Topic: Iraq
The Moral Case for the War: It Was a Moral Imperative
"A superpower has moral imperatives? Really?"

So Scottish Nationalist MP Pete Wishart last Wednesday in the weekly open session in the House of Commons, where the Prime Minister has to answer questions posed by the opposition, was pestering Tony Blair about where these damned weapons of mass destruction might be - these weapons of mass destruction that had to be eliminated, thus justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and justifying installing our idea of what we think they should have as a government and what its policies should be.

Blair's response? Change the subject. "What everyone should realise is that if people like the honourable gentleman had had their way, Saddam Hussein, his sons and his henchmen would still be terrorising people in Iraq. I find it quite extraordinary that he thinks that that would be a preferable state of affairs."

There's a lot of that going around - that "change the subject" business. Blair hears the question and implicitly dismisses it as really the wrong question, because even if he said something many months about what you're asking, you have it all wrong because what he said many months ago is kind of old news - not worth talking about. So he answers a question you didn't ask because, well, you asked a foolish question, you twit!

George Bush, by the way, cancelled his address to the House of Commons last week, as these guy do get a bit unruly what with impertinent questions and jeering and all that. Bush's advisors did the right thing in canceling the talk. It would not have been pretty at all.

But as for what are the real questions folks should be asking, and leaders gladly answering - because all this is easy to explain and quite defensible - well, herein lies the problem: no one is asking good questions, much less giving good answers.

"...in debating the war, those of us who opposed it find ourselves drawn into this fairytale. We are obliged to argue about the relative moral merits of leaving Saddam in place or deposing him, while we know, though we are seldom brave enough to say it, that the moral issue is a distraction. The genius of the hawks has been to oblige us to accept a fiction as the reference point for debate."

George Monbiot has a column in today's Guardian (UK) in which he says things that have occurred to us all, but does so in that dry British fashion - terse, to the point and in well-formed, elegant sentences, in logical progression. He is no Ann Coulter.

You will find it here:

The moral myth
George Monbiot, Tuesday November 25, 2003, The Guardian (UK)

I particularly like his opening:

"It is no use telling the hawks that bombing a country in which al-Qaida was not operating was unlikely to rid the world of al-Qaida. It is no use arguing that had the billions spent on the war with Iraq been used instead for intelligence and security, atrocities such as last week's attacks in Istanbul may have been prevented. As soon as one argument for the invasion and occupation of Iraq collapses, they switch to another. Over the past month, almost all the warriors - Bush, Blair and the belligerents in both the conservative and the liberal press - have fallen back on the last line of defence, the argument we know as `the moral case for war'."

This is good:

"I do believe that there was a moral case for deposing Saddam - who was one of the world's most revolting tyrants - by violent means. I also believe that there was a moral case for not doing so, and that this case was the stronger. That Saddam is no longer president of Iraq is, without question, a good thing. But against this we must weigh the killing or mutilation of thousands of people; the possibility of civil war in Iraq; the anger and resentment the invasion has generated throughout the Muslim world and the creation, as a result, of a more hospitable environment in which terrorists can operate; the reassertion of imperial power; and the vitiation of international law. It seems to me that these costs outweigh the undoubted benefit.

"But the key point, overlooked by all those who have made the moral case for war, is this: that a moral case is not the same as a moral reason. Whatever the argument for toppling Saddam on humanitarian grounds may have been, this is not why Bush and Blair went to war.

"A superpower does not have moral imperatives. It has strategic imperatives. Its purpose is not to sustain the lives of other people, but to sustain itself. Concern for the rights and feelings of others is an impediment to the pursuit of its objectives. It can make the moral case, but that doesn't mean that it is motivated by the moral case."

As for the current White House and its war policies:

"When it suits its purposes to append a moral justification to its actions, it will do so. When it is better served by supporting dictatorships like Uzbekistan's, expansionist governments like Ariel Sharon's and organisations which torture and mutilate and murder, like the Colombian army and (through it) the paramilitary AUC, it will do so.

"It armed and funded Saddam when it needed to; it knocked him down when it needed to. In neither case did it act because it cared about the people of his country. It acted because it cared about its own interests. The US, like all superpowers, does have a consistent approach to international affairs. But it is not morally consistent; it is strategically consistent."

You might want to read the whole thing.

Topic: Iraq
Manifest Destiny

Rupert Murdoch owns Fox News and directs its editorial content - its "slant" so to speak. But Fox News is a crude tool. Murdoch also publishes The Weekly Standard, sometimes called "the bible of the neoconservative movement." The Weekly Standard is more measured and philosophical, or theoretical, or something. It's "serious."

In The Weekly Standard you will find the two core theoreticians of the neoconservative "change the world" movement, Robert Kagan and William Kristol. These are the guys who explain what Wolfowitz, Perle and Cheney are really trying to have America do in the world. You might call them apologists. Or "explainers."

Want to know what America is really trying to do in the world? Read this. It is about our new manifest destiny. To remake the world into a community of nations each of which is a secular democracy, with a deregulated totally privatized capitalist economy, few if any social programs (to require personal responsibility), friendly to multi-national corporations like Wal-Mart, Starbucks and KFC (and Exxon-Mobil and Arco and the rest), and so on.

Back in the nineteenth century we claimed it was our "manifest destiny" to increase the acreage of the nation to make it stretch from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. And damn, that would have been easier if guys like Custer had battlefield tactical low-yield nuclear weapons, or at least cluster-bombs and Blackhawks. But no matter. We did it.

Now we have something else to spread. And spread it we must. It is our "manifest destiny" to bring Happy Meals and deregulated discount-priced sneakers to the whole world. It is. Really.

Click the link and you'll get the idea.

An Administration of One
From the December 1, 2003 issue of The Weekly Standard: Bush has made it clear that the only exit strategy from Iraq is a victory strategy, with victory defined as "democracy."
by Robert Kagan and William Kristol
12/01/2003, Volume 009, Issue 12

My impression of this:

"When George W. Bush first entered the White House, the conventional wisdom was that his inexperience and lack of vision in foreign policy would be compensated for by his wise and experienced cabinet. This may or may not have been a reasonable view at the time. Right now, however, it is clear that the most visionary and, yes, the wisest and most capable foreign policy-maker in the Bush administration is the president himself. Let's hope the team around him proves willing and capable of fulfilling his clear and historic grand strategy."

Okay. This starts out defensive, then gets downright odd. Wise? Some dispute there, of course. Visionary? The son of the guy who "had a problem with the vision thing" way back when? Historic and grand are nice words too. What we are doing is, I agree, historic. Grand? Hardly.

"There can no longer be any doubt that whatever Republican `realist' inclinations the president may have inherited from his father and his father's advisers when he took office, he has now abandoned that failed and narrow view and raised the torch previously held high by Ronald Reagan--and before that by John F. Kennedy and Harry Truman."

Well, maybe. Truman with Korea seemed to want to "contain" threats to our nation, to keep us safe. Kennedy seemed to reluctantly "confront" threats, as with Cuba and the damned missiles. Neither acted to overtly change other governments and change their economies and philosophies. That was all covert back then - behind the scenes. Bush just goes out and invades. He's not subtle.

"Bush has broken from the mainstream of his party and become a neoconservative in the true meaning of the term. For if there is a single principle that today divides neoconservatism from traditional American conservatism, it is the conviction that the promotion of liberal democracy abroad is both a moral imperative and a profound national interest."

Well that's the core of the matter, isn't it? We are fated to make everyone just like us. It's a moral imperative. We've got to do what we've got to do. No choice.

As to those who object? "...we are not surprised to see traditional Republican conservatives, of whom there is no more esteemed intellectual spokesman than George Will, now denouncing the supposed folly of such ambitious ventures. Nor are we surprised that in Bush's own cabinet, neither his secretary of state nor his secretary of defense shares the president's commitment to liberal democracy, either in Iraq or in the Middle East more generally. Indeed, the only thing that surprises us, a little, is the failure of American liberals--and European liberals--to embrace a cause that ought to be close to their hearts."

Now wait a second! It ought to be close to this liberal's heart to impose my views of how life ought to be lived, and thus how governments should work, on everyone, everywhere, anywhere in the world? I don't think so.

And these two conclude with this.

"Bush's great task now will be to explain his strategy to his own cabinet and commanders and insist that they begin implementing it."

Time to join the Rebel Alliance on the planet Tatooine to fight the Empire and that Death Star thingy. This is madness.

New Feature

On the panel to the left you will find a link that will open a new page I added to Just Above Sunset this evening. Clicking Comprehensive List of Sites will open a page containing links to most major newspapers here and around the world, numerous magazines, links to the major weblogs and to some policy sites, along with links to the major book reviews. At the bottom of that same page is a link that will take you to a second page of "current events" links. If you are inclined to surf the net for what's up, you might start with these.

I didn't count, but there are, I'd guess, several hundred links you could investigate.

Topic: Bush
The Queen is not amused. But she'll get over it.

It's more than the five "personal chefs" Bush brought along with him to London.

Matt Bivens in The Nation today... and this link will give you the article with its own embedded hot links.

Bivens:

Remember when the Bush Administration was pushing a partisan falsehood about how outgoing Clinton folks had "vandalized" the White House? Remember how, even without photos or evidence - or, ahem, facts - the media couldn't get enough of the story? Remember how, after the formal US government study concluded the story was untrue - an early indication of the Bush team's commitment to honesty - editors defended their past enthusiasm for the non-story on grounds that it was just too sexy to ignore?

Well, fine. Where are the headlines about the Bush team's trashing of Buckingham Palace?

Queen Elizabeth - already less than chuffed with Bush over the five personal chefs he brought along for his visit - is now "furious" with our president for having let his men rip up her gardens, the Sunday Mirror reports.

"Palace staff said they had never seen the Queen so angry as when she saw how her perfectly-mantained lawns had been churned up after being turned into helipads with three giant H landing markings for the Bush visit. The rotors of the President's Marine Force One helicopter and two support Black Hawks damaged trees and shrubs that had survived since Queen Victoria's reign. ... clod-hopping security service men trampled more precious and exotic plants. The Queen's own flock of flamingoes, which security staff insisted should be moved in case they flew into the helicopter rotors, are thought to be so traumatized after being taken to a 'place of safety' that they might never return home. ... The Palace's head gardener, Mark Lane, was reported to be in tears when he saw the scale of the damage."

One unnamed Palace insider told the Sunday Mirror many of the plants and trees killed were rare species named after members of the royal family. "The Queen has every right to feel insulted at the way she has been treated by Bush. The repairs will cost tens of thousands of pounds but the damage to historic and rare plants will be immense. They are still taking an inventory. ... Thirty thousand visitors did not do as much damage as the Americans did in three days."

This story has everything the Clinton vandalism story had and far, far more. We're not talking about a few missing W keys from a few keyboards; we're talking about mass, crass destruction of rare historic gardens.

So where's the breathless American media coverage?

Topic: The Culture
Rush Limbaugh explained by way of William Bennett in a way implying things about Arnold Shwarzenegger by way of Bill Clinton

Will Rush go to jail for money laundering?

Kevin Drum over at CalPundit asks us to consider "professional moralist William Bennett's explanation of why Rush's actions weren't as bad as Bill Clinton's:"

"He was manly," Mr. Bennett added of Mr. Limbaugh. "He was straightforward."

He was manly? Is that what you call threatening your housekeeper when she starts to have second thoughts about acting as your supplier? And straightforward? Sure, after he was caught, same as Bill.

I guess Bennett thinks that Arnold's groping was OK too. After all, it doesn't get much more manly than that.