Not another one

“I don’t expect it from Eugene Volokh.”

Why not? Wasn’t he the one who posted a long article about the personal satisfaction he derived from the thought of his enemies being tortured?

I’m getting a little tired of reading these posts where liberals are let down by conservatives who they thought were reasonable and respectable and intellectually honest* (“Oh, Tacitus, how could you?”). It’s Year Five of the Second Bush Administration – anyone who hasn’t jumped off the Endless War for Empire bandwagon by now by definition isn’t reasonable or respectable. They’re all wingnuts underneath; some are just better at hiding it than others.

*and their converse, the usually-reliable wingnut who breaks formation for a moment to criticise torture or the Iraq quagmire or Bush’s anti-science policy, and so gathers fulsome praise from the liberal blogosphere before falling back into full attack-dog mode. See Andrew Sullivan or that “Baloon Juice” guy.

Do we have an accurate idea why Steven Vincent was killed? The earlier story was that it was to shut him up after a NY Times article he wrote criticising the British for allowing an Islamist takeover of the south and criticising the Basra police for corruption. I also wasn’t aware that he was killed by the “Iraqi resistance”, but thought it was by people affilitated with Basra government.

I am very sad about this. Not because Ted is correct, which he is. But because the Radicals have tuned this Dolchstoss nonesense to a fine pitch, and it resonates strongly with the average American. The Radicals have set up a “heads-I-win, tails-you lose” argument that no one (even John McCain) can effectively counter. We know what happened the last time this meme got firmly implanted in a superpower’s citizenry. Can the Republicans assure me that they can keep their Radicals under control? I doubt it, myself.

Cranky

With the gleeful torture, this makes strike two. If even Eugene Volokh moves beyond the pale, whatever sane or adult Republicans remain had best start screaming.

If I may perform, oh, just a thought-experiment, some might speculate that the inflammatory speech is preparatory. An attempt to energize and commit the base in expectation of a crisis.

Further scandals and possible indictments would not surprise, and would be divisive but manageable. But liberals, I believe, should at least mentally prepare themselves for what the country, considering the polarization, might look like after an economic crash, a pre-emptive attack on Iran and a geometric war escalation, or another possibly worse domestic terrorist event.

The comity has become brittle.

Here’s an interview with Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, conducted today, in which she addresses the killers’ probable motivations and the rumors of infidelity.

Reports of Vincent’s marriage plans aren’t just malicious speculation about his “virtue.”

Steve Vincent’s wife knew that he planned to marry his translator for immigration reasons, according to this article in The Telegraph:

Mr Vincent, 49, a former art critic who turned to journalism after witnessing the September 11 attacks, had been married to his American wife for 13 years. She is understood to have been aware of his plans to marry Ms Weidi for visa purposes.

The Scotsman reports that Vincent had already paid a $2500 dowery to his interpreter’s family.

See my post on Vincent and relativism at Phronesisaical (http://phronesisaical.blogspot.com/), also taken up at Selves and Others (http://www.selvesandothers.org/).

fmguru has it right above.

There’s just no surprise at Volokh writing this, given past form in the Iranian death-by-torture case.

“I don’t expect it from Eugene Volokh. He has earned the respect and readership of a wide swath of left-leaning readers for his intelligence, his fair-mindedness, and for his ability to express a right-wing viewpoint without displaying contempt for the other side.”

Volokh, really?

Volokh now has up a “call for papers” for pro-insurgent quotes.

God you guys! You are so behind the times! Don’t you know? Nowadays the pro-invasion posse are in favour of the Shi-ite gangs who, amongst other things, murdered Steven Vincent. In fact if you oppose them you’re Islamophobic. Apparently the plan to reconstitute a de facto nouveau (nouvelle?) Persian Empire was the real aim or this glorious crusa…er…war. WMDs? Democracy? That was so last season, darling.

Get with the programme!

I)This angle, or smear, (‘Vincent was killed because of his closeness to and possible affair with his Iraqi translator’) was first aired, that I’m aware of, in the ‘Sunday Times’ of 7th August. Newsflash for hermits living in Himalayan caves: The Sunday Times is owned by a pro-war individual named Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News and keeps the tightest editorial control on all his outlets. This smear was therefore not repeat NOT started by ‘antiwar’ writers.

II)This killing is an embarrassment for the British Government in general and the British Army in particular because a) Vincent was murdered ‘on their watch’ and b) he had just made detailed and angry criticisms of the British administration in Basra, notably that the British were permitting Iraqi police forces to be infiltrated by Shi’ite radicals, who were then killing political opponents- and Vincent himself appears to have been murdered by men in Iraqi police uniform.
Who, then, has a motive to smear the late Steven Vincent? To spell it out for the morons on the Right: the British Government. Given that the Scotsman and the Sunday Times, one anti-war and one pro, have run near-identical stories on Vincent, I would guess that press officers in either (or both) the Ministry of Defence or the Foreign Office have been ‘briefing’ that ‘that dumb Yank was shagging his translator and that’s why he got shot’. That’s how the British Civil Service (and senior military) play things: tough and, if need be, dirty.

Could someone find out just how Daniel Davies knows the motives of Vincent’s killers? As far as I know, no one has even been arrested, much less tried and convicted. Since Davies has this information, he should share it with the authorities.

In any case, whatever the motives of Vincent’s killers, this single incident says little about the rightness (or wrongness) of the Bush administration actions in Iraq. (It may say something about the British part of the occupation, but we won’t know even that until we learn more about the killers and their motives.)

BTW, it is possible that Vincent was planning to make a formal marriage to his translator, not because they were conducting an affair but because he thought that it was necessary to get her out of Iraq for her own safety — and it is possible that his wife may have approved of his plan.

TONY JONES: John Pilger, do you still maintain that the world depends on what you call “the Iraqi resistance” to inflict a military defeat on the coalition forces?

JOHN PILGER: Well yes, they’re legitimate targets. They’re illegally occupying a country. And I would have thought from an Iraqi’s point of view they are legitimate targets, they’d have to be, sure.

The issue is that the unjust invasion and occupation gave the opponents a just cause; whoever they are: Baathists, Islamists, auto-mechanics, accountants, peasants, psychopaths, extremists – you name it.

Hey, you don’t like it? Don’t invade countries.

That’s just how it is, just like Stalin’s henchmen fighting the Germans in 1941. Where’s the controversy?

As a psychopath and extremist, I’d like to ask sensible anti-war liberals to clarify: do they consider the war and occupation unjustified and illegal or only poorly executed?

I’ve long ago accepted the reality that the US maintains a massive military infrastructure and that we have a long history of seeking to police the planet in pursuit of what our rulers deem to be “America’s best interest.” I grudgingly accept that the US military will consistently become involved in overseas wars, police actions, drug eradication efforts, etc. It’s clear to me, however, that some of those actions are a lot better thought out and defensible than others.

Given the reality spelled out above, I generally supported the purpose and objectives of the first Iraq War and the post 9/11 invasion of Afghanistan. But I thought it was apparent from the start that Bush et al. were lying about the rationale for the second Iraq War, and there was much evidence that their post-war planning was insufficient and likely to fail (in terms of achieving what they said they wanted to achieve).

So, to answer your question, I have been opposed because of (a) my basic belief that America is too focused on our own narrowly defined self-interest and too prone to seeking military solutions, (b) the incoherent and dishonest way that Bush and his cronies sold this particular war, particularly conflating Saddam with bin Laden and 9/11, (c) the craven way the Democrats rushed to agree with everything Bush said in the runup to the war, and (d) the incredibly poor planning for post-war Iraq, which seems likely to undercut whatever “good intentions” we might have had.

(2) (and this is a relatively minor point) – it is just absurd for smart anti-warriors on the left to get their noses out of joint everytime somebody on the right criticizes those who support the insurgency. They (i.e., smart-left-anti-warriors) should instead be thinking, and saying:

“We that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.”

When, instead, they get all defensive – well, that’s when guys like me really start thinking:

“What? frighted with false fire?”

Just to be clear, the stuff abb1 and Pilger are saying above makes sense in its own way too. Just because there is no at present no “right” side in this war doesn’t change the fact that the U.S. is currently on the wrong side. But I’m anti-war in order to defend the interests of the U.S. and the U.S. military, not the interests of some foreign insurgency that (who knows) might well turn out to mismanage the country once it takes over. But genuine U.S. interests demand that we get out of this mess. Changing the subject to “rooting for the insurgency” is as I said a pure propaganda move.

marcus: OK, I’ll bite.

What, in your view, constitutes “genuine self-determination?” And what is “genuine sovereignty?”

Steve, I said that was the genuine debate, but I didn’t say it could be conducted on a blog comments thread. One of the things this whole public discussion has shown is how intellectually weak our conceptions of “sovereignty” and “self-determination” are. Especially weak for Iraq since the meaning of Iraq itself as a nation (as opposed to a bunch of loosely confederated ethnic groups) is pretty unclear.

But a short answer would be a government that did a reasonable job of reflecting the will of a majority of its citizens on most issues *and* had the power to control its own territory completely, which obviously includes the ability to ask all U.S. troops to leave Iraqi territory if this was the public desire. I don’t think it is possible for that to happen under U.S. military occupation, for lots of reasons.

I also think that post-U.S. occupation it may take more bloodshed for this outcome to occur, which is very sad but as I said Bush’s fault and not the antiwar movements. If we had genuinely worked with other countries — Iran and Syria in particular, but also Europe etc. — to ease Saddam out of power or arrange for a post-Saddam succession in Iraq then an acceptable sovereign Iraqi government would have been much easier to achieve.

I understand that pro-war pro-occupation types will say that they too share the goal of genuine Iraqi sovereignty, but I think that their actions show pretty thoroughly that that is not the case.

“Right, abb1, you just wanted to ask a “heads I win, tails you lose” question.”

Since this is exactly what people are doing when they ask whether the anti-war movement “supports the insurgency”, it seems only fair that abb1 gets to answer in kind.

If the US was consistent in actively opposing “evil dictators” around the globe I might be more sympathetic to the argument that we were “just” in removing Saddam from power by force. But we aren’t in the least bit consistent, meaning that the justifications given for our invasion are fig-leaves concealing the real reasons. I don’t know the real reasons, and I don’t believe that anyone outside of Bush’s inner sanctum does. So I can’t sign on to the notion that we did what we did in the name of justice.

There’s no way for me to objectively judge whether any given resistance fighter’s cause is “just.” I can imagine various situations in which a reasonable person would be completely justified in either supporting the invaders, joining the resistance, or sitting on the sidelines hoping things work out okay.

I’ll put the question to you — let’s say that Iraqi abb1 had his entire family killed by mistake during shock/awe, or your doors were kicked in and you were held at gunpoint all night by US forces for no reason, or you were tortured for no reason at Abu Ghraib. Would you be justified in resisting?

Alternatively, Saddam killed your whole family, or your sister was killed by her husband’s fundamentalist family for some ridiculous “transgression” of Islamic law. Would you be justified in supporting the occupiers?

Sorry if those aren’t “straight answers” but a straight answer is often an overly simplistic one. That’s why you have to think things out very clearly before taking the extreme action of a “preventive war” in a place like Iraq. Bush I knew as much.

abb1, I’m honest enough to acknowledge that your question makes me more than a little squirmy. I feel that the war is unjust. I feel that the occupation is unjust. So far so good.

Now then…to the extent that the insurgents are “fighting the occupation,” do I feel that this is a just cause? I can’t answer that with the same certitude, since they are doing far more than “fighting the occupation”–a goodly number of them are fighting to replace the occupation with a kind of theocratic fascism in which people like yours truly tend to get strung up or buried alive.

Do I want the US military to “win”? I don’t believe that such a thing is really possible at this point, but even if it were, no, I do not want it to win. An emboldened Bush administration is a far greater danger to far more people in the world than a hobbled, overstretched one.

I realize that “a plague on both their houses” doesn’t really cut it when one is confronted with “Which side are you on?” But it’s pretty much where I find myself, in all honesty.

Your question really made me think about this because I was just contributing numerous examples on another thread of prowar types accusing antiwar types like me of “wanting the US to win.” And while I find the motives of the people making those accusations deplorable, I can also see the point that you’re making–in my own personal case, in some sense, they’re right. I do not want my country to “win” this war.

I would like nothing more than to see a truly independent, sovereign, peaceful and prosperous Iraq. Unfortunately, I don’t think a US “victory” as envisioned by, say, Dick Cheney or Michael Ledeen bears any resemblance to such a result.

Abb1, it’s quite possible for all the armed factions in a conflict to be morally wrong. Think of organized crime families fighting over turf–I think that’s probably a good analogy for most wars. A truly just war, where one side is mostly in the right, might be a rarity.

In the case of Iraq, I can understand why someone tortured at Abu Ghraib or in some other way harmed by the US might take up arms against the US, but when you look at how the insurgents have been conducting their war it’s hard for me to see that it could be called just, even leaving aside the fact that as an American I refuse to cheer for people shooting at fellow Americans. Of course the same criticism applies even more strongly to the American side, which has probably killed more civilians so far–it’s hard to see how anyone could believe Bush was serious about trying to turn Iraq into a democracy. The US wanted a puppet state with lots of American bases–they probably thought that anything they put in place would be better than Saddam and sanctions and the ordinary Iraqi would be grateful for the improvement, so they didn’t have to do any serious planning.

I also refuse to cheer for people shooting at fellow Americans, especially since I suspect that they may be planning to shoot at me too or blow me up in an airplane one day.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t be honest and analyse the situation objectively. What does it have to do with cheering.

marcus stanley – thank you for your reply; I sympathize with your doubts about debating this on a blog comments thread.

Still.

I like your formula for genuine self-determination/sovereignty: “a government that did a reasonable job of reflecting the will of a majority of its citizens on most issues and had the power to control its own territory completely.”

But why would anyone believe that such an eventuality would have been more likely without US intervention?

I know Michael Moore can be a lightweight sometimes, but he does an important job of making subversive films that connect to the masses.

He does an even more important job of allowing principled-but-timid antiwar types to qualify their views so as to make them palatable to the arbiters of treason: “I’m against the war, but I’m not, y’know, scary like Michael Moore.”

Whether Michael Moore is crazy is irrelevant. Whether he really does “want America to lose” is irrelevant. It’s clear by now that if he didn’t exist, we would have had to invent him.

In the latter case it wouldn’t make sense, since that would be something that the occupiers rather than Saddam had made possible.

Yes, Saddam was basically secular, so I understand your point, but we’ve been in the post-Saddam era for a while now. At this time, one goal of the occupation of Iraq is to discourage extreme interpretations of Sharia law, which many insurgent groups would love to see enshrined in country’s new constitution. That’s what I was trying to get at — sorry if it was unclear.

“But why would anyone believe that such an eventuality would have been more likely without US intervention?”

Um, wow, Steve, lots and lots of reasons. Too many to get hashed out here. I mean, yes, deposing Saddam was a prerequisite to a better government for Iraq. But there were lots of ways to skin that cat, especially if you were willing to delay the transition while keeping Iraq contained militarily. The current resistance movement and civil war was the entirely predictable result of a U.S. invasion under false pretences, clearly conducted without genuine concern for the well-being of the Iraqis in the aftermath. That civil war is a major barrier to effective Iraqi sovereignty today and I believe we are pouring fuel on it by our presence there. We have no credibility with the Iraqi people, people who side too closely with us have no credibility, and the emergence of a powerful force that does have such credibility is critical to the eventual creation of a sovereign government. Not sure how to manage this, we are in a tragic situation here.

but there were lots of ways to skin that catever been overthrown other than by external military intervention.

soru

The original comment quoted above from Volokh’s blog (“that’s a hell of a thing to say about a dead man”) was mine.

My point, lest it be lost, is that it’s wrong to suggest that a dead man was having an affair if you have no idea, period. I don’t care if you’re Michael Ledeen, Juan Cole, or anyone in between. The man has a grieving widow who clearly believes otherwise, and people should have a little respect.

The fact that some pro-war types would use this allegation as a way to flog their standard claim that the insurgents are really bad people doesn’t help matters any, particularly because Vincent’s murderers can in no sense be considered part of the “insurgency.” But the allegations themselves are simply inappropriate, regardless of the point one is trying to make by repeating them.

‘no government with the military technology level of Iraq and the willingness to use it repeatedly on its own people has ever been overthrown other than by external military intervention.’

So when Christopher Hitchens argues that the Iraqi regime is on the point of collapse you disagree with him?

Was he referring to 1776 or to those guys who want to patrol our borders as immigration vigilantes?

Actually, I’m pretty sure it was a reference to the punk band.

Those insurgents do lay down a kickin’ bass line.

—Myca

‘ Like North Korea, Iraq, without outside intervention, would almost certainly continue on indefinitely.’

Ah right I think what is being claimed here is becoming clearer (to me at least).

I think you are getting confused between totalitarian regimes (a new socio-political order unique to the 20th century) and Empires (which are as old as civilisation itself). You are quite right. Some Empires did last 1000 years or more (although NONE of them lasted forever….not an uninteresting fact. Even Rome fell).

But totalitarian states (Soviet Russia, Hitler’s Germany, the South American terror regimes, Albania, Romania, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal), which sometimes but not always were imperial powers (this is a very important point: just because you are totalitarian, it does NOT mean that you necessarily pose a threat to your neighbours, altbough of course you might): these states proved themselves to be extraordinarily unstable. Even the longest lasted of them all, the Soviet Union, only lasted seventy years: an eye blink compared to the British or Roman Empires. You must remember that seemingly ‘long lasted’ totalitarian states are incredibly young. China and North Korea are only slightly over fifty years old. Fifty years after the Soviet Union was created was 1968. If anyone had stated then that the Soviet Union was on its last legs, you would have been laughed at, loudly (to the best of my knowledge not one person predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union until the late ‘seventies).

Christopher Hitchens was right. Iraq WAS on the brink of collapse. So is North Korea. It won’t last another thirty years. I seriously doubt if ANY totalitarian state will last longer than the Soviet Union (which had huge advantages which no other totalitarian state in history is likel to have, in terms of natural resources etc. etc.).

And I think you are getting confused between saddam’s rhetoric and politicial background and the actual nature of the Iraqi state, which was not totalitarian, more of a plain old-style tyranny or despotism.

soru