The Return Of Hagel?
Posted on March 2nd, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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This seems guaranteed to annoy a lot of the right people for the wrong reasons:
Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party figures to his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska and an opponent of the Iraq war, and Richard Lugar, leader of the Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee.
Senior advisers confirmed that Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and one of McCain’s closest friends in the Senate, was considered an ideal candidate for defence secretary.
If he did end up winning, putting Hagel in his Cabinet wouldn’t really put my mind at ease, but then I have been an unusually harsh critic of Sen. Hagel’s claim to being “an opponent of the Iraq war” and of his foreign policy views more generally, but I can see how it would reassure a lot of people that we would have someone reasonably competent at the Pentagon (plus Lugar at State?) under Obama. While this may be consistent with his “unity” theme, I don’t see how it helps consolidate his support among the party regulars, and I expect a new round of complaints in the netroots to be coming soon. It would certainly be something if a victorious Obama gave both Defense and State appointments to more or less “realist” Republicans–can you imagine the backlash from both parties? So much for “change you can believe in”! The funny thing is that a Hagel selection would inevitably draw more scorn from all those Republicans who decided that Hagel was persona non grata for expressing some skepticism about the war early last year. It would still probably annoy a lot of partisans who wanted the post for one of their own, and instead of being a reassuring sign of bipartisan governance it would be received as confirmation in the eyes of his mainstream critics that Hagel is just a RINO and that Obama associates with “appeasers,” which is strangely how many Republicans see Hagel. Update: On cue, Ledeen takes this line more or less exactly
For my part, I wouldn’t find it reassuring at all, since the last time we had a Defense Secretary from the other party in a Democratic administration we had the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 (another war Hagel supported), and Hagel is almost as much of an interventionist as Obama. One thing that should give everyone pause is that it’s entirely conceivable that Hagel could serve readily enough in a McCain administration, too.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
From a non-interventionist perspective, are there ANY realistic candidates for defense secretary or Secretary of State who would be reassuring, in either potential administration?
I hate to say it, but given the current state of affairs, a “realist republican” might even be the best of a (very poor) set of choices. After all, the realists, including Hagel, while having as bad a record vis a vis Iraq as almost anyone, seem to me likely to be somewhat more cautious going forward than either the current clowns in the administration, the currently somewhat marginalized neocons, or the liberal hawks. In terms of specifics, I would think that, of all the “serious” foreign policy factions, the realists would be the least likely faction to get into a military confrontation with Russia (definitely), China (probably) or Iran (maybe).
Though I agree that this sort of thing is not exactly well calculated to reassure his base. Maybe Obama has concluded (perhaps correctly) that the base will come around, and that he needs to continue to focus on getting/keeping support from independents and moderate Republicans.
Though I agree that this sort of thing is not exactly well calculated to reassure his base. Maybe Obama has concluded (perhaps correctly) that the base will come around, and that he needs to continue to focus on getting/keeping support from independents and moderate Republicans.
Yes, this pick (Hagel) works for me.
I also want to see the netroots reaction – I don’t think it will be as negative as you think. I think they will be reasonably supportive.
I don’t share your paleocon views, but I sympathize with the fact that no one in this election, at any level, is putting them forth, nor does the electorate seem to have any interest in them. That said, are you really sure Obama is more interventionist than Hillary or McCain? And if not, shouldn’t you spend a little time, just a teensy weensy bit, exploring that? I mean honestly, you’ve pretty screwed in this election, but you still have to evaluate these candidates in terms of comparative value to your own views, and it doesn’t seem like you’re doing that. All I see is you spending a lot of ink complaining that Obama doesn’t represent the change that you want, when he certainly does represent a change of some kind. And yet, he still seems to represent at least marginally more of the kind of change you want than the others.
And about Hagel, well, he’s not a RHINO on any issue other than the war. He’s the Lieberman of the right, who’s a liberal on virtually all issues other than war. As for Secdef, I could live with him there, though I’m not crazy about him. And as for the accusation that Obama isn’t being “true” to his call for unity unless he actually appoints someone who disagrees with him entirely, well, that’s just silly. The idea isn’t some kind of ideological representation plan, but to take people from across the spectrum who actually can form a consensus on various issues. So Hagel, who is strongly conservative on most issues, such as say, being pro-life, is still able to agree on a consensus to end the war in Afghanistan, while not having to compromise his views on other issues that aren’t relevent, and can even serve in the cabinet. This is, indeed, a significant change form the polarization of Bush, who put people into positions of great responsibility solely becase of their ideological purity and group loyalty. The incompetence of the Iraq efforts was due in part to this approach. So yes, that’s a welcome change. It doesn’t mean he’s going to put people in charge of various policies who actually oppose his policy. That’s just silly, and playing “gotcha” on that point is absurd.
I, like Mr. Larison, am a pessimist, so I don’t expect any sort of “change we can believe in” coming from the White House. Everybody knows that Hillary is no peacenik hippie and McCain is not a Taft Republican, so for doves Obama seems to be the least of three evils. But for me it seems to be a choice between a fire, a frying pan, and a barbecue. Maybe Obama won’t make the same policy mistakes as Bush 43, but he’ll probably spend his four years making new ones.
Well, I had a long response written out to your first comment, which I lost with an inadvertent click of a link in the sidebar. The brief version would be this: as I have said many times, except for Iraq, and his minor differences with the status quo on talking to Syria and Iran and his attitude towards the Cuba embargo, there is literally nothing that Obama is offering that I would find desirable, and also nothing that could credibly be described as “change.” His overall foreign policy view strikes me as being more interventionist, and you can find evidence for this in his statements on Pakistan and his position on Darfur. With respect to “humanitarian” interventions, I am confident that Obama would be more activist than the other two, and that seems as foolish to me when he is doing it as it did when Brownback was proposing something similar. So, yes, he is more interventionist, and I think I have shown that many times over the months.
I am talking about these things as much as I am because there is a temptation among antiwar conservatives to back Obama on the assumption that he is an antiwar candidate and better still one who opposed the Iraq war for the right reasons. In other words, it is because Obama *appears* to be comparatively more in line with our foreign policy views that I have been subjecting his record to such scrutiny. I take for granted that many of my antiwar colleagues think so, and I am making arguments to make them approach Obama more skeptically. In my view, the only real dilemma for us should be whether we vote third party or opt not to vote at all. Voting for Obama would entail becoming essentially one-issue voters while blithely ignoring all the ways in which Obama is worse in foreign policy. There are plenty of people who are now antiwar who are kicking themselves for voting for Bush in 2000 because they fell for his “humble foreign policy” rhetoric, only to find that he was never in principle opposed to interventionist wars as such. What I have been trying to do is to make sure that they don’t make the same judgement in backing Obama, only to find themselves deeply regretting that as well in another two or three years.
On the second comment, I don’t know who you’re arguing with, but it isn’t with me. Obviously Hagel *isn’t* actually a RINO as that term is generally understood, but for Republicans who define Republicanism by support for the war, which is most of them these days, he is. You and I know that this is crazy, but it is how he is perceived by most Republicans. I’m not the one criticising Obama for not being “true” to his call for unity–I would say that this is what his and Hagel’s enemies will say. In fact, they’ve already started as soon as this story broke. I can see a good case being made for selecting Hagel on competence grounds, and I could even make an argument that Hagel, since he has never really opposed the war meaningfully, would be a perfect example of Obama bringing people from the opposite side of a debate to work alongside him. However, that would not be the mainstream perception of the move, because the mainstream media sees Hagel as a war opponent and mainstream Republicans view him with the contempt they reserve for antiwar Republicans. I don’t know who it is who is supposed to be playing “gotcha” here. I was speculating on what the reactions to these proposed appointments would be. I think they would be, on balance, better choices than many of the alternatives. That doesn’t mean that I find the choices reassuring about the things that worry me about Obama, but I don’t pretend to be representative of a large number of people.
I also don’t know of anyone who is proposing to end the war in Afghanistan. Obama certainly isn’t. I assume you meant to write Iraq.
I guess, Daniel, and I know you weren’t responding to my post, but my response to your latest comment would be along these lines: you have every reason to be skeptical about Obama’s foreign policy, and certainly he may well end up be more likely than McCain to engage in “humanitarian” interventions, and almost as likely to engage in other types of interventions. But I do think that a case can be made that, overall, he is less dangerous than McCain (for example, as crazy as an intervention in Darfur would be, it most likely would be less damaging, for ourselves, for the subjects of the intervention,and for the rest of the world, than, say, an attack on Iran). I think you even agree with that – you have come pretty close to saying as much. So, then, the “vote for Obama” option is perhaps a bit more plausible for anti war conservatives than you are saying.
And here is where the talk about Hagel comes into play – say what you will about him, his presence would likely act as a restraint on, at least, certain types of interventions.
Which leave us (and by us I mean anti-interventionists generally) about where Mr. Martin is,
Of course, that is somewhat easier for someone like myself, who, despite not being anything like a conventional liberal, finds at least some of Obama’s domestic agenda congeneial, to say.
To further expand upon the Hagel point, yes, he supported the Kosovo intervention, but that was a relatively low cost intervention (for the United States). I can’t imagine him supporting a high cost, long term, messy intervention in Darfur. As I stated above, I also think he would be cautious with regard to conflicts with, say, Russia or Iran. He would probably confine himself to supporting interventions involving “low hanging fruit”, such as Iraq was (incorrectly) perceived to be. Now, that’s bad enough in its own right, and of course miscalculations like Iraq are certainly possible. And, of course, Obama would still be the person in charge. The point is merely that, while not embracing Hagel at all, the chatter coming from the Obama campaign should be (marginally) reassuring to anti-interventionists. Again especially when the alternative is a crazy septuagenarian.
I suppose that is where I differ, and maybe I differ from many non-interventionists on this as well. In my view, an intervention that is unjust and indefensible is the wrong thing for the government to do even if it is “low cost” to us. Panama was “low cost” for us, and it was also illegal and wrong. So I question the judgement and wisdom of someone who wants to embark on any particular intervention of this kind, because it usually shows a misguided sense of priorities and a misunderstanding of what our government ought to be doing in the world.
McCain is pretty crazy, I grant you, but he may be constrained by the domestic opposition in ways that Obama is not. His well-deserved reputation for militarism would make it much harder for him to build a coalition in support of new military adventures, while Obama’s image of being sane and prudent will make it possible for him to gain and use public trust for such things much more easily.
Democrats have tried for several years to make hay out of Iraq being a distraction from the greater threat from *Iran*, and in this Obama does not seem to be very different on this point. I can easily imagine that Obama would want us to intervene in Darfur *and* launch strikes on Iran in the same four-year term if he deemed them both necessary. This is a problem with his overly ambitious definition of our security interests, and it goes back to the question of setting priorities that I raised in an earlier post. To the extent that a Hagel or Lugar could restrain him, that would be good, but that just underscores that the candidate himself seems potentially very dangerous.
I suppose I am marginally reassured by the talk of Hagel and Lugar in his Cabinet, and I fully intend to lay into McCain with the same gusto that I have been criticising Obama recently, but I have wanted to present the arguments for why non-interventionists should be very wary of Obama.
Daniel,
Sorry you lost that reply. We are poorer for it.
Yes, I can understand where you are coming from, but I still have to say I think you are misreading the man. Or I am. I think it highly unlikely that Obama will be a major exponent of interventions, even in places like Darfur. He certainly has not campaigned on an interventionist program, and invoking Bush as an example of someone who turned out to be different than he campaigned simply isn’t fair. Obama has far more integrity and has thought these things through far more than Bush. But even more so, it’s a difference in temperament. Obama simply doesn’t strike me as the impulsive, radical type. Bush is a dry drunk and a true believer, let’s face it, without any intellectual capacity to make careful evaluations. He got sold on the Iraq invasion, and it was gung ho and no reflection whatsoever from that point on. Obama is the opposite. He strikes me as someone who would carefully weigh all the factors, and err on the side of caution, not impulsiveness. He doesn’t have the temperament, like either Bush or McCain, to launch us on a messianic program of interventionism.
On the other hand, he may be more inclined towards small, low-cost interventions. Your assertion that the 1999 Kosovo operation was “illegal” is rather dubious, or that any support for Kosovo against the Serbs is wildly dangerous is also unsupported by the facts. Obama may, or may not, involve us in minor things such as this, but I’m sure he will not involve us in anything major or costly such as Iraq or Iran, and I disagree that congress could stop McCain. He’s a dude who has nothing to do, and will do what he thinks is “right” even if it’s unpopular. I don’ think he cares if he doesn’t get re-elected anyway. He’s incredibly dangerous in my book. ANd Hillary is somewhere in between. Obama, on the other hand, is far more likely to get us out of Iraq than either, by every metric. And yes, in foreign policy at least, Iraq outweighs every other consideration by a mile. There’s simply no way that even a dozen small actions on Obama’s part adds up to anything remotely like the costs of Iraq, or God help us an Iranian war. Be reminded that McCain’s straight talk is that we will, indeed, have more wars. Take the man at his word, please.
Now, I can understood your not wanting to vote, or going third party, but of the three remaining majors, I think the only rational paleocon choice is Obama, if maybe with gritted teeth.
Specifically on the illegality of the Kosovo war, it had no authorisation under international law, it was in direct violation of NATO’s founding treaty, it violated the guaranteed sovereignty of a member state of the United Nations that is protected under the Charter (a treaty to which our government was a signatory), and it also had no Congressional authorisation when it began. Take your pick of which part made it illegal. More to the point, it was, like Panama and Iraq, a war of aggression and therefore unjust. I think responsible leaders should be against all aggressive wars. The real test for a pol comes when the conflict doesn’t stand to harm your country very much. It’s a lot easier to oppose aggression when the risks to your country are greater.
There seems to be a lot of confidence that Obama will not launch strikes against Iran. I’m not sure why that is. He hasn’t ruled out such strikes, and his rhetoric about the Iranian government is difficult to distinguish from those identified as hawks. I take McCain at his word, and I take Obama at his. They have both declared the Iranian nuclear program to be unacceptable. Obama has left the door open to negotiations, which is marginally better, but he insists on the same goal, which I think he and everyone else knows is only going to be achieved through force (and even with the use of force it may not be achieved). What concerns me about his stance here is that there is the danger that he brings a level of credibility and respectability both here and overseas to a policy that is fundamentally misguided.
I take your final point. I would not argue that anyone on the antiwar right ought to prefer McCain to Obama. I suppose I simply want the antiwar right to go into this election with their eyes open, understanding that Obama’s position on the war in Iraq is very much the exception in his foreign policy.
Daniel
I for one appreciate your refusal to endorse Obama as the lesser of two evils regarding interventionism. I agree with you regarding Darfur and Pakistan, but more importantly it is time to put to rest the curse that is internationalism and that will not happen on Obama’s watch. As the leftist Alexander Cockburn is found of saying the Obama’s of the world essentially run as the better “managers of empire”. This is not non-interventionism. It is a return to the “humanitarian interventionism” of the Clinton years.
While it is technically right to note that Panama, Grenada, et. were “low cost” the precedent they set, both morally and politically has proven to be a disaster, as escapades like those are constantly invoked to point to the ease by which the U.S. military can impose its will over anyone. The consequences and realities of any given situation are rarely exampled at all in large part because of such low risk ventures.
While I respect Justin Raimondo, and think his willingness to look for the silver lining is something all non-interventionist ought to engage in more often, Obama is not a vehicle for us. He is a vehicle for managerial elitists plain and simple.
Dylan
Dylan,
I agree, Obama is not a vehicle for Paleocons. But let’s face it, dudes, you guys don’t even have a broken down VW bug, much less a Presidential vehicle. Who, even among Republicans, could serve that role. Only Ron Paul, and he had less of a chance than Pat Buchanan. The reality is that either you don’t vote at all, or vote for some absurd third party dissent candidate, or choose the lesser of what to you are two evils.
So yeah, we are choosing the better manager of our empire, if that’s what you want to call it. What, you want the worse manager of our empire to win? Is there some kind of advantage in that?
Actually there is reason to believe that a “worse manager” could finally wake up the broader conservative base toward a serious examination of our foreign policy failings, especially given what we have seen from the talking heads since McCain’s ascension…but I am not willing to play a game of that sort that directly effects the lives of U.S. troops and possibly civilians.
For me the act of voting implies an endorsement of the platform, statements, charactor, et. of the person I am pulling the level for. I am willing to make compromises, but some things are non-negotiable. Perpetual war is not something I am willing to compromise on.
If you choose to sanction evil by voting for the lesser of its kind that is your choice. I choose to reject evil.
Dylan,
I’ve never looked at voting as an endorsement. It’s a choice, usually between two possibilities. It’s a fork in the road, literally. It’s seldom the case that one gets the best of all possible roads to choose from, or even one that one can wholly endorse.
I recall for example voting for Reagan in 1980, not because I endorsed his platform – I was an even more liberal democrat back then – but because I thought he was the fork in the road the country needed to take. Hating Carter helped also. But I did see some positive things about Reagan that I thought for a number of reasons he would be good for the country, so I decided for him, even though I also saw a whole lot I didn’t like. All I’m arguing about in favor of Obama is that he’s the better fork in the road to take, and there aren’t any other options available.
Now, true, if you think Obama is actually evil, then don’t vote for him. I certainly wouldn’t. But I think you should re-examine your sense of evil if you think that way. If I had thought Reagan was evil, as quite a few of my fellow liberals did, I wouldn’t have voted for him. But closer examination dispelled me of that illusion. And I think closer examination of Obama reveals a flawed candidate, but far from an evil one.
Daniel,
You neglect to mention that the Kosovo war of 1999 was aimed at preventing genocide, which renders your other claims of “illegality” moot.If it was illegal, why did NATO and the UN not charge the US with war crimes? Why is that they charged Milosevic and the Serbs with war crimes? And calling it a “war of aggression” is a pretty poor excuse for defending fascist war crimes. Oh, wait, but the Serbs were orthodox Christians, like yourself, so that makes it okay? Protecting their sovereignty outweighs their using their sovereignty to wage genocidal war? That’s a very fine legal system you subscribe to.
I’m sure you will bring up Iraq in your reply, and I don’t mind. I have no problem with the argument that Iraqi sovereignty isn’t inviolable, and that if Saddam was engaging in genocidal behavior, it would justify an intervention. The problem there is that, at the time of our invasion, Saddam was not engaged in genocidal behavior, nor was he threatening to, and that even if we were, while an intervention would have been justified, it would not have been required on our part. I opposed the Iraq war in spite of the humanitarian arguments in its favor, precisely because I saw the cost of an invasion as being far greater than any benefits. I didn’t see the same problem in Kosovo in 1999, and how it played out showed that this was the smart play.
Now, comparing Kosovo in 1999 to Panama in 1989 (I think it was) is absurd. There was no human rights crisis or genocidal factor in Noriega’s regime. There was a purely manufactured “crisis” of no account whatsoever that was used to justify a regime change operation we had been itching to bring about. He was laundering drug money, to be sure, but that’s hardly a reason for a military strike. I opposed that action as well. It was a brutal and deadly operation that killed many innocent people for no good other than letting Bush play the autocratic military henchman and getting rid of someone who had lost our favor. That bears no relationship whatsoever to the Kosovo situation.
Now, suggesting that there’s a parallel between McCain’s and Obama’s plan towards Iran is absurd. Obama has ONLY suggested negotiations. He has NEVER suggested military strikes. When he says their nuclear program is unnacceptable, he has never indicated that a military act is the alternative. He has talked only about increased sanctions, economic isolation, and increased international pressure, which is the standard European strategy. Europe has also declared Iran’s nuclear program unnacceptable, but no one thinks the alternative is a European invasion of Iran.
McCain’s Iran policy? “Bomb bomb boms, bomb boms Iran!”
I think the difference is rather clear. Pretending there is no difference reminds me of guys like you who argued in 2000 that there was no difference between Bush and Gore, or if there was one, that Bush was less inclined towards interventionism. Well, see how well that played out.
Daniel,
On reflection, I can only say it’s really hard to predict the future, but if one does play that game, I think one has to largely go on the personal qualities and predilictions of the candidates, not try to decipher their actions from abstract policy statements.
I’m recalling the 2000 election, and my predicting to my friends after it was over that we’d be going to war in Iraq. An even more prescient friend said we’d be at war within a year. I based this not on what Bush had run on, but on the kind of guy he was. I just basically said to myself, looking at him and the guys he put into his administration – “These are the guys who go to war. That’s what they do.” It’s not crystal ball methodology, it’s just looking at the kind of people these candidates are, and who they surround themselves with.
In that respect, I think Obama is pretty dovish. He’s not a total hippy-dippy dove, but he’s not a big war-mongering interventionist either. McCain, on the other hand, has war on his brain, and the guys he surrounds himself with are total nutcases for war. They simply love it, personally, in their bones. And that’s what counts. Call that a pretty flaky way of looking at things if you will, but I think it matters far more than most people are willing to admit. And it tells you what these guys will do once they are in power.
“You neglect to mention that the Kosovo war of 1999 was aimed at preventing genocide…”
That’s because I don’t repeat state propaganda that is demonstrably false, and it’s embarrassing that there are still people who repeat this garbage almost ten years after the fact. I also don’t talk about Iraqi WMDs, nor do I blame the sinking of the Maine on the Spanish. I do appreciate the insulting assumption that I opposed the Kosovo war only because I’m now Orthodox, which I wasn’t at the time.
Panama and Kosovo were both exercises in trampling on smaller countries to project power and force political outcomes that Washington wanted. They are not identical, but they are certainly comparable. This is what never ceases to amaze me–if someone says “human rights,” people who would never support a similar military campaign are suddenly confident that it is right and proper, but take away the pretext of humanitarian assistance and suddenly it’s a different story. No wonder the public can be so easily manipulated.
Obama has ONLY suggested negotiations. He has NEVER suggested military strikes. When he says their nuclear program is unnacceptable, he has never indicated that a military act is the alternative.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/oct2004/obam-o01.shtml
Democratic keynote speaker Barack Obama calls for missile strikes on Iran
Thanks, tedschan. The Tribune story mentioned in the article is real enough, but we don’t have to dig that far back to find Obama’s openness to bombing Iran. Just last spring he made his position on this quite clear. Now you can make an argument Obama is slightly less intent on turning to the military option, but his stated position is that he has not ruled it out and clearly believes the “threat” from Iran to be great enough to warrant the possibility that it may become “necessary.” I think the pressure on him to show that he is sufficiently “pro-Israel” will be great enough that he will feel obliged to take a harder line on Iran in the future.
Heh. I was trying to find something more recent, but couldn’t find anything with an actual quote.
The argument for Obama on Iran isn’t so much that he would be less likely to resort to military force if negotiations failed; the argument is that he would be more open to the kind of “grand bargain” that would resolve the problem non-militarily. Not that such a grand bargain is exactly a non-interventionists dream, but it beats open warfare.
Moreover, and for some reason I don’t hear the argument phrased exactly this way, but one would think that Obama, with perhaps less self confidence than McCain in his instincts regarding the use of military force, and (only relatively) less inherently belligerant than McCain, would be more likely to listen the advice of the generals (which, in the case of Iran, anyway, would likely be along the lines of “attacking Iran would be lunacy”).
Really, this was one of the many reasons that I found the idea of a Guilliani presidency so horrifying. I think most of the other candidates, including even McCain and Clinton, when push comes to shove, tough talk to the contrary, are not going to let the bombs fly in the face of what, from what has been leaked to the press, is apparently MASSIVE military opposition to a strike on Iran. Whereas Guilliani most likely wouldn’t give a damn what his generals advised.
And yes, I recognize the sad irony of an inti-interventionist actually favoring the candidate who might be more willing to listen to the generals.
Daniel,
I’m deeply disappointed to hear that you are among the war crimes denialists regarding Serbia’s actions in Kosovo. I thought more highly of you than that. Whether your motives have something to do with religious or ethnic loyalty, or some fantasy that we should just leave the rest of the world alone to sort our their killings, and we’ll all be better off in the end, I don’t know. The ethnic cleansings of the Serbian forces prior to our bombing campaign is clear as day. The likelihood that it would only get worse is close to certain. That you side with the Serbs in this case tells me you’ve got some serious blinders on. But I kind of got that idea already. I just wasn’t aware of how severe the problem was.
Regarding the Obama-Iran issue, I can’t get that WSJ 2004 link to open, so I can’t comment on it. The 2007 speech clearly states that Obama will pursue diplomacy, not war, against Iran. He merely states that he will not rule out military action, which is quite different from advocating military action, and I think it’s pretty clear that actually ruling out military action would be widely taken as appeasement, and rule out any Presidential possibilities for Obama. And, of course, ruling such things out unilaterally is simply a stupid way to approach such issues, and clearly weakens any possibility of diplomacy achieving results.
In short, I think this approach is a completely crazed rationale for claiming that Obama is an advocate of military intervention in Iraq. So the standard is, unless he makes an absolute rejection of military action, he’s advocating military action? Come off it, dude. This is just nutty. As I’ve said, there’s no comparison between Obama’s approach and McCain’s, and this article does nothing whatsoever to change that. If anything, it makes the divide all the more clear.
I find it truly hilarious that some still parrot this line almost a decade after both NATO and the international “human rights” brigade – the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, etc. admitted that casualties were nowhere as severe as they first claimed them to be. If 2500 civilian fatalities is your threshold for military intervention into a third world brushfire war then not only would that justify intervention into Iraq dozens of times over but it would also compel us to intervene into several dozen other separatist and tribal wars all over the world.
Needless to say, if the Clinton administration truly cared about “human rights” then at a minimum it could have stopped selling the Turkish military the weapons they used to butcher 50000 Kurds during their war with the PKK rebels.
You call can call it a “fantasy” all that you like, but that isn’t going to stop the rest of us from continuing to call it “common sense.” One day interventionists are going to have to explain just how America managed to somehow survive for the first 150 years of its history despite doing absolutely nothing to stop the countless bloodbaths that transpired elsewhere on the globe during that time period.
NB: I’ve refrained from accusing you of having some ulterior motive for wanting Slavs/Orthodox believers killed, despite the fact that you couldn’t stop yourself from doing the converse to Daniel.
Zarathustra,
Yes, you are living in a fantasy world. Here’s a link that describes the ethnic cleansings Milosevic engaged in from 1991-1995, listing the dead Muslims as 200,000, with 2,000,000 refugees. Do you dispute these figures? By how much?
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/bosnia.htm
Between 1995 and 1998, several hundred thousand more refugees were created by further massacres by serbs. An increased campaign in 1998 produced 640,000 more refugees, and many more deaths. In 1999 a major invasion was in the making to take over Kosovo for good and finish the job of ethnic cleaning, This had barely been started when the allied bombing campaign began. Some of the worst massacres occurred after the bombing began, but much of the cleansing operations had to be suspended, and finally stopped. So yes, like you say, the actual fatalities in the spring of 1999 were rather small, by previous standards, precisely because of the allied intervention. WIthout that, we have the 1991-95 record to go by, which would have produced many, many more fatalities, and millions of refugees, as the country would literally have been stolen away.
Now, I guess you consider this small potatoes, and none of our concern.But you idea of common sense is not particularly “Christian” that I can see. So whether you or Daniel belong to some chuch with fancy beliefs and sanctimonious rituals, and whether you are simply defending the long history of such churches encouraging the “common sense” activities of people like Milosevic or Ratko really doesn’t matter to me. It’s something I oppose and I applaud the courage of Clinton and others in Europe and in our armed forces to put a stop to something that should have been stopped long before.
And yes, I do want slavs and orthodox beleivers killed if they engage in genocide and ethnic cleansing. You, on the other hand, seem to think its perfectly fine for such people to do such things, if they belong to the right religion, and do it to people who belong to the wrong religion. You are welcome to keep such beliefs beneath whatever sordid rock you live under.
Can we, I don’t know, agree that there were real, and serious, abuses by the Serbians in Kosovo, while also agreeing that they were much exaggerated? And then, perhaps (just perhaps) agree that military intervention by the United States in all such cases is (a) an untenable position, (b) often counterproductive, with the usual incidence of unforeseen negative consequences, and (c) ultimately a recipe for justifying interventions with less less “noble” real motivations?
I agree with this last comment. It is typical for those who swallowed the media line about Kosovo to conflate war crimes with genocide, because that is what our government also did: it took evidence of war crimes committed in an ugly war against insurgents who used methods of terror and declared this evidence of a genocidal plan. There were abuses committed by army and paramilitary forces against the Albanian population in fighting the KLA, and the KLA engaged in abuses against the Serb and Albanian populations of Kosovo that would not cooperate with them. The official narrative, however, had to be that the heinous Serbs were intent on wiping out the Albanians, for which there is simply no evidence. We went to war based on that general lie and on the specific lie of the “massacre” at Racak.
Our government waged war against a people that had never done ours any harm and which had fought on our side in both world wars. Try to justify that any way you want–it is aggression and it is despicable. They suffered their own genocide in WWII, and virtually no one cares about that, so I am a little tired of the one-sided pleading on behalf of people who started wars with the Serbs and had the misfortune to be losing them. There were cruelties and mass expulsions on all sides in those conflicts in the ’90s, none of which was right and none of which was necessary, but came about partly because of the enthusiasm for recognising newly independent states in the Balkans and making an internal struggle for power the business of the enture world. I am growing very weay of the suggestion that I or anyone else here thinks that war crimes are “fine” if committed by the right people. That is an outrageous insult, and I won’t tolerate that kind of accusation in my comments. Anyone who has been reading this site for very long knows that I abhor injustices committed during wars, and I condemn war crimes regardless of their origin. I do have the annoying habit of holding our government and its allies to the same standard that we demand of everyone else. Speaking of sanctimony, all commenters who cannot show basic respect to other commenters will be barred. I do not issue such warnings lightly.
Fundamentally, however, it is true that I regard wars in the Balkans as “none of our concern,” just as I regard the war in Chechnya as none of our concern. Ditto separatism in Kashmir and other regions around the world. It remains incredible to me that serious people think that America has any right or business interfering in other nations’ conflicts on either side. It ought always to be incumbent on the people urging such action to defend their radical and arrogant position. Those who propose to pick winners and losers in wars that have no connection to us have a galling amount of hubris. They should reflect on the presumption it requires to dictate the fortunes of other peoples.
Daniel,
What am I to think when you consistently try to minimize the horrors the Serbs are responsible for in the former Yugoslavia? Then you come up with the tired excuse that there were abuses on all sides. Yes, there were, but the abuses were initiated by the Serbs as government policy, and carried out systematically with the intention of driving muslims out of their lands, and far outwieghed any abuses on the other side, while the abuses of the muslims were initiated in response to this murderous policy as a defense (and plain old retaliation). You might as well describe the atrocities of WWII as being “on both sides” since the Russians certainly committed atrocities against Germans, and the western allies committed atrocities in their bombing of civilians. But that would completely obscure the actual situation as it actually occurred, and would amount to rather transparent apolgetics for Nazi genocide and their own ethnic cleansing program.
There’s simply no question that the problems in the former Yugoslavia are due to virulent, neo-fascist Serbian aggression. It isn’t some kind of “both sides are at fault” situation. The Serbs had been engaging in deadly ethnic cleansing for a decade and had killed many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, already. Kosovo was simply part of their long-term strategy, as transparent as the Nazi strategy, just on a smaller and weaker scale. But evaluated by the square mile, or per capita, it was just as deadly and despicable.
Now, why you insist on trying to minimize this situation, or pretending it’s something where blame can be meted out on both sides, rather baffles me, particularly given your claims to be outraged that anyone would dare question your motives.Well, at the risk of being banned, I do question your motives. I think an issue such as this requires the honest inspection of our motives. I am not finding an obvious explanation for your failure to condemn the Serbian aggression and ethnic cleansings in the most uncertain terms, rather than trying to pretend some kind of mutually abusive conflict existed there which it is impossible to sort out. I don’t know if it has anything to do with your own personal religious affiliation, but I do find it rather predictable that whenever someone seems to have trouble evaluating and condemning this kind of situation, it turns out they have a conflict of affiliation, so to speak. I think that given that conflict of affiliation, the onus is on you to explain why that’s not the case, rather than getting all huffy that someone would dare suggest you might have personal prejudices here. And I think banning me at this point would only confirm the worst, however you’d like to spin it.
Now, I do acknowledge that the question of whether we should intervene in such a situation is far more complex than determining that something truly horrible has taken place, or will continue to take place, or get worse. The track record of the Serbs on this is indefensible, however. I reject the notion that they must be given the benefit of the doubt, that their motives can’t be gleaned from their actions, and that reports of massacres were exagerated. They had a nearly ten year record of brutal ethnic cleansing operations against musims (and others, to be sure) that should erase any notions of what their long term policy had been, and would continue to be if left unchecked. And yes, it’s terrible that they suffered genocide at the hands of the Nazis in WWII, but It think we intervened there too, so it’s not much of an argument against intervention. Nor does it excuse them for using the same methods and policies against others.
I don’t think that the US, or NATO, or the UN has to, or even can, intervene in all situations like this. But I see nothing wrong when they take on a situation like this which can be handled with minimally effective force, as was the case in Kosovo. It’s not like it was thousands of miles away in Rwanda, where we have no military bases. This was in the heart of Europe.
In summary, the arguments against interventionism you are making remind me of William F. Buckley’s comparison of communism and the free world. He compared communism to pushing a little old lady in front of an uncoming bus, whereas the free world is pushing a lttle old lady out of the way of an uncoming bus, and yet someone always objects, saying, “Hey, you’re both pushing little old ladies around!”
Daniel,
And by the way, you don’t need to ban me. If you don’t want me posting here anymore, just ask me to stay away, and I will.
And where exactly is Daniel’s “conflict of affiliation” in the case of Iraq? You yourself agree that “there were abuses on both sides”, but then go on to criticize him for “pretending it’s something where blame can be meted out on both sides” – well, which is it? There is a perfectly respectable position, which I take to be roughly the one that Daniel has adopted, which at once rejects any form of criminality (whether that of the Serbs, the Albanians, the Nazis, or the Baathists) as immoral, and yet insists that it is not our place to intervene wherever such immorality is present, and that in general our presence tends to make things worse for everyone and so we’d be better off staying at home. Is that “motive” enough for you?
I’m sorry – the second sentence should read “You yourself agree that ‘there were abuses on both sides’ in the former Yugoslavia …”. Daniel, you really ought to add an “edit” function. Or perhaps I should just learn to get things right the first time …
conradg,
The Buckley paraphrase is, indeed, quite apt (in that your argument is equally – nay, more – absurd than his), But your deployment of it does, indeed, demonstrate the gulf in thinking between people like Daniel and myself, on the one hand (ironically, as I expect that politically we would agree upon little else other than our non-interventionism) and yourself.
A year ago I might have tried to educate you – but more and more I despair of such a task. Most of our citezens don’t WANT to examine the assumptions that underpin their beliefs about our role in the world. But I will ask you to think hard on two facts – the same type of arguments that were used to justify our intervention in Kosovo were used to justify our intervention in Iraq, and are being used to justify interventions in Iran and elsewhere. And our tactics in Serbia – bombing civilian infrastructure, a war crime – were “justified” by our ostensibly good motives, just as other war crimes have been similarly justified. There is no principled distinction between Kosovo and the worst demented dreams of the neocons. And there will always be a cynical monster like Cheney to take advantage of naive saps like yourself to justify aggression against weaker nations.
John, my point is precisely that the “there were abuses on both sides” argument is a fake and phony way of hiding the reality, rather than exposing it. As I said, in WWII there were abusing on both sides also. That doesn’t mean that the Nazis weren’t the evil dudes responsible for the war. And any argument about the Nazi war crimes which tries to bring up the “there were abuses on both sides” argument is pure apologism and propagandistic deception.
Now, I think it’s fine to argue that we shouldn’t intervene in such a situation as Kosovo (or Iraq for that matter), but to use the argument that “there were abuses on both sides” to support this is nefarious denialism, and it deserves to be condemned.
Though it is tempting to pick apart the many specific poor arguments and errors in your latest post. Let’s start with “minimally effective force,” Obviously from OUR perspective it might have looked that way, but I kind of doubt that it (38,000 combat missions) looked that way to the Serbians.
conradg,
I don’t see how you can justly interpret Daniel as using that claim – the one about atrocities having been committed on both sides, I mean – in a positive argument against military action in Yugoslavia. It was brought in as a relevant fact (which it is), and one which has very often been overlooked in this discussion (which it has been). Perhaps you could properly interpret him as having drawn on that claim in attempting to rebut a very common sort of argument in favor of military action, but the core of Daniel’s own argument against it seems to me to be contained in a sentence which makes no mention at all of whether both sides were committing atrocities:
The fact that your only response to this line of argument is to compare the Serbs to the Nazis – who posed, of course, the kind of threat to the U.S. that Milosevic never could – seems to me to reveal quite nicely the weakness of your position.
LMaggitti,
Yes, the effective use of force is proportional. For us to use the force we did was effective precisely because of who we used it against – a small country with limited defenses facing a giant force such as NATO. This is standard “Powell Doctrine” – only engage in wars in which we have an overwhelming force advantage. To me, that’s one of the requirements of any intervention, and why I opposed the Iraq war – the force and effort required to win and sustain a victory was just too great, and there were too many things that could go wrong. Whereas in Kosovo the logistics greatly favored our success with minimal costs. We suffered no combat fatalities at all, and our combat activities lasted only a few short months. As you say, the Serbs undoubtedly didn’t see it that way – which is exactly the point, and why it was effective.
John,
I compare the Serbs to the Nazis because of the ends they pursued and the tactics they employed. The Serbs, of course, did not match the Nazis in firepower, but that does not mean they were no threat to NATO security, of which we are a member. The kind of grotesque ethnic cleansing operations they employed for over a decade in the middle of Europe did, indeed threaten the stability of the region. And, of course, it threatened the lives of all minorities living in the former Yugoslav republic. The notion that “national sovereignty” protects a country from practicing genocidal ethnic cleansing within its borders is a thing of the past, thankfully. And yes, that kind of activity is indeed a threat to its neighbors, even if one simply looks at the refugee situation.
As for Daniel’s pretense that the moral and legal situation in Kosovo was somehow ambiguous, because there were “abuses on all sides’, well, of course that’s a relevant argument intended to weaken the case for intervention directed at the Serbs (rather than equally directed at the Kosovars), as if we should keep out of some kind of family feud, you know, Hatfield and McCoys. As I’ve said, it’s fine to argue that we shouldn’t bother getting involved in their little exercise in genocidal ethnic cleansing, but let’s not pretend it’s something other than that. I know it makes it easy to argue against intervention if we keep up that pretense, and that’s exactly why I don’t think it should be allowed. Daniel is threatening to ban me from this site because he seems to desperately need to keep that pretense up, and I have to wonder why that pretense is so important to his arguments. If he really believes in the principle of non-intervention regardless of the circumstances, why should it matter what the circumstances were? I think it’s rather clear he does think the circumstances matter, and so he wants to obfuscate them with this phony claim of moral ambiguity, when there really is none – no more so than there was when fighting the Nazis. The fact that the allies did engage in some war crimes of their own in no way made the war itself morally ambiguous, or our “intervention” any less a good and positive act.
And as for waging war against an enemy who had never done our people any harm, let me remind you that the Nazis never did our people any harm either. They did not attack us at Pearl Harbor, and their declaration of war was merely a formality due to their treaty with Japan. They did not attack us, and I’m sure would have been more than happy never to have fought us. It is we who mounted an attack against them by joining in the war on the side of the British and Russians.Nevertheless, I think we decided that fighting the Germans was in our national interest.
conradg,
And my point is that your position is a monstrously sick and twisted view of the world. The fact that so many of our fellow citezens share it doesn’t make it any less so.
We have killed far more innocent Iraqis than Serbia killed innocent residents of Kosovo. By at least one and probably two orders of magnitude. But you apparently don’t have a problem with that – you are just opposed to the Iraqi madness on prudential grounds.
But really I digress. I’m sure you have 4 or 5 comforting little rationalizations for our many war crimes. What appalls me about your pathetic moralizing (and I don’t speak for Daniel, but I expect he feels the same way) is the disconnect between being just fine with killing of innocents and ethnic cleansing when done by the United States or its surrogates, yet being appalled by such actions when it’s being done by other nations.
Oh, and Daniel, this supports a point I have been making about many of Obama’s supporters, Far from being appalled by Obama’s real foreign policy views, they share those views. I’m sure if conradg thought that bombing Iran was the only way to stop them from getting the bomb, and if he could be convinced that it would make sense on prudential grounds, he would be all for it. Just like Mr. Obama.
I find it interesting that my condemnation of Serbian ethnic cleansing shows that I have “a monstrously sick and twisted view of the world.” How so?
As for the Iraq situation, what on earth are you talking about? I opposed the invasion for precisely the reasons you mention. I did some research before the war, and saw that yes, Saddam was a monster, but he was a monster contained, who was murdering maybe 1,000 people a year (by Amnesty International’s count), whereas an invasion would be hugely more destructive, and unlikely to actually acheive anything remotely like a peaceful Iraq, and of course tie us to the country indefinitely by the principle of “you broke it, it’s yours.”
Kosovo was quite a different story, however. In that case, we could stop the monstrous Serbian ethnic cleansing operation by a relatively small investment of force, manpower, and treasure. It wouldn’t solve all the problems, but would at least contain them. In Iraq, we already had containment, which I thought was the best strategy, as it was in the Cold War. I think it’s sad that many civilian Serbs died in our bombing campaign, but I don’t consider those death deliberate war crimes, simply because they were not. We were not there to kill Serbian civilians, but to stop Serbian aggression, and we accomplished that goal, at least in the larger picture.
Now, that you accuse the US of “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo, rather than the Serbs, tells me just where you stand in this battle. I’ve met sick dudes like you before, and really, there’s not much to say to someone who takes the side of ethnic cleansing, except to say, your days are numbered. And this cheap rhetorical gambit of accusing your enemies of the crimes your side is guilty of just doesn’t work.
conradg,
I hope Daniel doesn’t mind my mild rudeness to you, but you fail at reading comprehension. You have a sick and monstrous view of the world because you are among those who believes that the United States has the right to use it’s military to attack sovereign nations and kill their people when ever it suits us, limited only by the prudential concerns of the of the Powell doctrine.
Your condemnation of Serbia, on the other hand, doesn’t make you a moral monster. However, combined with your acceptance and approval (explicit, in the case of our war crimes against Serbia; implicit, in your apparent belief that the only problem with our Iraqi venture was that is was an unwise, as opposed to immoral and illegal, use of force*) of similar, and worse, actions taken by the United States**, makes you a pathetic morally preening hypocrite.
As for accusing the United States of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, that wasn’t what I was referring to (I was referring to the ethnic cleansing byour clients in Iraq, which, in terms of the numbers involved dwarfs even the highest estimates of what happened in Kosovo), but it is a documented fact that our clients in Kosovo did engage in ethnic cleansing of the Serbs after the war. I suppose that you think that that’s justified by what the Serbs did there, or it’s okay when “our side” does it. Either way, it demonstrates a moral depravity on your part far greater than anything that you have (falsely) accused Daniel of. (Parenthetically, I think that Daniel is a tad easier on the Serbs than I would be, but his version of the historical facts is far closer to truth than your version. But really that is neither here nor there, for the reasons set forth above and in prior comments.)
* Your reasons for opposing the invasion of Iraq were not the same as mine. An invasion of Iraq, even if far less bloody and costly to the United States, would have still been a war crime – aggressive warfare – you know, one of the three categories of war crime for which people were hanged by the neck until dead after WWII.
** You don’t need to intentionally kill civilians to commit a war crime. Targeting civilian infrastructure (in Serbia) is a war crime, even if no civilian is killed (and some were). Also, indiscriminate bombing that kills civilians is a war crime even if there was no intent to kill the civilians (plenty of that in Iraq). And torture.
And if, indeed, the days of the war criminals and ethnic cleansers, and their enablers, were indeed numbered, then the United States and some of it’s closest allies would have a lot to fear. Sadly, that does not appear to be the case.
Lmaggitti,
First, I’m not offended by your accusations. I understand that you are just getting a little hysterical – those kinds of things don’t mean much to me, sticks and stones and all that jazz. I’m just finding it odd that you would accuse me of having reading comprehension difficulties when you can’t seem to figure out my position with any accuracy at all.
First, I don’t believe in abstract concepts such as “rights†in this respect. The US has a military, and it can use it wisely or unwisely, justly or unjustly, and it certainly has. It doesn’t have to justify itself by saying it has, or doesn’t have, some abstract right to use force. I favor wise and just use of the military, and I oppose unwise and unjust uses. But this is like saying I like good movies, and don’t like bad movies. Defining what is wise and just is not always so easy as you would like to think. And international law is a murky and even silly on this issue, and I think the fundamental problem is that nations, and corporations, don’t have rights at all, only individuals have rights, so it is silly to argue about what right a nation has, since it isn’t the relevant issue. Individuals have the right to form nations, but their rights are not thereby transferred to the nation, nor does the nation thus formed have any rights of its own, as if it were an individual. This is a form of “anthropomorphizing†of legal entities, which is a false and dubious proposition which leads to endless false arguments on both sides.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but your argument that the US committed war crimes in Kosovo rests on the notion that our intervention there was illegal, and thus criminal, and thus a war crime. This is a technical legal argument that is very different from saying it was unjust, unwise, immoral, or inappropriate. There’s a huge difference between this kind of “war crimeâ€, and the vast program of ethnic cleansing engaged by the Serbs throughout the 1990’s, of which Kosovo was only a part. I suppose you could legally argue that what the Serbs did wasn’t a war crime at all, since it did not involve violating the sovereignty of any nation, and was applied only internally. I guess you could say the Holocaust wouldn’t have been a war crime if Germany hadn’t started WWII, but had just rounded up German Jews and begun exterminating them, even if the Jews had fought back. And that intervening in that situation would have been a war crime, since it would have violated German sovereignty. Well, this is the kind of legal argument I reject as monstrous and sick, and I think most people would agree. It’s one thing to argue that the costs of intervention might outweigh the benefits in such a situation, but it’s another to say one doesn’t have the right to intervene. If I have to break a law to help someone out in dire need, I’ll do it, and worry about the law later on. But I guess in your view that makes me a monster.
Your condemnation of Serbia, on the other hand, doesn’t make you a moral monster. However, combined with your acceptance and approval (explicit, in the case of our war crimes against Serbia; implicit, in your apparent belief that the only problem with our Iraqi venture was that is was an unwise, as opposed to immoral and illegal, use of force*) of similar, and worse, actions taken by the United States**, makes you a pathetic morally preening hypocrite.
There’s a word for what hiding behind legal rationales as an excuse for turning a blind eye to ethnic cleansing is: cowardice. If my views seem like hypocrisy to you, I can live with that. I just couldn’t live with being a coward, whereas that seems to suit you just fine.
I fully acknowledged that Kosovars did engage in ethnic cleansing of Serbs, both before and after the NATO intervention. I do condemn that, but I don’t pretend it was anything other than predictable retaliation for a program of ethnic cleansing initiated by Serbia and carried on by them for almost a decade. It’s not really all that hard to imagine that if you practice the kind of systematic ethnic cleansing that Serbs did throughout the 90’s, that some of those chickens are going to come home to roost somewhere down the line. NATO tried to lessen that, but it didn’t have the power to stop it entirely. But you should also acknowledge that the Serbs continued to practice ethnic cleansing, to the degree they could get away with it, after the intervention as well. It’s just that they were stopped from doing it with the overwhelming force they had prior to the intervention.
But here’s the silliness of your “outrageâ€: first you imagine that I think Kosovar war crimes are justified, when I never said anything of the kind, and then you express outrage at my “moral depravity†for justifying war crimes. How desperate is that line of argument? I condemn Russian war crimes against Nazis, that doesn’t mean I think that the real problem with WWII was Russian war crimes. The real problem with WWII was Nazi aggression and Nazi war crimes. Their plan, if carried out, was to exterminate ALL Slavs, throughout ALL of Europe, not just Serbs. Yes, the Russians did commit war crimes in fighting back against that approach, and while I condemn it, I don’t see the Germans as innocent victims (as a nation at least) in that they supported Hitler and his wars so long as they seemed to be going well. The Germans were responsible for creating the situation in which Russians would undoubtedly seek retribution, and thus they even bear sizable responsibility for the inevitable retaliation they later suffered. I think the Germans figured this out over time. The question is, why can’t you figure this out in relation to the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia? Yes, it’s terrible that their own terrorist methods were turned back upon them by the very people they terrorized, but honestly, what would you expect if you attack people like that?
The real weirdness of your argument is that you would blame NATO for this situation, as if NATO had created it, rather than the Serbs. Yes, I guess you could say that NATO’s intervention weakened the Serbs, thus making it harder for the Serbs to engage in ethnic cleansing, and thus easier for the KLA to do some dirty work of their own, but this is looking at with only the pure self-interest of the Serbs in mind, rather than seeing that, overall, the potential for war crimes was reduced by the operation.
Both legally and morally, I think the invasion of Iraq probably could be considered a war crime, in that not only was Saddam not a credible threat to the US, he wasn’t enough of a credible threat to either his neighbors or even his own people to justify an invasion. I think there’s no doubt that Saddam himself was a war criminal and all-around murderous shithead, and while arresting and replacing his government and putting him on trial was thoroughly justified, I don’t think it was at all wise. And in my view, war has to be both justified and wise. I have no problem with the idea of putting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their legal staffs and admininstrators on trial for war crimes. I can’t believe it hasn’t happened already.
** You don’t need to intentionally kill civilians to commit a war crime. Targeting civilian infrastructure (in Serbia) is a war crime, even if no civilian is killed (and some were). Also, indiscriminate bombing that kills civilians is a war crime even if there was no intent to kill the civilians (plenty of that in Iraq). And torture.
My last post has numerous formating problems. I hope you can see that the paragraph beginning: “Your condemnation of Serbia” was in fact a quote from Lmaggitti. Likewise, the 2nd to last paragraph is also a quite from Lmaggitti, and the last paragraph is my response.
And yes, I second the motion to add an editing feature to the comments section.
For now I only have time for the big point, not the little ones. And even on the big one, unfortunately I have to punt a bit, simply because setting out the whole argument is well beyond the scope of a blog comment.
But, in essence, I understood your position all too well. The problem is simply this – that your position, in the real world, inevitably leads to the very kind of horrors that we are seeing now (and worse). Good intentions (and the reason I called you a naive sap in an earlier post is because the vast majority of the people in our government making the actual decisions either do not share those good intentions at all, or, at best, mix those good intentions with some decidedly not so good intentions) aren’t enough. As a secularist, I don’t literally believe the old cliche that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but that cliche contains an important truth. The fact is, the moral vanity that leads you to claim that failing to respond to what you (based upon government propaganda that was only partially true) consider to be atrocities led to the killing fields of Iraq. And precisely the same types of arguments are being used to justify war with Iran.
To put it another way – even if you want to pretend that Bush and Cheney and company represented a dramatic departure from the past – a debatable position, to say the least – any democracy is going to be governed by morally dubious people from time to time (or, more cynically, more often than not). If you have a nation with (a) the most powerful armed forces in the world, (b) a military industrial complex to support those forces, ( c) military bases throughout the world, and (d) a political consensus that we have “interests” that we have a right to “defend” throughout the world, you are going to have horrible horrible things happen when the people in control aren’t the “good guys.”
And that’s bending over backwards to assume that in “normal” times the people running things will be people of good faith, which is decidedly not the case. In my lifetime, there hasn’t been a president who I would trust with the armaments of a small town police force, let alone the strongest military in the world.
But that only scratches the surface of why your world view, is, ultimately, morally monstrous in effect if not in intent. Look up the treaty of Westphalia sometimes, and the 30 Years War that it resolved. You might start to understand some of the reasons for the international order that Cheney and Bush are dismantling with a wrecking ball. And you might be surprised at how closely some of your own arguments about the international order dovetail with the Bush administration’s justifications for doing so.
And, of course, here is where, if I had more time, I would list the hideous, horrible things done by our nation and its surrogates in the last half century or so. Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, central America, Chile, the list goes on and on and on. It’s a shameful record, it happened on every administration’s watch, and it is really, really disgusting to see it defended by morally preening hypocrites like yourself. Oh, yeah, that’s right, your only defending the GOOD things we did, not the bad things. The problem is you can’t seperate them. It’s like housing, feeding, and protecting a mass murderer for 50 years who spent one month a week working in a soup kitchen. You can’t defend yourself by saying you only supported the charitable work, and disapproved of the mass murdering.
And i can’t resist commenting on the incoherence of your position vis a vis Iraq. Once you adopt the principle that international law is “murky and even silly”, and “that nations, and corporations, don’t have rights at all,” and that the United States has the right to violate the sovereignty of other nations to protect their citezens from their rulers, you can’t argue that the Iraqi venture was immoral or illegal. You can argue that it wasn’t prudent, either in terms of our own interests, or in terms of the interests of the people of Iraq on consequentialist grounds, but you have conceded both the legal and the moral case (well, okay, I suppose you can still make a purely consequentialist moral case, but not one that is going to be very effective in terms of actually effecting policy).
Lmaggitti,
I don’t pretend that international law doesn’t exist, even if I think some of it is both silly and murky. So while I acknowledge that the Iraq invasion probably violated international law, I don’t care as much about that as that it violated international morality. Likewise, I don’t think all of international law is silly and murky. I don’t think the Geneva Conventions are silly and murky. I don’t think that international soveriegny is sacrosanct, but I do think that violating it shouldn’t be done lightly, or dishonestly, as it was done in Iraq. ANd while I don’t think the approach of talking about a nation’s “rights” makes sense, I don’t think there are no ways to make sensible international law that applies to both nations and people. What I am pointing to is the insanity wherein international law protects “national sovereignty”, but not people. This seems entirely wrong-headed to me, and almost inherently immoral and inhuman.
So my arguments will make better sense if you understand that my priority in both morality and legality is not about protecting nations, but about protecting individuals. I’m not saying one can’t do both, but if one must make comprises, it’s the “rights” of nations that must be compromised, not the rights of individuals. All within the realm of what is possible, not what is ideal.
Lmaggitti,
Responding to your longer post, I’m both entertained and a bit repulsed. I was glad to see that I had graduated from being “sick and monstrous” to merely be a sap, but then I see later on I return to being “morally monstrous”. So I’m quite versatile, apparently. But I must say that I simply don’t share you view of this country, or the very concept of a “country”.
You seem to be addicted to anthropomorphizing everything, the United States in particular. As if there is actually some person called “the United States”, who is responsible for everything evil in the world over the last fifty years. As if Vietnam and Iraq were actually fought by the same people, the same leaders, the same policies, etc. Well, I’ve got new for you, our “country” is nothing more than the people in it who are alive at any given time and voting, working for, and getting themselves elected as leaders of those people. The notion that there’s a continuous “nation” from one generation to the next is merely a legal fiction, not an actual fact. So in fact those who carried out the Iran coup in 1954 are not the same people who bombed Kosovo in 1999. Nor are the people who elected them the same. It’s only the legal name of the country that stayed the same.
Now, as to the morality of those actions, I would condemn some things done, and praise others. I think virtually all nations have done good and bad things, and the notion that you can’t separate them is just as insane as the notion that there are “good people” and “bad people” rather than good acts and bad acts. Obviously you are one of those people who thinks that they are one of the “good people”, and I guess I’m one of the “bad people”. Well, this is just nutty. There are very few crazed killers among us, and as you say, even they are capable of good acts. But nations are not people, and they do not have a coherent personae. The same Germans who elected and followed Hitler into the depths of horror also elected peaceful, Democratic German leaders from the 1950’s on. It wasn’t even a new generation. So, is Germany a psychotic killer or a peaceful builder of automobiles? Well, the question is just stupid, because nations are composed of individuals, they are not individuals, and they don’t act as individuals. If even individuals have a huge range of actions and characteristics, it’s impossible to define a nation in that way, being composed of millions of individuals. But human beings are addicted to anthropomorphizing everything around them, so this illusion is widespread.
That said, I simply don’t see the United States as some kind of morally monstrous entity comparable to a serial killer who also volunteers at a homeless shelter. I think some American leaders have made great decisions, and some have made criminal decisions, and we should punish those who are criminals, and praise those who have done good. Likewise, some American leaders have done both. FDR made some great decisions, but I think he was also culpable for war crimes in sanctioning the allied bombing campaigns against German and Japanese civilians in WWII. THe same goes for Truman, who did some very good things, but also ordered the dropping of the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which I also believe were war crimes. So even WWII can be divided up into a serious of good and bad acts, and I see no problem differentiating between the two. By your logic, we should not have fought at all, because it would be naive to think we could fight that large a war and not make some very bad decisions resulting in very bad acts. I would disagree, and say that your view represents the silliest kind of utopianism.
Now, I understand that international order is important, I simply think international order should be based on the reality of individuals, not the fiction of nations. You seem to have this naive view that international security is somehow guaranteed by treaties and laws. It is not. It is guaranteed only by individuals. Likewise, it is not violated by nations, it is violated by individuals. Hitler led Germany into WWII, not vice-versa. Saddam Hussein, not Iraq, invaded Kuwait.George Bush, not the United States, invaded Iran. The notion that you can reverse these facts by “strengthening international law” is just a fantasy. It’s not the way the world works. Leaders who want to go to war will always be able to do so as long as the individuals who actualy make up their country support them, whether by popular acclaim or through fear. No treaty can stop a leader from breaking it if he can get away with it, just as laws against murder don’t stop serial killers from killing people. That you think such laws work is laughably naive. What stops serial killers is good police work, or blind luck, not laws. Likewise, what stops murderous leaders is other leaders willing to step up and stop them. I am not stopped from killing people because there are laws against killing. I am stopped first and foremost because I think killing people is bad, and secondarily because I might get caught. But the law itself is pretty much immaterial. And international law is pretty much immaterial unless there is an enforcement mechanism. The problem is, the enforcement mechanism is the very thing that you are arguing against, because it would require intervention, which you oppose. So in effect, you are simply arguing for a fantasy – expecting laws that no one will actually enforce to stop people who don’t much care about laws to begin with. Such laws will only stop people who had no intention of breaking them in the first place, and do nothing to stop those who wish to. Hitler negotiated with people like you at Munich, and when he returned to Berlin, he told his staff that they had nothing to worry about. He said, “I have met our enemies, and they are little worms”.
So, yes, maybe on tuesdays and alternate thursdays I’m a moral monster, but I’m not a little worm. Which do you think is worse?
conradg,
Sadly today is going to be to busy to fully respond to your current posts, let alone continue the dialog. All that I can say is that you aren’t really getting the point – not surprisingly, as your brand of naive do goodism is virtually a national characteristic. The kind of foreign policy you prefer can’t exist in the real world. In this respect, even liberals and libertarians need to cultivate a Burkean understanding of the concept of unintended consequences and the dangers of radical violent change, even when people have the ‘right” motives.
Okay, after a somewhat productive couple of hours I still don’t have time for a full response, but I can’t resist quickly revisiting Conrad’s (lack of) coherence regarding the distinction between supporting the Kosovo venture and the Iraq venture. Set aside prudential concerns; conradg claims to have moral and legal objections to the Iraq disaster as well. But the distinctions that he makes on those grounds are incoherent. Start with “based on a lie.” Two points: first, Daniel claims, and I think correctly, that the Kosovo venture WAS based upon a lie, or at least a pretty serious exaggeration. Conrad disputes this, albeit more with bluster than with evidence. But setting aside for a moment who is “correct” about this dispute, let’s remember that there are plenty of people making precisely the same argument regarding Iraq as Conrad is about Kosovo – i.e., disputing that there was in fact a “lie.” Moreover, the humanitarian reasons for the invasion of Iraq, which weren’t different in any meaningful way than the justifications for attacking Serbia, weren’t a lie – the lies were with regard to other justifications, i.e., WMD.
Well I imagine that Conrad might reply that the humanitarian concerns were not our “real” motive for attacking Iraq. There are about a dozen problems with that argument, but let’s just hit the high points. Is Conrad so sure that the same couldn’t be said about Kosovo? I’m not. The fact is that “real” motives are inherently unknowable, or at least imperfectly knowable, and basing conclusions about the morality or legality of going to war on motivations is dicey at best.
As for legality, I’m afraid that a detailed critique of Conrad’s troubling thoughts regarding international law is beyond my current time constraints. I will simply point out that, if one accepts his criticisms of international law, it is simply impossible to characterize the Iraqi war as ilegal.
The bottom line is this: you certainly can coherently hold the positions that conrad has vis a vis international law and morality*. Those positions are IMO morally monstrous in their implications for reasons which I have tried to sketch out above, but set that aside. What one CAN’T do, coherently at least, is to hold those positions and simultaneously condemn the Iraq venture on moral and legal (as opposed to prudential) grounds.
Which is, incidentally, why so much of the left interventionist critique of the Iraq venture fell so flat. The crowd who was so thrilled to intervene with regard to Kosovo wasn’t really in a position to oppose the Iraq venture, except on narrowly prudential grounds.
And that, of course, comes back to one of my central arguments, which Conrad hasn’t even engaged, except for sputtering along the lines of ‘but but but, then what can we do about governments doing bad things tot heir people,” combined with name calling. It simply isn’t true, int he real world, that any nation can adopt a policy of humanitarian intervention and avoid having that policy misused to support horrors such as Iraq. You can’t have one without the other. And Conrad’s attempts to have his cake and eat it too – to break down a consistent pattern of U.S. foreign policy in to the “good” parts that he likes, and the “bad” parts he doesn’t like, is, to be charitable, morally vacuous.
Which brings me to a final point. It’s all well and good to make silly arguments about “cowardice” when condemning a policy of consistent non-interventionism. But put any label you want on it. You want to argue that, by taking such position I’m some how supposed to feel some level of responsibility for what might have happened in Kosovo without intervention? I could talk about the moral distinction between responsibility accruing from inaction, versus the responsibility accruing from action, but let’s accept some such responsibility for the sake of argument. I’d sleep much, much better at night, even with that on my “conscience,” than Conrad should sleep at night with the innocent blood that he has on his hands from Iraq and other interventions . And noConrad, you don’t escape responsibility for such blood because you opposed the Iraq venture. It all stems from the the consensus role of the United States role in the world, which you have made it clear you whole heartedly support.
*Well, actually that may be conceding too much. It seems to me that the logical implications of what Conrad says about the nature of individuals and states creates some uncomfortable contradictions with his rather expansive notions of how the United States should act in the international area, but that would be a suject for another, longer post.
Lmaggitti,
It’s a pleasure to get smacked down once again. But no, I don’t agree with you about much of anything.
I don’t agree that humanitarian motives for intervention make it difficult to criticize interventions motivated by power and corruption. That’s like saying having a police force makes it impossible to criticize police brutality. It’s true that as long as one has a police force, one is going to get police brutality, but that ignores the reality of how brutal life would be without a police force.
I’m not suggesting that the US, or the UN, or NATO, needs to act as an international police force, but let’s face it, that’s going to happen at some point in the future whether you or I like it or not. The best we can hope for is a fairly benign police force which intervenes when innocent people are in trouble, not a corrupt police force which intervenes to rob and exploit people, as often happens in third world nations. In the present world, I can certainly see how one could argue that Kosovo helped make things slightly easier for Bush to invade Iraq, but in the real world, it wouldn’t have made any difference at all. Bush, after all, was one of the people who opposed Kosovo. And yet, he still managed to invade Iraq without it bothering his conscience one bit. The point is, Bush was set to invade Iraq regardless of what anyone else said. He could have given a hoot about what left-wing protestors, congress, the whole world thought, he was going to do it. So pretending that if only leftists had been pure anti-interventionists, this would have made a difference, is pure fantasy. You are still operating under the naïve assumption that people who have bad reasons for invading other countries give a damn what reasons their critics have for opposing them. Or that good people engaging in interventions for humanitarian reasons simply pave the way for bad people engaging in bad interventions. Bad people will do what they want to do regardless, unless they are forcefully stopped. The only thing that would have actually stopped Bush’s invasion of Iraq would be if, say, Russia or China threatened to align with Saddam and defend him militarily. That’s the kind of criticism he would have taken seriously. Leftist protesters? Furgettaboutit.
As for your insistence that supporting the United States’ leading role in the world is itself enabling the moral outrages of Vietnam and Iraq, etc., is just incredibly short-sighted. Yes, I’d certainly like the US to simply pull out of everything outside its borders, and just concentrate on baking apple pie and playing steroid-free baseball, but in the real world, it doesn’t work that way. In the real world, power abhors a vacuum, and the minute the US steps back, someone else is going to step in and start leading the world, and it isn’t going to be someone you like. It’s going to be Putin’s Russia, or Jing’s China, or various middle-eastern shitheads. And before long, that “new world order†is going to be doing some very nasty things, and not to our benefit. You really think an unchecked Milosevic, running rampant through the Balkans, aligned with KGB Putin and various eastern european and central asian despots, controlling all the gas pipelines to Europe, are really going to make the world a better place? Dream on, dude. The US may indeed be the worst Empire in the history of the world – except for all the others.
So, if I have Iraqi blood on my hands because I in general support a leading role for the US in the world, then you have Iraqi blood on your hands for simply living in the US and buying gasoline for your car, because that’s the reason we have interests in the middle east at all, and why Bush decided it was in our interests to invade. I at least am a virtual fanatic about the need for the US to attain energy independence, and to spend hundreds of billions of dollars at the very least towards that end rather than trying to occupy Iraq indefinitely. Still, I find it very amusing that you consider me responsible for a policy I entirely opposed, as if supporting my local police force means I am responsible for putting a plunger up some guy’s poor ass in NY city. (I’m sure you know the case from the 90’s).