Currency Lad seems to be down on someone called Saddam Hussein. It’s not clear who’s being referred to here. Certainly not the Saddam Hussein who collected $300 million from the Oil-for-Food fund, courtesy of the Australian government statutory authority/official privatised monopoly AWB (formerly the Australian Wheat Board). That’s a beatup of no interest.
I’ve generally been an admirer of Currency Lad, but this is truly dreadful stuff. Either he should stop insulting his readers with moralising about Saddam* and present an honest realpolitik line, or he should condemn without reservation those who financed Saddam’s arms purchases, and those who either encouraged them or looked the other way.
To be clear in advance, this includes all those who colluded in evading sanctions, whether they were from France, Russia, the US or elsewhere. However, as we now know, AWB operated on a scale that dwarfed the petty operators about whom we heard so much from the pro-war lobby until recently.
* Or anything else. If you’re willing to swallow this, your opinions on ethics aren’t worth considering regardless of the topic.
John Quiggin 
For example, are Baathists and Baathist supporters (including foreign Arabs) justified in their killing of COW allied Iraqis, or even COW soldiers, when their end game is to reinstate the erstwhile hegemony of their sect?”
I’m not at all sure we know what their ‘end game’ might be. Your assertions are merely assumptions. I suspect in fact there are any number of competing ‘end game’ motivations, including avenging the deaths and destruction wrought by COW forces. The point is it matters not one jot what their motivations might be – in attacking COW troops they are engaged in legitimate warfare and deserve to be treated as legitimate combatants eg as POW if captured, not as subhumans.
“And what of the reduced population of Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia- another Serbian “provinceâ€??”
What indeed? The NATO intervention had nothing whatever to do with that conflict. The prime political function of the Kosovo intervention has been to re-innure western electorates to indescriminate bombing as the military weapon of choice.
At any event, the Serbs=bad guys, Muslims+Croats=good guys narrative is infantile in both Bosnia and Kosovo. There were few good guys and plenty of atrocities all round, with loads of covert support for all concerned from all major powers. Personally I think the Germans have a lot to answer for in the catastrophic dismemberment of Yugoslavia, but there are plenty of other villains.
“Point of clarification: US opposition to the ICC has nothing to do with its newfound predilection to torture people and commit human rights abuses.”
I’d suggest it has everything to do with what is not a ‘newfound predilection’ but a long-established policy. See the history of torture recently compiled by Alfred McCoy or google ‘School of the Americas’.
“International institutions of this type have been regarded with skepticism by many Americans for generations.”
Since the inverse is also true, ie ‘International institutions of this type have been supported by many Americans for generations’, this is a feeble argument. I remind you that the UN was an idea proposed by the US, which is why it is headquartered in New York and not, as was its predecessor the League, in a neutral country. The Bush administration remains only too happy to trumpet any UN support for its policy positions eg Haiti.
How careless of me. The fact that, but for one Shiite cleric’s posturing, the insurgency exists exclusively in provinces with large numbers of Arab Sunni Muslims- the same ethnicity and sect as that which dominated the Hussein government- is coincidence of course. The majority of Iraqis domiciled in other province simply don’t have the courage or wherewithal to resist even as their hearts are surely with their brethren in arms in Tikrit, Samarra, etc.
So this is the narrative that you prefer, eh? How could I have missed so obvious an explanation?! It’s not as though there has been any fighting or COW caused civilian deaths in Shiite or Kurdish provinces… err….
I am happy you are proud to vouch for the legitimacy of warfare that involves planting bombs in Shiite mosques and detonating them during funerals for other Shiite’s you’ve knocked off. Good on you. I don’t have the cahones for such things, however, I also don’t possess a New Hampshire size axe in want of grinding. What I will say is that, whether the actions of the insurgents are legitimate or otherwise is the issue I raised– not the treatment they deserve. On that count, suspected insurgents deserve to be treated with respect for their human rights if for no other reason than to protect the innocent.
The “what” wasn’t cryptic to all but the purposefully or clinically obtuse. You shrugged off the mass expulsion and, in many cases, murder of Kosovar Albanians amidst recrimination for the consequence of Nato’s intervention, “the ethnic cleansing of Serbs out of one of the provinces of Serbia”. Never mind that the world had become aware of GENOCIDE perpetrated by ethnic Serbs against Bosnian Muslims only a few years earlier. This was the information known at the time and not “hindsight” about, “the scale of Serb atrocities in the province” which is totally irrelevant to an evaluation of the morality of NATO intervention (to say nothing about the highly questionable nature of your hindsight). In any case, the source of your animosity toward America is becoming clearer. You don’t have a Serbian sir name, do you?
And you talk about “mere assumptions”. How quaint. So Hal9000, evidence…? Didn’t think so. The NATO intervention had everything to do with that conflict because, as alluded to, the world was aghast at the genocide perpetrated by the Serbs in Bosnia and wasn’t willing to let another one unfold as they sat on their hands. Also btw, if there really was “indiscriminate bombing” as you implausibly claim, the world wouldn’t need to be told of it by a conspiracy theorist. See: Grozny.
Yes- “Greater Serbia”. What a progressive ideal. Never mind that whole self-determination thing and so what if it requires a few concentration camps here and there. Speaking of, word is the Sudanese rebels are responsible for numerous human rights violation. I find the evidence of this persuasive, so I wouldn’t advocate intervening on behalf of the residents of Darfur where these Militia are domiciled.
Catastrophic, eh? The Slovenians and Croats seem pretty happy to be independent- but is that really relevant where Serbian pride is at stake?…
Yes, the “School of the Americas”. The favorite whipping boy of the wild eyed left. I suppose you also believe the CIA is importing crack into America’s inner cities to fund their right wing death squads. In any case, has the CIA done some bad things- you bet. But your claims are reaching and sad. I don’t have the time or interest to go to the trouble of debunking some massive conspiracy tome about America’s longstanding “policy” of torture any more than I do its policy of hiding evidence of aliens. Why don’t you build a single case of an instance outside of Iraq (where I have conceded as much) where torture was the “policy” of America. I’ll be happy to debunk it for you.
First of all, “the League” was also proposed by the US, by President Woodrow Wilson. Second of all, I’m merely trying to help you understand a foreign country’s mindset- something you wouldn’t know. As that goes, as you may have noticed, the Republican Party is in power in the United States, so it is their policy and not the policy of the ‘many Americans’ that ‘support International institutions of this type’ that matters (and it was two insane Republicans that blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City). The Clinton administration actually signed onto the ICC but the Republican Congress wouldn’t ratify it. So the argument is only feeble to those that would prefer it be less their mythical conspiracy theories be exposed.
“Catastrophic, eh? ”
Well, yes, at least 100,000 deaths. I’d call that a catastrophe, but you’re welcome to call it what you like.
“Why don’t you build a single case of an instance outside of Iraq (where I have conceded as much) where torture was the “policyâ€? of America. I’ll be happy to debunk it for you.”
I’ll concede the logic is inductive rather than deductive, but every regime installed by the US over the last half century or so has deployed torture. Call me wildly illogical, but when the correlation is that close, you have to suspect a link. When confronted with evidence, and a nice recent example of this is Guatemala when John Negroponte was ambassador, the US goes into cover-up and denial.
Now let me see – a score or more of interventions and covert actions – torture an invariable consequence, and attempts to cover it up. Sound like a connection to me – perhaps if you could show me evidence of significant US attempts to force its client regimes to abandon the practice I might be willing to revise my analysis.
“I’m merely trying to help you understand a foreign country’s mindset- something you wouldn’t know.”
And you’d know what I know? Perhaps you’d like to enlighten all of us about how that mindreading machine of yours operates – did you pick it up from those UFOs you mention?
At any event you completely missed the argument. Any proposition that can happily sit along side its exact opposite can’t form the basis for a conclusion. We now see that in fact your argument is that ‘the Republicans are in office so they can do anything they like, including abrogating treaties etc’. Well, yes, I suppose they can, but I don’t imagine put like that it’ll convince many people that it’s right and just.
I see. So it was the split-up of Yugoslavia that caused 100,000 or so deaths- nothing to do with those Serbians and their concentration camps. Ain’t that something. You know I used to advocate the break-up of California into north and south, but now I’m not so sure this is a good idea.
Amazing your powers of reason. Did you perhaps consider the extent to which the regimes replaced (or that followed) used torture? You may want to check it cause it sorta inducts a spanner into your correlation coefficient.
I most assuredly did not. The proposition that “America opposes the ICC” is not accurate, (see Clinton administration policy), while the proposition that the “Bush administration opposes the ICC” most certainly cannot sit happily alongside its exact opposite. This was obvious and plain as written whether or not you choose to ignore it for your own rhetorical edification.
My, are we dramatic. The Republicans are in office so they are in charge of running the government. This is sort of implicit. So if, by their decree, the US should choose to enter into or exit international treaties, that is well within the nation’s right, (and its leaders remit), as it is within the rights of all nations to do the same (and is explicitly permitted under international law). This is not to say anything about how other people should judge the appropriateness of their actions- IMO their actions have been crap (appalling and probably in breach of domestic law- i.e. criminal- to boot).
1. My point was, and remains, that the Serbs were not alone in committing atrocities. Check out the charges at the Hague. Nor did the Serbs start the war – secession from a federation is a causus belli that you ought perhaps to have some familiarity with as, I guess, a citizen of the USA. So who was responsible for starting your Civil War – the secessionists or the loyalists? No doubt there would have been many in southern parts of the former union who would have rejoiced in the success of their enterprise – so what does that prove? Before your fingers go into a frenzy on the keyboard I am by no means trying to excuse the Serb criminals responsible for numerous atrocities in Bosnia. But neither should you gloss over the ethnic cleansing of both Serbs and Gypsies under way in Kosovo at present – which was where this argument started, you might recall. Nor should you ignore the many atrocities for which Croats and Muslims were responsible in Bosnia. You should try the idea on for size that the world is not entirely composed of chaps in black hats who need a shave, opposed by Gilletted Marlboro men in hats of white. I know, it’s a little less comforting, but I personally found giving up similarly juvenile notions and activities like thumb sucking worth the trauma in terms of coming to terms with reality.
2. “Did you perhaps consider the extent to which the regimes replaced (or that followed) used torture?” Yes. 3 examples immediately to mind: Iran, Guatemala, Chile. The argument re regimes ‘that followed’ is nonsensical – crimes are not mitigated by the subsequent behaviour of the terrorised victim. If you have counter-examples of where the US toppled a democratic government and the subsequent regime eschewed torture, I’m waiting.
3. “I most assuredly did not.” So you would maintain that Americans are unanimous in their skepticism about international institutions. Wow. Even the Soviets had one or two percent not toeing the line. I imagine you can back this up with polling data? And I take it the numerous dissenting voices to be found on line are the totality of dissenters, and so statistically insignificant? If these are not the propositions you are advancing, then what I said about the logic of your argument about international institutions stands unmolested by your remarks. Check out the history of the argument (clue: it’s the last par of my post three posts back up).
“No, they were simply pointing out the obvious, that UN controlled economic sanctions against a totalitarian regime would not work and those who advocated that as a serious solution to Saddam were delusional. The AWB is simply more evidence of that and basically what’s all the fuss about?”
Ah, yes, the “the way she was lying there passed out SOMEBODY was going to rape her so why not me?” defence.
Have sanctions ever worked against a dictatorship?
Don’t get excited this is an honest question.
sdfc, the most obvious example in which it did was South Africa.
But, honestly, how many case studies to do we have to work with?
Besides Iraq and South Africa, the only other example that come to mind is Libya.
Ian,
You can hardly call South Africa a dictatorship. Even under apartheid it was a democracy – just not of all the people. That was the reason they eventually buckled. The people realised they could not go on, so the government then changed.
Neither are the Janjaweed alone in committing atrocities in the Darfur, nor the Axis powers alone in WWII. This red herring was conceded long ago (even if, as it turns out, the allusion to Darfur was too subtle for the audience). What I find curious are the lengths to which you’ve gone to cast Serbian atrocities in a kaleidoscope of shades of grey, given the stark contours of your mythological American bad guy. What is that- outrage on tap? What kind of a leftist are you? Never mind- we may have an answer to that one:
A Maoist one it would seem. Tibet is after all an inextricable province of the motherland and those seditious capitalist monks would’ve had it torn asunder. Is the principle of self-determination- as codified in international law- totally lost on you?
Rings a bell. And now that you mention it, I recall saying that NATO intervened in Kosovo because Serbian aggressors were attempting to ethnically cleanse the province’s majority in the same way, (if not necessarily by the same tactics), that they had cleansed Bosnian Muslims, that the case was straightforward, that the Serbs could not be trusted to refrain from barbarism after what the world had been made aware of, and that your flailing accusations to the contrary were completely baseless, without a shred of evidence and what’s more, overtly sympathetic to political forces that had masterminded genocide. Think that about sums it up. But, please do drag out the red herring of non-Serb atrocities again- he’s looking a little tired, but I’ll humor you.
And here I thought we were talking about a “policy” of torture. On that count, even suspending the fallacy of causation, if we are to infer that the United States has a policy of torture from the fact that regimes the United States supported in the past practiced it, the conduct of regimes in those same nations fore and aft is relevant. In particular, if these regimes also practiced torture that mitigates/eliminates the correlation coefficient, rendering insignificant the relationship you are trying to demonstrate. Sorry pal, I didn’t invent the laws of statistics, I’m merely trying to avail you of them.
How about an example where the US toppled a despotic regime and installed a democratic government- Grenada. Was that motivated by altruism or bereft of negative consequences? No, but it also doesn’t gel with your trite monocausal narrative.
Your obstinacy is notable for its ignoramus. Be that as it may, your purposeful misreading of what I’ve written is still implausible, because my statement, “The proposition that “America opposes the ICCâ€? is not accurate” is rather difficult for a human to misinterpret. With that in mind, this:
is a trifle rich. Let me see if I can’t reach new heights of heroic optimism by trying to explain this… again:
1) The United States citizenry is not homogeneous of opinion about the place of international institutions such as the United Nations and the ICC.
2) The United States citizenry is actually, largely divided between people who believe in the imperative of such institutions and people who are skeptical of them.
3) As with all issues of substantial disagreement in the United States, the two political parties have staked out opposite sides of the ideological divide which best fit their constituency/ideology. In the case of this issue, Democrats are largely supportive of international institutions and Republicans are the largely skeptical (as noted, this skepticism has parallels in the domestic sphere as state vs. federal rights).
4) Republicans are in power in the United States.
This storyline is by the way consistent with my preceding comments as you will find if you “check out the history of the argument”. So please, do yourself a favor and desist in trying to resuscitate this feeble argument by maladroit misinterpretation.
Majorajam I may have missed something “mythological American bad guy” but are you saying that the US both historically-living memory- and the present, has nothing that it should be held to account for?
Grenada, eh? We really are into big issues, aren’t we? As despotisms go, it’s about on par with the Branch Davidian ranch at Waco. And no, I don’t want to hear any conspiracy theories you might harbour about that little number.
I’m also interested to see your entirely novel conflation of Abraham Lincoln and Mao Zedong. You might want to work on that one a little more before its next airing in polite company.
Meanwhile, I’m not going to continue this debate since you constantly shift ground. I would recommend you read a work I alluded to earlier – Alfred McCoy’s well-researched “A Question of Torture : CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror” – a snap at only $16-95 from Amazon.com. Although I haven’t detected much concern with facts that may challenge your Weltanschauung, it’s conceivable that I may be wrong on that account.
South Africa was a democracy.
“if EVERYONE had told Saddam that his actions were unacceptable, war might have been unnecessary.”
i know i musn’t feed the trolls, but good christ. two things:
1. so you’re saying this is true, notwithstanding all the evidence suggesting america wanted to go to war regardless of what the world said or thought? [such evidence includes the well-documented and not insignificant fact that america ended up going to war, without any regard to what the world said or thought]
2. you may have heard of UN1441, a resolution of the united nations security council. it was in a few newspapers. in it, EVERYONE told iraq that its actions [by which i can only presume you mean failing to permit inspections] were unacceptable. but — funny story — there was a war anyway.
I should mention a further alternative policy, which I think might have had a chance of, at least, a better form of containment. The US should have offered to join the International Criminal Court, in return for changes that would allow charges to be brought against Saddam.
i’m not sure this would’ve been possible, as it would’ve required not only unworkable changes to the rome statute, but arguably also the law of sovereign immunity, because:
1. the ICC only has jurisdiction in respect of certain specified crimes [crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes, although probably not (happily for tony blair) aggression], and only when those crimes were alleged to have been committed after the court’s inception. saddam certainly committed all of those crimes, but i don’t know of any credible allegations of saddam having engaged in these crimes after the rome statute took effect [july 2002].
2. iraq is not a party to the statute, so there would be no basis at law for the ICC to act against saddam in any event. the rome statute is actually a treaty, i.e. it having come into effect only has limited [and, here, irrelevant] consequences to non-parties.
3. it’s still an open question as to whether charges of grave ICC-like crimes can be prosecuted against a sitting head of state. opinion of prominent scholars has tended to say yes, but the ICJ didn’t think so in the belgian war crimes case [see http://www.asil.org/insights/insigh82.htm%5D, and neither did the law lords in pinochet, so probably not. although on the other hand, milosovic was indicted when he was a sitting head of state, so who the hell knows.
Andrew, sfdc: yes and therSoviet Union was a democracy too, its just that only the members of the Politburo got to vote.
Gee and I thought it was the voters that ended apartheid. Thats the heart of the matter Ian, what were the sanctions supposed to achieve? Revolution?
Starve or be shot. Good choice.
Gee and I thought it was the voters that ended apartheid. Thats the heart of the matter Ian, what were the sanctions supposed to achieve? Revolution?
Starve or be shot. Good choice.
Sorry.
I don’t recall spinning conspiracy theories or drawing a comparison between, let alone conflating, Lincoln and Mao, but if you prefer precious nonsensical flip to honest argument that is your prerogative. Likewise, if you prefer to accuse me of shifting ground, without citing a single example, even as your ungracious exit highlights your own shiftiness, that is also your right. And finally, you are welcome to hide behind Alfred McCoy’s opus even if, in all probability, he isn’t the genuine article (realize it could be coincidence he’s got the CIA as drug pusher when narcotics were topic du jour and ‘ministry of truth’ now that torture’s all the rage, but suspension of disbelief has never been my strong suit). However, if these are indeed to be your choices, it’s just as well you’ve called an end to this ‘debate’ because you’re wasting my time.
There is a difference between you and I. I don’t seek out literature that confirms my Weltanschauung and then cast myself as arbiter of the open mindedness of strangers. I don’t engage in obfuscation and equivocation when confronted with arguments that challenge the veracity of my assertions. And I don’t showcase my own trumped up sense of virtue. You want to challenge to my world view? You couldn’t even tell me what that is. So, please, curb your enthusiasm. It’s made a mess all over everything.
“I don’t recall spinning conspiracy theories or drawing a comparison between, let alone conflating, Lincoln and Mao”
I said:
“Nor did the Serbs start the war – secession from a federation is a causus belli that you ought perhaps to have some familiarity with as, I guess, a citizen of the USA. So who was responsible for starting your Civil War – the secessionists or the loyalists?”
You said:
“A Maoist one it would seem. Tibet is after all an inextricable province of the motherland and those seditious capitalist monks would’ve had it torn asunder. Is the principle of self-determination- as codified in international law- totally lost on you?”
Yugoslavia was almost to the year as old as the US was when the Civil War began. Other than Serbia, the only constituent part of the federation to have an independent existence in modern times was fascist Croatia 1941-45, a precedent you’re welcome to celebrate if you want, but not one holding much sway in legal circles after 1945. (BTW Croatian fascist emigres were encouraged by the CIA and other western intelligence agencies during the Cold War to commit terrorist acts against Yugoslavia, a history well known in Australia where Attorney-General Lionel Murphy raided ASIO in 1973 to seize documents showing the support continued despite government policy prohibiting it.) Tibet’s status is arguable either way – see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/res-rp-publicationdetails.asp?pub_ID=1481&SearchString=
Wikipedia notes “The purpose of the self determination clause in international law was to allow the former colonies that existed before World War II to have a say in their future. Some felt that after decolonization the right to self-determination should apply only to states and not to peoples, and to be circumscribed by the principles of territorial integrity and non-intervention. Territorial integrity can only be applied to prevent the cessation of integral parts of a state, and does not apply to decolonisation.”
Wikipedia also notes “The concept of self-determination can also be used as a justification for Far right beliefs and movements, such as Neo-Nazism, racism, and fascism.” Indeed.
Perhaps if you clear away that mouth-foam from your eyes you’ll agree the principle is lost on you and not me. At any event, the principle does not authorise secession, and as I recall it preservation of the union was the issue exercising Lincoln.
Of course in former Yugoslavia the eggs are now all scrambled and nothing is likely to reverse it. Ante-bellum Yugoslavia was not, however, a hotbed of ethnic antagonisms and ethnic populations had to a large extent blended among the provinces of the federal state. Which is why there was so much ethnic cleansing in the war – there were no ethnically ‘pure’ areas to start with. My point, which seems so to rile you, was that the war was both catastrophic and unnecessary and all who fomented it are responsible for that catastrophe, not just the unlamented Milosevic and his cronies. And it all started with the secession of comparatively wealthy Slovenia with the overt and covert encouragement of Germany, not with Milosevic’s ‘greater Serbia’ nonsense.
I want the good Americans to impeach, proesecute and jail all the bad Americans.
Then the Good Americans may make merry ridiculing to death all of the bad Americans’ unrepetent supporters.
Callous, moi? No no no, I’m just a fun-lovin’ kinda guy with an interest in American politics.
“Gee and I thought it was the voters that ended apartheid.”
How, exactly did they do that?
The National Party won every single election held under Apartheid.
The last National Party government decided that apartheid was no longer viable, in large part because of the increasing economic cost of sanctions (and the other indirect costs like the hundreds of thousands of young educated South Africans who emigrated rather than live in a pariah state).
Here’s a suggestion for the future: find out the facts first and THEN form your opinion.
“The people who should be condemned without reservation are the slime who wanted to get in the way of the Americans toppling a child-torturer.”
how abouy the people who wanted to prevent America causing the deaths hunbreds of thousands of people in the course of replacing one child-torturer with another?
The fleas are all jumping off the dead dog now. US Generals are lining up to tell Rumsfeld that it’s time for him to go.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4908948.stm
One general is even floating the notion that Americans should be subjected to rationing to help concentrate the minds of Americans on their greatest national challenge in Iraq.
Remember when Bush said: “the best thing Americans can do to halt terrorism in its tracks is to go to the mall, go shopping�?
So what’s it to be, “shop till you drop”, or “grease a raghead, catch a bus”?
I’m sorry Ian but no amount of foot stamping changes the fact that the National Party retained power because it was the wish of the majority of South Africa’s white voting class. The reforms which ended apartheid were endorsed by a referendum of this same whilte voting class.
Forget the angst and provide some evidence that sanctions could have led to a transition to majority rule in Iraq by similar democratic processes.
It’s hard to know where to start. At the tip of the iceberg are the misstatements. For example, the bit about Tibet and China. Note that this was posed as a response (via explicit quotation) to your statement that Slovenian, Croation and Macedonian succession from the sacred Yugoslav federation was a causus belli. This is plain in the text, its diabolical simplicity what I sought to highlight, and was unrelated to your US Civil War red herring. In any case, I’m fascinated to hear you’ve determined that “the status of Tibet is arguable either way”. Not sure what exactly is arguable- that they’ve been colonized- that they are second class citizens existing mostly in impoverished unreconstructed enclaves of what were formerly their cities- that almost nothing of their cultural heritage survived the cultural revolution- that Han Chinese, now a majority, look down their noses at ethnic Tibetans. What is clear and patently so is that you do not understand or are not sympathetic to what is meant by self-determination (as per John Stuart Mill, Rousseau, etc. not so much Wikipedia). At least your maladroit understanding of the Tibet’s relationship with China is consistent with your sympathy for Serbia’s territorial claims.
As regards the remainder of this post, it is riddled with factual inaccuracies and mischaracterizations. In order:
This nice continuous history you paint as legitimizing the institution of Yugoslavia is a mirage. For one, it skips over its own civil war, between Tito and the government in exile, that resulted in regime change. For two it ignores the fact that both were authoritarian governments. Most importantly, it also glosses over the original imposition of the federation on the federated states by Serbia and the victorious external powers. I could go on about the silliness of this historical ‘parallel’, but I’ve sworn off this diversion.
This is inaccurate in addition to its being irrelevant. Montenegro gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire at the same time Serbia did. Ironically, they’re the ones still saddled with Serbian rule.
Which antebellum Yugoslavia was not? If you’re referring to WWII, this is patently false. If, as I assume, you are referring to ante-bellum Yugoslavia part deux, it is false in a less obvious way. Tito, who was not Serbian but did maintain authoritarian rule, skillfully played off the various provinces against one another. His plural background, cult of personality and iron fist kept things together for a time, but once he died, ethnic and sectarian tensions beneath the surface began to boil over (culminating in the resurgence of the strident Serbian nationalism that propelled Milosevic’s into power and provided impetus for secession). The fact that there was relative calm for some short period of time does not in any way imply that Yugoslavia was a politically natural or ethnically harmonious nation. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was for certain stretches a model of tranquility across ethnicity and sect if only because the government maintained a strict monopoly on violence (not that its persecutions were neutral with respect to sect or ethnicity, but that was not a necessary condition of the peace).
The lack of ethnic purity is hardly a result of the Yugoslavian state- centuries of war, empire, back and forth of political boundaries and related migration have made the Balkans what they are (though your simplistic analysis speaks volumes).
___
So what is your argument then? That Yugoslavia, which was largely borne out of Serbian nationalism and expansionism, (notwithstanding lip service paid to their Slavic brethren), and that gained nationhood through the skillful choice of allies before WWI, (if only because Austria Hungary, standing in the way of its expansionism, was unskillful at choosing theirs), has some transcendent authenticity? That the preservation of a federation, characterized by authoritarian rule and an actively oppressive secret police throughout its existence, notably incapable of existence under a pluralistic government (hence “ethnic cleansing”), was worth starting a war to preserve? Is that it? That’s a very progressive notion. Any clue what this logic could justify?
No matter how the war began, as I’ve said, and as I will continue to vainly hope you will catch onto, NATO had no choice but to intervene on the side of the Kosovar Albanians as they were being expelled from their homes en masse in 1998. Previous Serbian atrocities were not the stuff of a few bad apples as you seem to fallaciously insinuate (“they were wrong, the Croats were wrong, everyone was wrong”). Thiers was a premeditated, well organized and ruthlessly perpetrated genocide against Bosnian Muslims. The world was by 1998 well aware of that, and rightly had seen enough (even if the ‘world’ excludes the cynical autocracies on the Permanent Security Council). Bottom line: barbarism such as what NATO was right to suspect in Kosovo cannot be allowed to go on if it can be helped. I endorse without hint of reservation what NATO did in Kosovo. By contrast, in condemning NATO’s actions, you have, like it or not, put yourself in the position of providing moral cover for the political forces that masterminded genocide and ethnic cleansing. But hey- you’ve got your casus belli: the sanctity of specious lines on a map. In any case, you’ll have to pardon me if I am not moved by your sermons about American atrocities.
“I endorse without hint of reservation what NATO did in Kosovo”
Before we tackle this one, let’s get your basic proposition straight.
This is that by your lights no ‘authoritarian’ regime has legitimacy and so may not act in ways that are perfectly ok for non-authoritarian regimes to act.
As an aside, a reasonable person would think that a regime that has the largest proportion of its population imprisoned in the world would be authoritarian. But no, that’s the US, and the same standards don’t apply. Friend to tyrants the world over, but ‘cynical’, never.
The rest follows from this central proposition. Yugoslavia, a member of the world community in good standing, because it was illegitimate (in your view) had none of the rights to preserve its territorial integrity that, say, the slave-owning US had in 1860.
But if we cast our eyes around the globe (a difficult thing for a majority of Americans, if surveys about knowledge of world events are to be believed) how many nations are not, or cannot be be portrayed as, ‘authoritarian’. As my aside demonstrates, the US can easily be made to fit the bill – further evidence can be found in the appointment of Bush by judges against the popular will, systematic disenfranchisement of minorities etc.
So this central argument of yours is in reality a blank-cheque excuse for intervention at will, anywhere, any time, by a tyranny-friendly US that gets to make March Hare pronouncements about what do and do not constitute legitimate governments of other countries. Terrific. You’ll find like-minded folk up at the Project for the New American Century. You’ll also find similarly idiosyncratic views on legitimacy at Islamic fundamentalist websites.
“I endorse without hint of reservation what NATO did in Kosovo.”
But Majoraram, they didn’t do it in Kosovo by and large. What they did was bomb civilian infrastructure in the rest of the country. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, BTW. (Article 52, Protocol I). And I take it your unreserved endorsement applies to ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Gypsies currently under way. You might like to examine your arguments for consistency, or maybe explore further the implications of the proposition ‘all Serbs are bad’. Either way, I’m not sure how the Gypsies merit persecution, but perhaps you can enlighten us. You might find some useful arguments at holocaust-denial websites.
To come full circle, where we started in this sub-debate was this comment of mine:
“Of these, the Kosovo intervention is the most troubling, in that the scale of Serb atrocities in the province appears in hindsight to be out of all proportion to the bombing campaign carried out by NATO, and the end result appears to have been the ethnic cleansing of Serbs out of one of the provinces of Serbia. (Interestingly, the expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait following the 1990 Gulf war was a similar scenario in terms of scale to what the Serbs were accused of in Kosovo but attracted little attention and no sympathy for the many innocent victims.”
Try though I might, I can’t find any comment from you on the expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait under US auspices. But perhaps in your view Palestinians, like Serbs, are deserving of persecution. You might enlighten us with a list of races, nationalities and ethnicities you view as similarly afflicted.
At any event, the central points I was making were that the bombing campaign was out of proportion to the actual scale of violence in Kosovo, and that the results have been the ethnic cleansing of a minority population from its homes. And isn’t that what the campaign was supposed to prevent?
Last, your remark about ‘the sanctity of specious lines on a map’. Care to explore further, with particular reference perhaps to the status of Guantanamo Bay, and the implications for territorial sovereignty in general? Or perhaps only lines drawn by US-approved surveyors are non-specious.
Interesting article in the Economist last week – looking at the costs of containment. Pay only, but an except:
I would be interested in some other views on the costs of continuing the old policy. PrQ, I presume you have looked at this.
Even though it seemed pretty obvious to me that the Iraq invasion would be a giant cock up I could sort of understand why some people supported it.
What I can’t understand is now that it has proven to be so there are those who continue their support.
sdfc,
We, of course, bow before your superior foresight. Now, how much, given your enormous wisdom, would the alternative (continue to let Iraq wallow) or some other option beyond our contemplation, have cost?
It is opportunity cost that is the question here.
Yes, it has been cocked up – but that does not mean a cock up was inevitable. It also does not mean that the alternative was not even more of a cock up. Answer the question, do not condecend.
These “opportunity cost” exercises on the cost of alternatives to the Iraq War are no doubt fascinating intellectual puzzles for economists with nothing better to do. I enjoy cryptic crosswords for the same reasons.
Such opportunity cost exercises gloss over the most important question: who is bearing the cost?
Occasionally naively and occasionally disingenuously, the included costs are restricted to those imposed on the public purse.
The study quoted by AR does not factor in the cost of failure. This study assumes that all strategies have an equal and by implication inevitable chance of success. In other words, it is simply a matter of finding the cheapest successful method. Failure and the cost of failure is not consisered.
Excluded are the costs of a failed venture upon the proponents of the war and the supporters of those proponents.
And here’s the central point that puts the lie to this type of reductionist thinking: going to war is primarily a political decision.
The validity of this political decision for war may be tested with a measure of the economic cost of the decision. But the political decision contains components that can never be measured economically.
In the case of the political decision to invade, occupy and reconstuct Iraq, the Bush Clique has squandered virtually all of its “political capital”.
1. The US Right faces political annihilation and a loss of control of the domestic agenda.
2. The US has lost much international political leverage.
3. The Iraq fiasco has actually played into the hands of Islamists worldwide, with unquantifiable, but possibly dire, financial, political, cultural and human costs.
As the dust settles on this controversy it is possible to perceive just how schizophrenic the Bush apologists are over this issue of the choice for war.
Bush apologists take two contradictory lines:
1. The US, being a superpower, need not contemplate failure, except a failure of will. Victory is inevitable. It is simply an intellectual question of finding the cheapest route to victory. But if that route cannot be found, no matter, all roads lead to victory. The US has a godlike ability to achieve success.
2. Yes, the war was “cocked up” but anyone who argues that such a cock up was foreseeable at the time of the choice for war is a charlatan. Implied in this argument is that the US failure in Iraq was “an act of god” beyond the ken of mortals.
Bush apologists can’t have it both ways.
And despite constant reminders that many Bush critics warned of failure before the first cruise missiles were launched, Bush apologists still cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that the causes for failure are to be discovered in Bush’s addled brain and not in heaven.
Katz,
Sorry, but you are simply wrong. While I do not regard myself as a Bush apologist, I presume you do. I have never argued either of those points, so you are wrong, QED.
The cost of failure, Katz, is factored in to the study, at least on my reading. Please indicate where it could be improved or is otherwise wrong, rather than making vague, glib comments and assuring us of your profound ability to understand it.
For those of you who may be interested in making informed comment, the study itself is here.
Putting this together it is impossible to ignore how poorly formulated it is. As best I can distinguish, your synopsis of my argument is: authoritarian government-> illegitimate, illegitimate + defending territorial integrity-> just intervention by tyranny friendly March Hares (the last doesn’t hang together well, but you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear). Btw, the comparison to the US civil war again cannot be inferred from anything I’ve written, but I can’t be asked to complain yet again.
Astonishingly, the first logical inference accurately reflects my position. Here I would only note that your feeble attempt to insert fatal ambiguity into the process of determining the relative representativeness of governments smacks of desperation. There are many ways these things can be determined- notably the extent of press freedom, independence of the judiciary and transparency/legitimacy of the voting process. That said, it is not easy to create representative governments from autocracies externally which mitigates the usefulness of intervention, (Iraq being the quintessential example, but there are others). Also as regards legitimacy, Yugoslavia had its membership at the UN revoked by an overwhelming vote of the general assembly in 1992, so I don’t see how they could be considered a “member in good standing” of the world community at that time (though the idea that such a thing has meaning is separately ridiculous, see Sudan).
As I say, the second inference is a bit fuzzy. It appears to be a bad conflation of NATO’s intervention and Serbia’s attempt to prevent the independence of its erstwhile vassal states militarily. Of the former, I have stated very plainly on a number of occasions now the case for NATO’s intervention. With optimism undeterred, here goes yet another try: it was an appropriate measure to preempt genocide as, given recent experience, it was fair to suspect was being organized. It was furthermore clear at the very least that Serbians were planning to expel a significant majority of the population of Kosovo, i.e. its Muslims, and that given the difficulty of convincing people to abandon their homes and communities this would involve a good deal of cold blooded murder even if by chance it did fall short of genocide. The world community had had enough.
You’ll notice, (with hope), that nowhere in that explanation is the legitimacy of Yugoslavia raised. Only to the extent that legitimate countries do not engage in such things, which is largely true, or alternatively to the extent that a government that commits such crimes against its own people cannot be legitimate, is it related.
As to your assertion that Yugoslavia was a legitimate state, (indeed, that all the world’s “authoritarian” regimes are legitimate), with rights to defend its “territorial integrity”, its implications are rather inconsistent with other of your positions. In particular, the only thing you’ve given to substantiate its legitimacy is its existence. Given the means by which autocracies create lines on a map, (e.g. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait), this position can be fairly summarized as, ‘within national borders, might makes right’ (where the national borders of record are presumably taken from some magically equilibrious moment of the 20th century). Ironically by consequence of this belief, you are also stridently anti-interventionist, (i.e. anti-American intervention), which appended to the other view yields ‘within national borders, might makes right, across them, might makes wrong’. Hence, if it weren’t for the sanctity of specious lines on a map, what would you have?
It may interest you to note that your, shall we say, creative argument provides handy cover for colonial powers, Russia’s designs on its former colonies and- oh yes- the defense of fascist Croatia during WWII to name a few. Your argument is so twisted it would disappear behind a cork screw.
___
A few fresh accusations needed to be addressed, first:
If bombing infrastructure is against the Geneva Conventions, nothing isn’t. All apparatus supporting war can be used for civilian purposes and vice versa. At heart, the Geneva Conventions protect explicit targeting of civilians, something NATO surely did not engage in (as surely as the Serbs did).
The second accusation is NATO’s complicity in the reprisals of Kosovar Albanians:
I’m surprised you were able to get that out without eating your keyboard. Next time, try breathing.
So, what was the alternative Hal9000? Utopian spring replete with garden gnomes, backyard barbecues and bountiful communal glee? (presumably while the corpses of better than three quarters of the former inhabitants fertilize the crops) This just in: NATO didn’t start the process of ethnic cleansing- that was the Serbs. To address your ignoramus in this particular area, once you start the process of genocide or ethnic cleansing, there’s no going back to ethnic harmony. It’s a Rubicon whose crossing cannot but unleash the hounds of hell (see Russian treatment of Germans in WWII). So, while Albanian reprisals against a relatively small fraction of the population represented by Serbs are regrettable and immoral, they are also entirely predictable. Not for nothing does the saying go, live by the sword, die by it.
Lastly, on your new old parallel:
Try harder. My first post to you comments on this example (the “under US auspices” being a new wrinkle, which, presumably you have as much evidence of as your other multitudinous nonsensical rants).
___
I left the comic relief for last.
No, a reasonable person wouldn’t, but I certainly wouldn’t expect that to stop the likes of you.
And yet it is the Australian consistently getting things wrong. What is the world coming to when you can’t fall back on pat stereotypes?
Not quite, but it does demonstrate a greater degree of ignorance than you’ve thus far been able to communicate. No small feat.
Yes- including abducting their children from their families and raising them in state institutions so as they cannot misunderstand their inferiority… errr… If nothing else pal, you’ve got chutzpah.
AR,
To quote directly from the abstract:
“We estimate a range of present and future costs, by including expenditures not in the $500bn CBO projection, such as lifetime healthcare and disability payments to returning veterans, replenishment of military hardware, and increased recruitment costs. We then make adjustments to reflect the social costs of the resources deployed, (e.g. reserve pay is less than the opportunity wage and disability pay is less than forgone earnings). Finally, we estimate the effects of the war on the overall performance of the economy.”
As I understand this AR, no mention at all is made of the political costs of a political decision. If you can’t recognise the difference between finance and politics then you aren’t worth engaging.
Katz,
I think any econometric study has to look at the quantifiable costs, not the ones that you, correctly, point out as unquantifiable. To say that a piece of analysis is not useful because it cannot quantify the unquantifiable is an “interesting” position to take. I could equally argue the converse – because you cannot say what you believe the political costs to be then your arguement is worthless. This would be just as bunk.
Our good host has made much of the cost of the war in econometric terms. I was merely asking if he had looked at the cost of continuing the previous (non-war) policies. I thought it a fair question on a topic that I, given my resources, have no hope of calculating.
I also note you have not answered my point on the (so-called) “Bush apologists”. I also (I feel) answered many of your other points. Please do me the same courtesy.
AR, a lot of people correctly foresaw that the outcomes of the Iraq invasion would be very bad, relative to the alternative of continuing the inspections and waiting to see what turned up. This is true in terms of Iraqi lives lost, US and other lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted that could have been used for all kinds of good purposes. I haven’t seen any argument from you or other supporters of the war that supports a contrary conclusion.
AR
Like I said before, I never claimed such studies were not useful.
“The validity of this political decision for war may be tested with a measure of the economic cost of the decision. But the political decision contains components that can never be measured economically.”
As the decision for war was primarily a political one, primarily its results should be assessed politically.
I also stated that financial and economic analysis can help discipline political choices. To be explicit, such analysis can never substitute for political analysis.
If I’d intended to claim that you were especailly subject to the schizophrenia I detected in Bush apologists, I would have singled you out. I believe that you are somewhat subject to the second mode of thought I identified:
“2. Yes, the war was “cocked upâ€? but anyone who argues that such a cock up was foreseeable at the time of the choice for war is a charlatan. Implied in this argument is that the US failure in Iraq was “an act of godâ€? beyond the ken of mortals.”
Indeed, you JQ and I exchanged some views on it not long ago.
However, I do not claim that you are subject to this mode of thought:
“1. The US, being a superpower, need not contemplate failure, except a failure of will. Victory is inevitable. It is simply an intellectual question of finding the cheapest route to victory. But if that route cannot be found, no matter, all roads lead to victory. The US has a godlike ability to achieve success.”
Thus I clear you of any implication of being schizophrenic.
Katz,
Thank you. Do you also clear me of being a Bush apologist?
.
PrQ,
I do not attempt to put a cost on the lives lost – a life lost is a terrible thing and should be avoided if possible.
You (and the others) were right that the costs, both in terms of lives and money were much higher than expected. I would contend, however, that neither of these outcomes were inevitable and I also raise the question of the cost of the status quo, based on the study cited. Iraqis were also dying under the status quo, both directly through oppression and also through the collapse of the infrastructure of the nation. Very few US lives were being lost under the status quo prior to the war.
How harshly would history have judged the US if future historians considered the US had the power to stop what was going on and did not? History has condemned other politicians who, in the face of gross injustice accepted a formula of words and other promises and did not use hard power. Should Bush (either one) have gone to Kuwait, got a text and declared “Peace in Our Time”?
To me at least, these are legitimate questions. The fact that the invasion and its aftermath did not go as hoped adds weight to one side of the argument, but surely it does not conclude the argument.
1. Bush 1 fought a winnable war. Bush 2 chose a loser.
2. (This is beginning to sound like a broken record):
Bush 2 never attempted to justify his attack on Iraq using the following justification:
“How harshly would history have judged the US if future historians considered the US had the power to stop what was going on and did not? History has condemned other politicians who, in the face of gross injustice …”
You are imputing a motive that Bush never voiced before the invasion. There is no evidence that he had humanitarian motives. In fact there is more evidence that he did it because he believed that God told him to do it. (Not that I beleivve that this was a motive.)
If he had invaded for humanitarian reasons, I for one would have concluded that Bush was a dill, but that he was a dill with his heart in the right place.
The whole injustice schtick was wheeled out until the WMD argument collapsed.
As it turns out we can legitimately conclude, courtesy of the Downing St Memo, that Iraq was to be a testing ground for Bush’s flirtation with the neocons’ “revolution in military affairs”. Hitler used Spain to practise something very similar.
(But again, I get an eerie sense of deja vu. We’ve thrashed this point out before.)
Actually Andrew not superior foresight just balance of probabilities. How can you talk of opportunity cost when we don’t know what the cost is?
What was the opportunity by the way? Some neo-con wet dream of troops being greeted with flowers followed by peaceful transition to democracy?
Katz,
The only real reason we know that there were no WMDs there is because of the invasion. PrQ (from memory – I cannot find the comment at the moment) himself stated he believed that WMDs were there at some stage after the Bush 1 war and right up until soon before the Bush 2 war – so the “Bush apologists” are not the only ones indulging in a little ex post justification.
You claim (without evidence) that Bush and Blair knew that there were no WMDs there. This may turn out to be not the primary reason for the war (merely an excuse) but I have not yet seen evidence that they knew there were no WMDs there. Even the “Downing Street” memos do not show this.
We have thrashed this out before – but you keep trying to make the same points, to which I respond. When you come up with some real evidence, put it up. Otherwise …
“You claim (without evidence) that Bush and Blair knew that there were no WMDs there. This may turn out to be not the primary reason for the war (merely an excuse) but I have not yet seen evidence that they knew there were no WMDs there. Even the “Downing Streetâ€? memos do not show this”
This is a crude caricature of my previous argument. Here is the previous thread
https://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/04/05/hindsight/
Note nuances.
Katz,
Which nuances? Link to a comment, please.
Scott Ritter released a little book not long before the invasion that suggests that it was well known that the Iraqi WMD programs had been all but destroyed.
Andrew Reynolds,
You make some good points, but it really doesn’t matter whether we can prove Bush or Blair knew that Iraq didn’t have any WMDs. When you actively press your analysts for confirmatory intelligence and ignore contrary intelligence, whether or not you are deceived by your deception is a superfluous point. Of the above, we have very good evidence- the head of the CIA for the Middle East has said that intelligence was not evaluated, period. That it was used only to sell the case for war. That’s pretty credible, wouldn’t you say? Further confirming this is the Downing Street Memo, the selective declassification of the NIE. The facts were being fitted around the policy.
Bottom line, Bush & Co.’s decision to invade was not contingent on any evidence of WMD. It was a tactic, and a shady one at that. They made repeated allusions to mushroom clouds to scare everyone even as they were fully aware of the extent to which the evidence that supported the claim of a nuclear program was disowned by their own intelligence agencies. Similarly, they were selectively declassifying this faulty intelligence, leaking it to the press and then hiding behind the credibility of those press organizations (as where Dick Cheney told reporters, “there’s an important story today in the New York Times”. This while his office was the sole source for the story!!).
We were taken for a ride. We may not know for sure the motives, (although I have read one quoted administration source, “think of a military base sat atop an ocean of oil”), but, based on their actions, they had little to do with WMD, and less with the well-being of the Iraqi people (e.g. their tossing the State Department’s plans for making the peace in the bin, protecting the oil ministry as the crowds rampaged and looted, etc.). The whole thing is diabolical- I don’t understand how people are not outraged.
AR
Go here:
https://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/04/05/hindsight/
Do a “find” on “anthropomorphisation”
Around that concept you’ll find a nuanced discussion of who knew what, when, and what those persons did with what they likely knew.
Majorajam elegantly sums up some of my conclusions:
“Bottom line, Bush & Co.’s decision to invade was not contingent on any evidence of WMD. It was a tactic, and a shady one at that. They made repeated allusions to mushroom clouds to scare everyone even as they were fully aware of the extent to which the evidence that supported the claim of a nuclear program was disowned by their own intelligence agencies.”
I would add that I think it likely that Blair was playing a still more subtle game in relation to WMDs. As I said in part in the earlier thread:
“I’ve just read the Downing Street memo for the first time from the British point of view.
It’s most explosive contents, of course, are JIC Scarlett’s report of “Washington’s� desire for an intelligence-based pretext for military action against Saddam.
But the British discussions appear to be more modulated…”
You can find the rest if you like.
Katz,
Just for future reference, you can link directly to a comment using the url under the date and time of the comment. The comment you were referring to is here.
.
Majorajam,
Can you support your statement about the head of the CIA for the Middle East? It would be a very brave, stupid, or outraged station chief to say this, never mind a regional chief.
.
Having further thought about it, perhaps the reason for the focus on WMDs was that, under the Vienna Conventions, this was the only possible legal pretext to put before the UNSC – if the US or Britain had raised humanitarian concerns or regime change as a reason then it would not have got as far as it did. As I have said before, China and Russia would have vetoed any such motion.
I still believe that, given what was known, or at least believed at the time, the policy was correct. Long run, the US had to get its troops out of Saudi to remove what was a running sore in relations with the Muslim world – and a prime justification for the September 11 attacks. They were there to keep tabs on Saddam. No other country in the region (with the possible exception of Kuwait) would house a large US military presence. Simple answer – move the troops, get rid of Saddam then reduce the US presence. This, handled properly, had the potential to reduce the large number of oppressive regimes in the area and get rid of one specific regime that was a continuing threat to its neighbours and had possessed and used WMDs in the past. The fact that the aftermath of the invasion was cocked up does not invalidate the original policy.
AR,
The guy’s name is Paul Pillar. He was the National Intelligence Officer for for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85202/paul-r-pillar/intelligence-policy-and-the-war-in-iraq.html
There are a number of money quotes, but this one merits special attention:
“The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq… I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community’s assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war.”
“China and Russia would have vetoed any such motion.”
Russia and China would not have needed to do this. The US and Britain were outnumbered on the Security Council. They were doomed to go down on a straight vote. That’s why B&B aborted the UN process and rushed to war.