queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2003-03-27 12:43 pm
queerbychoice) wrote2003-03-27 12:43 pm
War Arguments
This article makes a few points worth reading, but I do not agree with Paul Berman's conclusion at all. Yes, Saddam is plenty evil, and yes, I believe that war can theoretically be justified if killing a few people now will really prevent an even larger number of people from being killed later. However, the U.S. is using carcinogenic depleted uranium missiles whose half-life expiration date won't arrive until the year 4400002003 A.D.! Think about exactly how many people can die or be born with horrendous birth defects in all those years. You think our supposed attempt to bring "democracy" to this generation of Iraqis (even if you're naive enough to believe Bush actually has any real interest in democracy at all) can really justify killing off that many future generations? I THINK NOT.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/kershaw1.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/kysia2.html
Or search Google for "depleted uranium" "cancer" "iraq" etc. . . .
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See, I think the pro-war and the anti-war people end up talking past each other- the pro-war people think they're trying to convince everyone that Saddam is a bad guy and we're right to not want him around. Anti-war people seem to come in all different shapes and sizes, but the ones I relate to usually make arguments like yours- that the stuff we're doing is just over-the-top, and that the number of civilians we'll kill (and have killed) will, in the end, outnumber the number of lives we save.
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I don't agree with this. Zionism began as a minority movement among Jews, and had (and continues to have) both Jewish and non-Jewish opponents. Until the late 30s, the majority of British Jews, for example, were anti-Zionist. Noam Chomsky, among others, remains a well-known anti-Zionist Jew.
Salon: "Had you been interested in Islamism and Baathism before Sept. 11?"
Berman: "No. Yes, in a general way, but I hadn't paid special attention to it."
Interesting - a singular pronoun is used to refer Islamism and Baathism, as if they can be treated as the same thing.
Even Islamism is not all the same. In Iran, women can drive, vote, and have jobs (even become government ministers). This isn't the case in Saudi Arabia, one of the so-called "moderate" (i.e. pro-US) Arab states. But Saudi Arabia does not seem to figure in Berman's account - even though al-Qa'ida actually had its ideological roots in Saudi Wahhabism.
Berman: "When it looked like he [Saddam] was winning, he had a lot of support."
I keep seeing commentators (such as James Rubin, former Clinton official) on the news saying that Arabs respect strong discipline and only respond to the use of force, and this is why they will ultimately love the US, because it's showing them how strong it is. I don't know if this is what Berman is saying. But it seems a somewhat racist cultural analysis. Mind you, maybe it is true of westerners. I know a lot of westerners are power-worshippers.
Berman: "From their point of view, to see the Turks line up with the U.S. now must be enraging. And the fact that Turkey is led by an Islamist party which appears to have become a liberal party in its principal instincts, this fact must be enraging beyond words."
Fortunately for us, Turkey has not exactly lined up behind the US, allowing it airspace only. Turkey does, however, have a history of committing genocide against the Kurds. A "liberal" regime, indeed. It's currently threatening to intervene in Iraqi Kurdistan to ensure the Kurds don't demand independence. It also has a history of military coups. So I am not sure that I would agree that secularism and liberalism always go together.
Speaking of the coalition of the willing, Slovenia has now demanded to be removed from the list. I don't know if this means the US added states to the list without asking them first, or if the war is going so badly, countries are desperate to dissociate themselves from it.
Berman: "Yes, because the role of the left ought to be to express solidarity with the Iraqi people, to hope for the defeat of the fascist tyrant and to see their freedom and our own self-defense. This in fact became visible today, when some Iraqis at least, celebrated their liberation."
Hoping for the defeat of a fascist tyrant and supporting intervention by a rightwing imperialist superpower are not the same. Before it was banned, one of the largest opposition parties in Iraq was the Iraqi Communist Party. It has opposed the war. Most Iraqis have not celebrated the invasion. The big surprise for mainstream commentators has been the large amount of Iraqi resistance, the lack of Iraqi enthusiasm for being invaded, etc. All because they're too afraid of Saddam to show what they think? Then why are hundreds of Iraqi exiles, opponents of Saddam, in Syria and Jordan pledging to return home to fight the invasion?
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Surely, political leaders like to stress their honourable motivations. So the fact that they claim that Iraqi democracy and humanitarianism aren't their reasons for intervention - they have constantly stated that the reason for intervening is that Iraq is in breach of UN resolutions on weapons of mass destruction and constitutes a threat to the US - must be regarded as significant. Humanitarianism isn't their motive. (If it was, of course, they wouldn't have imposed the murderous sanctions.)
And the calculus of "if we don't act, a larger number might die" is speculative. Not acting might give you a certain indirect responsibility for what might happen. But acting gives you a direct responsibility for what does happen. The two aren't comparable.
Even if they were, it's not a straightforward issue of comparing the number of deaths that result from war with those that would result from Saddam continuing in power. What about the deaths that indirectly result from war - in the form of increased terrorism, instability in the region, and so on?
See also this great editorial.