Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

As someone who supported the intervention I can’t believe that others on my ‘side’ are seeing this as anything other than a catastrophe, caused IMHO in large part by not sending ENOUGH troops to actually bring order after the fighting was over.

It’s Mr Rumsfeld again of course, he shouldn’t be in his job, and probably shouldn’t have been in there before this happened. Not that his employment prospects will change anything on the ground. I too hope that civil war doesn’t happen, Iraqis have suffered too much war and oppression since the seventies for them to come this close to acheiving what most of them actually want.

Oh, come on, John. In Seattle, spring 2004, I participated in an antiwar meeting (although, I admit, I was for military intervention before I was against it!) and the prevailing sentiment was that if things went badly enough it would ensure Bush’s electoral defeat. One odious speaker specifically mentioned the “inevitable” clash between Sunnis and Shiites. Enthusiastically. His argument went: 1) Iraqis had lived together peacefully until Western meddling. 2) Yes, Iraqis cheered the overthrow of Hussein, but “democracy” in Iraq would be rigged and illusory. 3) Sunnis and Shiites (no mention of the Kurds) would clash at the ballot box and their differences would “inevitably” erupt into civil war. 4) Would this happen soon enough to affect the U.S. elections?

bloody pseudo-left. I suppose you think that the Iraqis aren’t “ready” for civil war? Well let me tell you, the USA had a civil war and they’ve never looked back.

“As someone who supported the intervention I can’t believe that others on my ‘side’ are seeing this as anything other than a catastrophe”

Is there not something of a delusion here? The social forces supporting the war are much more accurately represented by Daniel Pipes/Fox News than by Chris B. and so it is not surprising that Daniel Pipes/Fox News like the actual outcome (IMHO likely even with 100,000 extra troops) much better than some of those along for the ride?

the official pro-war position

I think that might well deserve an entry of it’s own in some kind of survey of fallacies. If you divide people up according to wrong categories you will get incoherent results, you might as well say the opinions of tall people are split, consequently tall people are confused.

The mainstream sides, in US discussions of Iraq right now, are more:

1. pro-elected-Iraqi-government
2. pro-occupation
3. pro-defeat-for-Bush.
4. pro-start-and-win-a-different-war

Those categories are based on what people think is the best obtainable outcome. They cross both party lines and the divisions based on the original decision to go to war: admittedly, not too many republicans in group 3, but there are some, and, I suspect, that number will grow.

Obviously, there are fringe figures who are primarily pro-Islamist, pro-Kurdish, pro-defeat-for-america, pro-war-in-principle, etc, but those are the main ones, at least in terms of public debate.

soru

There seems to be a consensus in some liberal quarters that it would be good for Iran to have nuclear weapons as it would stop U.S. expansionism in the region.

Well, I for one, do in fact think it would be good for Iran to have nuclear weapons because it would stop U.S. “interventions” in the Middle East.

My reasoning?

1. A U.S. invasion of Iran (or Syria) is a real possibility.
2. Such an invasion would be a catastrophe.
3. If Iran has nuclear weapons, it won’t happen.

To be honest, I don’t even see the downside. An armed society is a polite society, as the man says.

Again the U. S. of A. pokes its nose into another nation. Remember Central America? Again she makes a mess of it. A unholy disastourous cesspool. Again Europe is succumbing to emotional blackmail. Plus ca change…

Given that the U.S. is a technological powerhouse, superbly intelligent, wonderfully endowed with natural resources, gems of individuals with the best of intentions, people with an inherent desire and drive to achieve, in short a great civilisation, why in heavens can she not just leave this godforsaken place we unwashed scum call the earth and colonise Jupiter, Mars and the Moon being too close to home?

Well I think it would be a very bad thing if Iran got nuclear weapons.

However, can I point out one little problem in the Blair position vis a vis this matter?

Blair tells us (unlike Bush) that global warming is one of the major threats currently facing humanity (and in this he is right). However, his ‘solution’ is to build lots of nuclear reactors. Cos obviously it was such a great success the last time we tried this.

So: the solution to global warming is nuclear power.

Therefore: Iran should be ENCOURAGED to pursue its peaceful nuclear power programme, yes?

I should point out that according to Juan Cole the US is no longer in the ‘pro-elected-Iraqi-government’ position (if it ever was). They used to quite like Jaafari, apparently, until he admitted that he admired Noam Chomsky and would like him to visit Iraq (!). Mysteriously he forgot to mention how much he was impressed by Christopher Hitchens or the bunch of Blairites at Harry’s Place. Perhaps MEMRI is working on a translation of a speech in which he states that he is part of the ‘decent’ left even as we speak.

Anyway, the Chomsky thing was probably the last straw for the Americans, and, again according to Cole, they are now doing everything they can to undermine him. This is of course unconnected to the fact that the first thing a genuinely democratic Iraqi government would do would be to ask the Occupiers to leave, like, now.

Democracy is a funny old thing isn’t it? What would the reaction of the Americans be, do we wonder, if a plot to undermine the President were uncovered being run by Iraq, or Iran even. It would certainly be interesting to behold.

What exactly do people think the US is going to invade Iran with? Since Iraq is chewing up the US military, I think it highly unlikely that any Iran invasion is in the cards. Supporting nuclear weapons for a country whose elected leaders have publicly threatened to wipe their enemies off the map seems like a bad course of action.

And Ahmadinejad believes that he is the 12th Imam (as do a lot of his followers).

This right here is crap. Ahmadinejad no more believes he is the Mahdi than James Dobson believes he is the second coming of Christ. Both believe in their own respective apocalypses; neither believes they are the messiah.

Again I have to ask, though, why the right insists on focusing so much on Ahmadinejad when the president of Iran has never been the true power in the country. Khameni and the Guardian Council run Iran, and have done so ever since Khomeini’s death.

And Ahmadinejad believes that he is the 12th Imam

Of course he doesn’t and if he did, the clerics would have got rid of him pronto as an apostate.

I have to admit I’ve never heard of this 12th immam shit, but it sounds like a rational response to our own Madman Strategy.

“Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia”

Eastasia. Unless you were going for some sort of double irony, which I don’t think is the case.

Oh that’s right. Bush was elected on the Christian Zionist movement that is actively trying to bring about the apocolypse.

it would be good for Iran to have nuclear weapons because it would stop U.S. “interventions” in the Middle East.

An armed society is a polite society.

?!! (utterly speechless)

Yeah, right – that ridiculous, but everything you said about Ahmadinejad believing this or that is undeniable truth.

Because, of course, it is a priori impossible for two countries to be different in any way.

A just-so story:

A lot of transnational political discussion resembles 19C linguistics, which largely consisted of highly learned 7 volume essays on why French/English/German/Sanskrit/… was intrinsically superior to all other languages.

Consequently, international conferences in linguistics were dominated by non-productive and bitter arguments, which could never be settled because the ones who knew the most had the strongest, and most conflicting, views.

Eventually, the whole field adopted a working assumption that all ‘full languages’ (i.e. not pidgins or creoles) were functionally equivalent. That certainly made conferences go better, though nobody particularly knows if it is true or not.

Some people, including those with a linguistic background, seem to want to adopt an analogy of that principle in international relations.

Others say, well, if nuclear weapons are being thrown around, maybe we should be careful of exactly what assumptions we make, and why…

soru

C’mon, Christian Zionism shouldn’t be too wierd a concept! Utah remains the reddest of red states, right?

Not living in Iran I don’t want them to have nukes, but if I lived in Iran I would want it. Even the Iranian opposition (both domestic and in exile) agree with the mullahs about this.

IOW Chomsky is right – it’s Bush’s actions and rhetoric that make it imperative, from an Iranian POV, for them to get nukes.

Conservatives, above all, should be aware of the law of unintended consequences – which is why this Iraq stuff was such criminal (literally) stupidity on their part.

derrida derrider makes the key point: given US policy and statements over the past few years, it would be absolutely insane for Iran not to acquire nukes. I mean look at it — I know this sounds like crazy talk, but bear with me — look at it from their point of view for a moment.

The US has just invaded a neighboring country and made it quite clear that, if means are available, they’d like to pursue “regime change” in Iran too. International treaties and bodies clearly are not a constraint on the US. NOT having nukes is no defense either — look where that got Saddam.
Clearly, the only way the Iranians can be sure their country won’t be smashed into littl epieces by the US military (and don’t ask me “with what troops?”; there are plenty of planes and missiles) is to have a credible deterrent. I mean, if I were Iranian, I’d be marching in the streets demanding “nukes now!”

38,40. There were three members of “The Axis of Evil”. Bush attacked the only one of the three without any “WMD-related programs activities” at all.
The message could not have been clearer: if you don’t want to be deposed by force of arms, get yourself some nukes, and as soon as possible.
Thus, the current status of NK and Iran.

Back on topic: the message discipline of the GOP and their pet media is remarkable. One estimate says that 1400 Iraqis have been killed in the past week of sectarian violence. And yet they are still (successfully!) denying that Iraq has now descended into Civil War.
What would it take to be called “a civil war”?

Apparently no one will be allowed to describe the situation in Iraq as “a civil war” until somebody starts shelling Ft. Sumner.

“This Iraq stuff was such … stupidity on their part” only if you accept the official reasons given for the undertaking.
Criminal, yes, literally, yes, but stupid only if they weren’t lying about why they did it.
It’s telling how readily even the most polarized liberals accept the word of these heartless proven liars when it comes to motive.
With a little nudge nudge wink wink about the, you know, oil and everything.
With the billions Halliburton has sucked out of the war economy it’s ludicrous to even consider they couldn’t have had the oil revenues as well. if that had been a priority.
A few of us have been saying for some time that this is what they wanted all along. A broken Iraq. A nation atomized and crippled with poverty and turmoil.
In order to debate that though we’d have to agree on who “they” are.
And as long as liberals keep insisting that George Bush, a man who can barely tie his own shoes in public, engineered and prosecuted this debacle essentially on his own, that won’t happen.

You seem to be insinuating that people like Noam Chomsky want to view some other country (which one, may I ask?) as intrinsically superior to the US.

Err, no.

Look at #43, from abb1, who I don’t think would mind being called a big chomsky fan, to see what I was getting at.

In particular, there is quite a big difference, as societies and countries, between Iran and Iraq.

Humans are remarkably equal, so the principle ‘all humans should be treated equally’ works at a pragmatic level, with only the occasional adjustment.

In my view, and in contrast, countries are as different from each other as animals are, and treating them the same is as stupid as keeping your dog in a fishtank or taking a goldfish for a walk.

And who is the one to decide whether countries should be kept in a fishtank or taken for a walk?

There is no oversight whatsoever when it comes to pushing that big red button. The most dangerous incident in world’s history – the Cuban missile crisis – was handled on the US side by JFK personally with fewer than a dozen of his cronies, all (iirc) unelected. That’s fewer people than the Soviet Politburo; they had 15, I think.

abb1- for instance the communist party of czechoslovakia was completely outside the law but could control the law ; what parallels exist in the US ?

abb1– you are not responding to the point I made about transparancy . In western democracies the decision procedure that a leader falls back on is known to us the public( look you have described it and made a point about it )and can be assessed whether by historians or scholars studying administration or artists making movies about it or what ever . This public knowledge and limited pressure we can exsert constitutes legitimation.
Again no parallels with Iran or the other outlaw states.

zdenek does not appear to be familiar with the history of the Vietnam war… also, for all the transparency of the American government, people are still enter totally good-faith arguments today about why we went to war in Iraq.

I would have thought Vietnam would have made Zdenek’s point. That strong public protests over the war changed the governments stance on the war. In a place like Iran, the public is not even in possession of the tools to have strong public protests about anything (unless you missed those ransacked Iranian dorm rooms with doors kicked down and blood smeared on the walls as the Iranian secret police hauled off those strong public protests).

Also the fact that a Democracy entrusts the power to start and respond to a nuclear war should not only tell you the trust the Democracy voluntarily places in their leaders, but also something about the vetting process. Hard to imagine career politicians, who live and die by public polls, doing something rash (Iraq may have been highly questionable, but the polls showed it was not “something rash”).

Can this be said of Iran? Were the power brokers in Iran vetted to weed out craziness and make sure there was a strong respect for public opinion?

lemuel pitkin- two mistakes , first its obviously wrong to believe that you will be immune from attack if you have a nuclear weapon ( especially if its not easily deliverable ) situation is not comparable to cold war position where both parties were moreorless equally matched. The west is some 50 years ahead of Iran in this department and hence Iran is likely to have such a weapon simly destroyed and it will not be able to do anything about it.
But second, so what that there is a reason from Iranian point of view to have such a weapon. This doesnt show anything about whether it is a good reason. Jack the Ripper had a reason to murder a score of women ( from his point of view it was a good thing to do ) but that does not show that his reasons were good. Similarly you should be asking whether it is a good reason from a moral point of view and not just from Iranian poit of view. If your way of viewing the matter was valid than its easy to justify Iraq war : from neocon point of view there was a reason to do it. Is this good enough, no .

barbar– the thrust of the left critique ( Moore, Chomsky and these are just the highly visible stars ) is whether US should have gone i.e. it is a critique of the invasion ; it is not just an explanation of it but rather a condemnation of it ( even people who are not on the left such as Fukuyama are critical ). Where do you find analogues in Iran ( or anywhere in Middle East except in Israel )?
Re Vietnam my point was not that transparancy is a magic wand that can prevent all wars . The claim is a modest one that it can lead to improvement through self criticism and institutional change .:-)

#62, Iran has intellectuals, critics & etc., as one would expect of a society made up of mostly young people under the age of 30. It is a “democratic” society because that’s what relatively stable societies are. It has a system established by nationhood and protected by the people themselves. In some ways the system is less manipulative than American-style liberalism, in other ways more. It’s all relative: Iran is getting better, the US is getting worse. Or vice-versa. Who knows? Who’s helping?

Certainly if the US didn’t apply tremendous pressure on Iran, and didn’t propagate a discourse perceived by Muslims to be a continuous and permanent attack on them, the Iran government would have a harder time turning Iranians against the West. OTOH if the US did nothing Jet would have to submit to the authority of the 12th Iman. So it’s a delicate balancing act.

It must be such a blissfully ignorant world to be able to say it is all the US’s fault. To be able to view this situation as US aggressiveness against poor innocent Iran. And if I were to point at Iranian sponsoroed terrorism against Western targets, you’d probably just nod your head that the West had it coming. But what about all the Iranian sponsored terrorism in N. Africa, from Algeria to Eqypt? What about the Iranian affiliated groups in Turkey?

Fifi, hah, Iran is less manipulative only to the minority who agree with the hardline theocratic agenda. Otherwise you are saying that secret police, torture, arbitray justice, state controlled media are the same (or in some cases better) as the political spin in the US. Incredible that someone can believe a country that tortures and kills government critics could be seen as less manipulative than the US.

“The same from James Joyner….”

Having read Joyner’s piece, I don’t see where he’s saying anywhere that an Iraqi civil war “would be a good thing.”

He says that:

We owe it to the Iraqi people to do everything we can to help avert a civil war and give their fledgling democracy a chance. Saving them from themselves, however, is both beyond our power and responsibility. If they decide civil war is the only way to settle their longstanding disputes, we must stand aside and let them fight it and then try to salvage a relationship with the eventual victors. While that would be a bitter pill, indeed, after coming so close to achieving the incredibly ambitious vision of the neo-cons, it would nonetheless be preferable to the other alternatives.

Could you please quote the passage in which he says an Iraqi civil war “would be a good thing,” John, since that’s what you say he said?

Either I’m missing where Joyner said that, or you seem to have clearly (I’m sure not intentionally) misrepresented what he wrote. It’s possible that my eye is skipping over a relevant passage.

Incredible that someone can believe a country that tortures and kills government critics could be seen as less manipulative than the US.

Curiously, it appears that jet’s habit of posting while high on crack also robs him of any sense of irony. In the spirit of black humour, I might joke that torturing and killing outspoken critics has a filthy logic that’s lacking from the torturing and killing of random punters who got shopped by the local warlord.

But I shan’t, because that’s almost as silly as jet, who pissed away the last drop of his credibility with this, which I shall quote just because it’s so hilarious:

maybe you should learn a little about Islam. Just like Judaism and Christianity, Islam has a belief in the final apocalypse. And Ahmadinejad believes that he is the 12th Imam

Zdenek, could you clarify, please: which one is totalitarian and which one is liberal democracy?

It’s not clear to me: Iran has an elected parliament and elected president and the US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, practices torture, death penalty, indefinite detention of “illegal combatants” identified personally by the supreme leader, etc.

Black&white kind of terminology doesn’t seem appropriate here.

abb1– Iran a democracy ? forget it : the following bodies that control power are unelected and are made up of priests only : supreme leader , head of judiciary ,expediency council ,guardian council . What about the peolple ? well people’s candidates are vetted for them ( as if they were children ) by unelected body viz. guardian council and same goes for the candidate for the president. So in other words the legislation , the foreign policy or the education policy actually does not reflect peoples will but rather that of unelected clerical elite totally outside the law.
Because power rests with unelected people the set up is not a democracy and because power rests with the priests only it is a totalitarian regime.

what would be the analogue of Expediency Council which imposes ideology and that cannot be criticised or challanged in any way ? What ideology is ‘the super rich ‘ : george soros is secular leftie while George Bush is religious right ? Are these guys cooperating behind the scenes to control you and me ? Hang on you mean the illuminati the jewish bankers, but isnt this what the Nazis thought ?

Is this the “Ahmadinejad believes that he is the 12th Imam” guy talking?

When I say Iran is not worse than the US with respect to the inherent nature of its Islamic politics (i.e. “intrinsically”) I am referring to its unsuccessful revolutionary break from the modern state project in which identical technologies of organization, surveillance, warfare and propaganda have been integrated without a seam in the lives and thinking of western liberals. It took us longer than 25 years to get to where Jet can say today without blushing that historically unprecedented rates of incarceration are the “general will of the people.” Give it some more time, Jet; eventually Iran too will become evil.

Jet, 25 years ago Iran had a revolution. It overthrew the government of the Shah but also it was an attempt to go into the future by looking back to faith (Islam) instead of to modern methods of obedience, our own authoritarian program of cultural and economic modernization, which in Iran were being pursued by the Shah’s regime. Yes, Iran tried to become something other than a modern nation-state, and failed (though if I had to be born in a Muslim country in the Middle East today I’d choose Iran for reasons cultural and economic.) There isn’t much to choose between the old SAVAK and the theologically purer Ministry of Intelligence.

Your reading of my comment… we’re not on the same page, frankly.

Fifi,
Putting drug dealers in jail is a popular thing in the US. So either the high levels of incarceration in the US are how free people have decided to deal with their criminals (a group having broken the social contract, forfeiting their rights), or you are saying that, the Man, ie the government, has used Fox News to manipulate the people into voting for politicians who are for strict drug laws?

You seem a very interesting fellow, and I would like to better understand your points.

[a side note, the US prison population would be more than halved if drugs were decriminalized, which I’m for in a way.]

It just happens to be the war on drugs. If you could end it tomorrow it’d be replaced with a different strategy of control because modern power pervades every aspect of our social and economic life (e.g. terrorism: the smallest risks are existential threats that justify increased control.)

“or you are saying that, the Man, ie the government, has used Fox News to manipulate the people into voting for politicians who are for strict drug laws?”

It’s not so simple a relationship as between a single causal agent and its effect. Control is many people and institutions dependent on each other for existence, feedback and redundancy.

abb1
no capitalism is not an ideology but refers to an economic system in which means of production are largely privately owned and are operated for profit. This is simply a way of operating an economy of a country and not a set of philosophical ideas that provide a comprehensive outlook on the world.
Capitalists may be liberals , socialists,libertarians or nazis or christian fundamentalists.
So I ask what ideology do ‘super rich’ share ?

fifi– your gloss on Iranian revolution is interesting. You suggest that the project is to replace ‘modern methods of obedience’ with faith i.e. instead of submitting to propaganda , manipulation , and other methods of state control all of which are just methods of control Iran sought to achieve obedience through submision to God.

This seems to involve serious misunderstanding of what secular political legitimacy/obligation involves. Legitimacy in liberal democracies at least since Hobbes involves a contract that creates obligation on both parties when freely entered into. So the ‘obedience ‘ factor is just a self imposed obligation that I freely undertake because I want to and because I see some interest in doing so ( Kant provides aditional fleshing out of this way of looking at obligation). So I create the obligation when I enter into an agreement with you.
OK so the picture is more complicated than the one you present. Clearly some control involves what you call ‘modern methods of obedience’ but not all do and this is why I call you take on the matter a caricature. It cannot be taken seriously as analysis.

abb1-you are confusing the ideology which typically underwrites capitalism in US viz. liberalism or libertarianism and capitalism . These are different things and nothing follows from the fact that they go historically together.
You certainly can be a capitalist and be an egalitarian e.g Soros. who is virulently against Bush and against interventionism and against neocons. Or you can be a neocon and anti-capitalist like Blair.
You are misusing the term ‘ideology’!