5 ms·

Overall, I'm against the Iraq war. But... I feel like an egalitarian Arab should have supported the Iraq invasion. Saddam was cruel to his people, his sons wou

Overall, I'm against the Iraq war. But... I feel like an egalitarian Arab should have supported the Iraq invasion. Saddam was cruel to his people, his sons would crash weddings and rape just about anyone. The new Iraq government still has problems, but at least it's some semblance of a democracy. Sam Harris says it best: > As I tried to make clear on Maher’s show, what we need is honest talk about the link between belief and behavior. And no one is suffering the consequences of what Muslim “extremists” believe more than other Muslims are. The civil war between Sunni and Shia, the murder of apostates, the oppression of women—these evils have nothing to do with U.S. bombs or Israeli settlements. Yes, the war in Iraq was a catastrophe—just as Affleck and Kristof suggest. But take a moment to appreciate how bleak it is to admit that the world would be better off if we had left Saddam Hussein in power. Here was one of the most evil men who ever lived, holding an entire country hostage. And yet his tyranny was also preventing a religious war between Shia and Sunni, the massacre of Christians, and other sectarian horrors. To say that we should have left Saddam Hussein alone says some very depressing things about the Muslim world. https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-...

jacquesm 11y ago
> I feel like an egalitarian Arab should have supported the Iraq invasion. But they didn't. There is a lot of stuff wrong - from my perspective - in the Arab world, and nobody with actual power from the Arab world seems to actually want to do much about it. So we end with these half-hearted revolutions which are more regime changes than actual fundamental changes and if they are fundamental changes they tend to be for the worse rather than for the better. It's a real pity. As for the Iraq war, Saddam and his sons - and all those supporting the regime - were complete assholes. And I would have supported regime change per-se for that reason alone, but that wasn't what was sold. Because if we did support regime change for those reasons then there would be a long waiting list of other regimes that would deserve to be 'fixed' long before we'd get to Saddam (in spite of all the crimes they were engaged in the world is full of such trash, they were not the exception, in spite of the media spotlight being very much on Iraq).
- x5n1 11y ago
  Saddam was replaced by ISIS after an American inspired civil war that Cheney saw coming in 1994, so from a geopolitical realpolitik perspective, Saddam as lying smugly in his grave with a smirk thinking he did nothing wrong. American rhetoric such as "he's killing his own people" holds little weight, when we have seen America prop up regimes that routinely kill their own people for example in Latin America. In the end I think they got rid of Saddam in 91 because they were actually scared that he could put them in check if he wanted to, and that was enough to warrant containing him. Sure dictators are bad, by imperialists are worse, especially when they don't give two shits about the people and use baseless rhetoric to justify their invasion. What's need in the Middle East is a home grown secular, scientific revolution and rejection of Islam. Without that, nothing is possible there and all revolutions and evolutions will fail. The Imperialists will continue their half ass crusade to civilize the natives... while only causing havoc and destruction.
  - knughit 11y ago
    How is the Western rejection of Christianity coming along?
    - x5n1 11y ago
      Very well. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-33256561 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-33256561 http://www.pewforum.org/2015/11/03/u-s-public-becoming-less-religious/ http://www.pewforum.org/2015/11/03/u-s-public-becoming-less-... And Christianity does not have the same problems with science, humanism, and atheism that Islam does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      Quite well except for a certain continent. In NL churches are being sold for peanuts because they're empty on Sundays. As the last generation that went to church regularly dies the church makes one last effort at value extraction: real estate price increases are being liquidated. In the USA and Canada it is still very much a popular thing, no idea how long it will take to get to the point where people realize they're being had. Religion can have positive effects in people's lives, but at the same time organized religion is used for vote marshalling and politics, it's just another power structure and a business to boot. This goes for most religions, not just for Christianity. Personally I'd be fine with an englightened version of Islam, one that formally recognized the rights of women and that did away with the most antiquated and damaging aspects of the religion. Of course a push to effect that would result in even harsher pushback from the fanatics, for fear that such a strategy might succeed.
hoppa_liza 11y ago
> Saddam was cruel to his people So, let's bomb the shit out of those people and kill more of them. And everyone else should chip in as well.
- civilian 11y ago
  Don't strawman me, give me a steelman.
  - imron 11y ago
    Sure. It's not about rulers being cruel. A ruler being cruel to his people doesn't give another foreign power the right to come in and depose that leader by force. An egalitarian anyone would support that concept. In any case, the Iraq invasion wasn't because Saddam was cruel - although that's definitely the ret-conned justification given that all the other reasons for the invasion turned out to be invalid. And if being cruel to your people is the yardstick by which you choose to invade other countries, how come the US isn't invading North Korea? Oh that's right, because they don't have oil, there's no family vendetta between the leaders of those countries, there's no visceral national tragedy recently that would allow the government to ride on the back of it and go to war on flimsy pretenses, and lastly because a war with North Korea would most likely draw in China, and that's a sleeping dragon the US would rather let lie. The semblance of democracy in Iraq has come at the cost of over a hundred thousand lives. I'm not sure how many Iraqis feel they are better off.
    - DasIch 11y ago
      You're ignoring that R2P[1] exists. It's far too rarely acted upon but that's international politics. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect
      - hoppa_liza 11y ago
        Call me naive, but I always put human lives as a first key to judging the success of any such "operation". Death, torture and general misery do not constitute a part of any solution. Specially when the solution is not a solution begin with.
zanny 11y ago
I'm sure an egalitarian Arab would support democratic revolution by the people. Having foreign nations invade your country claiming to be bringing democracy on the backs of tanks and in the fires of bombs is not the kind of revolution that works, as Iraq and Afghanistan are continuing to show us. It takes the blood of patriots to fuel the fire of democracy, not America's endless military industrial complex coffers.
- civilian 11y ago
  Right. And really, this is why I'm mostly against the Iraq war, or the Iraq war as-it-was-executed. But like--- does the Arab world even have a culture of democracy? I think if we waited for that revolution to happen, we would still be waiting. Has the arab spring produced democratic results? The answer is mostly no--- they've just traded old regimes for civil wars among new regimes. Tunisia is a happy exception. http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/01/daily-chart-8 http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/01/daily-c...
  - zanny 11y ago
    If the people themselves do not want democracy, we should not force it upon them. We should just open our doors to those that do, so they do not suffer under tyranny as a minority. But it is not our jobs to change the will of the majority.
    - simonh 11y ago
      > If the people themselves do not want democracy... I think a lot of people in the Arab world certainly do want democracy, probably a majority of them in many countries, but the problem is that once a majority bloc attains power they exercise it autocratically. Look at how Mohamed Morsi behaved in power in Egypt, or how Erdogan uses the police and courts to silence and persecute the opposition in Turkey. Look at Al-Maliki's lurch towards sectarianism [1] in Iraq that created the conditions for the rise of ISIS. As a firm believer in democracy, it's pretty disheartening. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Maliki#Sunni_friction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Maliki#Sunni_friction

jacquesm 11y ago

> I feel like an egalitarian Arab should have supported the Iraq invasion. But they didn't. There is a lot of stuff wrong - from my perspective - in the Arab world, and nobody with actual power from the Arab world seems to actually want to do much about it. So we end with these half-hearted revolutions which are more regime changes than actual fundamental changes and if they are fundamental changes they tend to be for the worse rather than for the better. It's a real pity. As for the Iraq war, Saddam and his sons - and all those supporting the regime - were complete assholes. And I would have supported regime change per-se for that reason alone, but that wasn't what was sold. Because if we did support regime change for those reasons then there would be a long waiting list of other regimes that would deserve to be 'fixed' long before we'd get to Saddam (in spite of all the crimes they were engaged in the world is full of such trash, they were not the exception, in spite of the media spotlight being very much on Iraq).

x5n1 11y ago
Saddam was replaced by ISIS after an American inspired civil war that Cheney saw coming in 1994, so from a geopolitical realpolitik perspective, Saddam as lying smugly in his grave with a smirk thinking he did nothing wrong. American rhetoric such as "he's killing his own people" holds little weight, when we have seen America prop up regimes that routinely kill their own people for example in Latin America. In the end I think they got rid of Saddam in 91 because they were actually scared that he could put them in check if he wanted to, and that was enough to warrant containing him. Sure dictators are bad, by imperialists are worse, especially when they don't give two shits about the people and use baseless rhetoric to justify their invasion. What's need in the Middle East is a home grown secular, scientific revolution and rejection of Islam. Without that, nothing is possible there and all revolutions and evolutions will fail. The Imperialists will continue their half ass crusade to civilize the natives... while only causing havoc and destruction.
- knughit 11y ago
  How is the Western rejection of Christianity coming along?
  - x5n1 11y ago
    Very well. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-33256561 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-33256561 http://www.pewforum.org/2015/11/03/u-s-public-becoming-less-religious/ http://www.pewforum.org/2015/11/03/u-s-public-becoming-less-... And Christianity does not have the same problems with science, humanism, and atheism that Islam does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Quite well except for a certain continent. In NL churches are being sold for peanuts because they're empty on Sundays. As the last generation that went to church regularly dies the church makes one last effort at value extraction: real estate price increases are being liquidated. In the USA and Canada it is still very much a popular thing, no idea how long it will take to get to the point where people realize they're being had. Religion can have positive effects in people's lives, but at the same time organized religion is used for vote marshalling and politics, it's just another power structure and a business to boot. This goes for most religions, not just for Christianity. Personally I'd be fine with an englightened version of Islam, one that formally recognized the rights of women and that did away with the most antiquated and damaging aspects of the religion. Of course a push to effect that would result in even harsher pushback from the fanatics, for fear that such a strategy might succeed.

hoppa_liza 11y ago

> Saddam was cruel to his people So, let's bomb the shit out of those people and kill more of them. And everyone else should chip in as well.

civilian 11y ago
Don't strawman me, give me a steelman.
- imron 11y ago
  Sure. It's not about rulers being cruel. A ruler being cruel to his people doesn't give another foreign power the right to come in and depose that leader by force. An egalitarian anyone would support that concept. In any case, the Iraq invasion wasn't because Saddam was cruel - although that's definitely the ret-conned justification given that all the other reasons for the invasion turned out to be invalid. And if being cruel to your people is the yardstick by which you choose to invade other countries, how come the US isn't invading North Korea? Oh that's right, because they don't have oil, there's no family vendetta between the leaders of those countries, there's no visceral national tragedy recently that would allow the government to ride on the back of it and go to war on flimsy pretenses, and lastly because a war with North Korea would most likely draw in China, and that's a sleeping dragon the US would rather let lie. The semblance of democracy in Iraq has come at the cost of over a hundred thousand lives. I'm not sure how many Iraqis feel they are better off.
  - DasIch 11y ago
    You're ignoring that R2P[1] exists. It's far too rarely acted upon but that's international politics. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect
    - hoppa_liza 11y ago
      Call me naive, but I always put human lives as a first key to judging the success of any such "operation". Death, torture and general misery do not constitute a part of any solution. Specially when the solution is not a solution begin with.

zanny 11y ago

I'm sure an egalitarian Arab would support democratic revolution by the people. Having foreign nations invade your country claiming to be bringing democracy on the backs of tanks and in the fires of bombs is not the kind of revolution that works, as Iraq and Afghanistan are continuing to show us. It takes the blood of patriots to fuel the fire of democracy, not America's endless military industrial complex coffers.

civilian 11y ago
Right. And really, this is why I'm mostly against the Iraq war, or the Iraq war as-it-was-executed. But like--- does the Arab world even have a culture of democracy? I think if we waited for that revolution to happen, we would still be waiting. Has the arab spring produced democratic results? The answer is mostly no--- they've just traded old regimes for civil wars among new regimes. Tunisia is a happy exception. http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/01/daily-chart-8 http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/01/daily-c...
- zanny 11y ago
  If the people themselves do not want democracy, we should not force it upon them. We should just open our doors to those that do, so they do not suffer under tyranny as a minority. But it is not our jobs to change the will of the majority.
  - simonh 11y ago
    > If the people themselves do not want democracy... I think a lot of people in the Arab world certainly do want democracy, probably a majority of them in many countries, but the problem is that once a majority bloc attains power they exercise it autocratically. Look at how Mohamed Morsi behaved in power in Egypt, or how Erdogan uses the police and courts to silence and persecute the opposition in Turkey. Look at Al-Maliki's lurch towards sectarianism [1] in Iraq that created the conditions for the rise of ISIS. As a firm believer in democracy, it's pretty disheartening. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Maliki#Sunni_friction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Maliki#Sunni_friction