Reality Intrudes

[TCBF]

Sadly, the "critical thought of facts" no longer has a place in modern politics.

Tom

 

[Infanteer]

Sadly, the "critical thought of facts" no longer has a place in modern politics.

Judging from human history, I don't think it really ever did....

 

[couchcommander]

As I said before, I really want to get to the root of discontent with the strategy that the US in taking towards the War on Terror.  I'm beginning to sense that the "Unilateral" argument is something based more upon emotion or "numerous streams and disciplines relating to issues of the history and current critical debate on foreign policy" rather then critical thought.

I'll bite (though I am pretty sure I will regret it).

Firstly, there is a problem with the philosophical backing of the "Bush Doctrine". I discussed it in greater detail in the "World War IV" thread, but briefly that the entire struggle of "Good" vs. "Evil" is fundamentally flawed idea.

The fact that the philosophy behind it is f*cked really isn't the issue for me, though. I don't give a f*ck whether or not modern philosophy backs whatever I, or others, are doing. But in this particular instance it has rather bad repurcussions, in that with this doctrine in all likelyhood they will end up attacking a nation or some people that are actually not "evil" because they cannot actually definae what is or isn't evil. They may be going after "evil" but because they have no idea what it really is they will in all likehood kill a lot of "good" people.

On top of this, in their great quest to rid the world of "evil" they seem to be willing to sacrifice the lives of untold masses of innocent people in order to acheive their idea of "good". And it's not that people aren't dying now, indeed that is far from the case, nor am I saying that inaction is the solution, no no, that is also not the case. My point here is just that in the neocon crusade there is little concern for the lives of the innocent people caught up in their wars; once again they can justify this as necessary to defeat evil.

Furthermore, there seems to be little respect for the rights or dignity of man (the treatment of prisoners, the increasingly restrictive and rights abusing laws the states continues to pass, etc. etc.). They seem to justify this on the grounds that the nation is under threat. Yes we were attacked, yes it was horrible, yes we need to prevent that, but has there really been a need to keep the nation in a "hightened" leve of alert for the past 3 years? Are we actually under THAT much of a threat? I mean, lets be serious here, if someone wanted to explode a bomb in a public place, somewhere in the US..... it's a sad fact that it really wouldn't have been that hard, and no level of security is going to protect us. The fact is that in large part this "threat" is fictious (ie Iraq had no WMD's.... are you going to actually take the administrations word for it that Iran does?? Seriously?) really irks me the wrong way.... The really scary thing is that the Bush administration, and the neocons before them, have no problem with this, because they are trying to defeat evil.

This becomes a big problem when you think about what I first said, they can't tell us what this "evil" actually is that they keep using as a justifaction; which means it makes a perfect justification to use if you want to be able to do ANYTHING (and at the same time convince yourself that you are doing good)......

There is a great fear, and some would say that this has already occured, that "evil" will become used to describe things which the administration either doesn't like or wants for itself, not things that are in fact actually "evil" (ie there is a lot of talk that the reason they invaded Iraq was not actually even because they thought there were WMD's, that they only gave lip service to the fact that saddam was a horrible dictator (and there are lots of dictators, many of them very worse off, so even that's can't really be used as a reason to attack Iraq, that they didn't actually care about the plight of the people, but instead were simply after trying to establish another stable oil source, which would fit in with their plans to open the alaska wildlife refuge to drilling, not to mention Bush's and Cheney's ties (and shares I might add) in oil companies.....)

There are a lot of otherthings, ie unilateralism on the part of the states (and no it's not about the number of states or the percentage of troops, it's the "we are doing this whether or not anyone else comes on board" that makes it a "unilateral" decision), coorperate influence in the decision making process, etc. etc. etc.

....disclaimer time.... there is nothing wrong with wanting to spread democracy. There is nothing wrong with want to remove the world of wmd's, or horrible dictators, or any such things. That is not the issue. The issue is with what has been said above.

 

[Infanteer]

:boring:

"Good" and "evil" is silly - anyone who takes that politcal rhetoric as reality doesn't have a head on their shoulders - I'm sure people felt the same "crusade" overtones with "ridding the world of the Nazis/Fascists/Communists".   So you don't like the "twist" they've put on the latest war - does it mean that the strategy is flawed?

Other then that, can you give me something that isn't so stale, or are you going to fall back on the same old "neo-con, corporate influence" canned answers?

US Foreign Policy was assertive towards the Middle East long before the "Neocons" and "Haliburton" came along - look up Clinton's record in the area (both in terms of political posturing and actual use of force).   As I said, 9/11 was a catalyst for the inevitable.

As well, you never answered my question on the whole "unilateralist" accusation (I see an attempt, and it was pretty weak) - I don't see how "Neocons" could spur Britain (Labour is "Corporate Neocon"?), Japan, Australia, and the rest of a respectable amount of the international community to join the coalition (Does Mongolia have Neocons?).    So the US takes its natural leadership position (kinda hard not to when your the only Superpower) and says "damn the UN rubberstamp" (which, most would agree, is highly irrelevant anyways) - I've yet to see how this all of the sudden makes an action "unilateral".

 

[PPCLI Guy]

:Other then that, can you give me something that isn't so stale, or are you going to fall back on the same old "neo-con, corporate influence" canned answers?

Perhaps the longevity of these canned answers speaks to their veracity...

Just a thoight.

Dave

 

[Brad Sallows]

When it comes to the Iranian threat of WMD, it is only necessary to take Iran's word.  The US's word is unnecessary.

Safety measures are always finite.  Perhaps too much is being done; too many freedoms are being sacrificed.  I certainly believe some of what is being done is either counterproductive or pointless (and sometimes both).

When the next "event" occurs, and unless there is clear evidence of basic incompetence on the part of our security agencies, I expect only to hear a rousing chorus of "Well, we did all we should have, and more" from the supporters and the critics alike.  Except for a small contingent of hawks, I do not expect to hear any hand-wringing, and certainly none from those opposed to measures being taken.

 

[a_majoor]

Just to weigh in on the Multilateralist angle; given the UNs increasingly abysmal record for supporting Human Rights (Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the Oil for Food Scandle, the UN sex for peacekeepers scandle in the Congo, their total inaction on the Genocide in Dafar....) I would be tempted to ask why would we even want the sanction of such a body.

 

[Infanteer]

Perhaps the longevity of these canned answers speaks to their veracity...

About as long-lived and veracious as the "unilateralist" arguement that I've seen chucked around, even in solid journals like Foreign Affairs.  Although I paid attention to it before, it seems to be shot to pieces now that I've looked at the hard facts.

So is the arguement shifting now?  US Policy in the Middle East, both tactically (in Iraq) and strategically (War on Terror), is flawed because it is driven by a corporate agenda.

Any better way to go about dealing with the threat to the West if this is the case?  It would seem that "do nothing if corporatation are involved" seems to be silly from the get go, considering that it smells of "tin-foil hatness" and that corporations have always been involved in State war efforts.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

So you are saying that we need pragmatic realism - judged on results, not reasons?

 

[TCBF]

"they can't tell us what this "evil" actually is that they keep using as a justifaction; which means it makes a perfect justification to use if you want to be able to do ANYTHING (and at the same time convince yourself that you are doing good)......"


At what point do they NOT tell us that the enemy of the day is evil?  I see not lack of explanations why the Russian "Evil Empire" was evil, nor does Saddam have a big fan club  (he is probably now wishing he was a leftist, then our Pinko ComSymp Care Bear Gallery would REALLY love him) around the world.

So, not only are they calling people evil, they are giving us reasons WHY they are evil too.

Of course, I could be wrong.  Maybe we should have left Hitler alone as well.

Tom

 

[The_Stu]

:boring:

"Good" and "evil" is silly - anyone who takes that politcal rhetoric as reality doesn't have a head on their shoulders - I'm sure people felt the same "crusade" overtones with "ridding the world of the Nazis/Fascists/Communists".  So you don't like the "twist" they've put on the latest war - does it mean that the strategy is flawed?

Please, thats like saying the justification for a crime is irrelavent, as long as your plan is strategically sound. The "twist" has everything to do with it, its the whole justification, without it, everything falls apart.

And I believe US Foreign Policy first became assertive, or interested at all for that matter in the middle east, with the rise of oil in the global economy.

 

[Infanteer]

Please, thats like saying the justification for a crime is irrelavent, as long as your plan is strategically sound. The "twist" has everything to do with it, its the whole justification, without it, everything falls apart.

The "twist" is never the whole story, and is never the sole motivation.  Remember when WMD was the "twist" on the invasion of Iraq - I can guarantee you it was never the biggest concern for going in there (not that it matters).  The "twist" is relevent to time and space, the used-car salesmen must find a way to sell a pragmatic policy to his people.

As for "good" and "evil", I challenge you to find me a foreign policy decision that was executed along altruistic ideals or did everything right.

And I believe US Foreign Policy first became assertive, or interested at all for that matter in the middle east, with the rise of oil in the global economy.

Well duh.  We aren't involved with the House of Saud because they put on great Tupperware parties.

 

[a_majoor]

What, you missed Prince Fasil's invitation? It was great, and the dancing girls really set off the small storage containers and drinking cups......... ;D

 

[a_majoor]

Lets here from someone on the ground:

http://democracyiniraq.blogspot.com/2005/03/2-years.html

Sunday, March 20, 2005
2 Years
It has been now two years since the United States, UK and other countries invaded our nation. It has been two years since Iraqis have had to live with daily violent attacks and rampant terrorism. It has been two years since our nation began being turned upside down. It has been two years since the road to democracy began.

It has been a very hard two years. So many people have died, so much has been destroyed, so many drops of tears and blood have been shed, so many have been robbed of loved ones, and so many words have been spoken about Iraq, it's future, and this war.

Two years...seems like yesterday that I was awoken by bombs going off in Baghdad, and the realisation that my life and that of my country was going to change. That very day I remember being scared that my house might be destroyed by a bomb, or that my relatives who were forcibly put into the Iraqi army might be killed.

Two years since Saddam came on TV, and pledged that Iraq would never fall. Little did he know, he surrendered like a rat in a whole only months later. Two years since my father had a heart.

Two years is about 730 days. In those days what have I seen. My eyes have seen more than I had ever hoped, more blood, more death and more pain, then I ever imagined or hoped I would have seen.

In those days I have seen the worst of humanity, the animal that lives in all humanity, the ability of humanity to destroy at will others, and rob the life given to others by God almight himself.

So you ask me, Husayn, was it worth it. What have you gotten? What has Iraq acheived? These are questions I get a lot.

To may outsiders, like those who protested last year, who will protest today. This was a fools errand, it brought nothing but death and destruction. I am sheltered in Iraq, but I know how the world feels, how people have come to either love or hate Bush, as though heis the emobdiement of this war. As though this war is part of Bush, they forget the over twenty million Iraqis, they forget the Middle Easterners, they forget the average person on the street, the average man with the average dream.

Ask him if it was worth it. Ask him what is different. Ask him if he would go through it again, go ahead ask him, ask me, many of you have.

Now I answer you, I answer you on behalf of myself, and my countrymen. I dont care what your news tells you, what your television and newspapers say, this is how we feel. Despite all that has happened. Despite all the hurt, the pain, blood, sweat and tears. These two years have given us hope we never had.

Before March 20, 2003, we were in a dungeon. We did not see the light. Saddam Hussain was crushing Iraq's spirit slowly, we longed for his end, but knew we could not challenge him, or his diabolical seed who would no doubt follow him and continue his generation of hell on Earth.

Since then, we now have hope. Hope is not a tangible thing, but it is something, it is more than being blinded by darkness, by being stuck in a mental pit without any future.

Hope has been the greatest product of the last two years. No doubt, many have died, many have died by accident or due to crimes. But their sacrifices are not, and will not be for nothing. I refuse to let it be, and my countrymen stand with me.

Our cities are smoking, our graveyards full, and terrorists in our midst. But we are not defeated. We are not down, we are not regretful. We are not going to surrender. For all that the two years have brought, the greatest thign they have given us is a future, and a view of the finish line.

Iraqis see the finish line, the finish line of freedom and democracy and a functioning nation. We can smell it, taste it, and like a sprinter, one who has broken his legs, but who has a heart full of passion, we will crawl there no matter what the cost. No matter what we must endure, we have realized what we can become, and that is the biggest result of the last two years.

Noone can take that from us. Not the terrorists, not those who want to question the good of the removal of Saddam, not those who want to reduce our glory for politics, none.

We have been brought from darkness to light. And not only has the future been made better for Iraq, but the martyrs of our nation, their blood is watering the roots of democracy across the world. We are watching our neighbors come closer to the light, and this only pushes us more, and makes us stronger in our burning desire to reach the finish line, to realize the dream that our people have had for so long.

No, we will not give up, and we will not say that the last two years were a waste. They for all their trouble have been momentus. They for us, have been a turning point in history. Whether or not you agree, this is how it looks from Iraq.

posted by Husayn at 12:10 AM

 

[a_majoor]

More and more Arabs are encouraged to push for democracy

In the Gulf, Dissidence Goes Digital
Text Messaging Is New Tool Of Political Underground

By Steve Coll
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 29, 2005; Page A01

KUWAIT CITY -- Rola Dashti's cell phone buzzed on the heady evening of March 7, hours after she had helped lead the largest demonstration for women's voting rights in Kuwait's history, a clamorous protest that ended when hundreds of activists were expelled from parliament for shouting from the gallery.

She pressed her phone's text message button and read an anonymous insult circulating on hundreds of Kuwaiti phones, digital graffiti that attacked her family's Persian ancestry and disparaged her Lebanese-born mother. "Here's what voters will gain if they vote for Rola Dashti," the text message read, as she recalled it. "They will learn the Iranian accent. They will learn a Lebanese accent. And they will learn how to work with the American Embassy to get money."

In this roiling political spring of protest and debate about democracy in repressive Arab countries, cell phone text messaging has become a powerful underground channel of free and often impolite speech, especially in the oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies, where mobile phones are common but candid public talk about politics is not.

Demonstrators use text messaging to mobilize followers, dodge authorities and swarm quickly to protest sites. Candidates organizing for the region's limited elections use text services to call supporters to the polls or slyly circulate candidate slates in countries that supposedly ban political groupings. And through it all, anonymous activists blast their adversaries with thousands of jokes, insults and political limericks.

"It means I'm making them nervous," Dashti said of the lambasting she received. "I'm on their list," she said, referring to Kuwait's conservative Islamic activists, "and I'd better get used to it so I'm not shocked when it happens during the election." Dashti hopes to run for office if the long campaign for women's suffrage in Kuwait succeeds, as many participants expect it will when the elected National Assembly formally considers the issue, perhaps as soon as April.

At about 40 cents per missive, text messaging can be an expensive way to mobilize the masses, but the Gulf countries are lightly populated and afloat on record oil revenue. With political debate at a fever pitch this year, many of the region's well-heeled activists find it hard to resist the chance to compose their own uncensored statements and deliver their political wisdom to targeted audiences.

"My bill is going sky high," said Abduljalil Singace, foreign affairs director of Bahrain's Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, the island emirate's largest opposition grouping, a Shiite Muslim movement that is noisily boycotting the country's three-year-old, limited parliament.

Singace was fired as an associate professor and department chair at Bahrain University in mid-March after he traveled twice to Washington to lobby against his country's royal government, a close U.S. ally. He said Bahrain's security services also told him to stop sending dissident text messages. The Bahrain government says Singace was discharged for neglecting his duties at the university.

"They warned me against text messaging on demonstrations," Singace said. Before the warning, he said, "I was not sure they were reading my text messages. Now I'm telling everyone."

Still, he remains proud of some of his compositions. When American management consultants issued a report recently about how Bahrain's government could accelerate reform of its free-trading economy, Singace whipped off a reply and paid a commercial service to distribute his message throughout the island.

"Economic reform without political reform is like a bird with only one wing," he wrote. "How can it fly?"

Text messaging is only the latest in a wave of border-hopping communication technologies to rewire patterns of Arab dissent during the past 15 years. Saudi exiles and Islamic activists waged an underground war of faxed pamphlets during the early and mid-1990s. Satellite television channels transformed the images and ideas available to Arab viewers during the same period. More recently, CDs, DVDs and the World Wide Web have dominated underground political publishing in the Gulf.

As each new technology has spread, the region's authoritarian governments have tried to fight back. They have sent censors to license fax machines and block dissident Web sites, and they have pushed government-friendly investors to buy and manage satellite channels. But the Gulf's monarchies have not yet figured out whether or how to control text message channels.

If they do, they will sorely disappoint the region's profit-engorged cell phone companies, whose stock prices have soared as phone and messaging use has exploded. About 55 percent of Kuwaitis and a third of Saudis now own cell phones, according to mobile service providers, and growth rates show no sign of slacking.

The Gulf's huge youth population stands at the center of the boom. As young people come of age in societies that discourage unsupervised contact with the opposite sex, text messaging offers a way to duck parents and defy gender segregation. In one of Riyadh's gleaming shopping malls on a recent Thursday night, veiled teenage girls in black-robed flocks giggled as they messaged boys across the food court. Teenagers send messages to flirt, plan social events and even set up clandestine dates, Saudi parents and teenagers said.

Less innocent slander and pornography also flow through text channels. When a Saudi mobile phone provider announced new photo and video messaging services this month, it issued an unusual press release to encourage socially responsible use of mobile phones and to argue that innovative technology should not be blamed because a few people abuse it.

In Gulf politics, too, text messaging "allows people to send messages that they would not say in public," said Fawzi A. Guleid, program officer with the National Democratic Institute in Bahrain. "It is alarming to me the messages that come."

Activists have learned how to blast thousands of attack messages while hiding their own identities. "People who use those messages are denouncing, insulting opposition figures, members of parliament and the government," Guleid said, suggesting that the new technology encourages unrestrained personal invective as new democratic cultures are formed.

Many of the insults and comments would sound tame to an American politician.

The technology also helps democratic organizers who are often badly overmatched by the Gulf's authoritarian governments. In a region where formal political parties are banned but loose political societies are often tolerated, text messaging allows organizers to build unofficial membership lists, spread news about detained activists, encourage voter turnout, schedule meetings and rallies, and develop new issue campaigns -- all while avoiding government-censored newspapers, television stations and Web sites.

The Gulf's network of Muslim Brotherhood chapters has been especially aggressive in adopting such tactics, several of its leaders and campaign managers said in interviews. The Brotherhood is a global network of conservative Islamic political activists, often drawn from elite professions, who seek to establish religious governments and societies, usually by peaceful means. Its members control student and professional unions across the region and have won seats in several of the Gulf's limited parliaments.

Before text messaging went commercial, black marketers sold CDs containing lists of cell phone numbers smuggled out of government ministries or phone companies, said Mohammed Dallal, a lawyer and Brotherhood campaign manager in Kuwait City. Now "the mobile companies are giving the services," he said. "You give them the message, they'll send it to 40,000 people" for a fee.

Before this year's municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, the first in the kingdom in decades, Dallal spoke to prospective candidates and campaign managers in three Saudi cities. "I try to convince them to use the technology," he said.

In Bahrain, Shiite opposition organizers who frequently stage unauthorized or illegal demonstrations said they used services originally meant for commercial advertisements to keep protests on track even as the government tries to shut them down.

Kuwaiti women organizing protests for voting rights said they had been more effective during their 2005 campaign than during their last serious effort five years ago because text messaging had allowed them to call younger protesters out of schools and into the streets.

For all of these appealing practical benefits, text messaging also appears to be popular because it has captured Arab pop literary imaginations. In Gulf societies, where rhetorical speech is celebrated and poetry is prominent, the short, quipping format of a text message offers a new twist on tradition. Activists deliberate over their compositions and memorize their favorite zingers, passing them from phone to phone.

For Dashti, the women's suffrage activist insulted for being of less than pure Kuwaiti ancestry, the sting was salved by the message her own group blasted out that same night of the historic demonstration about the speaker of the Kuwaiti parliament, Jassem Kharafi, who had shut down their rally. The activists accused him of being more interested in making money from business contracts than in helping Kuwait advance democratic reforms.

"If you want Kharafi to vote for women's political rights," an anonymous member of the suffrage movement wrote, "just issue the right as a tender contract."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company