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The debate joyfully rages on. (If you’re just joining, go back to 1st July 22nd entry, where the discussion starts, and read up from there.) Andrew’s words are in Green Text – Italicized Text of any color is quoted material from previous posts.

The war was decisive yet humane. how often has that combination ever happened?

Humane? You recanted “good war” for “humane”? In the words of Inigo Montoya (Princess Bride), “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Webster’s defines humane as marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration. War is none of those things. Maybe you should switch from “Rambo II” to “Saving Private Ryan” – or at least to decaf. Yes the war was decisive. It was an awesome display of force and technological prowess. But given the disparity of our respective forces, we would have had egg on our face if it was anything less. Yes, we took great measure to protect Iraqi lives and assets, but to your previous point, that was motivated as much if not more by political and economic necessity than by our humanity.

Janeane Garofalo and Susan Sarandon can kiss my white Irish ass.

I noticed you didn’t invite Martin Sheen or Sean Penn to pucker up. Oversight?

The issue wasn’t the short term price of oil, but rather the long term (5 years and out) guarantee of it. Believe it our not, currently we only get a small percentage of our oil from the Middle-East, something less than 20%. We are getting a lot of our oil from South America, Canada, Russia and areas surrounding the Black Sea. But these countries are pumping it out at very high rates and peak production will happen quickly, probably in a few years. After that, Middle East oil will be the only game in town. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia.

Twenty-five years ago, the U.S. only had a ten year supply of oil without the Middle Eastern fields. Doom-sayers were adament that if we didn’t find an alternative to oil or play nice with the Arab nations that we would all be walking to work. But it didn’t happen. New techniques to locate new reserves, reach oil we couldn’t get to before, and/or get more oil out of existing wells was developed. This is no different than then. And technology is also on the verge of realizing man-made oil production through the Thermo-Depolymerization Process you mentioned earlier. If that pans out (and that looks pretty likely), the Middle East gets a lot less important. But all that is aside the real issue. It’s one thing to state oil as the primary goal of the war. However, that was never stated as even a tertiary goal. In fact it was adamently denied to be a factor. Will it come in handy? Damn straight. But it’s a little like taking over Fort Knox because you need the parking space and then serendipitously finding the basement is full of gold. Does anybody really buy the parking story? That’s the point.

Democracy is a human, not an American ideal. My guess is that only someone living under a democracy would ask your questions. Democracy isn’t the only benign form of government, but it provides the greatest protection from extreme forms. As Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest”. Believing that democracy is not the “cultural norm” for Muslims is probably elitist, was Fascism the cultural norm for Germans? The recent Iranian student protests for democracy make it pretty clear that the desire is there.

Well I guess it’s my turn to claim that your explanation is simplistic. If democracy were the natural human organizational model, it wouldn’t be so scarce. True democracy, where everyone has an equal voice, is virtually non-existant. We are fooling ourselves if we think it even exists in the U.S. Only 51% of eligible voters turned out for elections in 2000, and most of them were woefully unprepared to be in a voting booth. Besides, true democracy (majority rule) doesn’t work anyway. Larry Flynt commented that “Majority rule only works if you’re also considering individual rights. Because you can’t have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.”

Left to their own, people organize in heirachical command and control structures. There are leaders and there are followers, and the vast majority of people are followers. They don’t want to be abused, but they want to be led. Strangely, “The Matrix Reloaded” gets it right. Benign leadership/control requires that people be given the illusion of choice. Any parent knows this as well, and what frightens me is Bush administration gets it too. On the flip, everyone from Lord Acton to George Orwell has said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The result being that “natural” human organizations yield a constant struggle to be King-of-the-Hill. You follow the guy that’s there until he becomes abusive or weak and the next guy knocks him out. This is the basis of most unstable or oppressive governments. Further, virtually all social mammals operate on this theme. In cases where resource competition is not a daily struggle (and only in those cases), our intellect has allowed us to reason a way beyond the constant churn and consequent violence. The main way we attempt to address the problem is by separating power so that no one body/person has absolute power. In the USA this power is separated into a number of different bodies, each acting as a check and balance on the other – the Congress, the President, the Supreme Court, and the written Constitution. The system is notoriously slow and not in the least productive, however that was exactly the way it was designed. It is this design which provides the illusion of choice for us as citizens while protecting us from abuse and leader churn. Our so-called democracy is one way to achieve this checked power distribution and illusionary choice, but there’s nothing magic about it.

As for my comment that Muslims are culturally disinclined to democracy, I concede that I painted with too broad a brush – or at least the wrong broad brush. It is radical monotheists who are not inclined toward democracy. They have already yielded their will to their god, and will readily transfer that to a human leader replete with religious fervor. Certainly all Muslims are not radicals, the Iranian students are good evidence of that. But I fear that Iraq has more than an annoying share of radicals.

I support the policy of preemption, I think it is a necessary and inevitable reaction to the new reality of asymmetrical warfare, where small bands of individuals can threaten the world.

This is probably the most disconcerting statement you’ve made. You’re on a mighty slippery slope there. Our form of government is based on the notion that you are innocent until proven guilty. Now you are saying that guilt is provable prior to the occurrance of the crime. It’s easy to back preemption when you are the 500lb gorilla and the alleged perpetrator is half a world away. But if we are to avoid hypocracy we must practice the same basic philosophy at home. Are you prepared to be arrested because you’re sitting in a bar with a BAC over the limit and car keys in your pocket? I’m not. And I’m also thinking to a future point where America might not be the 500lb gorilla. How would we react if the Chinese launched a preemptive strike against us because we were experiencing civil unrest and had old stockpiles of WMDs in our possession. It’s not all that unlikely a future.

Even given that preemption is limited as our foreign policy, doesn’t that mean we should be invading Iran, Syria, and North Korea right now as a minimum? India is somewhat politically unstable and nuclear capable as well as being an increasing home for American business. Lots of interets at stake there. And Pakistan hates India and also has WMDs. We should get them too. Where does it stop? Who is the judge for what qualifies as justified preemption? There’s not a person or organization on the planet I would trust with that authority. This is not a world I want to live in.

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Andrew returns with his rebuttal. His words are in Green Text – Italicized Text is quoted material from previous posts.

Oh boy, I’ve really poked my head into the bee’s nest now. Just a few points of clarification and responses.

I’m intrigued by your definition of a “good war”. I understand the concept of a just war, a necessary war, or even a noble war. But “good” is not an adjective I find remotely applicable to the reality of war.

“Good” was probably (intentionally) a bit inflammatory given it’s religious/moral implications. How about “Wildly Successful”, “Extraordinary Triumphant” or “Opened a Giant Can of Whoop Ass”. How do you measure the success of a war? Minimal numbers of soldiers and civilians killed, infrastructure spared, short duration, goals achieved, post war restructuring (in progress). The war was decisive yet humane. how often has that combination ever happened? But of course, none of the war protestors will give any credit to our military. They were predicting a million dead civilians, a blood bath in the streets of Baghdad, Arab streets going berserk, oil fields ablaze and the Iraqi infrastructure destroyed. Janeane Garofalo and Susan Sarandon can kiss my white Irish ass.

The really scary part is that I think he (Bush) truly believes his quest to rout evil from the world is divinely inspired. He thinks his god is more righteous and powerful than the Muslim god. He hasn’t said that explicitly, but I think he believes it. He his guilty of acting with the same air of moral superiority as the terrorists he purports to hunt.

I agree with you, Bush is scary, overly nationalistic, dogmatic and a quite stupid. No doubt we will agree, that reentering Iraq wasn’t Bush’s idea, but in fact, hatched by guys like Paul Wolfowitz and Bill Kristol. If anything, Bush ran on a protectionist platform, as he said, he wasn’t into “Nation Building.” I think a lot of the protest over the war had more to do with Bush than the actual idea of attacking Iraq. The Left is rightly upset about the Clinton Impeachment, the 2000 election, drilling in Alaska and pulling out of Koyoto. As I said previously, the war was just about the only policy of the Bush administration that I agree with.

Things like the Patriot Act and the positioning of those with opposing views as unpatriotic simply reek of the tactics McCarthy employed in the ’50s and are the precursor to even scarier things to come. Is it not ironic that we are losing our own freedoms while we wander the globe spreading it elsewhere?

Excellent point, I agree completely.

I would welcome more detail on why you believe what you state above. As I stated earlier in the blog, this war broke new ground. It was pre-emptive. We attacked to remove a perceived threat. A perception which is turning out after the fact to have been greatly exaggerated. If this qualifies as justified, exactly what would not qualify as justification? If this becomes the international standard for war then as a planet we are about to experience a great deal more of it.

I support the policy of preemption, I think it is a necessary and inevitable reaction to the new reality of asymmetrical warfare, where small bands of individuals can threaten the world. Of course no stockpiles of WMD have been found in Iraq yet (I believe they will). But I think finding them is moot. Iraq was a threat, even if they no longer had WMD, because they never gave the world any reason to believe they didn’t possess them. The power of WMD comes from the threat of using them, actually using them is usually impractical. Iraq gave every signal that they still possessed the WMD’s they had used in the past. Is killing someone threatening you with an unloaded gun, self defense?

Will the world be safer and more democratic now? It’s not clear Saddam was ever much of a threat to the world at large. His own populace was in the most danger, followed by his immediate neighbors. Curiously, the other Middle East nations were not pleading for U.S. intervention (excluding Israel who’s always up for kicking a little Arab butt).

The rest of the Middle East supported us thru their relative silence. They couldn’t support us openly, for fear of reprisals, and lack of trust that the US would actually follow thru with our threats. Now their confidence in our willingness to take risks and put boots on the ground is helping make headway in the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. The new respect we’ve gained will help us in our continuing war on terror. Bin Laden thought we were a paper tiger, that our only response to him would be to lob millon dollar cruise missiles at five dollar tents.

And what hubris drives the assertion that democracy is the only benign form of government? By implication, non-democratic institutions are less ideal. I don’t buy it. The majority of the planet’s population does not live under a functional democracy. Are they all oppressed? Do we need to go free the rest of them now? And I will be greatly astonished if anything resembling a democracy survives in Iraq after the U.S. forces leave. Look around the Muslim world and find me good examples of democracies. It’s not the cultural norm for them. That doesn’t mean they are doomed to oppression or even that they are wrong. Everyone doesn’t need to be like us.

Democracy is a human, not an American ideal. My guess is that only someone living under a democracy would ask your questions. Democracy isn’t the only benign form of government, but it provides the greatest protection from extreme forms. As Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest”. Believing that democracy is not the “cultural norm” for Muslims is probably elitist, was Fascism the cultural norm for Germans? The recent Iranian student protests for democracy make it pretty clear that the desire is there.

If the Middle East is more stable post-invasion it is only because there are hundreds of thousands of our heavily armed troops over there. If we left tomorrow, it would be way more destabilized than it was before we showed up.

Were not leaving tomorrow. When we do, hopefully things will be better.

And by what rationale did this war strengthen our diplomatic hand with terror sponsoring nations? Do you mean that we are probably more intimidating now so they are less likely to mess with us? That’s only considered diplomacy if you’re Bill Gates. We have established ourselves as the quintessential 500lb gorilla, but that’s a double edged sword. The bully gets a lot of respect in the light of day, but needs to sleep with one eye open.

Hmmmm, Bill Gates, and he is…. what? An example of how not to run a successful company? The appeasement and lack of response to terrorist attacks during the Clinton administration didn’t stop the 9/11 attacks. I believe that our weakness only encouraged them. We are a 500lb gorilla whether we fight back or not.

And I’ve addressed the “liberation” angle many times before. Yes, that was goodness and light. Yes, we’ve liberated other countries. But we’ve also ignored the plight of countless millions where liberating them was not politically feasible or economically viable.

I always find this the strangest argument against the attack on Iraq. Just because we can’t solve all the worlds problems, does that mean we shouldn’t try to solve any of them? Especially ones that our in our national interest.

The first war was a U.N action and it accomplished the U.N. goal of driving Iraq from Kuwait, and officially ended. The goal was never to depose Saddam. Yes, Iraq didn’t comply with the U.N. sanctions after the war. But the U.N did not reauthorize a war to enforce them. The U.S. was the dominate military force in both wars, but they were different legal entities launched by two separate governments. You can’t join them as contiguous actions of a single government. Emotionally there is a connection. There is continuity for the U.S. involvement. But that doesn’t make them the same war.

Ok, let’s be honest, the first war was a US war and we brought the UN along to appease the fence sitters. If you were to suppose that this war was necessary for our national security, then we have a right to defend ourselves, regardless of what the UN wants. If you want to disagree on the need for the attack, that’s fine, but the US should not let the UN decide if we can defend ourselves.

Sure, we’re oil junkies. I drive a big honkin’ truck, so I know a thing or two about being addicted to oil products. But we survived for 12 years without Iraqi oil on the market. Was the price rising? Sure. But we weren’t in danger of losing our oil supply.

The issue wasn’t the short term price of oil, but rather the long term (5 years and out) guarantee of it. Believe it our not, currently we only get a small percentage of our oil from the Middle-East, something less than 20%. We are getting a lot of our oil from South America, Canada, Russia and areas surrounding the Black Sea. But these countries are pumping it out at very high rates and peak production will happen quickly, probably in a few years. After that, Middle East oil will be the only game in town. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia.

Besides, if the real issue was flooding the market with Iraqi oil to lower the price, that could have been accomplished by pressuring the U.N. to remove the oil sanctions under the premise of providing revenue to improve the standard of living for Iraqi citizens. No one would have died and we wouldn’t have invested billions to accomplish that.

We already had an oil for food program and by most accounts it wasn’t working.

We’re back to the honesty and integrity of our leaders. If oil was the reason, then say that. I take umbrage at the notion that Bush et. al. are trying to manipulate public opinion to create the illusion of morally righteous actions when the reality is otherwise – even if they truly believe that their real agenda is in my best interest. How the hell does that remotely translate to the precious democracy which we are so desperate to spread to everyone else?

Look, as I said before, I don’t like Bush, didn’t vote for him and probably won’t be voting for him next time around. I’m an independent (thank god). But I do find it ironic that the Left is suddenly aware of the necessity for “honesty and integrity of our leaders”.