----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Paul" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 9:08 AM Subject: RE: Winning the War on Terror
> From: Gautam Mukunda [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > snip > > >> democracy one day in the future. However, I doubt > >> that makes living in such turmoil any easier on a > >> day-to-day basis. > > >Again, _they_ don't think so. You don't think > >midnight raids and large-scale arrests happened > >before? Some time looking at the mass graves would be > >instructive, in that case. At least the people > >arrested aren't dropped into paper shredders now. > > >You _can_ make this argument, I guess, but actually > >_making_ it makes you an apologist for one of the most > >brutal dictators in human history - you have to > >believe all of the propaganda that he and his > >supporters put out. Are you willing to go that far, > >Ritu? > > I dont get this sort of black and white thinking. > It scares me as much as the mob violence we saw on TV. > I had no time for Saddam or his regime. To suggest that just questioning > the outcomes of the war is somehow supporting Saddam is ludicrous, and well, > the way you phrased it, somewhat offensive. But, Gautam has explictly stated earlier that, although he favored the war in Iraq, reasonable people could differ. What I cannot see is the arguement that people were better off before the war. Right now, individual deaths make the news. If 10 people were to die as a result of a botched US attack tomorrow, it would not be swept under the rug. People are free to talk about it. Estimates before the war were of 100,000 people dying every year as a result of Hussein's policy. As Gautam has said, there has been sworn testemony about his atrocities. Scientific methods for estimating the death toll have been made. For example, even though Baghdad was highly favored, and had a far lower death rate than the rest of the country, there were >50,000 killed by Hussein in Baghdad. The way this was determined was to poll people, ask them their family size, and how many members of their family were killed to determine the number killed. > We are getting the same thing in our politicans here, > an overt and agressive sensitivity to even the mildest questioning of the how > and why the war is going. What mild questioning? Your arguement that its hard to tell whether the people in Iraq are better off than under Hussein indicates that either Hussein wasn't such a bad fellow after all or the US is engaged in torture, wholesale murder, institutionalized rape, etc., or that these things are not primary criteria. Since Gautam has shown that, materially, most folks are better off, what remains to decide on? >All I can put it down to is that whatever self-delusional > rationale they used to justify the war to themselves has worn so thin that any mention of it not > being a 100% rolled gold success grates against whatever remains of their morality. > It seems a clear sign of moral paranoia. > I didn't like Sadaam, and I dont like what is happening in Iraq now. > I can hold both those postitions and still sleep at night. > The only way I could take your position is to deny that there was any other > possible approach to dealing with Saddam than the one we chose. > And that is patently untrue. After 10+ years of waiting for Hussein to fall, a reasonable person would conclude that the other options would have to include leaving Hussein in power. Thus, the torture, institutionalized rape, torture, etc. would continue. We would have to accept that we could have stopped this, and decided it was prudent not to. Now, my position before the war was leaning against going in. I didn't think we were ready to handle the aftermath. I think things have gone better than I would have guessed, but that the long term prognosis is still an open question. I agree with Gautam in that having Iraq end up in a long term situation like Jordan would be a tremendous success, and worth the cost and effort for the US. But, having said that, I accepted the moral responsibility for the continuation of the murders, rapes and torture that I could have supported stopping. That's what made it a hard call. I remember a NYT article by Tom Freedman about a conference attended by those he called "hawkish liberals" (liberals who feel that the power of the US should be used to stop atrocities like those in Rwanda and the Balkans). They had leaned against the war, until they heard a testimony from a refugee from Iraq on the horrors in the country. You talked about Gautam thinking in black and white terms. Having debated with him over the years, I know that isn't true. A number of conservatives do; he doesn't. What he and I agree on is that there are shades of gray. One cannot say that both situations are gray and be done with it. One has to consider the shades. I believe that the Catholic confession for "what we have done and what we have failed to do" is a very valid encapsulation for morality. We are responsible for evil we could have stopped, as well as the evil we do ourselves. True, raping someone and standing by while another is raped are not equally evil, but both are evil. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
