more on Immorality on the March - Michael Kelly

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

He is a student not from France or Germany and rather mature djf

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Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:26:45 -0500
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Immorality on the March - Michael Kelly

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If you want to publish it on IP, please take off my name. An obviously
foreign name would make most Americans dismiss the validity of any
argument I try to make as "anti-american". Since when is critisism of a
state's politics an attack against the nation? What is this country
becoming?

On Thursday 20 February 2003 04:35, Dave Farber wrote:
> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: Einar Stefferud <Stef () thor nma com>
> Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 21:47:34 -0800
>
> The Seattle Times - Wednesday, February 19, 2003, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
>
> All they are saying is give tyranny a chance   -   By Michael Kelly
>
>
> PARIS - Last weekend, across Europe and America, somewhere between 1
> million and 2 million people marched against a war with Saddam
> Hussein's Iraq.

Grossly inaccurate if we consider what global media reported. 1-2
million people in London. Another 2-3 million in Rome, and the streets
were filled (and people driven away) in New York, Athens, Tokyo, and
many other major or minor cities. The numbers are much more significant
than US media reports, obviously hinting at a much more widespread
dissapproval of yet another US-initiated war than the US government
would like Americans to know about.

<snip>

> Of course, not all the marchers can be counted as 99.9 percent pure
> moralists. Some -perhaps many- marched out of simple reactionary
> hatred: for the United States, for its power, for its paramount
> position in a hated world order. London's paleosocialist Mayor "Red
> Ken" Livingstone, a featured speaker at that city's massive demo,
> comes to mind. His enlightened argument against war consisted chiefly
> of calling George W. Bush "a lackey of the oil industry," "a coward"
> and "this creature."

Is the author trying to laugh off the legitimacy of people's frustration
by pointing to a politician's choice of words?

<snip>

> The situation with Iraq may be considered in three primary contexts,
> and in each, the true moral case is for war.
>
> The FIRST context considers the people of Iraq. There are 24 million
> of them, and they have been living (those who have not been
> slaughtered or forced into exile) for decades under one of the
> cruelest and bloodiest tyrannies on Earth. It must be assumed that,
> being human, they would prefer to be rescued from a hell where more
> than a million lives have been so far sacrificed to the dreams of a
> megalomaniac, where rape is a sanctioned instrument of state policy,
> and where the removal of the tongue is the prescribed punishment for
> uttering an offense against the Great Leader.

This "US will rescue the oppressed people" argument is as old as dirt.
Wasn't it even used in the Vietnam campaign? Wasn't the Great Freedom
Fighter (TM) waging war against the Red Evil Tyrants (TM) that
massacred many of the Good People of Vietnam? Does the US government
really believe that such a smoke screen will convince once again? Are
American people willing to be lead to another massacre once again?

> These people could be liberated from this horror - relatively easily
> and very quickly. There is every reason to think that an American
> invasion will swiftly vanquish the few elite units that can be
> counted on to defend the detested Saddam; and that the victory will
> come at the cost of few -likely hundreds, not thousands or tens of
> thousands- Iraqi and American lives.
>
> There is risk here; and if things go terribly wrong it is a risk that
> could result in terrible suffering. But that is an equation that is
> present in any just war, and in this case any rational expectation
> has to consider the probable cost to humanity low and the probable
> benefit tremendous. To choose perpetuation of tyranny over rescue
> from tyranny, where rescue may be achieved, is immoral.

The world has seen how effective the US is in "liberating" oppressed
people. They did it in Bosnia, where they bombed a whole country to the
ground - making financial and technological dependence of the "just
liberated" ruins that remained, a safe bet for favorable US partners.

> The SECOND context considers the security of America, and indeed of
> the world, and here too morality is on the side of war. The great
> lesson of Sept. 11, 2001, is not that terrorism must be stopped -an
> impossible dream- but that (set italic) state-sanctioned (end italic)
> terrorism must be stopped. The support of a state -even a weak and
> poor state- offers the otherwise deeply vulnerable enemies of the
> established order the protection they need in their attempts to
> destroy that order - through the terrorists' only weapon, murder.
>
> To tolerate the perpetuation of state-sanctioned terror, such as
> Saddam's regime exemplifies, is to invite the next Sept. 11, and the
> next, and the next. Again, immoral.

So, the author supports this administration's policy of christening
everyone "a terrorist" and appealing to the so-laboriously-cultivated
feeling of threat that has been implanted in this country's heart.
Manipulating a whole nation with FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) tactics
reminds me of the Nazi-driven Germany. Obviously 70 years are enough
for people to forget the implications of such a state.

There wouldn't be any Americans to tolerate another war across the globe
today, if their hearts and minds hadn't been systematically filled with
terror. A fear-driven nation is the easiest to manipulate, and the last
to dare exert healthy criticism upon the state's choices.

> The THIRD context concerns the idea of order itself. The United
> Nations is a mightily flawed construct, but it exists; and it exists
> on the side (more or less) of law and humanity. Directly and
> unavoidably arising from the crisis with Iraq, the U.N. today stands
> on the edge of the precipice of permanent irrelevancy. If Iraq should
> be allowed to defy the law, the U.N. will never recover, and the
> oppressed and weak of the world will lose even the limited protection
> of the myth of collective security. Immoral.

Again, the argument of the US boldly resolving what other cowardly
nations/organizations dare not. Also, another attempt to convince (by
chanting "the truth", but no arguments) that this war is what will save
the legitimacy of what's good in this world (present example, the UN).
"The oppressed and weak of the world will lose even the limited
protection [they currently have]" ? Oh puh-lease!

> To march against the war is not to give peace a chance. It is to give
> tyranny a chance. It is to give the Iraqi nuke a chance. It is to
> give the next terrorist mass murder a chance. It is to march for the
> furtherance of evil instead of the vanquishing of evil.

That's right, marching against war is:

[0] Making the task of The Freedom Fighters (TM) harder.
[1] Advocating tyranny, because of course only a democratically selected
government like the one the US will install in Iraq will do.
[2] Making nukes in the wrong hands possible! Of course, we forgot to
mention that - unless you bomb them to the ground, they will nuke you!
(Of course the thousand-fold arsenal of "weapons of mass destruction"
of our approved allies is not an issue, since we know they'll only use
it against "the bad guys")
[3] Giving terrorists a chance! Well, the terrorist threat had to be
somewhere in here anyhow. Yes, no links have been established between
known terrorist groups and Iraq, but what the heck, let's bomb them
anyway. That way we'll never again experience another Sep.11 attack,
because people will love the US for protecting what's good in this
world.
[4] Last but not least, it's giving EVIL a chance to survive! Don't all
these millions of people get it? The White Cross of the Freedom
Fighters must crush all that don't abide. It sounds terribly like the
"arguments" used against Christians, Jews and Blacks at different
points in history. You don't bow your head to us and accept our
superiority and authority. Therefore you're a threat to the status quo.
Therefore you're EVIL, because of course we're the representatives of
goodness in this world. Therefore we will pursue you, weaken you,
marginalize you, and kill you.

> This cannot be the moral position.

I cannot believe such trash gets published.

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