December 22, 2003
NO PRICE FOR PEACE
Raimond Gaita, professor of “moral philosophy”, writes:
Only someone who believes that the end justifies the means will think the liberation of the Iraqi people from Saddam's murderous dictatorship, the creation of a democratic state in Iraq, or even the flowering of democracy in the entire Middle East, will justify the killing of tens of thousand of Iraqis.
That’s me! Actually, it’s less to do with anything Machiavellian than with simple mathematics. Fewer Iraqis died in the liberation of their country than would have died under Saddam’s continued rule. Only someone who believes in impotent, pathetic inertia will think the perpetual enslavement of the Iraq people justifies the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis in Baghdad alone.
UPDATE. Piers Akerman writes:
Posted by Tim Blair at December 22, 2003 02:32 AMWill someone send Mr Gaita to Iraq and give him a soapbox in one of the more than a hundred newspapers which have opened since Saddam took to his rathole? Or just let him speak his mind in the streets of Baghdad, which he can now do with the disappearance of Saddam's feared secret police.
He teaches in England and Australia? So basically he's spreading his moral twerpitude to two different countries? Well, he's an efficient moonbat, anyway.
Posted by: ushie at December 22, 2003 at 02:49 AMWern't these the people so willing to "break a few eggs to make that omelette?"
I'm curious as to whether freeing the slaves of the American South was worth "killing tens of thousands of innocent Southerners and Plantation owners". Raimond, no doubt would prefer they were in bondage to this day rather than do anything about it.
Posted by: Andrew X at December 22, 2003 at 02:52 AMThe actual principle is whether the ends justify ANY means, not simply whether the ends justify THE means.
But just as you cannot separate means from ends, you cannot dimiss the ends from the means. If you don't think the ends - in this case the overthrow of Saddam by the U.S. and its allies (and once again, thanks to our Aussie friends for their sacrifice) - is worthwhile, than any and ALL means will be rejected. That, it seems to me, is what Professor Gaita is arguing.
But it's absurd to argue that we sacrificed means for the goal. After more than a decade of exhaustive nonviolent measures - from economic sanctions to diplomatic intiatives to UN demarches - Saddam would not budge. The military option was taken after every conceivable pacific means was tried.
"Tens of thousands"? Where did this figure come from?
SMG
Posted by: SteveMG at December 22, 2003 at 03:08 AM620,000 died in the American civil war counting casualties for both sides.
Posted by: Fred Boness at December 22, 2003 at 03:15 AMWhat's really interesting here is the numbers game he is playing - What is the source for his "tens of thousands" claim? The main "massacres" paraded by the Iraqis during the war were the market bombings in Baghdad, where the death toll reached into tens of casualties.
Even the most "optimistic" estimate released this autumn by rather unknown peace creep group "Doctors against nuclear war", (Not to be confused with its rather more famous cousin...) claimed a couple of tens of thousands of casualties, of which all but 9000 or so were soldiers. In short, we are being asked to weep mainly over the demise of those poor, poor Feyadeen and republican guards. Sweet, no?
As for the "ends never justifying the means", that is an unworkable cliché, that might be suitable for kintergarteners at best. Ends/Means-calculations are used by us all, every day, and is an essential part of any workable moral system.
In fact, I'm rather surprised that any self-respecting radical philosophy professor is still stuck arguing tired old subjects such as "ends/means". If he wants to advance his career, he should rather devote his time to coming up with intricate arguments for killing infants, the elderly and right-wingers - that's what gets you all the attention these days. Plus, it is bound to get you lots of lucrative speaking engagements.
Regards, Döbeln
-Stabil som fan!
PS.
This is a nice place to advance my pet thesis, namely that the best way to jumpstart the recovery of western intelligentia is to cut off all humanities funding across the board. (Save for Economics of course...) Janitors are too busy cleaning stuff and taking extended coffee breaks to form an effective fifth column.
DS.
Tim:
America doesn't have to come up with a "justification" for the "killing." Raimond Gaita should be thankful that America acted in self-defense and removed a threat (Saddam & WMD) against the Western world. The important thing was to minimize the loss of American troops.
For more on this issue, please read my post, THE BATTLE OF IDEAS: CHICKENHAWKS VERSUS PACIFICISTS.
Now it is time to put pressure on the HQ of terrorism, i.e., Iran.
Best Premises,
Martin Lindeskog.
Student of a rational philsophy.
Ooops! I missed an "o" in my signature: Student of a rational philosophy. Sorry for the typo. I must have lost the concentration for a nano-second. D*mn these modern "ivory tower" philosophers in London, Australia and all around the world!
All the Best,
Martin Lindeskog.
Gothenburg, Sweden.
Yes, it's unbelievably trite to say "The ends don't always justify the means". Peter Singer apart (thankfully), must of us agree that this is true. What is a more relevant moral issue is that some means are so gruesome and dangerous that they can only be justified by the most extreme and urgent ends (eg, we don't amputate limbs unless and until an infection threatens the person's life).
I used to respect Gaita but now he, like Robert Manne, has got Stockholm Syndrome in a bad way. And his own argument is incoherent. Compare:
"... only someone who believes that the end justifies the means will think the liberation of the Iraqi people from Saddam's murderous dictatorship, the creation of a democratic state in Iraq, or even the flowering of democracy in the entire Middle East, will justify the killing of tens of thousand of Iraqis."
-- with Gaita's own ends/ means calculus:
"Had his [Blix's] plea been granted, his report might have convinced many opponents of the invasion that war was unavoidable, if only to defend the authority of the UN."
IOW, leaving Iraqis as toys for the tender mercies of Uday and Qusay is justified, in Gaita's view, by the need to defend the sacred "authority of the UN". (Remember the authority of the UN? When a single word from Boutros or Kofi stopped the massacres in Rwanda and the Balkans?). Excuse me while I puke/ throw up.
Yes, it's unbelievably trite to say "The ends don't always justify the means". Peter Singer apart (thankfully), must of us agree that this is true. What is a more relevant moral issue is that some means are so gruesome and dangerous that they can only be justified by the most extreme and urgent ends (eg, we don't amputate limbs unless and until an infection threatens the person's life).
I used to respect Gaita but now he, like Robert Manne, has got Stockholm Syndrome in a bad way. And his own argument is incoherent. Compare:
"... only someone who believes that the end justifies the means will think the liberation of the Iraqi people from Saddam's murderous dictatorship, the creation of a democratic state in Iraq, or even the flowering of democracy in the entire Middle East, will justify the killing of tens of thousand of Iraqis."
-- with Gaita's own ends/ means calculus:
"Had his [Blix's] plea been granted, his report might have convinced many opponents of the invasion that war was unavoidable, if only to defend the authority of the UN."
IOW, leaving Iraqis as toys for the tender mercies of Uday and Qusay is justified, in Gaita's view, by the need to defend the sacred "authority of the UN". (Remember the authority of the UN? When a single word from Boutros or Kofi stopped the massacres in Rwanda and the Balkans?). Excuse me while I puke/ throw up.
Yes, it's unbelievably trite to say "The ends don't always justify the means". Peter Singer apart (thankfully), must of us agree that this is true. What is a more relevant moral issue is that some means are so gruesome and dangerous that they can only be justified by the most extreme and urgent ends (eg, we don't amputate limbs unless and until an infection threatens the person's life).
I used to respect Gaita but now he, like Robert Manne, has got Stockholm Syndrome in a bad way. And his own argument is incoherent. Compare:
"... only someone who believes that the end justifies the means will think the liberation of the Iraqi people from Saddam's murderous dictatorship, the creation of a democratic state in Iraq, or even the flowering of democracy in the entire Middle East, will justify the killing of tens of thousand of Iraqis."
-- with Gaita's own ends/ means calculus:
"Had his [Blix's] plea been granted, his report might have convinced many opponents of the invasion that war was unavoidable, if only to defend the authority of the UN."
IOW, leaving Iraqis as toys for the tender mercies of Uday and Qusay is justified, in Gaita's view, by the need to defend the sacred "authority of the UN". (Remember the authority of the UN? When a single word from Boutros or Kofi stopped the massacres in Rwanda and the Balkans?). Excuse me while I puke/ throw up.
Sorry, premature posting. Meant to write "... is overridden, in Gaita's view, by the need ..."
The "tens of thousands" numbers game is a red herring, because it completely fails to distinguish deliberate killings from (okay, brace yourself for sneers) collateral damage. If the Coalition forces say: "You must stop killing or torturing Iraqis or we'll shoot; first we'll fire a warning shot, then we'll aim to wound, and as a last resort we'll shoot to kill" ... and some Ba-athist or al-Qaeda jihadista ends up dead, or subjected to a "humiliating" dental probe in the Special Guantánamous Region, then I lose no sleep over it. None whatsoever. I do lose a lot more sleep over civilians getting killed in crossfire aimed at the said jihadistas, but not enough to call off the operation, because a lot more civilians will get killed (and deliberately so) if the said jihadistas are not taken out.
Discussions of "Do ten thousand deaths justify democratising Iraq?" often gloss over this distinction, and introduce an unreal, arbitrary kind of body count into the matter. You end up with weird ethics like those of Prof Singer, that once the US killed its 3,001st Taliban (thus exceeding the WTO death toll), its war ceased to be "just". If you are deliberately planning to kill anyone at all (without giving them the chance to surrender or disarm first), that's wrong. Inherently and absolutely. But once you've determined that a particular military strike is necessary to save lives by neutralising an aggressor, and as long as you do your best to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, then it's morally irrelevant (although still a thing to regret and mourn) that ten thousand people get killed instead of a hundred or a dozen.
Posted by: Noami Kleimpsky at December 22, 2003 at 06:43 AMThere is a critical moral error in this line of thinking. It is that while one is responsible for all the consequences, intended and unintended of ones actions, one is not responsible for the consequences of ones non actions. Of course this is a childish notion. If we have the power to prevent further genocide, and refuse to do so, we are morally responsible for those deaths in some measure. It is truly a damned if you do damned if you dont situation, but there is far less evil in the doing than in the not doing. So in that sense, we are in fact morally obligated to free Iraq. Ironically, if the peacenicks are correct that we created Saddam in the first place, that makes us all the more responsible for correcting the mistake. It is a sign of their moral immaturity that they are arguing for not correcting a wrong as being the right course.
Posted by: Mark Buehner at December 22, 2003 at 07:48 AMSomeone should ask Professor Gaita if it's immoral to liberate hundreds of prisoners in a death camp, even if that means dozens will inevitably be killed in the crossfire.
The proportionality vis a vis Iraq is not even comparable. According to the AP, several thousand (not tens of thousands) of civilians were accidentally killed during OIF. This, in a country of 25 MILLION, the entirety of whom (South of Kurdistan) were effectively confined in a nation that had been transformed by Saddam into a death camp. If WWII was justified, despite the Allies causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, how could that moral calculus possibly be undermined, when far, far less innocents die?
Posted by: Wagner at December 22, 2003 at 07:54 AMI am glad this person is rightwing. You dont believe me? Get a load of this equivalence:
"Only someone who believes that the end justifies the means will think the liberation of the Russian people from capitalism's murderous dictatorship, the creation of a socialist state in Russia, or even the flowering of socialism in the entire world, will justify the killing of tens of millions of Russians. "
Ahhhhh that is much better!!!!
Posted by: Rob at December 22, 2003 at 07:59 AMThere's a Yiddish saying that paraphrases to the effect,'Never show a fool an unfinished project',which ceased to make its point more than even a few months ago.
This raving lunatic quintessentially demonstrates the pavlovian vehemence that consumes and rages within the souless body-politic of the left against America,
no matter what.
Except for the most viciously rabid America-haters who have had to endure the most ignominiously embittered outcome imaginable, that for the most of them, it can be said, have at least had a modicum of self-respect and common sense to know when to SHUT UP.
To Professor Dingbat, it seems it's NEVER A GOOD TIME TO SHOW A FOOL A WHOLLY SATISFYING, GRATIFYING, SUCCESSFUL OUTCOME FOR ANYTHING
if it involves America.
Tim,
First off, the highest rational number I have heard was 5,000. I would love to hear her explain where she got the "tens of thousands" number from.
Second, Saddam killed his own people at a clip of about 10,000 a year, estimating conservatively. So by now he would have killed 7,500 equally innocent Iraqis. If the regime lasted another 12 years, he would have probably killed 120,000. And if he passed the regime on to one of his psycho sons, who knows how bad it would have gotten?
If we only care about the deaths of innocent Iraqis, if we only look at it on that axis alone, this war is easily justifiable.
I made essentially this argument before, on by site.
Posted by: A.W. at December 22, 2003 at 08:11 AMI think when they say tens of thousands of Iraqis, they're including Iraqi soldiers killed by Coalition forces.
Posted by: scott h. at December 22, 2003 at 08:11 AMOf course, the professor will refuse to consider the further beneficial side effects of the invasion of Iraq:
* Libya's recent announcement that it will give up its weapons program and allow inspections. This will not only give us further intelligence as to who has been supplying these regimes with the fixin's, but reopen Libya's oil pipeline.
* The intelligence that Saddam has stolen at least $2 billion from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program and transferred it to places like Syria, Lebanon and Jordan that we're trying to chase it down (the Washington Post story by Susan Schmidt for 12/21).
* The exposure of groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who are more critical of democracies who inter suspects in bases like Guantanamo than dictatorships who tend to inter suspects in metal shredders. Even mildly lefty groups become critical fodder, like the American librarian groups who rail against the Patriot Act but remain silent about the Cuban librarians who Castro jailed.
Posted by: Bill Peschel at December 22, 2003 at 08:50 AMPeople in most walks of life realize that difficult decisions must often be made: bad things traded off against worse things, and so on. But we have increasing numbers of "word people" -- writers, professors, etc -- who have no experience of making decisions in the real world, and hence insist in an illusory level of purity and perfection.
Posted by: David Foster at December 22, 2003 at 08:55 AMWhat kind of name is Raimond Gaita? What nationality, I mean? When I read the thing in the Sydney, Australia on-line paper, I thought it was moral pish-tosh of an outrageous caliber, and I'm delighted to see so many people appear to agree with me. I also looked at the name, and wondered who or what a "Raimond Gaita" might be -- decided it might possibly be a French Muslim, which would nicely sum up the reasons for the senile dementia parading as deep and dark erudition.
Posted by: NahnCee at December 22, 2003 at 08:57 AMThe Professor is confused on a number of things. In a single paragraph we find the declaration that the two B's lied about Saddam having WMD's and the statement that almost noone who opposed the war doubted that he had WMD's. Which is partly true; French, German, and Russian intelligence all have been reported as believing he had some, so presumably the governments to which they reported also believed.
Enjoy the fact Saddam is gone, but deplore the means? As to the second part, only if you had recognizably better means. And no, the French "Well, sanctions obviously did not work, so let's stop them and see if that works" is not a better means.
I agree with y'all and have argued with my anti-war friends that you can't use the number of Iraqi deaths as an argument against the war without mentioning the greater moral context of the lives saved by stopping Saddam and his evil progeny, one of whom would have most certainly followed ever so maniacally in his father's footsteps.
As for the exact numbers of Iraqi dead many anti-war types reference the Iraq Body Count . There is something inherently disturbing about this site not only because of its dubious numbers and faulty logic but the fact that you can download a desktop counter that will update the supposed number of innocent Iraqi dead. These people criticize the pro-war crowd from trivializing civilian causalities (ignoring of course all that Saddam inflicted) yet believe it acceptable to peddle a downloadable death counter. As the putative number goes up I can just picture the user gloating over another "I told you Bush was wrong" death. Talk about dehumanization.
A couple of you have mentioned other, more reliable reports on civilian deaths. Is there a place where these reports can be found?
In general, the way this war activates the far left's gag reflex convinces me that, as the saying goes, extremes meet. Take a look at what far-right publications and thinkers say about the war, (e.g. here ) and there is little difference between their arguments and those promulgated by groups like International ANSWER. The war has caused these so-called leftists to undergo a process of deliberalization whereby their arguments against removing Saddam are now couched in staunchly isolationist, conservative, unliberal terms. For groups that criticize the U.S. for only thinking about its own interests it is almost comical (if the situation wasn't so grave) to hear them rail against the war by saying its not in the U.S.'s interest (i.e. no strategic threat, no WMDs, weakening international alliances, etc...). I thought that for real liberals such incredible human rights abuse was enough moral justification for war. I thought that this was the reason we acted in the Balkans even though Milosevic didn't have any WMDs and didn't pose a serious, practical threat to the U.S. I thought that that the reason so many human rights activists (correctly in my opinion) lambasted the U.S./UN for not acting in Rwanda was that though the volatility in this central African state was of little strategic importance it was morally imperative to prevent further death.
I'm sorry for the rant but as someone who considers himself a moderate liberal I am viscerally shaken when anti-war liberals cannot see how much this war has benefited the cause of human rights. It is fair to argue about the strategic threat posed by Saddam (I believe there was one) but for anyone to say the war was immoral, as Paul Krugman of the NYT has done here , is out of their freakin' skulls. Simply, as I think about Nazi tattoo still sullying my grandmother’s arm, I am thankful that Iraqis don’t have to suffer any longer under a tyrant who, if Mr. Krugman’s, the Professor's or the far-left's advice was followed, would still be evading UN weapons inspectors and more importantly murdering thousands and thousands of his own people.
A couple of months ago, Atlantic Monthly did a graphic comparing those killed in wars and those killed by the brutality of their own regiemes during the twentieth century. The former produced hills, the latter mountains. Perhaps we forget it because the "word" people don't have a good word for that (the Atlantic chose the word democide, with which most of us are unfamiliar; the holocaust seems reserved for one tragic yet small segment of those deaths; massacre generally means an incident rather than a policy, etc.) Or perhaps facing that graphic makes us realize how much these tragedies derive from expecting too much rather than too little from domestic government. Whatever the reason, this contrast is not often noted. I think some of us have long believed there are worse things than war - without celebrating or diminishing the tragedy of war. This chart makes it clear that what may be worse can be death (as well as slavery and injustice and imprisonment).
Posted by: Gin at December 22, 2003 at 09:29 AMScott,
Oh so more "Sympathy for the Devil" eh? (Not accusing you; you might only be a messenger.) Well, sorry but I could give a rats ass about the people willing to give their lives to maintain a tyrant.
Posted by: A.W. at December 22, 2003 at 09:30 AMGaita's argument pales against this abomination:
'It is true that if I had my way Saddam Hussein would still be dictator. But that is not the whole story. The US usually deals with tyrants by supporting them or leaving it to their own people to bring them down. What was different about Saddam? Oil? War is neither the only nor the best way to topple tyrants. Every nation in the world, except for four, saw it that way. I'm happy to stand with the 97 per cent majority opinion.'
Posted by: ilibcc at December 22, 2003 at 10:32 AMI have to disagree with the premise....we did not "kill" thousands of Iraqis.
The blame for that rests 100% squarely on their now captured ex leader.
How soon the moral equivicators forget that there are 2 sides to every story...and in this case the blame is squarely on the other side.
Period.
Case closed.
Hi.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kis/schools/hums/philosophy/frames/Staff/Gaita/Gaita.html
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/atbooks/gaita.htm
There's no special reason to expect that Raimond Gaita would be taking bizarre anti-American views, except that he's an academic. It's really saddening: when fashion and a corrupt culture go one way and common sense goes another, we can't trust even our professors of moral philosophy to take the right road.
"Moral Philisophy" Two lies for the price of one. Gaita would prefer to stand with the 97% who were DEAD WRONG. They must be the same majority who wanted to ignore the "Jewish Problem" in Germany, and to keep the US out of WWII.
Remember that all that is necessaqry for evil to triumph is for GOOD MEN to do nothing. Leftist scum like Gaita you can pretty much count on to sit around and jack their jaws about "moral equivelance" while Hussein's storm troopers are gouging out infants eyeballs to make their parents talk.
Posted by: Dacotti at December 22, 2003 at 11:10 AMWhat kind of name is Raimond Gaita? What nationality, ... I also looked at the name, and wondered who or what a "Raimond Gaita" might be -- decided it might possibly be a French Muslim, which would nicely sum up the reasons for the senile dementia parading as deep and dark erudition.
Raimond Gaita is an ethnic Romanian, who was born in Germany in 1946 (I don't know why the family was there at the time).
The family migrated as refugees from the Romanian speaking part of Yugoslavia to Australia in 1950.
Professor Doctor Gaita was educated at St Patrick's College Ballarat (same school as the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell), Melbourne High School and Melbourne University.
So he is neither French nor Muslim!
Anyway, there is nothing Islamic or Wahhabi in his philosophy.
In 1940, 'scuse me while I exhume the Devil Hitler was eager for peace with Britain. WWII would proceed differently. The killing of tens of thousand would have happened one way or another, but Churchill was positioned to influence whose. Untroubled by moral equivalence, able to distinguish right and wrong, he rejected that as, well, shit. How would a "Professor of Moral Philosophy" argue? Can one PhD without cracking a history book? Gaita's argument pales against that abomination.
To see yet another aspect of Gaita's moral dishonesty (anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism masquerading as moral concern) put it this way:
"Only evil people would believe the end of preserving international peace justifies the means - leaving Saddam Nussein undisturbed"
The "Ends and Means" argument can be twisted any way once you take leave of common sense.
Thank you for alerting me to this piece. It deserves a Nobel Prize for Wanking.
So Gaita was a refugees born in 1946. That means he probably owes his physical survival to the removal of Hitler and the Nazis. Does he also think that was unjustified?
Posted by: sue at December 22, 2003 at 11:43 AMI know this is off topic, but I suddenly remembered an old Japanese cartoon series where the giant robot who fought monsters or some other giant robot every week had this one weapon which was a rocket launched from his groin. It struck me as bizzare at the time but the full enormity of it has only now just hit me, 15 years later- HOLY SHIT! That robot was firing his DICK, man!! Who the hell puts that on a kids TV show!!?!?
Posted by: Amos at December 22, 2003 at 12:08 PMThe Romanians sided with the Sausage-Eaters in WW2; that's why Stalin dealt with them fairly harshly. It was also the Romanians who ran like poodles at Stalingrad, causing the line to collapse. Looks like a lot of them follow Gaity (with extra nutty coating) and his view on solving problems militarily.
Posted by: Habib at December 22, 2003 at 12:10 PMIf this Professor was worth listening to, he'd have a Billabong of his own, too.
Posted by: suede pseud at December 22, 2003 at 12:23 PMHOLY SHIT! That robot was firing his DICK, man!! Who the hell puts that on a kids TV show!!?!?
Go Nagai, that's who.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at December 22, 2003 at 12:36 PMGaita forgets that UN resolution 1441 after 17 other resolutions passed by the UN mandated ‘serious consequences’ if Irag did not comply with the UN in readmitting weapons inspectors with a totally open go—and by December 8, 2002.
The fact that the Security Council failed to enforce its own resolutions doesn’t mean that the Coalition was unjustified going in. Gaita doesn’t even mention the fact that the onus was on Hussein to prove he DIDN”T have weapons of mass destruction and to admit the inspectors openly.
There are many justifications for the war, which have been gone over zillions of times—but the failure of a philosopher to understand that the onus was on Saddam to prove his innocence in this case is worrying.
Raimond Gaita, professor of “moral philosophy”,That phrase reminds me of Voltaire's comment on the Holy Roman Empire. Posted by: Ernie G at December 22, 2003 at 01:08 PM
TB at least frames the question correctly. Gaita, being a "thinker", has his head stuck up his fundament.
Hussein killed several hundred thousand of his own citizens from the early eighties through the early nineties.
However this was a period during which SH was either a faithful US client, or whilst the US poorly managed the relationship, in the lead up to, and aftermath of, GW I.
The correct period for atrocity comparison is early nineties through early naughties, during whicht time SH was kept "in the box" through US power enforcing UN law.
SH's domestic atrocities during this period appear to have been an order of magnitude lower than the earlier decade.
Posted by: Jack Strocchi at December 22, 2003 at 01:10 PMcont'd
UN Sanctions-inflicted Iraqi casualties cannot be laid at SH's feet, as he most likely got rid of his WMDs in 1991.
By comparison, it appears that the total casualties from GW II range from KIA: 21,700 to 55,000 & WIA: 40,500 to 135,000. Still rising.
GW II was worth doing on moral grounds on the assumption that if the US did not regime change Hussein, he and his son's would have stayed in power for another decade, serial killing opponents at approximately their nineties rate of carnage.
That moral equation assumes the current insurgency peters out and Iraq turns into a civil state, without civil war or theocratic despotism.
Jack S.
06/03/1998: UNSCOM Chairman makes a presentation to the UNSC indicating Iraq has declared its uniltateral destruction of 38,000 banned weapons but, in fact, retained 46,000. The Chairman emphasizes the "magnitude" of the banned items Iraq retained: 2/3 of its operational missile force, more than 1/2 of its chemical weapons, and all of its biological weapons. He notes "evidence of a systematic, centrally controlled mechanism within Iraq, tasked with concealing material and activity proscribed by Security Council resolutions" and emphasizes that these patterns are particularly important because Iraq is currently demanding lifting of sanctions.
12/17/1999: Security Council Resolution 1284 replaces UNSCOM with UNMOVIC, reaffirms the previous resolutions and calls on Iraq to address humanitarian needs of vulnerable population groups. The resolution offers a trial period of 120 days under which sanctions would be lifted in exchange for full compliance, and a permanent end to the embargo would be considered upon demonstration of continuous movement toward disarmament.
Back to the top.
That first link was supposed to be from UNSCOM Chairman. And they are quotes from hear.
Posted by: Gary at December 22, 2003 at 01:58 PMWhat about a UN resolution to ban the use of dick-firing giant robots? When are serious issues going to be addressed?
Posted by: Amos at December 22, 2003 at 02:14 PMI say we get Jack one for Christmas before they are banned.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at December 22, 2003 at 02:29 PMA British health group that opposed the war in Iraq released a report yesterday estimating that total casualties from the war could range from 21,700 to 55,000, though they acknowledged that their calculations were hampered by a lack of verifiable data
In other words, those numbers are utter bullshit.
Sigh. Strocchi logic is, as I understand it, that Saddam's murder rate was way down since the huge bodycounts he understandably and legitimatly had to run up while brutally crushing the last vestiges of resistance from the Iraqi people. Apparently he got rid of his weapons and refused to allow verification, thus making sanctions deaths Americas fault, despite the fact he managed to build several more palaces during the sanction years while his people starved, also Americas fault.
Ignored is the fact that France, Russia and Germany are vastly more culpable for Saddam's arming, America having given him LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of his foriegn support and some satilllite info during the Iran/Iraq war. Apparently this means Saddam was a US puppet and the US supported their man in Bagdad by cunningly throwing him out of Kuwait, imposing sanctions and bombing him to allay suspicion. Clever!
Saddam, a US puppet with Russian guns, Russian warplanes, Russian missiles, Russian tanks, a French nuclear reactor and Swiss bank accounts.
Plus we should ignore intangibles like the denial of freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people, darkies don't mind that kind of thing.
"UN Sanctions-inflicted Iraqi casualties cannot be laid at SH's feet"
Yes, they can. Ever wonder why we get tired of dictator-apologist filth like you Strocchi? Your time has gone, scumbag. The ash-heap of history awaits.
Posted by: Amos at December 22, 2003 at 02:38 PMI would be highly skeptical of the figures put out by this antiwar group. Remember what happened in the Afghan war? There too the antiwar people, led by a teacher of women's studies in New Hampshire who has never set foot in Iraq, came out with hasty estimates of thousands of civilian casualties, assembled by similar methods (media counts and "extrapolations"). More reliable counts based on on-site interviews and hospital visits soon reduced this figure to somewhere in between 500 and 1000 civilian casualties. One would expect a similar figure in Iraq, where the conflict was similar in duration and methods (precision bombing avoiding centers of population). Also one wonders if this British antiwar group bothers to distinguish civilians killed by the insurgents. I have seen no exact figures but over the last few months the insurgents are said to have killed far more Iraqi civilians than Coalition soldiers. Are they assuming that the Coalition was responsible for all civilian deaths?
There have probably been several thousand Iraqi military deaths since April. The Coalition claimed to have killed or captured over 1100 guerillas during its big offensive last month.
Notice that the Rumanian moral philosopher does not seem to make any distinction between military and civilian casualties, a position which of course implies condemnation of all wars without exception, including wars of self-defense.
William T. Sherman also felt that means were justified by a noble end, which is why he felt little compunction about storming through civilian areas of the South during the Civil War. The Left like him.
Today's Left aren't so fond of Truman and his A bombs, but for every latter day pundit who claims Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't necessary, there's a remembrance of some poor soul who died in the meat grinder at Okinawa, a massive human tragedy that could have been avoided by an earlier use of the Enola Gay.
Posted by: Tim at December 22, 2003 at 02:57 PMJack S,
Some points:
1) America's complicity with Saddam's regime is certainly important but I do not think it takes away from the general moral argument. From a strictly American citizen point-of-view yes the fact that we aided the early Saddam dilutes any claim about 100% pure American moral authority for the war. However, as other commenters have mentioned the fact that we helped create a monster (a monster subsequently nurtured by many others in the international community) does not obviate the moral obligation for its eradication. Generally, for a moral act to occur the person or entity carrying it out does not have to be a saint or even consistently moral; the Holocaust abounds with examples of immoral people (even Nazi enablers) saving Jews and though their actions need to be put in context I don't think that their prior actions can completely erase their moral deed.
Also, think about the moral question for a second without taking into account the United States. The question then becomes, was the war a generally moral thing to do considering the genocide, human rights abuses, etc... and not whether the country leading the effort had the cleanest moral conscience. Sure if, say, Sweeden led the effort no charges of hypocrisy could be leveled but then again we live in an imperfect world where certain nations lack either the means or the desire to do what another, perhaps more culpable but nonetheless still praise-worthy country did.
2) The question of Saddam being kept in the box is still very debatable as evidenced by his multiple material breeches of UN Resolution 1441 his attempted procurement of N. Korean missiles and strong though not conclusive ties to Al Qaeda as reported by the Clinton administration here .
Secondly, there is no mention of lessoned civilian casualties in that article and even if true there is documented torture, murder, rape and pillaging post GWI. Though comparatively it may be less (and this relatively isn't that impressive considering the numbers during the 80s/early 90s) it wasn't like Saddam stopped violating numerous International laws with regards to human rights.
3) The numbers of civilian dead you reference are either not found in the articles you cite or are from organizations that have a specific agenda (Iraq Body Count, IPPNW). This is not to absolutely say they are wrong but the fact that these and similar groups vociferously protested the war, the fact that they made predictions about such things as refugee crises that never occurred and the fact that in the article it explicitly states that the estimates are based on very vague information gives me pause.
4) I disagree that for the moral justification to be true Saddam and his sons would have to continue "serial killing opponents at approximately their nineties rate of carnage." While the likelihood of continued murder is certainly an added buttress to the moral argument, the carnage need not occur at the same atrocious rate as in the 90s for the justification to be valid. This is like saying that, assuming Hitler remained in power after WWII, removing him later would only be justified if he, or his associates, continued killing at Holocaust levels. Jack, as you argue, actions are cumulative and the fact that Saddam killed so many pre GWI, and killed perhaps less but still a lot after GWI and would be likely to kill at least some more, assuming we decided to continue our "in the box" policy, is plenty to mandate removal.
5) Of course many of the UN-sanction-related deaths can be attributed to Saddam because as many posters have shown it wasn't up the u.s. or un to speculate about whether he "probably" destroyed his weapons and "might have" complied with the various other sections of the resolution. And its not like his previous actions vis-à-vis the UN had any reason to give us hope as seen here
Good points all, Matt, but you're wasting your breath. Save your energies trying to convince critics of the Iraq was that have yet to drink the Kool-Aid.
Posted by: Sean at December 22, 2003 at 03:47 PMI'm glad we have some leaders in the world with the balls to do something rather than talk about it for decades.
During the years the world talked about Saddam and what to do, Iraqis were being made into hamburger by Saddam's shredders. Saddam was thumbing his nose at the world and the gutless wonders at the UN.
I can't help but believe that to some people the Iraqis and their suffering are little more than an abstraction. How to deal with Saddam, and others like him, seems to delight some of our 'elite'. They have a subject to philosophize about to their hearts' content.
Too bad people are suffering and being tortured, we must wait until our 'elite' have time to consider (and lecture and write about) all the implications of getting rid of a monster like Saddam. Getting rid of Saddam doesn't provide as much intellectual stimulation as endlessly talking about it.
Posted by: Chris Josephson at December 22, 2003 at 03:54 PM"The ends don't justify the means" is one of those frequently misapplied moral platitudes. Certainly the ends don't justify the means, but not necessarily for the reason that people seem to think. According to Christian moral philosophy, the 'ends' don't justify the 'means' because someone who engages in bad means invariably produces a bad end. This is refered to as 'the law of reaping what you sow'.
So it is a completely specious arguement to suggest, 'Well, everything turned out well, but that still doesn't justify what you did to attain it.', because in fact Christian moral philosophy recommends that when some means is of debatable moral character, you judge it according to the ends it attains. In other words, if something bears good fruit (the ends), then its a pretty good bet that the seed and the sower (the means) was good as well.
The death of thousands or tens of thousands of Iraqi's is tragic, but one has to admit at some point that the deaths of some Iraqi's was unavoidable. Iraqi's were dying whether we got involved or not. The situation in a Iraq wasn't a good situation which was disturbed by an invasion and became a bad situation. Rather the situation in Iraq was a very bad situation which we could either respond to in one of two ways; either we could shake or heads and take on an attitude of moral superiority, sniff in disdain or offer platitudes and a distant sort of pity - and allow the tragedy to continue - or else we could intervene and accept on ourselves the burden that comes with intervention.
It is my belief that intervention and not tolerence is the best policy; for tolerence of evil quickly leads to inaction, and inaction to indifference, and indifference to sloth, and sloth self-centeredness, and thense to complete moral degeneration.
But how do we know whether it was the right and wise thing to do? Well, we know whether it was the right and wise thing to do precisely because it bears good fruit. And I would think that the end of a brutal dictatorship and the flowering of democracy (and maybe even an outbreak of uncharacteristic peace and sanity) throughout the middle east would be very good fruit indeed.
Basically, Raymond Gaita is saying that though he claimed the course of action was evil, and predicted it would have dire consequences (bad fruit), it now appears that it will have rather good consequences, but rather than admitting that he was wrong Mr. Gaita would fall back on half understood platitudes so he can continue his disdain, aloof inaction, and haughty self-delusion of his own moral superiority.
Posted by: celebrim at December 22, 2003 at 04:34 PMWhy is it that the people who when talking about Iraq can't go for one minute without mentioning the US relationship with the country in the 1980s (while avoiding any mention of Iran's government at the time) are the same ones who talk about the absolutely pivotal role the Soviet Union played in defeating the Nazis (which is true) while never saying a thing about, earlier in the war, Stalin's giving Hitler basically whatever he asked for inexchange for his not attacking (and, temporarily, part of Poland, etc.).
Andrea once again appears to be guilty of projecting with her revealing suggestion that "we get Jack...a dick-firing giant robot...for Christmas...before they are banned".
Although the diagnosis is not complete I would say that her unhealthy obsession with boys-toys is a stark symptom of a particularly virulent, barely latent, case of penis envy.
A long period of rest and recuperation is indicated.
Hey Jack,
Saddam is looking for a lawyer. Since you advocate for him on this blog in your spare time you'd probably enjoy it.
Posted by: Macca at December 22, 2003 at 05:17 PMAmos, in between spluttering episodes of mouth-foaming rage, manages to address a couple of factual points:
British health group...acknowledged that their calculations were hampered by a lack of verifiable data
Due to stringent word limitations I did not link to independent sources that offer alternative casualty estimates. Here is one that Amos might like to investigate, after a long lie down in a dark room:
The Wages of War Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities: Exec Summ
approximately 11,000 - 15,000 Iraqis, combatants and noncombatants, were killed in the course of major combat actions. (Iraqi casualties incurred after 20 April are not included in this estimate).
FWIW, my first preference was to advocate an increase in US military pressure to force a Hussein step down, although I thought SH, being a died-in-the-wool Stalinist, would not buy it. How wrong I was.
Posted by: Jack Strocchi at December 22, 2003 at 05:35 PM
I was the one to bring dick robots up, since then the rhetorical tone in here has substantially improved.
As for getting angry at tyrant apologists, yes I do that, will keep doing it, go boil your Saddam-loving head Strocchi
Posted by: Amos at December 22, 2003 at 05:46 PMTim: ... the meat grinder at Okinawa ... If anyone wants, John Toland has numbers in The Rising Sun:
12,520 US Military Dead (unclear whether Ernie Pyle included)
ca 110,000 Japanese Military Dead
ca 75,000 Okinawan and Japanese Civilian Dead
Before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, starting before Okinawa, the fire raids up and down Japan, starting with the one that burned (70,000? 130,000? Depends on which authority) Tokyo 10 March. Oh, and Dresden, too.
Armies, including Sherman's, (for all his calculated bluster) didn't go out of their way to kill masses of civilians back then (after all, it was a civil war) but many civilians died. No stats, but authorities guesstimate in the 100K -- 1M range over the war.
Posted by: Glenn (not Reynolds) at December 22, 2003 at 08:00 PMAmos tries to pin the tyrant-apologist tag on my skinny white ass:
go boil your Saddam-loving head Strocchi
Before Amos lets his heart-felt words spill out of his foam-flecked mouth, he might want to run them past his pea-sized brain.
He has got me pegged dead-wrong from the git-go. I enlisted on 09 DEC 1990, right on the eve of GW I.
I am, and always have been, a strong supporter of US military action to constrain and depose Hussein. Ditto for the long list of full-bird colonels and four-star generals who have misgivings about this venture.
Just trying to get the math right, which was TB's original point. Posted by: Jack Strocchi at December 22, 2003 at 09:12 PM
Jack, only you would use a lame Aunciente Jape about "penis envy" as a comeback. Twenty-first century to Jack: that sort of thing hasn't been funny since the Seventies.
Also, your comments in this discussion and others no more than useless argument-starting trolls. You are getting closer to being banned and/or having all your subsequent entries changed to read "I'm a little teapot short and stout." Perhaps I should put it to a general vote: guys, is the entertainment value of Jack Strocchi's comments worth letting him continue to post here?
Posted by: Andrea Harris at December 22, 2003 at 09:20 PMAnd four-star generals have misgivings about their morning coffee. Doubts and misgivings come with the military territory, Jack; you should know that, since you are always flogging your military creds.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at December 22, 2003 at 09:22 PMWhat vertigo of logic did this daffy Prof. follow? I also taught ethics in a philosophy college and the Western canon shows no base for his silliness. There are basically four types of ethics in Western thought: teleological, ontological, dialectical, and indicative. The first is modeling a situation by whether it is good or bad for the future, obviously is good for less people to die and there is a massive increase in personal security and self-determination if Saddam & Co. is placed behind bars or in the dirt. Ontological is a bit murkier and is a claim of a priori morality by design, ie “right” and “wrong.” Personally I cannot imagine anyone describing Saddam, a man who took his young sons to watch gang rapes as a way of toughening them up, as anything but a freak of nature, an anomaly beyond intended design. It is right, for being, to stop him and wrong, against being, not to have. Dialectical thought come from Hegel and birthed the commies heading ever upwards and onwards to a higher plane of consciousness by societal schemes extinguishing each other. Well Jeffersonian democracy just extinguished the Baathist marauders so maybe there is something here. Indicative ethics arrived complements of the nineteen century Phenomenologists, a belief that we could suspend judgment and each situation would allow a righteous course of action to float to the surface. Hey I saw some mellow looking soldiers doing yoga, and then allowing their M-60 to drift into their hand. Any way this situation is modeled it is ethical, not to do so is unethical. More and more the left-overs are simply unethical.
Posted by: Right Brain at December 22, 2003 at 10:18 PMRight Brain nails the issue, but it seems all previous thread-posters have STILL missed a key point, namely:
The civilian Iraqi deaths, whether by American bombs or fedayeen viciousness, were SADDAM'S responsibility.
Saddam and his supporters took conscious steps, made planned and deliberate efforts, to put soldiers, weapons, and other war paraphernalia AMONG Iraqi civilians, trusting the moral superiority of the Allies to provide extra cover for their own morally-bankrupt thugs...
No, perfesser, Zulus!
Front to back, your wretched apologia stinks!
And WE smell... the stench of Jock Strappi's verbal equivocational viciousness...
Jock, you embrace the perfesser. You lose.
Posted by: Straight_Talk at December 22, 2003 at 11:44 PMAndrea,
To characertise my
comments in this discussion and others no more than useless argument-starting trolls.
seems a trifle unfair. I concentrate on facts and always keep a civil tongue in my head.
Certainly don't seek to provoke witty remarks of the kind:
dictator-apologist filth...scumbag.
In fact, I broadly share the political ethic of this site's commentators, although I, and much of the brass in the US Army, have queries over the accounting, and reservations about the wisdom, of US admin policies.
But if you just want a right-wing echo chamber, then I guess blocking sympathetic critics would be the way to do it.
But if I cross the line of good taste with my harmless little sallies, then I will glumly accept the implication of your versification:
When my water boils I start to shout,
Just tip me over and pour me out.
Jack:
Here's the flaw w/ your "Saddam wasn't responsible for the deaths incurred by sanctions, since he'd gotten rid of his WMDs in '91":
Where are the anti-sanctions folks who cited this as their argument?
There were lots of folks (Voices in the Wilderness, frex) who wanted the sanctions lifted. But the arguments they laid out were consistently how many people were dying from them, NOT that Saddam had already gotten rid of his WMD.
Indeed, you'll note that these groups, even now, do not cite anything of the sort in decrying the war.
The point being that IF Saddam got rid of his WMDs earlier (and the reality is we don't know what he did with them, or even if they're gone), he did so w/o telling anyone. He can hardly then be credited w/ compliance, when one of the terms of compliance was to TELL THE UN. More to the point, if he DID get rid of them, w/o telling anyone, then he is doubly responsible for the deaths that occurred from sanctions, b/c then he could have had them lifted quite promptly, and thus saved the lives of thousands.
But I'm impressed w/ that bit of apologia for Saddam. You don't see many quite as breath-taking. Have you volunteered this to the French lawyer who will defend Saddam?
Posted by: Dean at December 22, 2003 at 11:56 PMDean:
Before Jack pops up. Saddam did tell the UN he had no WMD. But did not prove it when arsked. He was busted with banned material right up to the beginning of GW2.
Posted by: Gary at December 23, 2003 at 12:51 AMI notice that Jack's link goes to a Washington Post story that does not actually name anyone serving. Furthermore, Jack says "Much" while the article says "some."
Jack, are you asking for unaminous agreement from everyone in the Army with a rank of Colonel or higher, including those who have retired?
Posted by: John Nowak at December 23, 2003 at 01:20 AMIt's the math, without context, that offends me. It's true that Saddam killed tens of thousands of his people. It's also true (but conveniently ignored) that those people -- the Kurds and Shias -- were engaging in an armed uprising against Saddam's government.
Now if you remove ideology from the picture, isn't it understandable that a leader - ANY leader of ANY stripe - is going to put down people who seek to violently overthrow the government? So why are people shocked (shocked!) that Saddam would do the same?
After all, the religious elements that tried to overthrow Saddam are the same religious elements that overthrew the Shah of Iran. And the Shah, like Saddam, tried to put down the threat -- and *both* did so with U.S. blessing and encouragement (the only difference is that the Shah was ultimately unsuccessful, and had to flee to the U.S.).
So to spout statistics of the number of Iraqis killed by Saddam, sans context, is disingenuous. If the Kurds (loyal to Iran and the Ayatollah) had prevailed over Saddam, they too would have killed off many innocent Iraqis. And we would have been far less pleased with that, because Saddam (at least until he invaded Kuwait) was our boy.
Posted by: Kman at December 23, 2003 at 02:08 AM"NO PRICE FOR PEACE"
Indeed. Last week I saw some bearded old fart (he looked like an old hippie) with a bumper sticker on his car that read:
War is costly
Peace is priceless
Kman, you've got to be the biggest idiot apart from this professor.
Just why in hell do you think the Kurds and Shias tried to overthrow SH anyway? Because he raised the car tax or something? No, he was a brutal dictator from day one.
And anyway, who has ever expressed surprise that SH put down the insurrection?
Posted by: Visitor at December 23, 2003 at 04:31 AMArgument: If SH had destroyed his WMDs, then he would have proven this to the UN, in order that the UN sanctions could be lifted.
Rebuttal: The UN sanctions were an _asset_ to SH. Because the UN sanctions funnelled all imports through resources under SH's control, he was able to use their disbursement as reward and punishment to increase his control over the Iraqi population.
Disclosures: I whole-heartedly supported the war. I still think SH had WMDs.
Posted by: buzz harsher at December 23, 2003 at 04:55 AMA bit OT, but seeing as this is at the end of about one million comments from this post...
That robot-dick post is the funniest damn thing I have read in months.
ROTFLMAO!!!!
Good-on-you Amos!
Cheers!
Posted by: dogsbythesea at December 23, 2003 at 05:38 AMA bit OT, but seeing as this is at the end of about one million comments from this post...
That robot-dick post is the funniest damn thing I have read in months.
ROTFLMAO!!!!
Good-on-you Amos!
Cheers!
Posted by: dogsbythesea at December 23, 2003 at 05:38 AMKman,
What on earth makes you say "If the Kurds (loyal to Iran and the Ayatollah) ...".
There was never wide-spread support for Iran and the Ayatollah among the Kurds! Better do a bit of fact-checking next time.
Even worse, Saddam Hussein did a little bit more than "put down an insurrection". He engaged in a systematic campaign of genocide in which at least 20 Kurdish towns and villages were gassed in the so-called Anfal campaign, including Halabja (which seems to be the only place most people know about). He slaughtered an estimated 120,000 Kurdish civilians, including women, children and old people, fer fucks sake!
That is a little bit extreme, even as "putting down insurrections" go, wouldn't you agree? Saddam was special - he belongs in the same league as Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao. He hadn't quite reached their high standards of acievement yet but, hey, he was still working at it until the upset of 9 April 2003.
Posted by: Bob Bunnett at December 23, 2003 at 07:47 AMI must say I'm enjoying this refreshing new take on murderous tyranny, that savage thugs have every right to slaughter captive populations that try to overthrow them because after all, those people are their property and a man can do what he likes in his own backyard.
I assume, 'Kman' that you'd have no problem with being tortured raped or murdered as long as it's your officialy stamped and notorised local tyrant doing the murdering? Or are you OK with anyone doing it?
Because I wouldn't mind murdering you myself, you worthless little shitstain. You know, if you've got no objections.
Posted by: Amos at December 23, 2003 at 12:39 PMAmos: woah, there. If you murder Kman, we will have only Jack Strocchi to mock.
As for the aforementioned Mr. Strocchi: keep in mind that you are not the one who gets to decide whether you have "overstepped the bounds of good taste" or not. Actually, that boundary was left behind by you some time ago, but you were left alone on the supposition that you would be able to find your way back to it. (Also, I do have a day job, where I have no time to play webnanny.)
Posted by: Andrea Harris at December 23, 2003 at 01:44 PMThe 'Project on Defense Alternatives" estimates of casualties quoted by Jack Strocchi are far more believable than those put out by the 'Iraq Body Count' but the PDA is also an advocacy group whose efforts deserve to be received with skepticism. The declared purpose of these groups, after all, is to convince people that the cost of the Iraq war were much greater than is generally believed, and to do this they have not hesitated to rush into print with admittedly flimsy data. Their conclusions are clearly based on political bias, not data of any sort. I find it particularly difficult to believe their claim that 30% of the casualties were 'noncombatants.' Where? There has never been an invasion more closely reported and I don't remember any reports of civilian casualties on such a scale. All one can say at the moment is that there must have been several thousand fatalities in the Iraqi military forces, and how many accidental civilian deaths we don't know, but I bet it will turn out to be in the hundreds not thousands.
Posted by: doyne dawson at December 23, 2003 at 01:46 PMHey, Professor Gaita has a good point.
If might indeed makes right, if the ends indeed justify the means, then how can any chest-thumping American super patriot (=dickless wonder) in all honesty blame Muslim freedom fighters for slaughtering innocent US citizens in pursuit of their objectives?
It's the half-witted replies to Prof. Gaita's perfectly reasonable point that make me wonder if the US didn't get what was coming to it. It also makes me wonder just what will it take to take American arrogance down a notch or three.
Go watch MTV and eat your Twinkies, boys.
Posted by: Joseph de Bonald at December 23, 2003 at 02:43 PMYou're the half-wit and the twink, Joseph.
The invasion of Iraq was undertaken with the hope and expectation of minimal casualties on both sides - a calculated risk undertaken with grave forethought.
Terrorism is undertaken with the hope and expectation of maximum casualties - calculated murder undertaken with thoroughly evil intent.
Go figure the difference Joseph.
De Bonald seems somewhat out of his depth when he tries to address philosophical questions. 'Might makes right' and 'the end justifies the means' are two quite different positions. Gaita meant the second, which is called utilitarianism, or acting so as to bring about the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. To say that 'the end justifies the means' is to say that if the end is good then the means needed to achieve that end are justified. For example, if the liberation of 25,000,000 Iraqis was a good act then it justified the loss of a few thousand Iraqi lives (many of them fascists, hence not exactly innocent). But the 9/11 terrorists ("freedom fighters," he calls them) were not making any sort of utilitarian argument. They did not slaughter thousands of innocent civilians in pursuit of their objectives. Slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians WAS their objective. The means and the end were the same thing. He cannot tell the difference between realistic and humane cost-benefit calculations, which all statesmen are required to make, and pointless mass murder carried out by demented fanatics.
Posted by: doyne dawson at December 23, 2003 at 03:29 PMDe Bonald seems somewhat out of his depth when he tries to address philosophical questions. 'Might makes right' and 'the end justifies the means' are two quite different positions. Gaita meant the second, which is called utilitarianism, or acting so as to bring about the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. To say that 'the end justifies the means' is to say that if the end is good then the means needed to achieve that end are justified. For example, if the liberation of 25,000,000 Iraqis was a good act then it justified the loss of a few thousand Iraqi lives (many of them fascists, hence not exactly innocent). But the 9/11 terrorists ("freedom fighters," he calls them) were not making any sort of utilitarian argument. They did not slaughter thousands of innocent civilians in pursuit of their objectives. Slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians WAS their objective. The means and the end were the same thing. He cannot tell the difference between realistic and humane cost-benefit calculations, which all statesmen are required to make, and pointless mass murder carried out by demented fanatics.
Posted by: doyne dawson at December 23, 2003 at 03:29 PMI can't place the penis missile, but I believe there was a female robot with breast missiles on Mazinger.
Good old Go Nagai. To him, "taste" is something done only with your tongue.
I have the feeling that De Bonald is out of his depth when negotiating his bathroom, but that's just me.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at December 23, 2003 at 09:30 PMJS says: Here is one that Amos might like to investigate, after a long lie down in a dark room:
The Wages of War Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities: Exec Summ
What the heck is the Project on Defence Alternatives which JS refers to? It vaguely smells like some dense disarmanent shop-front. Reading their casualty count methodology, it doesn't sound much better than IBC's.
Posted by: Craig Mc at December 23, 2003 at 11:53 PMYou pin-pricked yanks can't have it both ways.
If liberating 200,000 million or so Arabs, maintaining the sovereignty of Middle Eastern states, and preserving the integrity of traditional Islamic cultures are good acts, then perhaps the slaughter of a mere 3,000 Americans (not exactly innocent) in furtherance of such goals was justified? In fighting "terrorists," the big, brave American super-patriots are becoming exactly what they purport to hate.
Further, the Neocon half-wits would have us believe that the 9/11 perpetrators were nihilists whose acts were bereft of any political or social significance. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Go back to your Nintendo, little ones.
Posted by: Joseph de Bonald at December 24, 2003 at 09:17 AMHey Bonehead: I have removed your second and third duplicate postings. Try hitting the "post" button just once instead of over and over like a hopped-up monkey trying to get more crack. Oh -- and as for the little comment fight you are trying to start: yawn.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at December 24, 2003 at 09:47 AMAnd German invasions in 1939 were good for ultimate world peace.
Go away.
Posted by: ilibcc at December 24, 2003 at 10:07 AMIn response to Craig Mc, the PDA is part of the Commonwealth Institute, a lefwing think tank in Cambridge, Mass., and yes, I think it would be correctly described as a disarmament shop-front. The report in question, which tries hard to present a facade of scientific objectivity and buries the reader under a bewildering mass of statistical analysis, is simply a polemic directed against the notion that the New Warfare has allowed sharp reduction in civilian casualties owing to precision bombing. The report claims 30% of the casualties in Iraq were noncombatants. As I mentioned above, that figure does not jive with my own impressions nor I think with those of most observers, and though we do not yet have reliable data to refute these claims I suspect we are dealing here with the usual statistic-juggling based on elastic media reports. It's obvious tht they do not have any reliable way to distinguish combatants from noncombatants, and the fact that large numbers of noncombatants have been killed by the Baathists is never mentioned. The thesis they are trying to refute, that the New Warfare does not incur high civilian casualties, was originally based on the experience of the Afghan war in 2001, where the figures have been thoroughly explored. It seems odd that this PDA report never mentions the Afghan war.
Posted by: doyne dawson at December 24, 2003 at 12:25 PMIn response to Craig Mc, the PDA is part of the Commonwealth Institute, a lefwing think tank in Cambridge, Mass., and yes, I think it would be correctly described as a disarmament shop-front. The report in question, which tries hard to present a facade of scientific objectivity and buries the reader under a bewildering mass of statistical analysis, is simply a polemic directed against the notion that the New Warfare has allowed sharp reduction in civilian casualties owing to precision bombing. The report claims 30% of the casualties in Iraq were noncombatants. As I mentioned above, that figure does not jive with my own impressions nor I think with those of most observers, and though we do not yet have reliable data to refute these claims I suspect we are dealing here with the usual statistic-juggling based on elastic media reports. It's obvious tht they do not have any reliable way to distinguish combatants from noncombatants, and the fact that large numbers of noncombatants have been killed by the Baathists is never mentioned. The thesis they are trying to refute, that the New Warfare does not incur high civilian casualties, was originally based on the experience of the Afghan war in 2001, where the figures have been thoroughly explored. It seems odd that this PDA report never mentions the Afghan war.
Posted by: doyne dawson at December 24, 2003 at 12:27 PMI think the much-maligned Prof Gatia has not been properly appreciated. Many have condemned Saddam for his torture chambers, rape rooms, secret police, institutionalized brutality, etc, but that may be somewhat short-sighted. I am sure that part of the Prof's motivation for his post is his enlightened recognition that all the good accomplished by Saddam may now be lost to the world.
For instance, the many and varied palaces dotting the Iraq landscape will soon be displaced by thriving communities of Iraq's working in new manufacturing or industrial facilities. Such a loss to the world of art will be hard to replace.
The EU economy may also be facing some hard times. With the loss of the sub rosa trade between Iraq and selected EU leaders, maintaining the high standard of living in franco-land will certainly be more difficult. It may even entail an increase in employee productivity!! (A socialized fate worse than death)
Third, the ME may now be facing an environmental crisis previously held at bay by Saddam's heavy-handed, but effective, methods. As we all know, the most effective way to control the herd is to cull females and the young, preferably before they have a chance to reproduce. Although misunderstood by all but Prof Gatia, Saddam's wholesale elimination of women and children had kept the Iraqi population under control and balanced with the available resources. And when that failed, diverting resources from food to weapons ensured the excess would simply die from starvation.
By removing Saddam, it is certainly possible that substantial portions of the population will live to adulthood and, maybe, have families of their own. This is certainly a receipt for disaster.
Rather than disparaging the good Prof., we should be asking for his leadership in finding another to fill Saddam's role and restore the natural order to Iraq. Unfettered democracy must not be allowed to flourish and spread. Who knows what calamities may be visited upon an educated, productive populace. We need the leadership of the intelligencia to prevent the catastrophes certain to befall the poor people of Iraq now that they have lost the steadfast hand that has beneficently guided them for the last 20 years.
Posted by: Rightfoot at December 24, 2003 at 04:15 PMI once had a moral philosophy professor comment, "If the ends don't justify the means, it's hard to figure out what would." Even deontological systems are ultimately justified teleologically (usually using some sort of "state of nature" or "original position" analysis.) Somewhere in his Theory of Justice the philosopher John Rawls (whom I'm sure Gaita has heard of, and may even respect) says that any moral theory that isn't ultimately teleological would be "crazy."
Posted by: Tom O'Bedlam at December 25, 2003 at 02:43 AM