Sure, the WMD thing was astupid basis for war (especially since we just had to wait for Iraq to fire at another plane patroling the no fly zone and then attacked "in retaliation"). There is another side to it.
As part of the surrender after the first Gulf War, Iraq had to prove that it had gotten rid of its weapons. Just saying that they didn't have them anymore really wasn't the point. They should have made a better show of disarming.
The equivalent is this:
1) Go menace your neighbor with a gun.
2) When the police show up and tell you to throw out your weapon and surrender, say you don't have a weapon.
3) Walk out with your hands in your pockets and tell the police that you're behaving well and have no weapons.
The likely result of this scenario is that the police will capture and beat you till you know better (if they don't just blow your head off with their own firearms).
The interesting start of this theme is the requirement, after Desert Storm, for Iraq to “prove” that “it had gotten rid of its weapons”. Well there is the first mistake. The requirement of the various resolutions of the UNSC were not for total disarmament, but to destroy and dispose of all weapons of mass destruction and the means of production.
Now over that same period, one might recall, there were a succession of UN based inspection teams.
The first were removed from Iraq “for spying for the CIA” as I recall. Is there any dispute of that? That team did oversee the destruction of some weapons. I think that there were a few Scud missiles and launch systems. There were other minor “findings” during that time.
After a delay of some years, the UN again persuaded Iraq to allow inspectors back into their territory. This was the team led, I believe, by one Hans Blix. His efforts proved fruitless, despite urgings from one particular nation “that he was looking in the wrong places, that intelligence showed the existence and blatant concealment of WMD…”. The intelligence was never reported as having been given to Blix or his team. It was never said “The UN inspection administration has been given information on sites…”. The closest ever was the statement that “We can not provide that information without compromising the source.”
The denigration of the UN inspection teams continued to the point where I can well imagine the exasperation and frustration that Blix was under. In those circumstances, I think any person capable of leading such a mission would contact HO and say “Enough. Stick your mission. I will report what I have found which is nothing of consequence.”. It is pointless debating whether this was the result that was sought by the US; if it was then the idea is VERY scarey.
We all know what the following stages were as well. With the basso US in the lead role now, we have learned through a series of recitatives that there was a war, that the good guys have won it and the worst of the bad guys is in prison. There has followed a series of chori lauding the victors, their bravery and skill, sung forte fortissimo with full orchestration to ensure that the audience does not hear the gunfire in the street outside.
Now how does that scene at the conclusion of Act 2 lead into the quiet domestic parable that opens Act 3. Well, I would suggest that the best that could be done for this comic operetta would be a new librettist. Certainly the current one has gotten it all wrong.
A quick reprise –
The equivalent is this:
1) Go menace your neighbor with a gun.
2) When the police show up and tell you to throw out your weapon and surrender, say you don't have a weapon.
3) Walk out with your hands in your pockets and tell the police that you're behaving well and have no weapons.
The likely result of this scenario is that the police will capture and beat you till you know better (if they don't just blow your head off with their own firearms).
Where this “equivalence”, this sweet little homily, falls over is in the last act.
There are several ways in which it could be re-written….
3. Go back into the lounge and sit down in front of the tv. Five minutes later the police crash through the doors, guns blazing, and shoot everything in sight including the cat (just in case it is boobytrapped you understand).
Or another variety…
3. Go back into the lounge and sit in front of the tv. There is a knock at the door and a FAA Inspector is standing there. He shows his credentials and search warrant, searches the house, then goes back to the front door and shouts “Clear”. His Swiss accent makes the word sound like “Fire”, and all the police surrounding your house open up with their guns killing the inspector, and everything else in sight…”
Or another…
3. Walk out with your hands in your pockets and tell the police that you're behaving well and have no weapons. The police say “Thank you very much for making our job easy. We will suggest to the Courts that this be taken into account when you are tried for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Perhaps you will get a quick hanging instead of a slow one. Now here are your rights…”
This is getting to be too much fun so I will stop. There are at least another five that come to mind…
9 comments:
Saying "you don't see any, do you?" is not the same as saying "watch me destroy everything I claimed to have had."
LibertyBob
No, I am sorry Bob, but that whole argument is just too glib, too self-serving to stand. It is the stock in trade "justification model" used by pro-Iraq 2 propagandists to justify a war that was impossible to justify then, and remains so to this day.
It follows all of the others; like the hilarious scenario of leaving a theatre late at night and this big bad hairy man jumps out waving a gun... As the beer ad down here says "Yeah, right!". That justifies owning a gun in everyone's mind. "Yeah, right!"
Like so many others you mis-take the point.
Firstly, the homily is laughably simplistic. It seems intended to persuade a person with the intelligence of a five year old that the police are baddies if you don't play the game their way.
In your little scenario, what was the guy to do if the "gun" he had was made from a bar of soap? Hand over a gun shaped bar of soap? Would your police have believed that? No, far more likely that they would shoot first, as soon as his hand came through the door, and ask questions after.
Just like what happened.
Does that make it right? "Yeah, right!"
Second thing is that it was not the police knocking on the door, it was the private militia of the local strong arm man. The police had been sidelined by the gangsters' lawyer, who had successfully obtained a court order from a bent judge saying that the militia was the law, not the police.
Does that make it right? "Yeah, right!"
The problem, the most simple statement of the fundamental problem, is that the planet today has one player which possesses technological power and weaponry that surpasses the total power of all other nations combined.
Rather than use that power responsibly, that nation has taken upon itself - ultimately upon the sholders of one man President George W. Bush - the right to impose its beliefs, its power, anywhere in the world in any manner and for any reason that falls "within the interests of the United States".
There is no turning aside that event. If the President decides that specific action is required "to protect the interests of the United States" then there is no protection for the "victim".
There is no protection even within the United States. The President has the power, supported by a rubber-stamp Congress, to undertake virtually any action that he desires.
Oy, Probligo is gonna win this argument. If you go around asking everyone to prove they don't have weapons, and you yourself possess the very weapons you're asking others to throw away, you're not going to convince many people that you're much more than an aggressive, self-serving hypocrite.
P.S. Probligo... I'd like to pursue the matter of building an anarchist community on my blog, but I'm afraid the constraints of my "project proposal" don't much allow for that sort of thing. If you come up with a solution to the matter, let me know. This could be an interesting project in and of itself.
P.S.S. LibertyBob, your username is ironic. I can appreciate a man with a sense of humor. You're very funny.
In the U.S., convicted felons are not allowed to posess firearms. That means if a ex-convict claims any type of bravado involving weapons, the police will treat such a statement very seriously. It is assumed that the earlier criminal act puts the burden of proof on the person still on parole.
Iraq's first crime was Gulf War I. They lost. They had to surrender in accordance with certain conditions. Basically, they are the ex-convict in my example above. They have a history of hostility and any bravado on their part will result in serious action.
The point is not that police should brutalize others. The point is that no one should go around threatening people if they've already been beaten and can be beaten again.
I don't necessarily agree that Bush should have initiated combat at this time. In fact, I think Bush is a moron. His interference with the military in the attack has caused the war to be a miseracble failure so far. However, in the big scheme of things, Saddam's Regime could use a good invading.
When it comes down to it, if enough countries really oppose the invasion, they can always take action.
LibertyBob
You're comparing apples and oranges when you're dealing with American law and international law.
Ah, errrrmm, Johnathon, given your current President's attitude to things external to the US you might have a point.
However, I do believe that he has not yet persuaded Congress to cancel or erase the laws of the US that ratify, for example, the Geneva Conventions.
So, to that extent at least that part of international law is also part of US law.
Read the Conventions some time.
Then you can tell me what part of the conventions the US is observing in the Iraq conflict, and perhaps some observations on what parts are not...
In similar vein, the US is signatory to the Charter of the UN; one of the formation signatories. That also is enshrined in US law as a treaty. Has that law been cancelled by Congress?
You might like to read through the Charter, and the obligations of member nations some time and give me the benefit of your honest appraisal of how the US is complying with that treaty as well.
Me again...Hey Probligo, this compulsive obsession with the WMDs and Iraq, how many years before you can let go and move on?
Your heroes the French are now involved in UN "sanctioned" massacres in the Ivory Coast. It has been exposed that the three "righteous" objectors to action in Iraq were not only profiteering under the table selling arms to Hussein against UN sanctions, but were embezzeling moneys via Oil for Food...Your typical blind-eye approach, though highly entertaining, is nonetheless becoming quite old, chap. Get yourself a crusade with solid ground underneath...
And that sounds like one of only four or five voices from the past catching up with me... :D
Warning, poor analogy follows:
4 Johns, 1 hooker. If one of the Johns decides he doesn't like the way the hooker treats him, and says he's going to beat the hooker up...do the other 3 try to stop him? Or does the fact that they were f***ing her, too, give them reason not to stop the violence?
That's what this argument sounds like to me.
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