More on Miliband and Pol Pot

Anyone see a problem with the claim that that amounts to “support for Pol Pot”?

I find it thoroughly unproblematic. If you say ‘my country right or wrong’, while your country is being ruled by a Hitler (or a Bush), then who would not read that as declaring, in practical terms, that you are on the side of the current leader?

The statement ‘the ruler of any country, anywhere, any time, right or wrong’, in the context of a discussion of Pol Pot, is surely in the same category.

What practical distinction are you intending to draw? I suppose, if asked, some of his supporters would have given different reasons for their support – for example, there were certainly those who supported him simply because he was an enemy of Communist vietnam.

Such details might be tactically or pragmatically useful. But I can’t see why the stated reason for the support changes it’s nature.

Tacit exception granted for Hitchens C.

This may apply to Kamm, but not to DeLong; he doesn’t have time for Hitchens.

So, Soru and John Meredith, I take it you guys aren’t at all concerned about opening “the way to even more military adventurism, predatoriness, conquest and subjugation than is already rife in the world today”?

Do you disagree with the “already rife” characterization or you view these things as positive?

3: Meredith has failed to notice that there are other forms of intervention than invasion; a point made at length in the excerpt above.

And he fails to address Miliband’s central point, also made above, of the ‘slippery slope’ – that if one approves of an unprovoked invasion which takes place for reasons one finds laudable, one will have difficulty disagreeing credibly with another unprovoked invasion which has less laudable ends, and so the safest position is to be against unprovoked invasions full stop.

This is more typical dishonest red-baiting from DeLong. He’s really bad about it. I’m sure he’s busy deleting and editing comments on his blog now, too, in his common and dishonest way. He can’t stand anyone to his left and becomes completely unhinged and highly dishonest when dealing with them. It’s frankly sad and pathetic from someone as accomplished as he is.

Maybe the difference between “not invading” and “supporting” Pol Pot’s genocide isn’t worth wasting ink over. No one is suggesting (well this is the internet so someone may be suggesting, but none of the major players here are suggesting) that Miliband was raising money for Pol Pot. Supporting arguments for the continued existance of Pol Pot’s regime despite massive evidence of genocide is quite enough and that he clearly does.

Further, you should note that Miliband isn’t objecting on “it can’t work” or other consequentialist grounds. He is objecting on a “who’s to judge” ground. He is arguing that becuase the borderline cases will be hard that you shouldn’t act even in the genocidal cases.

Maybe the difference between “not invading” and “supporting” Pol Pot’s genocide isn’t worth wasting ink over.

Of course it is, just as (as rea notes) the parallel argument about Saddam Hussein is and was. Anyone trying to claim that “not supporting the invasion of” means “supporting the continued existence of” is carrying out a dishonest warmongering argument which needs to be stamped on early and often.

Supporting arguments for the continued existance of Pol Pot’s regime

No! Milliband is clearly not supporting “the continued existence of Pol Pot’s regime”. He is in favour of it being brought down by domestic rebellion, supported by sanctions, diplomatic pressure and blockades. He is in favour of giving assistance to domestic anti-Pol Pot movements, not even ruling out giving them weapons. He’s against military invasion by the neighbouring Stalinist power.

He is objecting on a “who’s to judge” ground

Wrong again. “Who’s to judge” would imply moral equivalence which Milliband clearly doesn’t assert. His actual objection is “Who will judge”, the implict answer being “the most belligerent and usually the most tyrannical and expansionary powers going, usually Stalinists”.

He is arguing that becuase the borderline cases will be hard that you shouldn’t act even in the genocidal cases.

This is a consequentialist ground and thus inconsistent with your previous sentence. In related news, how’s that genocidal case in Iraq going?

Sebastian’s second para — is that right? Isn’t the argument, indeed, consequentialist (this is suggested by the use of the word “dangerous”) — once we give up on the principle of no military intervention even in clear cases we can expect that it will be used in borderline cases. Its something like an argument for adopting a simple rule on the grounds that following that rule will have better consequences than establishing a different rule (“invade only when it makes things much better in that case”) the following of which will, in fact, have dreadful consequences. I agree with you that the reasoning is bad, but its not ridiculous, and it seems consequentialist to me (I might be wrong).

Delong and Kamm clearly misstates the point of the cited passages. On the other hand, Miliband does seem (seem!) to be kind of a moral idiot, maybe.

Actually, forget about the essay. If the initial post summation of Miliband was fair, then presumably he was a moral idiot. But Chris seems to think he wasn’t.

Perhaps no one is arguing that he was raising money for Pol Pot, but people are arguing 28 years after it was written that this piece of text is offensive enough to drag it out of the archives, into the light, just to show how EVIL mr Miliband apparently was.

Even if you completely disagree with his arguments, you can’t claim on basis of this text, nor any other part of the article, that he was a supporter, or apologist, or sympathetic in any way to Pol Pot.

David, a lot of people say that what’s been going in Palestine in the last 60 years is a genocide. Sometimes they say “slow genocide”, sometimes just “genocide”. Many of them seem to know what they are talking about. Presumably, if you’re not a moral idiot you should demand – what? You tell me.

is it merely ‘genocide’ defined as ‘mass-atrocities we don’t approve of’?

are there any mass atrocities that we do approve of?

May I ask what a “moral idiot” is? Ideally, it would also be nice to have some hint as to your reasons for pronouncing Ralph Miliband to be one, but at this point I do not really have high hopes for this discussion…

at this point I do not really have high hopes for this discussion…

I do: here’s the figure to beat…

are there any mass atrocities that we do approve of?

OK, if Palestine is too controversial for a rational discussion, there was also that East Timor thing around the same time. Also often called ‘genocide’.

The UN Security Council had a unanimous vote for Indonesia to stop its invasion and to withdraw immediately from East Timor’s borders, and was blocked by the United States from imposing any economic sanctions or other means of enforcing this mandate.

Incidentally I just read Brad’s piece. He really shoots himself in the foot here:

‘Ralph Miliband’s position is that military intervention against the likes of Pol Pot or Idi Amin is illegitimate because they are not as bad as Adolf Hitler.’ (emphasis added)

NO!!!!!! Miliband’s position would unquestionably have been that the British should not have brought Idi Amin to power in the first place.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5391/is_200606/ai_n21392722

Brad obviously doesn’t know about this, and so he doesn’t realise that asking the British or the Americans to do anything about Idi Amin is undoubtedly the most lunatic suggestion one could make and would have been seen (and would, in fact, have been) an absolutely grotesque act of hypocrisy.

I do apologise incidentally. I joined this discussion under the impression that Oliver Kamm was a serious journalist whose views were worth paying attention to. Then I read this.

‘The Berkeley economist and former Clinton administration official Brad DeLong kindly offers me critical support in the murky business of the late Ralph Miliband, Marxist theorist and minimiser of the crimes of Pol Pot. Professor DeLong has himself had cause to query the views, on another issue, of the blogger Chris Bertram, an academic at Bristol University and an impressive candidate for “the stupidest man alive crown”. ‘

This is what Kamm thinks constitutes civilised political debate.

I honestly do think Chris should have second thoughts about ever discussing Kamm’s ‘ideas’ ever again.

“Do you know who once wrote a really rather good article in Socialist Register about how it was completely wrong for socialists to make apologetics for Stalinist regimes and their expansionary invasions? Ralph Milliband, you should check it out.”

That’s great. I’ll be happy to check it out. But I’m not seeing how that is a response to my suggestion that it is silly to worry about emboldening Stalinist expansionary invasions by allegedly providing legitimacy through trying to stop Pol Pot. They weren’t worrying about such things.

You correctly quote me as saying: “They were already doing that on a regular basis. That door was already wide open.” but I don’t understand what you think you are saying about it.

“The Soviet Union in 1980 were not Stalinists, hth.”

So again, what is your point? In #14 you write:

Wrong again. “Who’s to judge” would imply moral equivalence which Milliband clearly doesn’t assert. His actual objection is “Who will judge”, the implict answer being “the most belligerent and usually the most tyrannical and expansionary powers going, usually Stalinists”.

as (I presume) your interpretation of Miliband’s statement. But if there weren’t any Stalinists to worry about at the time (1978, unless you are going to claim that there were lots of scary Stalinists in 1978 but they all vanished by 1980) how is your #14 relevant to the discussion at hand?

I feel like you are hopping back and forth between mutually incompatible positions just to be snarky. But it could be that I just don’t understand you.

For the record, while I agree for the most part with DeLong about this issue, and many others, I’ve personally experienced that his comment policy can be both draconian (in the sense of grabbing fairly tepid comments) and annoyingly non-transparent (deleting comments without notice often throughout long discussion threads leaving them completely cryptic with out of context quotes that can’t be judged against the original).

Dsquared- just be glad that DeLong didn’t edit your comment to make it look like you supported Saddam Hussein. That’s another trick he likes to do. He’s really dishonest with this. And just think- if he does this with someone like you that he generally respects, think of how it does it to those he doesn’t know at all. He’s really bad about this sort of thing.

Kamm strikes me as unable to have a disagreement with anybody without trying at the same time to belittle and crush them. In that respect he reminds me of Nigel Short, another noted obituarist.

Ok, so…. is the point that Stalinists didn’t apparently need any excuse to be expansionist just something that you aren’t going to directly respond to?

It is kind of a large portion of my point, it seems like on #14 you believed it was important to your point, but since then you seem to have abandoned it.

One notable point here is the implicit re-emergence of the libel that anyone who opposed the invasion of Iraq was a supporter of Saddam.

That said, I think Miliband clearly got it wrong regarding Pol Pot – the Vietnamese invasion made things a lot better, and they could hardly have got much worse. But as Chris points out, plenty of others were far worse, notably the governments, such as that of the US which aided and supported Pol Pot right through the 1980s.

That’s likely so, Sebastian, but is the argument actually being directed at the Stalinists? I very much doubt that Miliband thought he had Hanoi’s ear.

That said, I think Miliband clearly got it wrong regarding Pol Pot – the Vietnamese invasion made things a lot better, and they could hardly have got much worse.

Is that true, though? I’d like to believe it, and obviously the previous crimes of the Pol Pot regime were atrocious, but is it true that the 20 years of civil war following the Vietnamese invasion (with the US supporting.. the Khmer Rouge and their allies with money and arms) were obviously “better” than what we might imagine would have occurred without it?

I ask because this kind of argument is also employed by Iraq war hawks who have a habit of ignoring the fact that Saddam’s worst atrocities were a decade in the past by the time of the invasion.

52: the Vietnamese occupation did make things better on balance, but it’s nothing like as obvious a call (particularly from the perspective of 1980) as everyone seems to be assuming. The Hun Sen government was not a good one and the Vietnamese oustayed their welcome by about ten years; the civil war was also pretty bad, however the highest credible estimates of the total casualties I’ve seen have been in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds.

Things get worse if you add the Chinese invasion of Vietnam into the accounting, because this was a pretty definite and proximate consequence. That led to about a hundred thousand deaths and could easily have been much, much more.

On the other hand, of course, Cambodia pre the Vietnamese invasion was not a stable situation; it was awful and getting worse. The balance of risks was much more favourable to the pro-intervention case than it was in Iraq.

But this is of course with the benefit of hindsight. As of 1980 it was not at all obvious that the Vietnamese would get out of Cambodia without a bloodbath, that the Chinese invasion wouldn’t turn into something worse, in general that things wouldn’t get even worse than they had been under Pol Pot (I disagree with John on this question – there’s always a dozen ways that things could have got worse). If we’re going to start hanging people for not having the perspicacity to see the Vietnamese invasion as a very rare exception to a very good general rule, then the consequences with respect to the Iraq War may end up causing a global rope shortage.

Where I think Miliband is also wrong is in downplaying the external aggression of Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Vietnam’s legitimate interest in self-defence against him.

Sebastian: “Maybe the difference between “not invading” and “supporting” Pol Pot’s genocide isn’t worth wasting ink over”

engels: “Now that is the most depressing thing I have read for a while. Is it really possible that five years after the invasion of Iraq you have learned nothing?”

Some people have learned that even a horrible failure isn’t that bad, in terms of consequences for them and their causes.

Also Barbara Ehrenreich.

That said, I think Miliband clearly got it wrong regarding Pol Pot

I tend to agree. But let’s be clear: The original discussion wasn’t “Was Milliband right or wrong?” It was “Did Milliband support Pol Pot or not?” Sebastian made an attempt in #12 to argue that it was fair to say that he did support Pol Pot (or “support[ed] arguments for [his] continued exist[e]nce”), but hasn’t been trying to defend it much since then — because it’s utterly indefensible.

The discussion about whether Milliband is right or wrong is more interesting than the original discussion, but we should be clear that that isn’t what was originally at stake; what was originally at stake was (as rea and John Q. have pointed out) an attempt to rehabilitate the sort of intellectual dishonesty that led war proponents to call war opponents supporters of Saddam.

“Sebastian’s argument seems to be that the default position in the case of any dictatorship…”

You could say that if you believed Pol Pot was just like any possible dictator. Do you believe that?

Do you believe that wars are routinely successful and more or less cost-free, international law and internationalist principles are of no account whatsoever, and that successor regimes can confidently be expected to be superior to overthrown regimes?

Beyond the fact that you’ve misread Miliband, I don’t think you’ve dealt with the fact that Miliband was more or less in agreement with Henry Jackson and Secretary of State Schultz. I suspect that you would not condemn them with comparable vehemence.

Now some Decents simply lie and state that they would be perfectly happy to be colonised by the Iraqis, (or the Guatamelans, or the Nicaraguans, or the Japanese, or the Angolans), under certain circumstances.

So your claim is that if my government was, each year, murdering ~8% of the population, if my mother had been raped by a policeman, my son tortured to death in front of me, 15 people out of my school class of 30 were missing in gulags, I would still back it against anyone waving a different flag, or wearing a blue helmet?

And not only that, you find it incredible, unbelievable, that anyone could think differently. A Jew in a death camp must, on seeing a British corporal, raise their emaciated arm to strike him as a hated foreign invader in violation of sacred German sovereignty. Not once, not most times, but every time, without exception – nothing else is credible, the idea of things being different can only be an implausible lie. All the personal testimonies on sites like http://www.andybrouwer.co.uk/bookrev.html don’t need to be explicitly dismissed – they are transparently fake, no human being could possibly say things like ‘ liberation by the invading Vietnamese’: it’s an inherent contradiction, does not compute.

Sarcasm aside, you basic mistake is obvious – no principle of equality or symmetry applies to societies, nations, classes, or anything other than individuals. Pol Pot was not an equally legitimate ruler as Bush, Putin or even Hu. Not being equivalent, there is no obligation to treat him equally.

randy, are you seriously suggesting that arresting a former head of state abroad is the same as invading a country? Goodness.

There are 3 basic positions the US could take with regard to the Vietnam/Khmer war:

a) non-intervention
b) intervention in support of Vietnam
c) intervention in support of the Khmer Rouge

Miliband argued for a, and the disputes now seem to be between

1) those who still support a,
2) those who think a amounts to supporting the Khmer Rouge, an indefensible heinous crime which should result in a permanent abdication of moral authority, and
3) those who support b, but do not think supporting a implies what group 2 thinks it does.

What has been lost in the structure of the debate, though some here have mentioned it, is that the US chose c, support the Khmer Rouge. Whether position b constitutes supporting the Khmers or not, position c certainly does.

So if those in group 2 – Kamm, Delong, Sebastian, soru – really are objecting morally to what they claim to be objecting to, they must condemn the US government in even stronger terms than they condemn Miliband, since the US offered tangible support not mere non-interference. And this condemnation should apply both to the Democratic Carter administration (which embargoed Vietnam), and the Republican Reagan one (which gave military support to an insurgency dominated by the Khmers, and fought for the Khmers as the legitimate government). Oddly enough, I’ve heard none of this. I’ll call Delong out specifically, since he might actually read this. I’d post it on his blog, but it would likely be either deleted or subjected to hostile edits, which is why I don’t go to “Grasping your mouth with both of my hands” anymore.

Delong, if your position is that opposing intervention on the side of Vietnam in that war is the only position that one could have taken and have any moral credibility today, how do you assign moral credibility to the US government or either of its major parties?

“Whether position b constitutes supporting the Khmers or not, position c certainly does.”

should be:

Whether position a constitutes supporting the Khmers or not, position c certainly does.

Easy to get ahead of yourself with lists.

So in your eyes whether general legal concepts like national sovereignty or due process have any value is contingent on whether or not Pinochet’s lawyers attempt to make use of them?

I am not clear as to what relevance you think the Pinochet judgment has to the question of whether invading a country to effect regime change is a violation of national sovereignty.

#70:in the last paragraph, first sentence, I think you meant to write “supporting” (not “opposing”)

The post that started this thread referred to Miliband as a “minor Marxist academic.” I think this is too dismissive, although I’m familiar with him more by reputation than by reading his work (though I did once dip into ‘The State in Capitalist Society’ and I remember references to ‘the Miliband-Poulantzas debate’ about the view of the state in Marxist theory).

But even if he’d been the most important Marxist writer of the second half of the 20th century, I don’t see why something he wrote in a few paragraphs of one article should be the focus of this kind of intense discussion. Whether he was right or wrong about the merits of the Vietnamese invasion, it’s patently obvious that, as numerous commenters have said, he was not supporting the Pol Pot regime.

I think it might also be worth pointing out that the problem/issue of armed ‘humanitarian intervention’ has been a vexed question in international law and normative IR theory for a long time, long long before the debates of 1990s and the 2000s. I believe the traditional position in international law was that such intervention, and the concomitant breaching of the principle of state sovereignty (or ‘national’ sovereignty,as this thread has it), was justifiable only in very rare cases of conduct so egregious that it “shocked the conscience” — that, plus the intervention had to be judged to have a reasonable chance of success. On these criteria, there is a pretty good — not ironclad, but defensible — case to be made that the Vietnamese invasion qualified as a justifiable humanitarian intervention (even if Vietnam’s *motives* were purely geopolitical not humanitarian). But none of these cases is easy, all of them are debatable, and to beat up on Miliband for taking the other view in his 1979/80 essay is, to my mind, ridiculous. I don’t know anything about Oliver Kamm (except what I’ve read here), but Brad DeLong should know better and should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

I just read the long quote from Milliband and thought how prescient he was on on that specific point. He says that justifying invasions on humanitarian grounds will lead to a slippery slope. Anyone still arguing against that post-Kosovo and Iraq? He was wrong on the specific point as to whether an attack on the Khmer Rouge was a better outcome, but these things are far easier to judge with hindsight. If anyone who ever made a wrong judgement about whether or not a war was justified has to be condemned, we’ve got a long condemn-a-thon on our hands. (I was wrong on Gulf War I, right on Gulf War II and still not sure about the Falklands).

“I suspect that you would not condemn them with comparable vehemence.”

Since the vehemence level of this particular condemnation is already low (I certainly wouldn’t have been writing about it even just in comments if someone else hadn’t brought him up) I suspect you’d be wrong. The US tried to play lots of people against the middle and it often was a very bad choice.

And here is Soru, to back up my claims.

‘So your claim is that if my government was, each year, murdering ~8% of the population, if my mother had been raped by a policeman, my son tortured to death in front of me, 15 people out of my school class of 30 were missing in gulags, I would still back it against anyone waving a different flag, or wearing a blue helmet?’

No my argument is that, to repeat you would in reality NOT enjoy: ‘agreeing to go through Angolan checkpoints to get to work, running the risk of being strip searched by Nicaraguan troops if those troops think you might be guilty of ‘terrorism’, having to learn Spanish to understand what your new government is telling you because the occupying forces can’t be bothered to learn English…and so on.’

As I say, there really is no point in continuing this discussion. I genuinely and honestly believe that when the Decents pretend that they would be happy about this they are simply lying and I don’t see how this point can be rationally resolved. Most Decents are American or British nationalists and get hysterical when their countries are even criticised (which is really what Decentism is all about). I literally cannot imagine what they would do if their country was actually invaded.

(I might also add that Decents assume they would be the victims of whichever regime was in power. How do we know that they would not be collaborators?)

Incidentally, like most of the Decents you seem to have little idea of what actually happened in WW2. Most of the death camps were in Poland or Eastern Europe, and they were liberated, generally speaking, by the Soviets. So your sentence should read:

‘A Jew in a death camp must, on seeing a Soviet corporal (would not) raise their emaciated arm to strike him as a hated foreign invader in violation of sacred Polish sovereignty.’

Well no, they were too ill and near death. But of course when s/he was well enough, I find it highly plausible that a Polish survivor of the death camps really would strike the Russian as a violator of sacred Polish sovereignty especially when he found out that the Russian was an anti-semite and planned to run their country for the next fifty years.

I genuinely and honestly believe that when the Decents pretend that they would be happy about this they are simply lying and I don’t see how this point can be rationally resolved.

Obviously, you can’t rationally resolve an issue when one party is an out an out nutter with not merely no comprehension of anyone who isn’t an ultra-patriot prepared to die for the sacred flame of their eternal nation, but the explicitly stated belief that every single person on the planet is as mad as they are, and anyone who claims not to be is obviously lying.

For the dubious benifit of those reading this who are not totally gaga, the issues involved should be pretty straightforward to disentangle: war and occupation are different things, with no necessary connection. A relatively large number of wars, perhaps 10%, have positive humanitarian outcomes – the Indian response to the genocide in Bangladesh is one that hasn’t been mentioned, and there is a more or less endless well of further examples (and , of course, several times as many counterexamples).

Foriegn military occupations are rather different – there are only two I can think of that ended well (germany and japan after WWII), and whatever caused those to work doesn’t seem to be a repeatable formula. When Hidari talks about the obvious defects of that form of government, he has one of his occasional moments of non-wrongness.

Things is, there are any number of wars that didn’t end in such occupation, with the US intervention in Kuwait being the most relevant. Of all wars since 1945, only three ended with a significant population perceiving themselves as miltarily occupied. Anyone tying to two things together as inevitable has an angle to sell.

They typical way things are framed in american and british debate is that occupation is an obligation owed to Iraq to make up for the violation of its soveriegnty implied by the war. This is the view of the most anti-war mainstream UK party (Lib Dems), of the most anti-war mainstream us candidate (Obama), of customary international law, probably that of the majority of people reading this blog.

Unsurpisingly, it is completely backwards – occupation is a dubious and temporary privilege granted by right of having done the heavy lifting in overthrowing Saddam. His overthrow granted a large legitimacy budget, which has largely but not entirely been squandered: the Vietnamese faced a similar situation, and the Soviets totally overspent theirs. As can happen in other contexts, a large budget merely serves to enable a large fuckup.

Tibet? Somalia recently?

Off the top of my head (and with some help from Google), you’re also missing Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon from 1982-5.

Anyway soru, since you were the one who introduced the “opposing war against a government = supporting that government” canard into this thread, you’re not really in a position to complain about people being rude about the possibility of rational discussion with you.

“The argument is obviously attractive: one cannot but breathe a sigh of relief when an exceptionally vicious tyranny is overthrown . But attractive though the argument is, it is also dangerous. For who is to decide, and on what criteria, that a regime has become sufficiently tyrannical to justify overthrow by military intervention? There is no good answer to this sort of question; and acceptance of the legitimacy of military intervention on the ground of the exceptionally tyrannical nature of a regime opens the way to even more military adventurism, predatoriness, conquest and subjugation than is already rife in the world today.

“The rejection of military intervention on this score is not meant to claim immunity and protection for tyrannical regimes. Nor does it.”

Of course it does. It’s not “meant” to, but, in terms of practical effect, that’s precisely what it does. And no, that’s not to support some type of general, much less a default principle of intervention, it’s more simply to acknowledge a sui generis quality for each specific situation is to be granted its due, together with the practical, real-world ramifications stemming from that quality. Sudan is not Zimbabwe, is not Iraq, is not Afghanistan, is not Bosnia, etc., they each are marked by their own more salient and more subtle particulars. Still, what Miliband is highly suggestive of here, is that a general principle be established, which, excepting in the most blatant and extreme situations (e.g., Hitler, but not Pol Pot? And Hitler in 1941, but not Hitler in 1938?)

So yes, in practical terms, Miliband, in part influenced by Chomsky, Herman, Porter, Hildebrand and others (presumably), was supporting Pol Pot. The real world is the world where choices are made, where one fork in the road or the other is taken. The real world is not some place where idealized imaginings are readily reified, as if it’s all about the desiderata of aesthetic delectations or intellections.

Well said, ejh.

ejh,

No. No one is “deciding” anything. What is being acknowledged, broadly conceived, is that reality is not ideality; what is being acknowledged is a type of intractable first principle.

For example, when Miliband states “… attractive though the argument is, it is also dangerous,” that reflects a false dichotomy because doing nothing is also dangerous, albeit, perhaps, dangerous for a different group of people. But that’s one general example only.

abb1,

No, you too miss the point being made. I’m not simplifying the world, I’m not advancing a reductionist thesis or agenda. Indeed, in acknowledging the sui generis qualities of each situation that non-reducible complexity is being acknowledged, front and center.

No. No one is “deciding” anything.

Well, yes they are. They are putting someone on a side that he was not.

chris bertram,

“Of course” they are not. And do tell us what boycotts did – or would have done (absent Hildebrand, Porter, Chomsky, et al.) – in the case of Cambodia. (Btw, it was none other than McGovern who advocated intervention in the case of Cambodia during that era.)

India/Bangladesh, Tanzania/Uganda.

Yes, that is because in both cases, the intervention occurred in support of a local liberation movement enjoying popular support. Completely different from, say, Iraq.

Right Michael. I can see like all Decents, as well as being Decent you are also Very Serious. Indeed you would seem to be a Very Serious Decent, the highest category (a bit like the Thetan in Scientology).

And your Very Serious argument is of course, that if you don’t want to bomb a country, you are, personally, morally responsible for all that goes on in it. And so I am faced with another Very Serious (and Decent) argument, which is that I personally am responsible for the evils of China, and North Korea, and Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and Equatorial Guinea and…well I could go on all night. Why? Because I don’t think it’s a good idea for the United States to invade or bomb them.

As I say, this is a Very Serious charge, and I will respond when I feel sufficiently Decent.

In practice, deciding not to go to war against any given regime is supporting that regime. To be safe we should probably go to war against all regimes, to avoid supporting their wrongdoing. At least, whenever a war is proposed, anyone who fails to support it is joining forces with the proposed target.

This is Schmittianism to the max. The fundamental concept of sovereignty is Enemy. Everything is that is not me is my enemy.

The Estonians have been treating their Russians at least as badly as the Poles were treating their Germans in the summer of 1939. I say, go get ’em.

So Miliband supported Pol Pot but he didn’t positively support him. Is that what you are saying?

And more importantly, was he a true Scotsman?

Ah, “de facto support”. What a harmless formulation that is.

So if the practical consequences of someone’s actions are that somebody is killed, would you refer to him as a ‘murderer’ (or a ‘de facto murderer’)? I suspect that you might offend quite a lot of people (not least in the US and UK governments and militaries) were you to start talking in that way, but don’t let that stop you…

I don’t know anything about Kamm; De Long while he may be a competent economist, has in the past showed a spectacular misunderstanding about Asian politics/society. Also people are being really generous here about his comments policy but this is besides the main point.

My understanding is, though admittedly shaky perhaps too influenced by reading Samantha Power’s work on genocide, while the principle of non-intervention is the default mainstream view; isn’t one of the few (if only exceptions) to this, if you suspect a genocide to be occurring you do have a clear obligation to do something to stop it – with the use of force if necessary. I thought part of this is to remove the excuse of “non-interventionism” that can be used by great powers who don’t want to intervene to stop a genocide when they don’t perceive any strategic benefit in doing so. I would assume the reluctance of the US to explicitly accept the Rwandan genocide as such, was to avoid in effect exactly such an obligation – who can forget the how many acts of genocide does it take to make an actual genocide fiasco.

the upshot is that when a genocide is happening, it constitutes what Miliband terms as an exceptional case and you have to intervene to stop it. If my reading of international understanding on genocide is correct and the UN system; I would assume that this is one case where non-interventionism doesn’t apply.

Would appreciate any responses from people more knowledgable than me on this point

lazynative (also relevant to David Weman’s point), when the peace was negotiated between the Khmers and Vietnam, Vietnam wanted KR atrocities classified as genocide and had, as I understand, a very good case. The US blocked it, not wanted to admit to having defended perpetrators of genocide.

soru also wrote:

“For the dubious benifit of those reading this who are not totally gaga”

As, of course, perception of clear benefit will be limited to those who *are* totally gaga.

Some sympathy for Michael B. His arguments are all wrong, but at least he hasn’t (so far, unless I’ve missed something) said anything completely bonkers or called any of his interlocutors unpleasant names. Should we really ignore him?

Actually, those are not arguments but rhetorical constructs. Rhetorical constructs can’t be reasoned with, they can only be trumped by stronger, more dramatic rhetorical constructs.

122: It’s not so much “abusive” as that it’s an extremely serious accusation, repeatedly being made on the basis of an argument that more or less everyone agrees is silly to the point of frivolousness. (I’d note that someone like Henry “Scoop” Jackson would accuse MichaelB of being “practically” in favour of the expansion of Soviet Communism if he followed this line of thinking). After a while, simply refusing to accept that your argument isn’t convincing becomes rude and annoying in itself, as anyone who’s ever argued theology with Jehovah’s Witnesses will tell you.

yes, and that’ exactly what they said I was like.

I was once approached by a pair of Mormons in Carlisle. I cut them off in mid-sentence with “No, actually I’m an atheist.” They apologised for bothering me, I turned away. Then I turned back, before they could walk away and added, “And an anarchist”.

I suppose saying ‘Satanist’ would have been even more effective, but to do so I would have had to lie.

By all means do ignore me, though what you’ve ignored is not me so much as the not too difficult logic that’s reflected in the original comment. Again, it has to do with ideality vs. reality and not confusing the two; it has to do with acknowldeging practical ramifications resulting from decisions made in the real world. Reality cannot be dealt with in the same manner as ideality; those categories – assumming clarity of thought, clarity of practical considerations, etc. is desired – need to be distinguished.

Too, the religion or “theology” on evidence here in rejecting that not so difficult logic is the theology of negation. Hence all the chest thumping and mutual reassurances, even the request or command from Bertram, apparently acting as the resident high-priest now, to ignore that very reasoning.

(And please, I don’t need, or desire any “sympathy”. This is a bit like Ripley entering the queens nest and I had no illusions about that fact from the beginning.)

And Bertram, in perhaps seven years now and w/o exaggeration I doubt I’ve commented in more than ten threads here total, probably five or six times in the manner being claimed. So, you’re additionally wrong in that vein.

Most Decents are American or British nationalists and get hysterical when their countries are even criticised (which is really what Decentism is all about).

Yep, you’ve got them ‘decents’ taped, alright.

One notable point here is the implicit re-emergence of the libel that anyone who opposed the invasion of Iraq was a supporter of Saddam.

Which isn’t really what any serious supporter of the war was claiming. The point was that ‘no war’ had consequences, some of which were more unpalatable than others, and one of which was continuation of Saddam’s rule over Iraq and all that this entailed. No right-minded person – not so fast Hidari – would objectively “support” a mass-murdering megalomaniac with a predilection for WMD and a penchant for waging war on neighbouring states. But those who opposed war certainly did support a policy that necessarily ensured Saddam would remain in power longer than a war would permit. We can disagree about the position this consequence occupies in the hierarchy of pro- and anti-war consequences, but not about whether it is a consequence at all.

The truth is that too many advocates and opponents of war did a pretty shitty job of acknowledging the inescapable consequences of their preferred policies. The pro-war camp was no better, but no worse than the stoppers in this regard.

Which isn’t really what any serious supporter of the war was claiming.

We’ll assume Nick Cohen isn’t “serious” then. He’ll be upset.

Brownie: the people who were advocating the invasion of Iraq were Governments and mainstream political parties. They have a duty to make a clear case for advocating a high-risk venture like an invasion. They have access to information and good access to means of communication. They didn’t make the case that you are outlining in comment 136 before the invasion; they made a case based on the fiction of Iraq already having chemical and biological weapons and being within 2/5/10 years of developing nuclear weapons. The opponents of the invasion did not have access to much information and did not have easy access to the media: but day after day in the letter columns of the press and handing out leaflets in the street they pointed out the flaws in the case being made for the invasion.

Now, why didn’t the proponents of the invasion make the case that you are outlining in point 136? I would suggest that it is because it would raise too many awkward questions. In 2001, Tony Blair had said in the House of Commons that Iraq was contained: it would be very odd for him to say in 2002 that Iraq wasn’t after all contained. The justification that you are making raises many important points of principle: about international law, about pre-emptive and preventive warfare, about whether in fact a UK/US invasion can create a better outcome than the default outcome of a contained Iraq ruled by Saddam (which would have difficulty in acquiring WMD and threatening its neighbours). I would suggest that the proponents of the invasion just didn’t want to have a debate about these points of principle and still do their best to avoid them. They want to have international law when it suits them, and then to ignore it when it suits them.

I was speaking recently to someone whose sister lived in Baghdad in the mid-1980s: she lived with an arms’ dealer. I had this vision of a Harry Lime-type existence, stuck in a hotel room, meeting people in shop doorways, creeping through the sewers. But then I saw the photos: parties, plays, sporting events. There were hundreds of Western arms’ dealers in Iraq in the mid-1980s, at the time that Saddam did have WMD and was at war with his neighbours. Not only was this support for a megalomaniac it probably helped to bring out Saddam’s tendency for megalomania. But oddly enough the West only discovered that Saddam was a megalomaniac when he was no longer in a position to put it into practice.

I would have thought that o right-minded person would say that turning Iraq into a failed state was better than continuing to contain Saddam. But apparently they are!

“Which isn’t really what any serious supporter of the war was claiming.”

As others have noted, “serious” is doing an awful lot or work here. Brownie apparently regards (among many others) Christopher Hitchens, David Frum, Bill Kristol, Glenn Reynolds and their many supporters as non-serious, not to mention Bush and Howard (not sure if Blair ever pushed this line).

This raises an obvious problem, which comes up in one form or another for all the supporters of the war (except, I guess, the Halliburton/Blackwater axis who have seen things go marvellously weel for them). Given that most of your allies were supporting the war for the wrong reasons and with the wrong objectives in mind, why did you imagine that the actual conduct of the war would be in line with the objectives you hoped it would achieve.

If you read Miliband’s essay, he is expressing regret that some degree of Cambodian will and self-organization was thwarted by being rescued by an outside power.

Now, I think Miliband was probably wrong about the population’s ability to do so in any relatively short time frame.

But his words are clear, clear, clear, clear, clear:

He wanted the Cambodians themselves to liberate themselves from the Khmer Rouge lunatics — murderers which were handed power precisely by the massive U.S. bombing & carpet bombing from 1965 – 1973.

A purist, ideological position, yes. But no more so than right wing libertarian ideologues who want U.S. citizens to endure whatever hardships might be necessary to live without government intervention or assistance.

But no, no, no. We must find some way to continue blaming the Khmer Rouge regime takeover not on the actual people who enabled it, the U.S.’ own war hawks, but on various leftish intellectuals who said various things years after the takeover, because that’s how powerful and seditious their words are.

Brownie: “What I think you mean is that the legal case for war was not made on this basis. You are of course correct on this and we know why.”

No, I don’t know why. Please explain. My guess is that the UK Government wanted to do something that was illegal and claim that it was legal. The UK Government was trying to have its cake and eat it at the same time. I find that deeply objectionable. Are you saying that it is OK for a Government to play these games with its electorate, and the UN and the weapons’ inspectors?

Blair said all sorts of things in late 2002 and early 2003 to justify invading Iraq. But whenever he was questioned closely he fell back to the justification of WMD. He even once said that Saddam could stay on if he owned up to having the WMD that Blair knew he had! I have a thick file of letters from Blair and Straw and my MP about WMD; they never answered the questions that I had asked about international law and whether the UK had bought into the American doctrine of preventive warfare. If the war was ostensibly about regime change then Blair should never have mentioned WMD, he shouldn’t have pushed for resolution 1441, he shouldn’t have “worked for the second resolution”. When he was asked what he would do if WMD weren’t found, he shouldn’t have answered “But WMD will be found”. When he was asked in early 2002 why he was going to Camp David he shouldn’t have said “I’m keeping Bush on the UN route”: he should have said “Bush and I are planning to overthrow Saddam in breach of international law”.

Regime change is illegal under international law. It also presents a myriad of practical implications. The assumptions that were being made (and are still made) about being able to do it quickly and without collateral damage are highly problematic. These were all hidden behind the smoke-screen of the WMD justification. Blair and Hoon and Straw and all the others weren’t just hiding it from us the public: they were hiding it from themselves. I don’t think that they have themselves thought about the implications. But the risk is that they will do it again, trying to avoid the (undefined) mistakes with all the same risks.

There is still, of course, the question of what to do about megalomaniac rulers. I would suggest that Iraq is a model of what not to do. Saddam was President of Iraq for more than 20 years (and a powerful Vice President before that) but it was only after he had been contained that it was noticed that he was a megalomaniac! A better model would be to be circumspect about some of our “friends” and some of those who are buying our arms and recognise their potential for megalomania.

Brownie: ‘Read the rest, as they say’.

Blair, 18 March 2003.

‘So: why does it matter so much?

Because the outcome of this issue will now determine more than the fate of the Iraqi regime and more than the future of the Iraqi people, for so long brutalised by Saddam. It will determine the way Britain and the world confront the central security threat of the 21st Century; the development of the UN; the relationship between Europe and the US; the relations within the EU and the way the US engages with the rest of the world.’ (Note; unlike the rest of Blair’s speech this is actually true: but note that it is about international geopolitics, not morality per se).

To continue Blair’s speech:

‘But first, Iraq and its WMD.

In April 1991, after the Gulf War Iraq was given 15 days to provide a full and final declaration of all its WMD…..’ (etc. etc. etc.)

And so on for the next SEVENTY SEVEN PARAGRAPHS.

And even when he changes the subject, he comes back to it. For example:

‘Let me tell the House what I know. (sic)

I know that there are some countries or groups within countries that are proliferating and trading in WMD, especially nuclear weapons technology.

I know there are companies, individuals, some former scientists on nuclear weapons programmes, selling their equipment or expertise.

I know there are several countries – mostly dictatorships with highly repressive regimes – desperately trying to acquire chemical weapons, biological weapons or, in particular, nuclear weapons capability. Some of these countries are now a short time away from having a serviceable nuclear weapon. This activity is not diminishing. It is increasing.’

And so on. This must be compared with a grand total of one paragraph where he mentions some form of ‘democracy’ for Iraq. (The exact phraseology is the meaningless phrase: ‘And let the future government of Iraq be given the chance to begin the process of uniting the nation’s disparate groups, on a democratic basis, respecting human rights’…the weasel phrase ‘on a democratic basis’ leaving much wiggle room).

The rest of the speech is purely and simply a defence of George Bush’s foreign policy.

Make no mistake about it: the case for Iraq, overwhelmingly, was made on the basis of WMDs, NOT for moral reasons or to ‘liberate’ the people of Iraq, and all discussion of the invasion should begin with that being well understood.

Miliband:

The rejection of military intervention on this score is not meant to claim immunity and protection for tyrannical regimes. Nor does it. For there are other forms of intervention than military ones: for instance economic pressure by way of sanctions, boycott and even blockade. Tyrannical regimes make opposition extremely difficult: but they do not make it impossible. And the point is to help internal opposition rather than engage in military ‘substitutism’. As noted earlier, there are rare and extreme circumstances where nothing else may be possible–for instance the war against Nazism. Hitler’s Third Reich was not only a tyranny. Nor was it merely guilty of border incursions against other states. It was quite clearly bent on war and the subjugation of Europe. But neither Uganda nor Kampuchea are in this order of circumstances…

As we saw with Iraq, sanctions don’t work. What are we left with? Coexistence? Complicity? And here is perfect example of what often happens with leftists. They greatly underestimate the brutal nature of dictatorships because, maybe, they distrust the rich West’s portrayal and analysis of the situtation.

Yeah if your goal is to kill children, <a href=”http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084″?sanctions work great.

No, it’s precisely the same discussion. Using a term that misrepresents somebody is misrepresentation whether one explains it or not. The term “supporter” has been used severally on this thread: the people who have done it have explained why they have used it and it remains inappropriate. The situation is precisely the same.

If you fixate on one specific term to the exclusion everything else in an accompanying article that qualifies the term, then you are guilty of misrepresenting the alleged misrepresentation.

I’d like to see some evidence that Cohen was egregiously bracketing the average stopper with, for example, the likes of Galloway (who as we all know was an admirer of Saddam). To possibly pre-empt you, I don’t believe articles which mention the word “supporter” but simultaneously make it clear that Cohen doesn’t equate opposition to war with advocacy for Baathism will pass muster as ‘evidence’ on this occasion.

“It is all right for me and my chums to misrepresent our antiwar and anti-Zionist adversaries: we do it as a matter of course. If they complain about it, though, that is merely wordplay.”

Curious. I didn’t indulge in the language that you allege characterised Cohen’s writing, so I’m not sure how you justify the “me and my chums” snark. And the use of “anti-Zionist” is intended to promote the myth of a Zionist dynamic to the war, to wit, supporters are necessarily pro-Zionist and opponents anti-Zionist. The invocation of this term is yet more evidence of an obsessional urge on the part of many stoppers to shoehorn into any passing debate oblique and not so oblique references to Israel. In the context of a discussion about Cohen’s alleged misrepresentation of Iraq war opposition, the use of “anti-Zionist” here is most ironic given the arguments of stoppers were liberally sprinkled with accusations that supporters of the war held “Zionist” briefs, not to mention the ubiquitous “imperialist” slander and even balls-out suggestions that support for the war betrayed a dislike for brown people/Arabs/Muslims/delete as applicable.

One difference? That’s right: you don’t hear us bleating like poor little lambs.

Let’s stop pissing around. You don’t believe for one second that Cohen was alleging you and people like you harboured pro-Saddam sympathies. This is not even a perceived slight; it’s your own contrivance. You insist Cohen meant one thing even while he tells you he meant something else. It’s intellectual dishonesty write large and another contribution to the infantilization of Iraq war debate; a debate that needs more infatilization like dsquared needs an injection of smug serum.

“No, it’s precisely the same discussion. Using a term that misrepresents somebody is misrepresentation whether one explains it or not. The term “supporter” has been used severally on this thread: the people who have done it have explained why they have used it and it remains inappropriate. …

No, not in the least. The term in question (“support”) was in fact properly qualified, even narrowly qualified. Of course, on one level, it’s understandable people will refuse to acknowledge the concept and the reality being conveyed, especially so since the subject matter was Pol Pot’s Maoist genocide.

Nonetheless, it’s an entirely viable concept, one which additionally has deep-seated resonance in cases such as Afghanistan, Lebanon, even Israel, since increasing military campaigns together with an array of ideological campaigns (media, propaganda, PR, etc.) are increasingly being waged against the very existence of Israel. Mark Steyn, here, has written thoughtfully on this very subject, in part noting how people tend to internalize the forces working against such situations rather than marshalling the vision, verve, foresight, strength, etc. it takes to counter those perduringly malignant forces. Internalizing that adversarial force results in accepting a certain logic, and that logic, in turn, results in “supporting” those forces at a type of meta-level. I.e. endless propaganda coupled with those militant jihadist strategems positively works.

That’s why the term “supporting,” rightly conceived, is entirely appropriate, because internalizing those forces, internalizing that logic, results in the acceptance – thus the support – of those perduring and seemingly never ending forces. It’s understandable that people might get hung up on the term, but rightly considered it very much is the proper term. The situations in Lebanon and Israel reflect tell-tale indications of that basic truth, the even more dramatic situations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.

Mark Steyn, here, has written thoughtfully…

Shurely shome mistake?

The bottom line is that whilst the non-discovery of WMD might well do damage to credibility of those who insisted it would be found, it does nothing to erode the legitimacy of the WMD argument for war.

I think this is my favourite argument of the whole thread.

Yeah, I’d be careful about this line of argument until you’ve researched exactly which states topped the list of arms sales to Iraq. To save you the bother, they are Russia, China and France.

Who’s the top scorers in the Saudi market, do you thunk?

I think this is my favourite argument of the whole thread.

You’re most welcome. I hope for the sake of your own credibility you are serious when you say this, for if you’re intending to demonstrate irony it simply confirms you as yet another member of the stopper fraternity who is manifestly unfamiliar with the text of the relevant UNSCRs codifying Iraq’s obligations to the international community in the matter of WMD disclosure.

This is a longwinded way of saying that on this particular issue, you simply don’t know what you’re talking about.

Who’s the top scorers in the Saudi market, do you thunk?

Which would be a great point if my argument ran “the US and UK practise ethical arms trade par excellence”. As it is, the discussion is about Iraq and Guano is evidently misinformed as to the states responsible for suplying arms to this particularly hideous dictatorship. Relevancy, yer honour.

What a strange passage this is, full of invented arguments, in the true raving style of the very, very serious Harry’s Place.

The passage is “strange”, the arguments “invented” and the HP style is both “raving” and “serious”.

Big on adjectives, short on reasoning. Unthinking stopperdom in a nutshell.

Simple question, Justin: are you claiming that to be in violation of the relevant resolutions Iraq had to be in possession of WMD? You appear to be claiming precisely that, but here’s your chance to clarify.

Sorry Guano, what is “this” in your #167 comment?

1441, unanimously accepted by the UNSC, reads:

Decides that Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions, including resolution 687 (1991), in particular through Iraq’s failure to cooperate with United Nations inspectors and the IAEA, and to complete the actions required under paragraphs 8 to 13 of resolution 687 (1991);

Point being, Iraq was found to be in breach before we’d discovered a centilitre of nerve agent. As it happens, it seems there may not have been a centilitre of nerve agent to discover. As before, this has implications for the credibility of those who promised we would find substantially more than a centilitre of nerve agent. But the text of 1441 confirms that it wasn’t and never was necessary for Iraq to be in physical possession of WMD for her to be found in breach of her obligations codified in numerous Chapter VII resolutions.

My point here is that the non-discovery of WMD has no bearing whatsoever on the legal case made for war and the legitimacy of those arguments. Now, you might claim that there are a whole host of other reasons why the war was still illegal/illegitimate and we can have that conversation if you like, but we ought to be able to agree upfront that one of those reasons cannot be that Iraq had no WMD. It’s simply not germane as to the question of legality.

The UNSCRs, including 1441 as I’ve shown, are clear on this. Justin remains confused. What about you?

The AG said that the invasion of Iraq would be legal if there was an absolute certainty that Iraq had WMD. He did not say that the US and the UK had a perfect right to invade Iraq ever since the passing of Resolution 1441 (which I’m sure he would have said if he could).

I’m also claiming that it is remarkable that such a clear case was accepted at the time by so few parties involved.

Why should you be surprised? There were huge numbers of people on both sides of the argument who patently had no interest in clarifying matters and were happy to throw as much fud as they could get their hands on.

That said, you’re way off-beam with your suggestion that such a clear case enjoyed so little acceptance. The dominant anti-war narrative was not based on a rejection of the claim that Saddam had WMD (even Ritter refused to give Iraq a clean bill of health pre-war), rather, those opposed to war demanded inspections be given more time to determine whether Iraq was indeed clear of WMD. The counter-claim was that inspections hadn’t succeeded in 12 years because Saddam was intent on ensuring we could never discover the truth as to Iraq’s programs and capabilities. We can keep going back and forth on the rights and wrongs of both positions in another discussion, but none of those arguments alters the fact that the legitimacy of the case for war was not and never was contingent on the discovery of WMD. I appreciate that a great many stoppers have spent the last 5 years telling themselves and anybody else who will listen that the converse is true, but that doesn’t make it so.

It’s not “sophistry” to make this point when there are still huge numbers of people who mistakenly believe the failure to discover WMD deals a fatal blow to the legitimacy of the war.

The AG said that the invasion of Iraq would be legal if there was an absolute certainty that Iraq had WMD.

The AG said a lot of things and even though I’m fairly certain he didn’t say what you claim, this is not the same thing as saying the war would ONLY be legal if there was absolute certainty that Iraq had WMD. To do so would make possession of WMD the sine qua non of a material breach. Of course, possession would be a material breach, but as more than a decade of resolutions makes clear, possession was not the only way Iraq could be in breach.

The accurate summation of the AGs advice is that authority to intervene militarily was revived now that 1441 had confirmed Iraq’s continued non-compliance and Iraq had foregone her “final opportunity” to comply.

This thread started by being about the accusation that R. Milliband supported Pol Pot and drifted (inevitably) into the question of Iraq and the accusations of people like Nick Cohen that people who marched against the invasion were marching in support of a brutal dictator. I find this kind of remark by people like Cohen to be deeply distasteful, because it is based on the assumption that there is nothing problematic about starting a war to overthrow a brutal dictator. There is a great deal that is problematic about starting wars in this way, both practically and legally. I marched against the invasion of Iraq because I think that “wars of choice” are dangerous: those who are in favour of them are forgetting why the Charter of the UN was written the way it was.

Brownie’s narrative of why the invasion was legal only makes sense if you leave out a great deal of what happened in late 2002 and early 2003. His argument would seem to imply that the work of the weapons’ inspectors was irrelevant because resolution 1441 had already said that Iraq was not complying (though that was not what the UK government said at the time of the resolution). Iraq was already not complying before it had had a chance to comply! I get the impression that proponents of the invasion want to have their cake and eat it too: they want to have a legal figleaf to say that the invasion was legal, yet they want to propose future “wars of choice”. That really is a dangerous illusion. Wars of choice are deeply problematic. Iraq illustrates why.

Well, I wonder if that may be because it was the primary argument that was made by the political actors who were promoting the war. We’re supposed to forget this because it suits you? Do me a favour.

Nope. I wouldn’t dsiagree with your main point here. I think this government and the US government made something of a balls-up in how they presented the case for war. They share at least some of the blame for creating the false impression that the discovery of WMD would legitimize the war and therefore the non-discovery of the same would render it unjust.

The two camps pre-war were not comprised of those on the one hand who were adamant Iraq retained a WMD capability and those on the other who were euqally sure she did not; more accurately, those agitating for war believed it was the only route to discovering the truth of that capability and those opposing believed inspections would reveal the same truth.

I’ve already conceded that the non-discovery of WMD has clear implications for the credibility of those who guranteed they would be found and I’ll even concede that it makes it more difficult to argue the case for war generally. But this is not the same thing as a concession that the decision taken at the time was, in retrospect, wrong. I’m firmly of the belief that we’d never have discovered the truth of Iraq’s capability whilst Saddam remained in power. I think Saddam’s continued obstruction even whilst half the US fleet sat a few dozen nautical miles off Iraq’s coast confirms that. If inspections had progressed, eventually those troops would be stood down and as soon as they were, the levels of obstruction and obfuscation would have increased as they always had. Like most of us who reluctantly supported the war, I was and remain convinced that a major confrontation with Saddam’s Iraq was inevitable. If wasn’t March 2003, it might be September 2004 when Blix came back to the UNSC to yet again report that inspectors were unable to complete their tasks.

His argument would seem to imply that the work of the weapons’ inspectors was irrelevant because resolution 1441 had already said that Iraq was not complying

1441 *had* already said Iraq was not complying. It’s there in the text. However, 1441 also afforded Iraq a “final opportunity” to comply. Even Blix confirmed that, whatever concessions to inspections Iraq was making in spring 2003, it still was not giving the full cooperation and providing the unfettered access demanded of it. As before, what kind of additional opportunity should you expect after spurning your “final” one?

Iraq was already not complying before it had had a chance to comply!

Huh? Iraq had 12 years to comply. Have you read 1441?

Decides that Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions, including resolution 687 (1991), in particular through Iraq’s failure to cooperate with United Nations inspectors and the IAEA, and to complete the actions required under paragraphs 8 to 13 of resolution 687 (1991);

Despite this manifest non-compliance, Iraq was given a “final opportunity”. What’s difficult to understand?

Wars of choice are deeply problematic

Every war is a war of choice. For every scenario you can present which hints at a war of necessity, it will always be possible to argue why something other than war might work if we just give it try. War is never the last resort as you’ll never exhaust every alternative option available to you. The trick is identifying the point at which your understandable desire to avoid bloodshed invites the potential of greater disaster and/or is simply a temporary delay of the inevitable.

Where does the resolution grant a member state the right to intervene militarily without the approval of the Security Council?

It doesn’t, but then who’s claiming it does? Certainly not the US or UK governments. Read here.

Again, where is there support for this finding in the text of the resolution?

Again, it’s not there. 1441 is silent on the matter of what should happen in the event Iraq fails to seize its final opportunity, other than to threaten “serious consequences”. It makes no metnion of second resolutions (as France and Russia tried to ensure it did) nor does it say that the UNSC will determine next steps. It says only that the UNSC will “consider” matters and consider it did.

Iraq was in clear breach of ceasefire terms and no member of the UNSC claimed the opposite. The US/UK position is authority for militiary action underwritten in earlier resolutions was therefore revived.

“Spurning” is misleading. According to the dictionary, the word means “to reject with disdain or contempt.” Blix acknowledged incomplete cooperation but pleaded for more time and promised success within months.

Anything other than “spurning” is misleading. How difficult was it, exactly, for Saddam to do what was asked of him? Not very. Saddam chose not to comply. You can’t be a bit pregnant and you can’t comply a bit. As to Blix, his job was to come back to the UNSC to report either compliance or non-compliance and he had no doubt that, whatever last-minute concessions Iraq was making as war loomed, even then she was failing to comply. Blix was, of course, entitled to voice whatever opinion he liked about what might happen in the future. But he could no more “promise success” than he could “promise” to deliver the moon on a stick. Guaranteeing Iraqi compliance was not within his gift. As far as prolonging inspections was concerned, Blair made it clear that inspections could run for another year so long as Iraq was complying. But what was the point of running inspections another day if, after 12 years, Iraq was still refusing to comply?

It seems to me, Brownie, that you’re making the very best of a very bad case. The Attorney General’s opinion boils down to this: for the US to proceed without Security Council authorization would be of doubtful legality but not plainly illegal. And even here, he stipulates 1) that any such action would have to be proportional: ie, that it would have to be a response to a grave and imminent threat; and 2) that the evidence purporting to establish this threat must be ocnclusive. In the end, he recommends that a second resolution be sought — as anyone with a grain of honesty would do in the circumstances. All this is a very weak reed on which to base an argument that the invasion was not illegal.

As for the meaning of “spurning” and “compliance”: To pretend to comply, as Saddam did, is not to “reject with disdain and contempt.” And of course one can comply “a bit”; or, for that matter, a quarter or a half or two-thirds or three-quarters. What can you mean by denying this? I fear you’re playing the “word games” you deplored earlier.

Mark Steyn, here, has written thoughtfully …

“Shurely shome mistake?” engels

Not in the least, to the contrary and decidedly so. Though it’s unsurprising – to understate the case immensely – that you’ve employed yet another dismissive sneer in lieu of any cogency or any engagement whatsoever.

The article in question is here. Take an excerpt:

Assuming Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic fancies don’t come to pass, Israel will surely make it to its 70th birthday. But a lot of folks don’t fancy its prospects for its 80th and beyond. See the Atlantic Monthly cover story: ‘Is Israel Finished?’ Also the cover story in Canada’s leading news magazine, Maclean’s, which dispenses with the question mark: “Why Israel Can’t Survive.”

A succinct summary of today’s erosions, wastreling intellections posing as sound commentary, defeatist and meta-defeatist vernaculars, etc. As to succinct and telling, another excerpt:

Would I rather there were more countries like Israel, or more like Syria? Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East (Iraq may yet prove a second), and its Arab citizens enjoy more rights than they would living under any of the kleptocrat kings and psychotic dictators who otherwise infest the region.

Continuing in the same fashion, now in the penultimate and closing graphs, worthy of some emphasis:

… Contemporary Europeans are not exactly known for their moral courage: The reports one hears of schools quietly dropping the Holocaust from their classrooms because it offends their growing numbers of Muslim students suggest that even the pretense of “evenhandedness” in the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” will be long gone a decade hence.

The joke, of course, is that Israel, despite its demographic challenge, still enjoys a birth rate twice that of the European average. All the reasons for Israel’s doom apply to Europe with bells on. And, unlike much of the rest of the West, Israel has the advantage of living on the front line of the existential challenge. “I have a premonition that will not leave me,” wrote Eric Hoffer, America’s great longshoreman philosopher, after the 1967 war. “As it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us.”

So, indeed, thoughtful, succinct and supremely fitting. All too fitting, which likely gets to the heart of your problem with Steyn: far easier to employ a tout court dismissiveness via a sneer than risk engagement and cogency and the logic that would ensue.

Calling an armed to the teeth racist settler state “liberal democracy” doesn’t strike me as thoughtful.

Michael, please moderate your eloquence or we shall be overwhelmed, nay paralyzed.

You’d be more prudent if you were heed the advice demanded above, to ignore me; indeed, for the mobius-strip commentators here I positively encourage it. If you “genuninely” wanted engagement, via Steyn or otherwise plenty has been offered. Instead, it’s sneers and meta-sneers, cute and meta-cute, b.s. and meta-b.s., summary dismissiveness, repeated ad infinitum, etc.; mobius strip “thinking”.

Again, that advice. Heed it.

Mr. Reluctance,

You already have, you simply haven’t admitted as much to yourselves, which fact, in addition to furnishing a few eye-raising lols, speaks volumes. It’s known as saving the appearances.

Here’s a thought: very simply, do it.

I have and I am, I was never commenting for the sake of that portion of the commentariat here as previously described. Too, that you require such “help” only adds to the eye-raising self-parody occurring herein. It’s as if, in some type of unconsciously masochistic mode, you’ve spotted a laughing-stock in the middle of the town square and, imagining it to be quite the strategem, have decided to place yourself in it, unassisted.

But for now, since the subject of Iraq has been overtly taken up and the subject of self-blindered ideologues has more tacitly been evidenced, Iraq, in City Journal, by way of a couple of gentlemen with handsome names and, more importantly, are reporting from within the theater in question, providing empirical and timely support to their arguments.

This is the third or fourth time in this thread someone has felt the need to unravel and plumb the deeps of the patently obvious. Here’s a clue: this veneer and pretence you folks trade in here – from the common commentariat to Bérubé-esque highbrows – is gossamer thin. Keep believing otherwise though as that’s where the bemusement and occasionally some raw, eye-raising mirth comes in. Some simpletons are born that way, some come to it via adaptation and habituation and the self-blinkered egoism that grounds it all so solidly.

You turned out the lights a long time ago.

The idea that 1441 licensed war is farcical and Brownie knows it. To begin with, no one agrees with him.

Including Brownie. You’ll be unable to find a single line of commentary from me in this thread or anywhere else on the world wide web that supports your assertion that I believe 1441 “licensed” war. I know you’re not the sharpest tool in the box, Hidari, but this just smacks of your not being arsed to actually read what I’ve written. You’ve skimmed my comments and seen the words “Iraq”, “1441” and “war” and just made up the rest. This is why most people ignore you.

Iraq simply found it very difficult to comply.

I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, please stop.

And let’s not even mention Israel.

Except you always do. You and abb1 see dem Jooos everywheres.

As for the meaning of “spurning” and “compliance”: To pretend to comply, as Saddam did, is not to “reject with disdain and contempt.” And of course one can comply “a bit”; or, for that matter, a quarter or a half or two-thirds or three-quarters. What can you mean by denying this? I fear you’re playing the “word games” you deplored earlier.[geo]

You write something like “to pretend to comply, as Saddam did, is not to “reject with disdain and contempt”” and then suggest I’m playing word games?

It’s simple. The inspectors ask to visit place X and you take them to place X. They ask to see document Y and you show them document Y. They demand to speak with person Z and you ensure they are given access to Z. Even Hidari could get this right after 12 years. If Saddam was “pretending to comply” then he was failing even at this. Who did he fool with his pretending, exactly? Other than you, of course?

This thread should be preserved in aspic so future historians can have a good giggle. After 12 years of deliberate obstruction, Iraq’s refusal to allow inspectors to see what they wanted to see and interview whomever they wanted to interview can’t possibly be described as “spurning” the “final opportunity” she was offered, no doubt because, as Hidari has noted, it was “very difficult” for Iraq to comply…..

You can’t write this stuff, yet every time I pop over here I see that someone has.

Tsk, tsk, tsk…