Why terrorists will ultimately fail...

I think the question " Which Terrorists "
should also be asked :

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/117BC38E-1187-4075-B7F4-CCCD001
AB620.htm



" Over and in, last call for sin
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done "

The Killers

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/killers/allthesethingsthativedone.html

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Hey DT I’m back in the game. Sorry to take so long to reply, I’ve been out of the world for a spell – by which I mean in the world, but away from my computer. So, where were we?

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KPO: “I think you've glorified the insurgents just by saying their cause is a 'moral' one. From then on it seems, you are free to blame the deaths of all the people they murder on Bush.”

DT: "This is just spin"

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Can this be the last time you accuse me of spin? All I do is state a condensed version of your argument so I can say exactly where I disagree with it, or where I think you have wrong assumptions. I’m not really trying to achieve anything with my wording other than conciseness. You don’t seem to like your own arguments when they’re stripped down to their barest points and recited back to you. My point, which I think you missed, is that you see the insurgents as 'good guys', with honest motives, ordinary iraqis doing the only 'sane' thing they can to protect their country - it's almost like you'd think less of them if they weren't blowing themselves up to kill their fellow countrymen. If you see them like this then you can make excuses for them when they kill innocent people, eg. 'George Bush is driving them to these actions by occupying their land'.

I can see why this is a valid point in your mind, I just think you've been unrealistic getting there, with your views on the nature of the insurgency.

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Of course it's a moral one, they're defending their country, ie, they are driven by their conscience

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I made the argument in my previous post that these were BAD GUYS. My point was a generalisation, but I think a much more accurate one than yours. It went something like:

‘Of course it’s not a moral one, they’re defending their own grip on power, i.e., they are driven by their own selfish motives’.

Quite an opposite view to yours. Now we are both guessing at the motives of the insurgents – some reasons why I think my view of things is more accurate:

1)The insurgents do not represent the people or iraq, who are mostly in favour of democracy. Therefore they have no right to resist in the name of the country of iraq.
2) The insurgents are killing their own countrymen quite indiscriminately. I think resistance driven by purely patriotic motives would not be so indiscriminate. Labelling the victims ‘collaborators’ is just a way to make it seem they are fighting for the iraqi people. But they don’t represent the iraqi people - in fact, I am quite sure they are hated by them.

So. I think it makes all the difference how you look at the insurgents. See them as Sadaam’s bitter, ousted henchmen, instead of freedom fighters and you can attach blame to them quite easily for all the deaths, which is what I do. And since they are the ones doing the killing it kinda works, don't you think? There's a beautiful simplicity to my theory.

One other thing I want to address, is this:

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But moreover, I can't blame the loyalists for being loyalists. It's not evil or immoral of them. It's a position I disagree with, but in a free society, they should have the right to hold that position. Resistance is what happens when you invade and subject people to your will. Our will, at the very least as perceived by them, is to steal the oil. To what extent that is true is irrelevant, because they believe it to be so. They also believe that our will is to create greater Israel. Since we do seek to establish a multi-natioinal mid-east union, there is a chance that such an institution might represnt more Israeli and penninsular power, and the Iraqis, like Pirate News, view the pneninsular kingdoms more or less as in collusion with Israel. To what extent any of this is true, again, is irrelevent, because they believe it to be so.

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I don’t like where you are going with this. I’ve said what I think are the motivations of the insurgents. If they cite largely groundless grievances as reasons for their acts of terrorism does that make it ok? Even if they’ve convinced themselves that these grievances are tr

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And what is our motive for killing? You can hardly call it "self defense" since Saddam never posed a threat. And if you say that we're interested in spreading freedom (or democracy, however you want to call it) with the business end of a gun then are we any better than the jihadist who wants to spread Islam at the point of a sword? With ONE wording change I could take your argument and apply it to Bush & Co:

"Even if they’ve* convinced themselve that these grievances are true, and they think they are really doing the people of Iraq a favour** I still hold them accountable – it’s inexcusable and indulgent folly. Every human being and community of human beings should be responsible for their actions. If you soothe yourself with comforting lies to make the murderous acts easier, you are still responsible (not talking so much about the young, impressionable soldier, but those who recruit them – to believe a lie from someone else is more excusable than believing a lie from yourself).

* neocons
** "spreading democracy"
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Free as in freedom, not beer.

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No comment?

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Free as in freedom, not beer.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
And what is our motive for killing? You can hardly call it "self defense" since Saddam never posed a threat. And if you say that we're interested in spreading freedom (or democracy, however you want to call it) with the business end of a gun then are we any better than the jihadist who wants to spread Islam at the point of a sword?

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Your implication is that there is a moral equivalency between a totalitarian theocracy and a democratic republic. Most people don’t believe that, even in much of the Middle East I would imagine, and they shouldn’t. Only if you believe moral equivalency between these two things are these two examples similar. So for most intelligent people, the answer is yes. Spreading “freedom with the business end of a gun” is better then similarly spreading totalitarianism. That’s pretty well established thought, and that’s probably why no one commented.

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Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Finn- The goals are different and I would argue that democracy is a better goal. But war in Iraq was entirely optional. We weren't forced into it by circumstances of dire, immediate threat. That means we chose to impose "collateral damage" to the tune of more than ten thousand civilian dead. Once you start killing people to impose your ideology because you are so entirely convinced that you're right... well, making that kind of calculation requires the same mind-set as a terrorist.



---------------------------------
Free as in freedom, not beer.

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No comment?

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Not immediately no, I went to bed after posting and I've been busy until now (1500 GMT).

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And what is our motive for killing?

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There you go with the present tense again. It was you earlier, right? Presently we're not killing many people at all.

Who exactly is your heart bleeding for? I don't think even you are clear on this. Lots of people have died - in the war a couple of years ago and in the ongoing insurgency, civilians and combatants - it's too complex to say George Bush has killed all of them.

So who have we killed? You are probably thinking of the small (percentagewise) portion of the iraqi civilian casualties killed by coalition forces. You ask me what was our motive for killing them, when you know as well as I do that they were killed by accident? Or were you thinking of the armed forces - 'enemy combatants', who died defending Sadaam? Does your heart really bleed for them? I'm sure that to some extent the Iraqi people were sad for their fallen countrymen but it didn't stop them celebrating in the streets the day that Sadaam was deposed.

The only point that I can see you making is that it's regrettable that anyone had to die at all. War is a terrible thing and people get killed, including civilians. True, but civilians were also dying under Sadaam.

If you ask me I think the Bush administration went to war in America's interests, but at the same time were confident that in the long run it would be benificial to the people of Iraq. Currently Iraq is in chaos and its future is in jeopardy, so where do you put the blame? For me you can blame (or just suspect, depending on how well informed you are) the Bush administration competence-wise. They set out wanting to benefit the Iraqi people, and you might say they have failed (I'd say it's too soon to tell, long term).
But I think you have to give some blame to the people behind the insurgency, causing the chaos. I don't think romantacising their cause is accurate or helpful, and most liberals are guilty of it.

Still, I think we are agreed that the war in Iraq wasn't legal; military action can only be sanctioned in my book if a country is a real threat to us, or if the head of state is carrying out genocide on his own people. Sadaam was only halfway on both counts. Having said that, are you utterly convinced that trying to oust Sadaam was worse in the long term for the Iraqi people than leaving him in power? If Iraq breaks down through civil war into a 'failed state', and the country is left in chaos will you completely blame George Bush, and give no credit to the different sections of society determined to wage war on each other?

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if you say that we're interested in spreading freedom

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Haha no. The words 'freedom' and 'liberty' don't hold the same political sway outside of your borders my friend. I can't think of 'freedom fries' without laughing. Not as hard as I do at 'liberty cabbage' though. I prefer to use more descriptive terms.

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or democracy

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Yeah, let's go with that

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with the business end of a gun then are we any better than the jihadist who wants to spread Islam at the point of a sword?

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Yes. Because installing democracy in Iraq is taking power from the hands of one tyrant and putting it in the hands of the people. Perhaps here you are trying to set me up so that I say "but democracy is better than Islam!" and then you can say "Aha!" and rail against my intolerance and arrogant presumption. Well, unlike with Islam, forcing democracy on someone isn't really doing anything more than giving them a choice. So let the people of Iraq choose, and if they want they can vote in another tyrant.

As for what you did repeating my whole paragraph and changing one word - yeah, nicely done, very clever. I don't think it works though - you'd have to explain exactly what you are talking about.

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Still, I think we are agreed that the war in Iraq wasn't legal; military action can only be sanctioned in my book if a country is a real threat to us, or if the head of state is carrying out genocide on his own people. Sadaam was only halfway on both counts. Having said that, are you utterly convinced that trying to oust Sadaam was worse in the long term for the Iraqi people than leaving him in power?

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It depends on when and how that would be accomplished. What makes a terrorist a terrorist is not his (or her) goals but methods. We effected "regime change" by spending Russsia into the ground (altho Afghanistan helped), we chose trade as our "weapon of choice" for China, South African apartheid was broken by sanctions and internal dissent, and we certainly destabilized our share of South American governments. But Bush's chose war and death...

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If Iraq breaks down through civil war into a 'failed state', and the country is left in chaos will you completely blame George Bush

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Yes. Absolutely. There was a reason why Bush Sr didn't remove Saddam from power: It's because he saw a gaping power vacuum. And Bush certainly had enough top brass advice that it would take 350,000 troops- not 150,000- to stabilize Iraq post-invasion. But he chose not only to "sex up" intelligence to scare everyone into invading, he also chose to believe the rosy but entirely erroneous notion that we would be welcomed as liberators. Now, right after the "Liberation Of Iraq" I thought long and hard (okay, I though for fifteen minutes on the topic) about whether this invasion would succeed and realized that it would only work if there was a natural constituency in for the solution proposed by the USA: a unified, democratic, secular Iraqi government. And I realized that
1) the Sunnis (being a minority) would have absolutely no interest in democracy- payback being such a b*tch and all that
2) the Shiites would abhor a secular government and
3) The Kurds wouldn't want to be unified because they would have to give up control of their oil and their autonomy. If I can figure this out in a few minutes, don't you think that teams of analysts already saw this coming? Of course they did.

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Because installing democracy in Iraq is taking power from the hands of one tyrant and putting it in the hands of the people.

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Oh yeah, good luck on that!

So here we are, having killed more than ten thousand civilians (Oops, yeah sorry about that. It was sort of an accidental consequence of a deliberate war) all because Bush had a notion to "spread democracy"? To beat my point to death- given the other options that were available, how does that NOT make Bush a terrorist?

---------------------------------
Free as in freedom, not beer.

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All of these things are questions of political will. If you have standout politicians in each faction who see the posibilities for a unified Iraq they can make the case to their own groups.

1) Sunnis realistically have no choice but unify or die. If the place fragments they are the smallest a weakest group. You could see a case for them being the most vocal advocates for a unified Iraqi identity.

2) Shiites, want something better than Iran has. I suspect a theocracy would not be their first choice in a free vote. Even Sadar seems more of a modernist than many in Iran.

3) Being part of Iraq protects the Kurds from the Turks while offering the posibility of a seperate Kurdish state.

There are cases for both sides to stick with it, the right men could make those arguments stick with their communities.

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