--- Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, 7 Apr 2005 22:40:04 -0700 (PDT), Gautam > Mukunda wrote > > > ... virtually no one > > thought that inspections were working _before_ the > > war. > > No one? No one? What is your definition of > "working" here? Certainly no one > saw Saddam stepping down immediately and no one > thought he was particularly > cooperative, but are those the only measures that > inspections are working?
Yes. Almost no one I am aware of in a professional capacity thought that the Iraqis had been disarmed. There was not _one_ intelligence service in the world that thought the Iraqis had been successfully disarmed by the inspections. German intelligence thought they were farther along in weapons development than we did, and the Germans _opposed_ the war. > Different in a way that matters? India was being > run by a group of elites who > mistreated and took advantage of the majority of > people. Those people were > British, rather than locals, but how does that make > the situation > significantly different from Iraq? Why couldn't the > same justifications for > the Iraq war have applied to India? Yes, extremely different in a way that matters. The British had an option in India. They could _give up and go home_. They were, in the end, okay with that. Exactly how was Saddam Hussein supposed to do that? > > > South Africa reformed under > > F.W. De Klerk. > > Are you saying that it was led by De Klerk? Seems > to me that without Nelson > Mandela and Desmond Tutu, De Klerk wouldn't have > budged. Are you saying that > this was an example of an oppressive leadership > leading itself out of power? No, I'm saying it's an example of an oppressive leadership that was willing to give up power. De Klerk was. If P.W. Botha had stayed in power, Mandela would have stayed in jail. The white South African government had the military capacity to remain in power. What it lacked was the ruthlessness to do so. Saddam Hussein does not lack for ruthlessness. > > > Neither of these regimes had much in > > common with Saddam Hussein's. > > What are you saying? That the British in India were > much nicer than Saddam, > and apartheid was nicer than Saddam, thus war was > the only answer in Iraq > because he was a nastier guy? Are you open to the > idea that these changes > came about without war because of the nature of the > leaders of the peaceful > revolutions? If the Brits were nastier, do you > think Gandhi would have > failed? They got pretty nasty, didn't they? Same > for the white minority in > South Africa. Yes, because I know something about the revolutions in India and South Africa. If you think Gandhi's tactics would have worked against, say, the Japanese, Germans, French, or Belgians, you're just deluding yourself. There's no way in hell. Gandhi could have laid down in front of all the railroad tracks he wanted, and the Germans would have just kept them right on running. If the Brits were nastier, _Gandhi_ would have failed, yes. Nehru might have led a violent revolution that would eventually have succeeded, at horrifying cost. But the British were facing thousands of Indians for every one of their people from thousands of miles away. Saddam Hussein was at home, with a massive army and secret police apparatus and non-trivial support from large segments of the population. Hitler wasn't overthrown by peaceful methods, and Hussein's control over Iraqi society probably exceeded Hitler's over German society. > It seems that you look at the oppressors and say > they're too powerful to take > down without war, while I'm looking at the > liberators and saying they're too > powerful to be resisted. No empire has ever > survived and they're usually > brought down by their own arrogance, despite > superior military strength. No, I'm saying that I'm looking at history, while you're just making statements unsupported by fact. Your last sentence is either true but trivial (if you're talking about timespans of centuries) or simply wrong. No empire has ever survived? Well, nothing lasts _forever_. But the British empire lasted for two centuries, the Roman empire for considerably longer. The Ottoman Empire for centuries. The Spanish ruled Latin America and most of South America from the 1500s into the 1800s. The Chinese empire and the current Chinese state are roughly coterminous, as are the Czarist empire and the modern Russian state. Empires last a _long_ time. I don't really expect to be alive two centuries from now, so waiting that long for Ba'athist Iraq to fall doesn't seem like a cost-free option. > Are you saying that you hear me using make-believe > arguments? Yes, absolutely. > > > Like in Korea? What is the historical parallel > for > > such a police action? Can you provide _one_ > example > > of such a thing ever occurring? > > Congo, Cyprus, Lebanon, Haiti, Yougoslavia, > Cambodia, Mozambique, and even > Somalia... with varying degrees of success, of > course. Cambodia - you mean where Pol Pot killed a third of the population? The Congo, where one of the worst civil wars in history has been fought over the last few decades? Cyprus, which is still bitterly divided? Yugoslavia, where massive ethnic cleansing resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced, tens of thousands killed, and _two_ wars fought by the United States? Somalia, which was rescued from starvation by American power only to descend into anarchy when we left? These are your examples of _good_ policies? For God's sake, what's a failed policy? In fact, in your list, the only two cases of "regime change" in which outside forces played a major role are Serbia (two wars by the United States) and Cambodia (an invasion by Vietnam). So _your own examples_ suggest that war is the only way to do it. > > Neither of which are even vaguely similar > situations. > > He's not arguing from his conclusion, he's arguing > > from reality. > > Are you saying that I'm arguing from fantasy? I > prefer to call it hope and > faith. > > Nick Hope is not a method, as I beieve I've said before. All of your arguments amount to "This situation which has nothing at all in common in Iraq was resolved without war, therefore we could have toppled Saddam Hussein without war." But, in fact, the rather decent British (and I have a very good idea of just how nasty the British were - far better, I would guess, than you could, unless you grew up with your parents telling you stories about Amritsar) were able to hold on to power in India from ~1800 to 1947. Almost one and a half centuries, despite their unwillingness (and inability, given the disparity in people available between Britain and India) to use all of the ruthless capacity of state power. Saddam Hussein did not have a problem with mass murder. Empires take a long, long time to fall on their own, and even then, it's usually because an outside power strikes the final blow. Peaceful regime change is a rare bird, and the product of enlightened leadership amongst _both_ the government and the opposition. Enlightened is not the first word that springs to mind when I think of Saddam and Uday. Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
