Rational Grounds

October 2, 2002:

From mobius Wed Oct 2 16:48:54 2002
From: Ben Ryan
Subject: Re: [TAN] Iraq Opinions
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan
Message-ID:
Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2002 20:48:54 -0000

Mark Loy wrote:

> My point? History if full of efforts/successes by the United States in
> replacing one regime/dictator with another who is "better" or whom we
> think is pretty only to have the entire thing backfire abysmally.
>
> Don't believe me? The Twentieth Century was rife with it.

Yeah, this is my last reservation to the whole deal, and it's a big one.
For the record, I don't believe one word coming from the administration
about why invading Iraq is a good idea. I don't think they are sincere
at all about why they want to do this. I think it largely boils down to
vendetta, with the secondary bonuses of maintaining support for the War
on Terrorism (and thus Bush and the Republicans) as well as sewing up a
huge ass supply of U.S.-friendly oil. I think doing this will again
infuriate the Arab Street, and flipping off the UN will further damage
our relations with our allies.

But. But Novak's analysis of the UN's relevance is spot on, and that's
coming out of a course at Columbia this summer on the UN human rights
apparati where I was able to study in depth the limp wristedness
therein. The UN is an entirely political organization - in the
substanceless, blustering, and fake sense of political. The Arab Street
will be pissed at us no matter what we do until we or they break the
death grip the extremists have on the hearts and minds of the people in
Islamic countries. And regardless of Bush's actual reasons for invading,
taking out Saddam is on it's own a good thing. So I can reconcile myself
to the political heat the US would get from an invasion. I can ignore our
government's deceitful sales pitch.

But what's the end game? There is no good replacement for Saddam. Iraq is
Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south, Sunnis in the middle, Arabs and
Persians and Turks. It's history since the days of the British Mandate is
one of coup and counter-coup. What makes us think taking out Saddam is
going to make anything better? And how are we eliminating the danger of
WMD falling into terrorist hands if we take out the controlling element
in the country? Now we've got any number of factions that could get into
power, and no one in particular watching or aware of where the WMD are.
Can you imagine if Afghanistan had biological/chemical weapons floating
around when we gave it back to the warlords?

So I'm not sure that rushing in and toppling Saddam is a good idea, at
least until we know what we plan to replace him with.

We just don't have a good record here, and I haven't seen anything to
tell me that this scenario would be any different.

January 31, 2003:

From mobius Fri Jan 31 17:05:49 2003
From: Ben Ryan
Subject: Re: [TAN] State of the Union
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan
Message-ID:
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 22:05:49 -0000

Jim Mansfield wrote:
> Ben Ryan wrote in

> I think upholding international law (and national law, too) is worth the
> risk. I do not believe it is good for the world or society for any part
> of it to take the law into their own hands. That's why we have laws in
> the first place.

Well, I disagree with you on the international law front. All the
players are all far too corrupt and self-dealing for me to believe that
there is much at all to be gained by strictly adhering to the rules.
When no one else is, you can look noble all you want and maybe someone
will bother to bury you when you're gone.

Which is not to say that I don't think we should have standards. I just
don't think those standards must be exactly the UN's.

> The trouble with moral relativism, though, is that it is nearly
> impossible to convert someone who doesn't want to believe what you
> believe.

The trick is to show them that the end which they're shooting for will
be better achieved your way than theirs. Nine times out of ten your
goals are remarkably similar (human - individual or general - happiness
and safety, for instance).

>> So Jim's response to Novak's request for other options was completely
>> unhelpful, because we've already established that the means in
>> question are to be avoided if possible. Novak was asking if it was
>> possible to avoid them.
>
> I didn't get that from Novak's questions.

Novak posited that certain tactics were palatable to him given the
situation (at this point I'm not going to touch on the exact
constituents of the set "certain tactics" here because I don't want to
put words in Novak's mouth and I've forgotten the specifics if he ever
gave them). Somebody else said that said tactics weren't palatable, and
that we shouldn't use them. He then asked what other alternatives did
they see?

> But if that's true, then I
> think it's easy to avoid the means in question. All we have to do is not
> attack Iraq until it is sanctioned by the UN.

Which would be... when? Base your answer on the UN's actions up to this
point.

I'm by no means convinced that it's necessary to invade Iraq by three
weeks ago, but similarly I have no faith that the UN is ever actually
going to get around to saying, "Yeah, let's invade" until there's a
significant body count obviously attributable to Saddam. This is the
same body that waited until weeks *after* everyone in Rwanda was dead or
hiding before declaring it a genocide and saying something needed to be
done. The constituents of the UN have a vested interest in making sure
it has an overiding sense of national sovereignty, as they are
themselves nation states and don't fancy being meddled with. Especially
not when they need it.

My likely scenarios for our alternatives here are thus. We wait on the
pleasure of the UN, and Saddam publicizes his position of and/or uses
WMD. The UN will then councel against screwing with him because of the
likely body count should anyone involved use said WMD.

Or, we eventually make the decision without UN sanction (they'll
probably sanction it within hours of the troops landing so as not to
appear irrelevant) and invade. We clean house, people decry the
inevitable civilian casualties, we set up a puppet government. Because
we decide to stick with the current borders to avoid pissing off Turkey,
the puppet government will be very unstable without us, so we'll stick
around for a while. We'll rebuild a lot more diligently in Iraq than in
Afghanistan because of the gigantic oil reserves there. Whether this
works like Germany and Japan or, well, Afghanistan (or any of the myriad
banana republics we fucked with in Central and South America over the
centuries) will depend on how well we do the job of rebuilding.

February 7, 2003:

From mobius Fri Feb 7 13:15:03 2003
From: Ben Ryan
Subject: Re: [TAN] Powell's Presentation to the UN
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan
Message-ID:
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 18:15:03 -0000

Michael Bruce wrote:
> In , Mike Kozlowski wrote:
>> Michael Hoye wrote:
>>>John S. Novak, III wrote:
>>>>
>>>>It will certainly be a long, drawn out, expensive effort.
>>>>It's better than just sticking our heads in the sand, or building sand
>>>>castles for defense, though.
>>>
>>>That's the part I still don't see. I still see no exit strategy,
>>
>> The exit strategy is the same as it ever is: After we get bored, we go
>> home, and nobody gives a damn what happens next. Or I suppose, we could
>> be going with the alternate "prop up a Shah of Iraq

> I have seen no indications that this administration will screw up this
> particular thing, and I think it's a little unfair to simply assume that
> they will do so.

I have seen no indications that this administration will *not* screw
this up either. And considering the past history to which Kozlowski was
referring, the burden of proof is in the hawks' court here.

I'm resigned to the necessity of doing this - after Powell's evidence of
al Qaeda agents operating freely in Baghdad (which could only happen
with the ex- or implicit permission of Hussein), I have to admit that
the scenario of Iraq launching attacks through al Qaeda is not as
far-fetched as I originally thought. And as September 11th showed, we
won't necessarily see it coming until it lands in our laps.

I'm resigned, but I reserve all judgement on the fate of the Iraqis
until I see it played out. We have a greater incentive to do a good job
rebuilding because of the value of the region (in oil and
strategically), but a lot can happen in a decade.