Hard News: Meanwhile in Iraq ...
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"I think there's a limit to how long it's possible to go on denying the research"
I think this is the point I was trying to make at the beginning (and not too well I can tell). If you are for the war, you'll jump on good peer-research and if you are against the war, you will also jump on good peer-research. It is really a case of blinding oneself to the point of view you don't like, as the alternative will unsettle us too much. Kind of like our point of view is sacred almost. Live's lost under Saddam or the US Army or the whatever. It's very, very sad.
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Sad? I'd call it an insult, really. I think you're saying we are incapable of having a reasonable view because we reject counter-evidence. Boo to that proposition.
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Rogerd - agreed
The point I was trying to make was Pogrom had specific meaning and became more widly used and the opposite for holocaust.
I really just shudn't have gone there it gets ugly quickly. -
Stephen. I think there are reasonable and well written views here. But Iraq is a case in point where views are so incredibly mired in philosphy, whether they be religious or political.
Anyway...I'm of for an early dinner
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Stephen. I think there are reasonable and well written views here. But Iraq is a case in point where views are so incredibly mired in philosphy, whether they be religious or political.
Which is why you debate said views. You don't just claim that people with the opposite view are simply wedded to their view.
Of course it is sad, and very serious. Everyone being pretty unsettled would be a good thing in my view. -
Andrew, I'm not surprised the views are polarized. Extreme violence has that effect, which is why you don't do it lightly if you value rational debate. If, on the other hand, you think rational debate is just a waste of time because everyone has their views anyway, then why not just start a war? Seems to have been the reasoning used at the start of this one. And that's how it continues. Why bother reasoning with Sunnis when you can just murder them? Why find out what a town demands when you could just bomb it flat? Why not blow up Americans? Why not shoot everyone in a turban on the assumption they're a terrorist? Why not torture a confession out?
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Slightly tangential, but Gwynne Dyer's column in the NZ Herald this morning kinda illustrates how politics can view two similar acts as quite different. Good for the goose, but not for Turkey?
Fifteen months ago, the armed wing of Lebanon's Hezbollah party, listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and most other Western countries, attacked Israel's northern border, capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight more.
Israel replied with a month of massive air attacks across Lebanon that destroyed much of the country's infrastructure, levelled a good deal of south Beirut, and killed about 1000 Lebanese civilians.
... Western capitals insisted that this was a reasonable and proportionate response, and shielded Israel from intense diplomatic pressure to stop the attacks...
...So what would be a reasonable and proportionate Turkish response to the recent attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist organisation by the US and most other Western countries, from northern Iraq into southeastern Turkey? More than 40 Turkish civilians and soldiers have been killed in these attacks over the past two weeks, and a further eight Turkish soldiers were captured.
...What's that? Washington is asking Turkey to show restraint and not attack Iraq at all? Even after the Kurdish terrorists killed or kidnapped all those Turkish people? Could it be that Turkish lives are worth less than Israeli lives?
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Well Kurdistan is the only vaguely stable part of Iraq so maybe the yanks don't want that fucked up as well.
Also, the PKK are pretty justified. A good chunk of Turkey (along with Iran and Iraq) is basically Kurdish and occupied by Turkey through oppression and torture. It's illegal in Turkey to voice support for an independent Kurdistan, even by entirely peaceful means.
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Good for the goose, but not for Turkey?
By ignoring 90% of the facts you can make any situation look like any other. Which is what Dyer is doing here and what he usually does.
Israel vs. Hezbollah is quite obliviously a different conflict to Turkey vs. the PKK. But there are obvious similarities such as both conflicts are indeed conflicts and they involve humans.
Beyond that there are a myriad of significant differences. Such as, most obviously, the different roles Hezbollah and the PKK play in Lebanon and Iraq. By ignoring those it's pretty easy to fabricate some sort of case of hypocrisy etc.
Also, the PKK are pretty justified.
Much like the IRA, the PKK might have had some justification for armed struggle early on but they wound up turning into a bunch of thugs.
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Ben, I believe strongly in rational debate. But we all bring our tainted views into any 'rational' debate which makes it less rational than it should be. But to state that we just start wars or murder entire populations just because we can't try rational debate, is a bit extreme and irrational don't you think?
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I guess a better comparison was Gallipoli, where we were invading someone elses country.
Gallipoli as an 'away game' would be a good comparison to Iraq if there were thousands of Turks living there when we invaded and it got bogged down in a Civil War and infighting between Turkish factions.
And there was a heap of oil in the Dardenelles.
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"But we shouldn't assume for even a minute that in the next 25 to 50 years the American military might be able to come home, relax and take it easy."
Gen Abazaid, who delivered the comments yesterday at Carnegie Mellon University, said the US would also need to reduced its dependence on imported energy."I'm not saying this is a war for oil, but I am saying that oil fuels an awful lot of geopolitical moves that political powers may have there.
"And it is absolutely essential that we in the United States of America figure out how, in the long run, to lessen our dependency on foreign energy."
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But to state that we just start wars or murder entire populations just because we can't try rational debate, is a bit extreme and irrational don't you think?
Andrew, I didn't suggest anything of the sort. I suggested that wars and murders often happen because people are unwilling to debate the issues. They follow your reasoning that polarized camps exist which simply will not change their position, in which case rationality has lost value and fighting is an option.
It seems that way with Iraq, bigtime. There was no protracted debate in the US of the pros and cons of invading. What debate there was did not show that the course that was actually followed took heed of the majority of opinions on the issue, even within the US, much less the world at large (which when it comes to war does actually matter).
The UN was written off as a debating society, and the advice of the only competent independent agency, the IAEA, was totally ignored. The evidence of the supposed casus belli, WMDs, was not given out in debate. Many insiders in the agencies who were being held up as having given the President secret information about the WMDs squealed out and said bullshit, particularly some of the people who had actually been given important jobs directly relating to the claims. Even insiders to the hawk camp, like Colin Powell, had serious reservations about the excuses and the outcomes of the war. Since he was a big part of the first Gulf War, you'd have thought his opinion might have mattered.
I agree that there is no perfect standard for rationality. But that is not sufficient reason to write the process of debate off entirely. It is by far the best method ever invented by man for decision making, and it should be used everywhere it can be. In the end, decisions must be made, of course, which commits to courses of action which are obviously not 100% certain. Every time I take a step, I am trusting that the floor or the ground will not give way beneath me. This is not 100% certain. Sometimes there are such collapses. But most of the time they're incredibly unlikely.
As a leader of an enormous army, pondering a huge mobilization into another country, there is a huge duty to consider debate, particularly when the threat posed by the other country to yourself is minimal. This duty of care was utterly neglected by the US system, and particularly by the administration.
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While all the usual suspects hail the downward trend in Iraqi deaths, the numbers come in:
The number of Iraqis killed in insurgent and sectarian attacks rose in October, according to government figures obtained on Thursday, in a blow to a nine-month-old US troop surge policy.
At least 887 Iraqis were killed last month, compared to 840 in September, according to the data compiled by the interior, defence and health ministries.
Better than August, but not really cause to declare a new dawn ...
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Ben, well written and debated. Thanks for taking the time. By the way Russell, no doubt you are aware of yet another slant on Iraq. This time hailing the positive news on deaths since August. Too early to tell yet, perhaps, but again it depends on what you read and how you come at it. Anyone for a trip to Iraq to find out for ourselves?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2797526.ece
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60 Minutes has unmasked "Curve Ball", the secret Iraqi "source" who provided some of the key "evidence" used to press the case for war.
Turns out he was a lying Green Card fraudster who only pretended to be a WMD specialist.
Bugger.
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Anyone for a trip to Iraq to find out for ourselves?
Only on the condition that I can bring my wife and child. Wouldn't want to leave them in NZ, wouldn't be safe with all these terrorists.
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The BBC has just posted a round up of Iraqi bloggers still in action, including Riverbend.
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...and the peerless Bag has Peter van Agtmael's photos of the graffiti on the latrine walls at Al Salem Air Force Base in Kuwait.
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As a leader of an enormous army, pondering a huge mobilization into another country, there is a huge duty to consider debate, particularly when the threat posed by the other country to yourself is minimal. This duty of care was utterly neglected by the US system, and particularly by the administration.
Well put Ben.
I would add, that I think that the past... four or so years are an indication of the failure of the American political system.
The administration got it horrendously wrong in Iraq. Horrendously wrong. It's all a mess with arguments about whether this month's big pile of dead people is better than last months/years etc. No WMDs etc. A complete cock up.
I think it demonstrates a complete failure of a political system in which this hasn't had serious repercussions for the instigators. America has a system for removing a President from power. They have a couple actually - the first being elections.
I would have thought that in most countries where someone had led such a disaster, the repercussions would have been far more serious. The fact that this hasn't happened in the USA, indicates a failure, not of law, but the political system of electors, legislators media, judiciary etc.
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