That's a good phrase init? "Anti-war faggots." An old friend gave it to me right before the bombing started, over a year ago.
So from one anti-war faggot to an audience presumably comprised of other anti-war faggots:
How would you have dealt with Saddam Hussein?
Would you seriously argue in favour of keeping someone in power who has a proven history of torturing and murdering his own people?
If you wouldn't keep him in power, how would you have deposed him? And how would you keep extremists from taking power once he was gone? Presuming that you don't want Iraq to become the same kind of religiously oppressive woman-hating regime as, say, Afghanistan currently is. (Oops, my bias is showing!)
Lefties are pretty good at criticising, not at providing solutions. Contestant #3, do you have the answers?
I'm looking at specific people who I know are reading this. :)
Posted by pearce at May 4, 2004 6:47 PMI have a blog entry brewing on this. I will try to get it written in the next week.
Its worth noting that a lot of the problem lefties have with solutions is that we tend to start with "first, change the fundamental premises of capitalist society" :-).
Posted by: morgue at May 4, 2004 8:01 PMHow can you change the fundamental premises of capitalist society, if you have nothing viable to change it TO?
Posted by: Pearce at May 4, 2004 8:31 PMRecipe for non-occupation cake:
First, take one UN resolution that permits force to be used in Iraq. Make sure it's fresh with no holes in it. Combine this with an international force led by the UN. Mix well and leave to ferment. Once fermented start to prepare for the process of democratic elections. This will form the base so you have to be careful to get this bit right.*
Have elections. Put newly elected politicans in cake tin and stick in oven. Aloow to cook until manged hand-over is completed. Voila!
*Advice. At this point it's always tempting to cut corners, install your own hand picked governing body and steal the oil. Do not attempt to do this; your cake may appear to rise, but will only flop as soon as you open the oven door.
I find the question (actually the whole string of them) somewhere between meaningless and problematic in construction.
"How would you" - implies a time in the past. How far back? Before the west sold him weapons and biological agents to fight a proxy war with Iran? Before the sanctions which crippled the nation and strengthened his control were introduced? undoing Either of those things would help. Or just before the present war and occupation?
Who is the "you"? I can suggest any number of alternatives that are meaningless because I do not command America, and they have more power than me; thus they might or might not work but they would not ever happen. So long as they have oil reserves they will be fucked with by the gleaming good empire. Any response is no better than fantasy.
What right does anyone on the outside have to meddle in the affairs of another country? Implicit in your question is this right. Worse, you seem to accept we (collectively, the west and the american empire) had not only that right but even a responsibility.
And why Hussein and Iraq? There's a lot of places all fucked up by our liberal (or conservative) standards with Bad People in charge and horrific records. A bunch of them are allies. Turkey, Israel, Cambodia...
Broadly, though. The traditional thing to do if you are going to meddle in another country would be supply Hussein's enemies in Iraq with money and training and weapons and let them sort it out. Will this lead to a collection of different evils, so to speak, as you outline - women hating religiously oppressive or whatever? Maybe. So what "evils" are worse to live under, by our values, standards and estimations, for people with a different worldview in a different culture. A system of oppression violence and torture which brought about a secular middle eastern state with the highest education and standard of living in the region before gulf war 1 anyway? Or a transitional period of chaos and badness while some new order forms. Read some history.
Another way to put this would be, why the hell are you asking us? Ask the Iraqis. Because any solution which does not come substantially from them will almost certainly not work for them.
To vaguely paraphrase Einstein, what we need is better questions. A lot of your questions imply and presuppose things about reality I do not think are useful, or are outright leading. To take the questions as they stand leads nowhere.
Blah. I wrote way too much about this. I have a novel to write. Eat me, Pearce. :)
Ooh ooh one last one. How about we sort our shit completely and unequivocally, become a perfect society where everyone is happy and equal, before we have the temerity to think we can go around fucking with other people and be doing them a favour?
Posted by: billy at May 5, 2004 12:37 PM
Maybe it would have been simpler to say, depending on how you frame the question, different solutions arise.
Like, say, asking the question:
"If we took it upon ourselves to help the people of Iraq achieve happiness, freedom and prosperity, how best could we do this?"
will return a significantly different set of responses.
I'm outta here.
Posted by: billy at May 5, 2004 1:46 PMWhat would you do Pearce?
Posted by: cal at May 6, 2004 11:22 PMI would have dealt with Saddam Hussein by abseiling in a pack of trained pandas, armed to the teeth with the latest deadly toothbrushes (in lime and purple transparent plastic - love it). They would first shave him, then behead him. His scone would then be used for bizarrely unhealthy calisthenics by liberal-minded giraffes.
Other than that I think that I am challenging the underlying assumption that disagreeing with the US policy on the Middle East therefore means I must agree with the likes of Hussein, the shahs of Iran, the Mullahs of the Taleban or the million-and-one prespectives offered by those that the western media call "Al Queda".
President W. Bush was wrong when he gave us the option of "you're either with the US, or with the terrorists." I honestly believe that if those were the only two options in existence, then the only sensible option an intelligent human could that was to side with these so-called "terrorists".
Thankfully, these were not the only two options. There is always an alternative. Cal and Billy have offered some, I won't. But I do suggest there is always the possibility of there being some kind of non-national organisation that has the moral authority and political will to interceed and correct areas of the world where the principles of human rights are being abused. Be that abuse in Iraq, Aceh or Florida.
This organisation does not exist, never has. And it is incredibly difficult to see how it could ever exist. But I still hope.
Yes, this does create the problem of where the authority comes from and how the authority is vested and executed, but I digress...
But there is a better way, there is an alternative. There should always be hope Peace, out.
Posted by: Scott at June 4, 2004 12:26 PM