How much support do you think we provided to the Baathist regime and Saddam throughout history

[Craig234]

ProfJohn: anything the US does wrong can be defended on the basis that you have to do wrong things in an imperfect world as the lesser of two evils.

Craig: the problem is that while it sometimes is necessary, you on the right overuse that argument to the point that the US has virtually no moral standards, far past where it's necessary. You apply it to far more situations than it should be.

Profjohn: Well, let me ignore your point and go pretend that you disagreed with what you agreed with that it's sometime necessary, and cite the Stalin example as if you had disagreed with it, and pretend I rebutted your argument as I restate my point you did disagree with as if it had just been proven with the Stalin example.

Yes, Saddam was bad, but the Iranians were worse. We choose the lesser of two evils.

Were they really? Or did you just assume they were because it so neatly fits your Stalin analogy and you need it to be the case to avoid the hard questions - exactly proving my point?

Let's look again at the history. The British have, in the good old traditions of imperialsm and colonialism, used military might to set up unfair oil arrangements with Iran. By 1953, the system of puppets who serve the British needs and screw the Iranian people hits a bump, and the leader of Iran actually does represent the Iranian people, saying he's going to make corrections to the exploitave agreements to make them more fair. The British, fair-minded as they were with colonies but weakened following WWII, appeal to the US to do something to stop the price increases. The new American president Eisenhower, shortly after making an anti-Soviet speech about how the US sees nation's rights to not be intererfered with as an absolute value the US respects, uses the shiny new CIA in its first covert operation, to overthrow democracy in Iran, and put in a 'secret police' force for the new dictator, and assure cooperation with the west's oil needs.

The Iranians aren't terribly please by this, and the resentment allows the more radical elements to gain popularity, who are finally able to seize power 25 years later. In perhaps the mildest rebuke for having your democracy taken away for 25 years in the history of manking, they let some students hold 52 hostages for a year and then release them.

Now, John, what exactly made Iran "worse than Saddam"? Can you back up the necessity for our instigating an aggressive proxy war with them through Saddam, can you justify the million casualties and poison gas launched on their schoolchildren? (Shortly after Saddam's gassing 'his own people', we rewarded him with closer ties and aid).

Is it a better explanation to say that Iran was similar to Hitler as a threat to us, requiring us to ally with Saddam and allow his acts? Had Iran invaded nations like Hitler invaded Poland and others? (oops, we actually never did go to war with Hitler for his invading other nations, or even over Pearl Harbor; we remained neutral, but finally went to war when Hitler was forced to declare war with us because of his treaty with Japan). Did Iran pose the sort of threat to the world's freedoms in 1980 that Hitler posed in 1941? Remember, your argument relies not only on one side being worse than another; if that's all that was needed, I could justify our going to war in every war on the planet because one side is worse than the other. You have to show that there was some extreme threat compelling us to compromise and take the lesser of two evils as there was with Stalin and Hitler.

Or is it more reasonable to say that it was simply our arrogance, our lack of responsibility for what we'd done to Iran and our domestic desire to look 'strong' and further harm Iran since they dared get mad about our destroying their democracy; our continued desire to weaken any oil power who wasn't our supplicant, that better explains our actions?

Doesn't it better explain our actions that we cynically decided we didn't care a lot for Saddam or Iran, and since we weren't in a position just after Viet Nam with a tired public to go to war we'd benefit from getting two 'enemies' to go to war with over a million casualties, as we pushed them to war and gave each the aid they needed for more damage?

Is that really comparable to the justification Hitler and Stalin gave us, or are we more comparable to the nations who did wrong in being such a warmonger, did we really have the justification for allying with poison gas on schoolchildren that we had for allying with Stalin?

No, you just ignored the point in my post, and you repeated the same error you made with these false analogies.

Go read my post again, now that you have been reminded of the issue.

 

[Craig234]

The history of empire and government has always dictated that alliances come and go. National interests change in time and one's enemies become one's friends based on what is in the best interests of the country at the time. So japan was our enemy, now is a friend; Germany was an enemy and is now our firend; Russia (USSR) was a friend then an enemy.

The British Empire was renowned for using such geopolitical tactics, aligning itself with groups that would advance its own interests. It's one way they were able to control a huge empire with a relatively small population.

Those who try to deal in moral absolutes find themselves trapped into being unable to make any decisions for the national good. Iran needed to be stopped so Iraq was the means to that end.

The USSR needed to be stopped in Aghanistan so arming the insurgents was a means to that as well. In both cases we aligned with unsavory groups/people, but in the larger world picture where the PRIMARY purpose of government is to protect its citizenry and advance its national interests, these were necessary geoploitical goals.

Now, I propose the main reason we are in Iraq today is agaon for geopolitical reasons. I leave it to the student to attempt a discourse on what those reasons may be.

The thing is, you who defend this war approach are assuming that 'the goals of empire' are justified.

You reduce the morality to 'if we do it, it's good and if they do it, it's bad'. That's the absence of morality, the morality of 'might makes right', not any real values.

We need to be better than 'the bad guys', and too many on the right fail to see it, simply defining our having more power as good, however it happens, with minimal restrictions.

Putting blacks or liberals in ovens - too far. Dropping jellied gasoline (napalm) on millions of farmers in Asia - good idea. The line is somewhere between the two.

Read the bolded text above. *Every empire in the history of the world* did what they did 'for geopolitical reasons'. That's not good enough for moral justification.

That's what I mean, that you justify the unjustifiable with such empty phrases as 'geopolitical reasons'. You need to do better, or we're the same as the bad guys.

There are times we're justified in using force; and times we're not, when we're simply pursuing power and wealth *unjustly*, just like the bad guys do.

It's not enough to be one of the two bad guys and hope our might beats their might.

We need to be the nation which stands for morality - which does allow compromises for practicality for the 'lesser of two evils' when needed.

And tossing around the example of Stalin and Hitler casually to use it for justifying any time we do or side with evil is wrong.

As you speak of 'geopolitical interests' you are blindly justifying a policy of empire, not justice; you are encouragins policies which force us into unnecessary wars.

Are we an empire or a peaceful republic? You need to decide that before you keep pushing the policies of empire and all the evils they include.

We weren't an empire for fighting Hitler.

We are in our policies pushing war for our own 'geopolitcal advantage', such as our pushing Saddam to invade Iran, with its million casualties and gassed schoolchildren.

Have you lost all sense of the US's moral values and simply succumbed to the blind pursuit of power regardless of the cost, not for defense but for corrupt greed?

It seems to me that the cold war thinking for the right, when the world was a chessboard for two superpowers supposedly competing, has carried over to the time when we continue to treat the world as a chessboard to gain mastery over the board even without the supposed justification of doing so to save it from the communists; now it's just become a habit as we stumble down the road of empire under prettier names, not admitting if even recognizing our policy for what it is. The accidental empire.

Our wealth and might is so large, that what to us is a minor action is to the target their entire sovereignity being threated, a major war with catastrophic impact.

It's like the giant stumbling around, 'oops, sorry for stepping on your house'.

Even the cold war, when we made so many compromises in the name of fighting evil, needs some revisiting. Were the communists hell-bent on world domination and enslavement? The roots of the cold war go to two things - the American elites/republicans' desire to battle the public wanting a greater share of wealth, and the need for an issue with which they could regain political power when FDR had so overwhelmingly made the republicans into an unncessary, annoying appendage in the political system.

They found it - the enemy of the commies, and accusations that only they and not the democrats could protect the nation. The public bought it and hence came McCarthyism.

The roots of the strident anti-communist policies, the ones based on saying the commies were bent on world domination, like with a couple of the more unbalanced, radical people in the debate near the president. Many others disagreed with the degree of alarm and the way to deal with the Soviets; Winston Churchill, who the right so greatly admires for his not following appeasment with Hitler, strongly felt that the US was making a huge mistake in not pursuing a peaceful arrangement with the Soviets and being hugely bellicose.

But the paranoid fringe won out. The Soviets certainly did have problems; a dictatorial system domestically, including some of the worst political purges in history; after taking the largest allied losses in WWII by far, they wanted the Eastern European countries as a buffer of protection, but a century earlier the US had announced the Monroe Doctrine creating a similar dominance over its region; later, the Soviets leapt at the chance to ally with Fidel off our shore with missiles - following our putting nukes on their border first.

It's possible to see the cold war as the Soviets having more to fear from us than we did from them. It's hard to see that, because our cultural propaganda is so stridenly in opposition to the message, just as you would expect if an empire were using another nation as a 'threat' to justify its own expansion, but the facts make a decent case for it.

The US did more aggressive acts in the name of defending from the monolithic evil of the Soviets than they did to outsiders, it seems. Make no mistake that they were an 'evil' system of government who deserved to be overthrown, but we managed to exaggerate it to even far more. We saw the Russians everywhere and acted not as a just nation but as a nation taking any action needed against evil again and again.

Yes, the Soviets wanted nukes - after we had them, and used them possibly as a show of strength against the Soviets. When we had thousands of nukes and they had four, JFK ran on a platform that the US was far behind the Soviets in the missile race - and won (beating the republicans at their own game). In Viet Nam, we went to war over an imagined global conspiracy and killed millions who just wanted freedom from colonialism. Later, we'd sponsor terrorism around the world in the name of defeating 'commies'.

But whatever you think of the cold war, it's over, and indefensible for us to continue the same 'compromises' absent the 'threat' of another superpower.

It's awfully difficult not to see the agenda of those who are trying to turn the muslims into the new 'commies' as looking for our next excuse for continued 'compromises'.

If we don't, the world will fall to the evil radical muslims, we hear, our own safety and sovereignity is at risk, the paranoia says.

No, your whitewashing of anything we do under 'geopolitical reasons' is inadequate to justify our actions. The Nazis, the Soviets, the Red Chines under Mao had the same explanation for anything they wanted to justify. Was Kruschev's decision to put nukes in Cuba not for geopolitical reasons too, especially with our Jupiter nukes already on his border in Turkey?

You need to do better to justify our pushing a war with a million casualties and the gassing of children than to say 'geopolitical reasons' make it ok. It doesn't.

If you say that, then Osama bin Laden is doing what he does for geopolitical reasons, too.

As I said, you rob the US of its values with such a position. It's one thing when there's a Hitler, and another when there'snot and it's the same old power grab of 'evil empires'.

 

[WHAMPOM]

Why does US foreign policy sound like a two year old having a tantrum screaming " I WANT WHATS I WANT, RIGHT NOW!".

 

[dphantom]

Originally posted by: Craig234

The history of empire and government has always dictated that alliances come and go. National interests change in time and one's enemies become one's friends based on what is in the best interests of the country at the time. So japan was our enemy, now is a friend; Germany was an enemy and is now our firend; Russia (USSR) was a friend then an enemy.

The British Empire was renowned for using such geopolitical tactics, aligning itself with groups that would advance its own interests. It's one way they were able to control a huge empire with a relatively small population.

Those who try to deal in moral absolutes find themselves trapped into being unable to make any decisions for the national good. Iran needed to be stopped so Iraq was the means to that end.

The USSR needed to be stopped in Aghanistan so arming the insurgents was a means to that as well. In both cases we aligned with unsavory groups/people, but in the larger world picture where the PRIMARY purpose of government is to protect its citizenry and advance its national interests, these were necessary geoploitical goals.

Now, I propose the main reason we are in Iraq today is agaon for geopolitical reasons. I leave it to the student to attempt a discourse on what those reasons may be.

The thing is, you who defend this war approach are assuming that 'the goals of empire' are justified.

You reduce the morality to 'if we do it, it's good and if they do it, it's bad'. That's the absence of morality, the morality of 'might makes right', not any real values.

We need to be better than 'the bad guys', and too many on the right fail to see it, simply defining our having more power as good, however it happens, with minimal restrictions.

Putting blacks or liberals in ovens - too far. Dropping jellied gasoline (napalm) on millions of farmers in Asia - good idea. The line is somewhere between the two.

Read the bolded text above. *Every empire in the history of the world* did what they did 'for geopolitical reasons'. That's not good enough for moral justification.

That's what I mean, that you justify the unjustifiable with such empty phrases as 'geopolitical reasons'. You need to do better, or we're the same as the bad guys.

There are times we're justified in using force; and times we're not, when we're simply pursuing power and wealth *unjustly*, just like the bad guys do.

It's not enough to be one of the two bad guys and hope our might beats their might.

We need to be the nation which stands for morality - which does allow compromises for practicality for the 'lesser of two evils' when needed.

And tossing around the example of Stalin and Hitler casually to use it for justifying any time we do or side with evil is wrong.

As you speak of 'geopolitical interests' you are blindly justifying a policy of empire, not justice; you are encouragins policies which force us into unnecessary wars.

Are we an empire or a peaceful republic? You need to decide that before you keep pushing the policies of empire and all the evils they include.

We weren't an empire for fighting Hitler. We are in our policies pushing war for our own 'geopolitcal advantage', such as our pushing Saddam to invade Iran.

I would propose the Roman and British Empire were not evil in themselves. Each, in its time, advanced the cause of civilization. Sometimes, the means of such advancement may seem "evil" to us today. But the underlying purpose was to as I said above, secure the citizenry and advance the national geopolitical agenda.

For us today, that agenda could include the following: democracy, economic capitalism, free trade.

We advance those causes (and others) thru what we believe to be a superior moral position, that we, thru our actions, attempt to provide the means to assist the greatest number to secure those things we hold to be important.

There are many grey areas to be sure. But your position that we are either a peaceful republic or evil empire is false. we are in fact neither. Our preference is to be peaceful, but some of the rest of this world sees us and other Western democracies as inherently dangerous, evil even, to be destroyed. As long as there are those groups, we must be prepared to fight and advance our interests across the world. It is how we will protect our citizenry, by supporting groups - sometimes unsavory - who will further our goals.

So we are hardly the saem as the bad guys. Far from it. So you have still not understood the geoploitical reasons for our involvement in the ME. Rather, you wrap your anger and bitterness toward this country in some attempt to define a moral high ground that falls apart just like those who in the later 1930's were determined to keep us out of WWII.

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Vic is right, except the CIA never helped Osama. Both the CIA and Osama state this clearly. Google it and you'll see what I mean.

Otherwise Vic is right. The "good guys" are not always the "good guys" and some times you have to support bad people on order to further your aims.

In the Soviet/Afghanistani war the US supplied the 'freedom fighters' among which OBL was one... that is common knowledge..

 

[judasmachine]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
Precisely the answer to this thread---Saddam is now dead and dead men tell no tales.----guess we will now have to ask James Baker, Donald Rumsfeld, and George H. Bush.
Who among us think we will get an ounce of truth out of them?

/thread

 

[mchammer]

Originally posted by: dphantom

I would propose the Roman and British Empire were not evil in themselves. Each, in its time, advanced the cause of civilization. Sometimes, the means of such advancement may seem "evil" to us today. But the underlying purpose was to as I said above, secure the citizenry and advance the national geopolitical agenda.

For us today, that agenda could include the following: democracy, economic capitalism, free trade.

We advance those causes (and others) thru what we believe to be a superior moral position, that we, thru our actions, attempt to provide the means to assist the greatest number to secure those things we hold to be important.

There are many grey areas to be sure. But your position that we are either a peaceful republic or evil empire is false. we are in fact neither. Our preference is to be peaceful, but some of the rest of this world sees us and other Western democracies as inherently dangerous, evil even, to be destroyed. As long as there are those groups, we must be prepared to fight and advance our interests across the world. It is how we will protect our citizenry, by supporting groups - sometimes unsavory - who will further our goals.

So we are hardly the saem as the bad guys. Far from it. So you have still not understood the geoploitical reasons for our involvement in the ME. Rather, you wrap your anger and bitterness toward this country in some attempt to define a moral high ground that falls apart just like those who in the later 1930's were determined to keep us out of WWII.

You have said some interesting things in your post, but I think there is one area that you should also address. I will quote a section from your post: "Our preference is to be peaceful, but some of the rest of this world sees us and other Western democracies as inherently dangerous, evil even, to be destroyed. As long as there are those groups, we must be prepared to fight and advance our interests across the world."

Let us hold your statement as true, which if stated more diplomatically, many would agree with. The key questions which you then must look at are:
1. Who are these groups that are against us?
2. What types of power do they have?
3. What threat do they pose to us?
4. How should the US respond to the situation?

Then when a possible US plan is decided:
1. Does the US have the power and capability to execute the plan successfully under the given conditions?
2. What are the possible consequences of each possible US action?
3. Do those consequences endanger the plan itself or harm other US interests?
4. Work more on plan, repeat until done.

You have done a good job showing why you believe the ideological underpinnings of US policy to be desirable and moral. However being too guided by ideology can be dangerous and counterproductive when deciding on what specific actions to undertake.