that led to that scenario….Not “unintended and unrelated consequences of good actions”, as you very slyly turned it around.’

So it looks as if you think that governments who fail to control the situation deliberately, or through incompetence, or failure to prioritise anti-fanatical measures, are responsible for what the fanatics do, but not where the fanatical activities are the unintended and unrelated consequences of good actions. That’s still going to leave governments who relax abortion laws as being responsible for the doings of pro-life murderers, since those murders are certainly not unrelated to the relaxation in the law; and similarly with governments who admit immigrants – they’ll be responsible for attacks on immigrants by local fascists, since these attacks are also not unrelated to the immigration policy. This just leaves you with ‘unintended consequences of good actions’ as the conditions in which governments aren’t responsible for fanatical attacks. As I originally argued, this amounts to saying that the Iraq government and its allies aren’t responsible *unless* we’ve already decided that the intervention in Iraq was wrong. You are, however, mistaken in thinking that I’m here arguing that that intervention was right (although I certainly think it was). I’m rather investigating the implications of Chris’s original claim, and Daniel’s development of it, and arguing that the principles they’re drawn to have implications which they may not want to endorse, and that this casts doubt on the plausibility of those claims.

“So it looks as if you think…”

No. It looks like what I wrote, which is not what you’re trying to make me say, which I don’t even understand as I don’t quite follow the twisted logic by which murders of doctors who practice abortion could ever be blamed on a law sanctioning abortion, or murdering immigrants can be blamed on… the existence of immigrants in the first place!

Seriously, what kind of reasoning is that?

You might as well blame murder on the existence of the murdered. If they didn’t exist, they wouldn’t be murdered.

Are you seriously saying that the premise for criticism of the US policy in Iraq is that totally insane?

Also no one said the “governments who fail etc. , *are responsible for what the fanatics do*” – you’ve read repeated reassertions of the obvious, that the responsibility is the terrorists’s, which no one disagrees with, but, in a normal, rational context in which not everything has to be either/or and 100% or 0%, the right to criticising a government’s or military power’s handling of a situation in which terrorists thrive is a simple right to criticise a policy, it’s pathetic to see it as excusing terrorists. In every country people have the right to criticise the army, the police, authorities, intelligence, etc. no matter who they are dealing with. Surely no one would suggest criticising a government’s _failure_ to deal _effectively_ with criminals is… motivated by sympathy or support for said criminals. Jesus. You don’t hear drug traffickers complaining that governments are _failing_ to stop drug trafficking, do you? Why would complaining about policies that fail to prevent or minimise terrorism be about justifying terrorism rather than being genuinely concerned about it?

As I originally argued, this amounts to saying that the Iraq government and its allies aren’t responsible unless we’ve already decided that the intervention in Iraq was wrong.

No. As I originally argued, the criticism of the current policies is largely independent of one’s opinions on the justification for war in the first place.

Shall we go around in circles on that, or can you maybe take it in?

How can the US and the interim government be not responsible for handling the situation in a country they’re running? not even one little bit?

You are, however, mistaken in thinking that I’m here arguing that that intervention was right (although I certainly think it was).

Er, so where would that be mistaken?

But no, I wasn’t even thinking you were arguing that, it was to illustrate that your insisting that in order to criticise the current policy one has to have been against the war from the start is plain wrong. You don’t need to be against the war to criticise how the situation is being handled now, and there’s been tons of instances of that also from officials and military people who sure weren’t anti-war.

You can’t keep reducing every opinion in the world to such absurd binaries.

I’m rather investigating the implications of Chris’s original claim, and Daniel’s development of it, and arguing that the principles they’re drawn to have implications which they may not want to endorse, and that this casts doubt on the plausibility of those claims.

ie. you’re _projecting_ implications that weren’t there in Chris’s claim, reducing everything to A or Z, making impossible comparisons, twisting and reducing the meaning of responsibility to something absurd, and attacking ridiculous straw men. That’s what you’re doing.

Mona, you’re correct in thinking that you don’t understand the logic of the argument. It goes like this: Chris claimed that governnments are responsible if their policies bring about situations in which crazy fanatics attack innocent people. I pointed out that *if* that claim is true, then it will *follow* that governments which relax abortion laws will be responsible for the pro-life fanatics who murder abortion clinic staff. That’s because such governments would be in precisely the situation described by Chris as generating responsibility for fanatics killing innocents. If you don’t like that implication, which I don’t myself and presume Chris doesn’t either, then you have reason not to endorse the original claim. That’s why my argument is a *criticism* of that claim – it shows that the claim has an unacceptable implication. If you don’t like *that* conclusion, then you have to show why the unwanted implication about abortion law reform doesn’t follow from Chris’s original claim. Either the unwelcome implication isn’t implied, or the original claim is unsatisfactory. That’s how the reasoning goes. You won’t show what (if anything)is wrong with it by shouting loudly about twisted logic or absurd binaries.

Freed Italian Hostage Says Iraq Rebels ‘Justified’

ROME (Reuters) – An Italian aid worker held hostage last month in Iraq said guerrillas there were right to fight U.S.-led forces and their Iraqi “puppet government.”

In comments that were bound to annoy Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government, Simona Torretta also called on Rome to withdraw the troops it sent to Iraq to support its U.S. ally.

“I said it before the kidnapping and I repeat it today,” she told Corriere della Sera newspaper in an interview published Friday.

“You have to distinguish between terrorism and resistance. The guerrilla war is justified, but I am against the kidnapping of civilians.”
[…]
Torretta, who lived in Iraq before, during and after the U.S.-led invasion, said she wanted to return despite her ordeal — but would not do so as long as U.S. troops were there: “I’ve got to wait until the end of the U.S. occupation,” she said.

She said she did know whether Italy bought her freedom from the kidnappers: “If a ransom was paid then I am very sorry. But I know nothing about it … I believe that (the kidnappers) were a very political, religious group and that in the end they were convinced that we were not enemies.”

You tell ’em George. You go tell those women and children they’re pulling out of the rubble in Fallujah every day,too.
And those young American soldiers coming back from Iraq, the ones that are killing themselves because they can’t live with what they’ve seen and done, you tell ’em buddy, you tell ’em good.
Deep pockets oh yeah. That’s what it is, litigation with bombs and rockets.
Just be sure to keep on message there George, don’t whatever you do start talking about what’s really happening in the Middle East, and in America.
Can’t have that. Bad for the economy.

Once you cede that the US is not merely part of the causal chain that led to this event, but “responsible” for it, the actual perpetrators begin to slide off the hook

What is your basis for saying this, George? This topic has been getting batted around on in this thread for awhile now, and I have yet to see a convincing argument for this zero-sum conception of responsibility.

I really don’t find it that hard to wrap my head around the notion that while the perpetrators of the bombings are fully responsible for their inexcusable actions, a certain degree of responsibility (or if you prefer, I’ll use the hot-button term: blame) must be laid at the feet of the superpower that has voluntarily taken on responsibility for the security of the Iraqi people. Seems to me that the alternative is to let the Bush administration “slide off the hook” entirely–you say that’s not where you’re going with this argument, but I don’t see any other outcome.