Here We Go Again—The Way We Are Now, Continued
It is said that the U.S. now has more Iraqis in prison that Saddam Hussein did. Nor is their treatment always better.
I haven't seen any estimates, but is it possible that the U.S. has killed more Iraqis than Saddam did?
Over 1,100 vehicles were viciously attacked by deer in my State last year.
When rulers start mad bloviating about imminent and desirable universal regimes, it is always a sign that a downfall is near. It does not make any difference if the universal regime is called "democratic."
Most governments conduct their relations with other states in the light of what is good for their country. I can think of only two states in recent times in which the rulers felt empowered to expend the blood and treasure of their people on fantasies—Nazi Germany and the U.S.A.
Was not the present financial crisis easily foreseeable by prudent people who care about their fellow citizens? If so, it follows that our rulers are either corrupt, incompetent, or irresponsible—or some combination of those characteristics.
We know the politicians and financiers are corrupt and incompetent, but we long ago lost the ability to do anything about it.
It has often been said that you can look at California and see the future of the U.S. In my worst nightmares.
In the last eight years we have seen the. U.S. government launch an unnecessary war of choice, put in place a police state apparatus, and sign over the economy to a few huge financial interests. All proposed by The Leader and hurriedly rubber-stamped by the "representatives of the people." It used to be called fascism.
Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he will just kill you. —Proverbial (remembered recently on receiving word of the 50th reunion of my high-school class)
Entries(RSS)
I agree with fellow paleoconservatives that the war in Iraq was wrong. My issue is when some commentators, in their understandable anger at the US Government for getting us into such a mess, give in to hyterics and start making wild, unsubstantiated allegations (such as Dr Wilson did) in a way that the Left is expert at. What usually most impresses me about paleoconservative commentary is its commitment to cold reason over hot emotion.
I should also add that, if we are to be honest, most of the opposition to the Iraq war came from the Left (paleos being too few to count). Yes, the Left has a great tradition of war mongering (Wilson et al) but that does not change the facts in this instance. Now, if we had gone into Sudan, I am sure the Left would have supported it wholeheartedly.
Chris,
Here is what Dr. Wilson said: "I haven’t seen any estimates, but is it possible that the U.S. has killed more Iraqis than Saddam did?"
Is this the "hysterical," "wild," and "unsubstantiated allegation" of which you speak? It sounds more like Dr. Wilson is posing a question for thought rather than making a definitive claim about the number of dead in Iraq.
Josh, it is most certainly an allegation (albeit posed as a question), and as he has made no effort to find a source as to whether it is true or not, it is unsubstantiated.
I was also taking issue with the comparison between Saddam and the US military's prisons. That to me borders on hysteria and unbecoming of the quality of commentators to be found at this site.
Chris, I posed it as a question because I don't think anybody knows how many Iraqis have died, directly or indirectly, due to the invasion of their country and the long boycott that preceded it. No, American prisons may not match Hussein's atrocities. My point is that we self-righteously justified war because of his atrocities and then committed them ourselves.
In a general context and not directed at any specific war, past or present, when murder, theft, rape and pillage is wrong, it is wrong for all parties. When it is wrong for the enemy only, it is called hypocrisy. No country or people, no matter how self-righteous they perceive their cause, is above condemnation.
HF Wolff
You and the rest of Euro-Amerian wo't be the worse off if GEorge W Bush,Dick Cheney, Condaleza Rice were packed off to stand trial for crimes against humanity On the contrary we will have gooten rid of traiors whose ultimate agenda is to destroy Euro-America. The legal case could be very easily be made.
Vincent Bugliosi already has made a powerfull legal argument that GEorge W Bush should be indicted for the mass murder of over four thousand Amerian teenagers who have served in Iraq. If the Vermont for state attorney general goes the right way, the preosecution of GEorge W Bush for the mass murder of four thousand American teenagers who served in IRaq wil proceed.
If George W Bush were ever packed to the Hague to stand trial for mas murder in Iran, it would open the doorfor prosecuting rapist and traior Bil Clinton for war crimes in Serbia.
BY the way, Donald Rumsfeld can no longer travel to Europe. LAst time he was there, he came very close to be picked up for war crimes because of the Abu Garb torture chamber. So ther might very well be legal proceedings taken place already against the Bush adminstration that we are not aware.
Finally, it is beyongd the pale to engage in a debate about who had a more brutal torture chamber Iraq Saddam or George W Bush. Sadam Hussiens atrocities were US atrocities. America aided and abetted Sadddam Hussien since at least 1979. This is a well known and well documented story.
As far as the exact number of Iraqis murdered by both the Bush and Clinton administrations, let the court at the Hague figure it out. The will sort it out in precise way. Enough is known already to require both Clinton and Bush to stand trial for crimes against humanity. We never know a serial killers actuall body count until they finally stand trial for their killng spree, but there is always evidence beforehand that was compelling enough to justify their indictement for murdering the innocent.
A few years ago I was paid a visit by a leader of the Republikaner in Germany. I gave the fellow every benefit of the doubt, even when he simultaneously derided our pretty waitress's Italian background and tried to pick her up. Trying to be pleasant, I said something like, "There was right and wrong on both sides in WW II." He told me Germany did nothing wrong. I set aside the unpleasant treatment of Jewish citizens, the invasion of Norway, etc., and asked if it showed good judgment to slaughter the Ukrainian peasants who initially welcomed the Germans as liberators. "GERMANY DID NOTHING WRONG!!!" was his response. I understand this coming from a German nationalist, but not from Americans. Britain and the US committed unspeakable crimes in the course of WW II but Nazi and Soviet thuggery were of a different order. Those who wish to dispute this are either hopelessly ignorant or morally diseased. Since this is not a Revisionist website, people who wish to debate the details can go elsewhere. Those who wish to defend mass homicide will be banned. You know who you are.
Estimates vary and no one on this site, even active duty officers in Iraq, can have any rational way of making a final determination. I did used to know slightly a fine French officer, General Gallois, a Catholic rightist who held senior positions under De Gaulle. In his book, which can be translated as Blood and Oil, he estimated about 750,000 civilian deaths after the first Gulf War, but that was some years before the second War, which would make the million figure reasonable. Gallois traveled widely and spoke everywhere with top officials. I do not believe he would lie deliberately, but who knows? Whatever the figure, we had no moral or legal justification for either war--neither was waged in self-defense--and however many hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, they are on our moral balance sheet. Saddam was, indeed, an ugly customer, but he was THEIR ugly customer, not ours.
TJF, politics nothing more than human chimpanzees of one troupe shrieking insults at another troupe (think the water hole scene in "2001 Space Odessy").
"My issue is when some commentators, in their understandable anger at the US Government for getting us into such a mess, give in to hyterics and start making wild, unsubstantiated allegations (such as Dr Wilson did) in a way that the Left is expert at. What usually most impresses me about paleoconservative commentary is its commitment to cold reason over hot emotion."
Chris,
It seems to me that making a moral evaluation of the situation in Iraq is as valid as assessing it from the POV of realpolitik. Obviously my opinion is that the invasion was a grave mistake from both vantage points, and as such they should reinforce one another. Whether liberals distort one and exclude the other should be a matter of indifference; what we should be interested in is the truth.
Of course empathy for the plight of foreigners can lead to hysterical, counterproductive, and irrational & sentimental hand-wringing or self-destructive decisions -- but on the other hand properly-balanced and rationally-restrained empathy can also provide significant and very practical insights.
I.e. an empathic person is more likely to question the prudence of trying to create a new American ally in the Middle East by starving and bombing people into a state of democracy. Lack of visceral empathy is as much to blame as anything for leading the Albrights and Frums of the world to think that a man whose child has become "collateral damage" will simply shrug off his son's death by saying, "you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs."
It is not a lack of Machiavellian cunning but rather an inability to connect with real-world, human feelings which leads the would-be masters-of-the-universe to presume that this man -- and the dead boy's brothers, uncles, etc. -- will enthusiastically embrace Western-style constitutional principles immediately following the boy's funeral. (Not that the West really cares about constitutional principles anymore, of course, but that's beside the point.)
There is also the factual issue: I do not know the actual numbers any more than Doc Wilson does, but I should say that if we haven't killed as many Iraqis as Hussein has, then we've certainly given him a run for his money. Add together the civilian deaths from the embargo (~1 million) to those due to the occupation (the low estimate I've seen is ~40,000, a paltry sum I admit) and we get a pile of stiffs that is a bit too large to be swept under the rug.
This fact has indeed some bearing to our standing & reputation in the Middle East, and is something worth reflecting upon when we consider how we deal with the Muslim world.
What Dr. Wilson is attempting to do is in fact quite practical: Debunk a dangerous delusion held by far too many Americans, the delusion that we have any reasonable expectation of receiving a warm fuzzy glow of gratitude from Iraqis or anybody else in the Middle East.
In this light, I invite you to ponder as to whether "hot emotion" is not more evident in post #17, and in admonitions to have "the decency to edit outrageous attacks on the conduct of U.S. forces".
If we attempt to whitewash the ghastliness of the situation, then we are simply playing Rudy Giuliani to Dr. Wilson's Ron Paul.
They're over here because we're over there? What are you, some sort of anti-American leftist radical?
If American history records the truth (something you don't see a lot of), the Iraq invasion will be seen as one of, if not the greatest blunder(s) in our history. All that death, mayhem, and treasure for what? A truthful history will not be kind to George W.
Let the international court at the Hague determine actual criminal guilt or innocence. A good estimate of the number murdered by both Bush and Clinton adminstrations can be determined. Unfortunately, this isn't even on the mental radar screen of the American public. Not even below the mental radar screen. The door to even more criminal wars of pre-emption is wide opened. At some point-and I expect very soon-the rest of the world will fight back.Obvioulsy, this could lead to nuclear world war three.
Like I said before, Saddam's atrocities were never of any concern to Republican and Democratic adminstrations and to the American people. His crimes became a "concern" when he no longer became a reliable asset. The same was true of Manuel Noriega.
Then the next question that arises is how much and what kind of aid was Saddam recieving from the US during his reign of terror. The answer to this question will determine the degree of US complicity in Saddam's crimes against his own people and against Iran when he declared war against Iran back in Nov 1979.
For the WW11 revionists:If the US had not destroyed the Japanese Empire, what would have happened to the European nations Australia and New Zealand? WW11 revisionist Justin Raimondo thinks the Japanese would have taught them about rock gardening-worst case scenario. But the rest of us-who aren't brian dead -know exactly what would have happened. The European men of these nations would have been worked to death as slaves and the Euopean women of these nations would have forced into sexuall slavery servicing the Japanese imperial army.
The Nazis were the technological enablers of Imperial Japan. The Nazis would have been accomplices to the mass murder of Euro-Australians and Euro-New Zealanders.
Ron Paul's opposition wasn't exactly based upon deep moral principles. Ron Paul would to put the American people to sleep with technical mumbo-jumbo about the Constitution.
As always, it is important to make distinctions.
It is absolutely beyond doubt that the war in Iraq is an act of criminal malfeasance that has done enormous damage to the well-being of the American people ( none too well-off prior to the war ) and to the civil and military institutions created to serve the interests of those people.
To refer to this criminality as "fascism" or "nazism" is absurd;it reveals a mind so besotted with leftist banality, that in trying to make a case for a traditional foreign-policy, weak and provincial intellects find it impossible to articulate such a policy without relying on ideas and opinions whose origins are deeply hostile to the traditions they seek to uphold.
In other words "outta the frying pan and into the fire".
The war in Iraq has nothing to do with Herr Hitler,but rather with Israel,oil,and a vulnerable dollar.In short the Anglo-American hierarchs are trying to shore-up their dwindling share of global power rather than graciously accepting the just claims to some of that power by Europe, Russia and Japan.
And in their desperation they've become reckless and violent.More so than usual.
Irony of ironies Fascism sought to,and almost succeeded in, nipping this clownish American imperium in the bud.Whatever ELSE they might have done notwithstanding.
Christians and "rebels" who affect to disdain Fascist misdeeds (from a safe historical distance I might add) have a duty to put forward practical alternatives to the all-too-real problems Fascism resisted and wrestled with.If they cant or wont,then practically speaking they are worthless.
Without America ruling the world America would be much better off.Europe can be Europe again,and Americanos can spend most of their time - ineffectually, as is usually the case with them- chasing negroes away from their daughters (and wives).
Dr.Flemming,if you should ever meet-up with that stupid Nazi again, kindly remind him that Italian men have far more success with pretty fraulein than he does with Italian waitresses.
I forgot to mention one other thing.All of the fatuous Wilsonian rhetoric surrounding the Iraq war has been misinterpreted by critics of that war.
Bush and his gang do not for a moment adhere to any of the nonsense they put forward.They are not Leftists.
Their propaganda is roughly analogous to Soviet propaganda surrounding the Berlin Wall.Briefly,the Soviets announced that the wall was erected TO KEEP PEOPLE OUT,when it was common knowledge that nobody was trying to get in.They obviously couldn't admit the truth.But the purpose of their lie was not to deceive anyone- who could be so stupid-but instead to simply remind the world that they would do as they please and nobody could do anything about it.The same is true with Dubya.
As for the American people,Sempronius will graciously interpret their implicit response to Dubya's Agit-Prop."We Americano's don't care what you do,nor what you say in order to justify what you do,so long as you leave us to our creative accounting practices and our suburban swinger-parties".
However it would be a mistake to to dismiss Bush's propaganda as entirely devoid of significance.By using revolutionary rhetoric,albeit dishonestly,he is anchoring his policies in the soil of revolution.In other words he is seeking the enlistment of revolutionary cohorts into his army.If revolutionaries join forces with him and drop their anti-Western Third World solidarity they too may share in the spoils of victory.
By implication no spoils are being proffered to poor, down and out little conservies.
Sempronius
No one has ever come up with an essential universally agreed upon defintinion of fascism. The Nazi charge is not accurate either. However, there is important overlap btween the Bush and Nazi regimes:attacking other nations based upon a pack of lies. An attack that has lead to large scale death and destruction. This is the Nuremberg standard.
Sempronius
An alternative Fascism ok. How about the American populist movements of an earlier era. One of the big problems with facism is its top down political structure. This is not unique to fascism of course. What passes for Democracy these-and days before-is very top-down in structure. Real democratic input into fundamental core policy decisions is non-existant. Much of what passes for Democracy in America is ratification of pre-ordained policy decisions. The ongoing policy proposlas for dealing with subprime mortgage meltdown is example of this. So was the repeal of Glass-Steagal by war criminal and rapist Bill Clinton.
I almost don't know where to begin. There is very deep rot in common American Culure. Do our fellow Americans really find Cultural garbage satisfying? It is this common core rotting cultural garbage that creates the consensus to keep quite about the obvious. Listen to sports talk radio and you will experience clinical depression. Look, somethng is keeping people in line. The Dark ages have arrived.
Shall we beign the autopsy of Euro-America? The autopsy begins with asking the following question: Just what the hell do Euro-Americans care about?
64Horace Grady wrote:
..."However, there is important overlap btween (sic) the Bush and Nazi regimes:attacking other nations based upon a pack of lies."...
Truly a case of "My mind is made up don't confuse me with facts".
As I stated before and confirmed by various British dispatches at that time and Russian historians as of late, the German invasions were preventive in both the cases of Poland and the Soviet Union.
Perhaps the American psyche is so weak that it cannot bear/understand its criminality without fantasy tales of horror from "long ago and far away". Some people never outgrow these fairy tales.
Why not state the REAL truth: The USA and Israel attacked other nations... without any legal justification.
H.F. Wolff
"Wars of preemption in this day and age are war crimes. The rest of the planet will not tolerate it." (#43)
Oh but they do! They tolerate it every time. Here in Japan the people are scared to death of America's government because of its global hegemony. They know that the ruling party is always strong-armed into supporting our wars. It's pathetic. The people keep up a facade of following along but you can see the resentment seething underneath. Yet there is nothing they can do about it. No, they just tolerate it.