Whispering Death said:
Peter Pan said:
Whisper,
I am afraid you have not read my earlier posts. Possibly because they were too detailed to hold the attention span.
However, you may like to read the Defence Policy Guidelines and the National Energy Policy of the US govt and the Proceedings on the Caspian Sea Area in the Congress.
An analytical reading of these would give you the rationale for not only Iraq but also for Afghanistan, Iran and the Caspian Oil Reserves; as also the need to have quick reaction strategically based around the world or at least the critical areas. The quest for light and rapid reaction like the Stryker Brigade is a case in point.
At the risk of repeating, the contention of 'liberation from oppression' or 'Freedom and Democracy' appears a trifle uncomfortable a proposition to accept, when there are genuine genocides galore in Darfur, Rwanda and even today at the Congo border there was another 'cleansing' reported, where the 'forces of liberation should devote attention but are conspicuous by their absence. Iraq should ahve been liberated in the 1980s when Saddam gassed the Iranians and his own.
This paradox naturally leads to the view that the moral issues are not quite what they are being stated.
I do regret if my post has caused you distress, but may I, at the same time state, that what the US did was in hernational interest and I presume that sentiment (if one can call national interest so) is her birthright.
Uh oh, now you are backtracking and dancing around the issue.
YOU SAID "in purely moral and altruistic terms" that it was bad. Oh, no no no, when you look at the morals of the situation it was the morally correct thing to do. The morally incorrect thing to do was let the people suffer. You just wrote 3 paragraphs about the Geo-Politics of the situation which are irrelevent since we are talking "purely in moral and altruistic terms."
But your 4th paragraph is quite the eyebrow raiser. From someone who tries to assert himself as the intellectual superior by an "attention span" quip, your argument is parodoxical and might I opine, quite illogical. You are trying to rubuke my assertion that purely on morals, going into Iraq was the correct thing to do by countering "well, US didn't help in Rawanda and Darfur." Really? So you are saying that what the U.S. did in Iraq is so correct that the U.S. should be doing it all over the world and you kindly give examples of places the U.S. could help out. Well thank you for bringing to light the moral obligation of powerful nations to help the weak like in Rawanda, Darfur, and Iraq. Now that you have established that, in purely moraly altruistic terms you cannot disagree that going into Iraq was the perfectly correct thing to do.
Unless of course your attention span is too short to read the entirety of my writing.
I am neither backtracking nor doing a jig.
I have written rather long posts on the subject which apparently you have not read. Had you read, then this post of mine would have been redundant.
1. The invasion of Iraq is moral to the extent that it ‘liberates the oppressed’
2. Yet, the level of morality is, without doubt, less than the level of morality that manifests the requirement of intervention or invasion in Darfur, Rwanda etc. It might be recalled that the US find Darfur a genocide. The mayhem and displacement of population does indicate (to all) that it is ethnic cleansing to say the least in Rwanda.
3. In comparison, there was no ‘ethnic cleansing’ per se in Iraq since there was no displacement of population. Killings, yes.
4. Therefore, the Invasion on Iraq is moral, but not to the level of morality as in Darfur, South Sudan or Rwanda.
Given the American indignation of ‘oppression’ in Iraq as also the high decibel media blitz in support, the attempt to make it appear more moral to intervene in Iraq and not in the evidently more oppressed areas is what makes the whole blitz and the hurt moral indignation a trifle suspect. Had it occurred when the killings in Iraq took place i.e. the 1980s, this moral indignation would have been accepted without cavilling. Right now, it does not wear the ‘moral indignation’ cloak well.
Do read the Defence Policy Guidance and the National Energy Policy of the US for greater details on the rationale for, apart from other places, the Invasion of Iraq.
I also do not subscribe to the theory of powerful nations intervening with military might to bring succour to anyone for any reason, unless it is under the UN Flag. Why the UN flag? Because it indicates to the population being ‘liberated’ that it is not the agenda of any particular nation, because come what may, when a nation invades, there is the suspicion that there is some hidden agenda. The UN has intervened in many places including the no fly zone (which indeed impinged on Iraq’s sovereignty) and yet there was no outcry as for the current Invasion of Iraq. There was no outcry since it had the mandate of the UN, even if it were a US agenda.
It would be worth recalling that Osama and his coots ‘invaded’ the US by bringing down two towers. It invited the wrath of all Americans. Now, if the Iraqis (the Sunnis and now the Shias as per the Washington Post news posted by GingerB), don’t appreciate the invasion or liberation and are storming the bastion of ‘liberated’ Iraq, then it is a negative form of ‘extending the other cheek’;or as one would say ‘tit for tat’ or as per Islamic law ‘an eye for an eye’. Notwithstanding, my opinion is that it will lead the Iraqis nowhere if they continue with their ‘war against liberation’ by egging their storm troopers as suicide bombers and professional beheaders.