Re: a positive plan

On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 [email protected] wrote:

> >How can we "combat" such horror? Well, step one in my book is to stop
> >*committing* it. Close to or more people die each month in Iraq. Each
> >month. Serbia is mostly rubble, much of it
> >contaminated. Columbia...Columbia is a disaster area. And we've 
> >declared
> >"war" there (though "not really").
> 
> This is a dangerous slippery slope.

Note the "step one" part. Are you seriously arguing that halting much of
the active violence we commit is the first step to diaster? I think you
are making the slippery slope *fallacy* here.

Let me give you an example: Even last week I wouldn't have supported just
cutting off aid to Israel, poof. The situation was (and is even
moreso) delicate and destabilizing it could produce a lot of harm.

But I do think we can just stop bombing Iraq. Really. We don't need to
bomb every three days. I think we can rationally life sanctions, but there
are a lot of political interests here and around the world that have to be
navigated in doing so.

>  If we are going to simply withdraw 
> from the world then what does that make us?

I didn't say that. I said stop committing terroristic horror. Surely it's
possible to do the one without "simply withdrawing from the world".

>  If we have the capacity to 
> ease suffering, and we do not even try what does that make us?

Better than someone who increases suffering continually. Remember that
most if not all of the suffering we cause isn't do to well meaning
blundering but explicit, deliberate policy goals. We could have easily
stopped the Rwandian genocide. We didn't. We are directly supporting the
genocide in East Timor. Etc. etc. etc.


>  As an 
> example, take the issue of Aparteid.  If we had not used sanctions it 
> is likely that that oppressive system would have lasted a lot longer, 
> perhaps even until today.

The sanctions against SA were vastly different from the sanctions against
Iraq. A million people didn't die of the sanctions against SA.

Plus, our govt sucked at SA sanctions...remember Reagan's "constructive
engagment". Look at our Cuban sanctions (a clear crime). Look at our
policy toward China. Etc. etc.

>  While I agree that there are a litany of 
> evils included in the actions you have mentioned there is an equally 
> severe moral abuse in not even attempting to right these wrongs for 
> fear of making enemies.

Again, I think you read the wrong thing into what I said. I don't think we
should stop our own commission of terrorist horror to keep from making
enemies. I mean that we *should* LITERALLY "combat" such horror
*whereever* it occurs. The simplest, cleanest, most effective thing we can
do to reduce such horror is to stop doing it.

Now, given the huge reduction in human misery that we can accomplish by
refraining from producing or supporting the production of it, what *then*
should we do to defend ourselves against it? I'm not sure. I happen to
think that a *happy* side effect of reducing our crimes is that we'll be
less likely to be *subject* to such crime. But that's an empirical issue.

>  As a further example take the recent Farce in 
> Durban.  Following a policy such what you have implied above, a 
> conference on ending racism would clearly create enemies in other 
> nations and might even, in the end, require some sort of enforcing 
> mechanism, such as sanctions, which would of course create further 
> enemies.   Thus, we should not attend such conferences, or any other 
> international conferences on any topic for that matter.  

Really. Really really. I don't see how that remotely follows from what I
said. I fully endorse strengthening international law...fair, country
neutral international law. I think a lawful world would likely be a safer
one.

Law alone or even vigorous enforcement of such, naturally, doesn't make
one perfectly safe. But it tends to be MUCH better than lawlessness for
most people.

>      What is needed is an entirely new formulation of our foreign 
> policy. It is not enough simply to say, "we should stop the sanctions 
> against Iraq" or "we should cease to use pesticide against peasant 
> farms in Columbia" or even "it is not right to bomb innocent people 
> that are citizens under a regime that is committing genocide."

Yes, it is.

>  unless 
> you also supply an alternative to solve the underlying problem.

Hmm. I really really suspect that if we just withdrew the world would be,
on balance, better. Really. And that's scary. Remember we rarely, if ever,
heed anyone else's interests unless they align *exactly* with our own,
*very* narrowly conceived. That is, the interests of our empire.

>  Where 
> would the world be if it was always said, "my brother is in trouble, 
> but i can see no clear way of helping him, so i will not try." 

Read some chomsky on the kosovo war (his book Rouge States has
lots). While I think his "first, do no harm" principle isn't *quite*
right, it's a reasonable approximation.

Some links: 
	http://zmag.org/Chomsky/articles/z9907-peace-accord.htm
	http://zmag.org/Chomsky/articles/z9804-rogue.html

>this is 
> why it is important not merely to point out mistakes, but propose 
> alternatives.

If they were mistakes, that'd be one thing. I fail to see how our Iraq,
Columbia, etc. etc. etc. policies are mere "mistakes"...they *are* our
policy as planned.

The scale of horror we produce is so bad that if it were completely
accidental, we should just stop.

The morally best case scenario is that we are inept doctors from the
middle ages that think that leeches, blood letting, and amputation, plus
packing the wounds with human dung extract from the bowels of plague
victims is THE WAY to cure the common cold.

Perhaps better, we're witchhunters who think that just about anyone,
healthy or not, is possessed and needs to be vigorously tortured or killed
to save them.

While clearly, sanitation, sane doctoring, a bit of chicken
soup, etc. would be positive steps, I think stopping our
"misguided" behavior is the first step. This is regardless of whether our
patients sue us for malpractice.

>      This is especially important with regards to the issue at hand. it 
> is easy,

Apparently not easy enough. Look how few are doing it.

> and important, to remind the emotional that it is just as 
> wrong to murder innocent people in a foreign land as it is for people 
> from a foreign land to murder innocent people here.  However, it is 
> more important to supply an alternative way to acheive justice.

It's not an "alternative way to achieve justice". The proposed way doesn't
achieve justice.

I'm sorry if a murderer gets his case thrown out because a technicality,
you DO NOT have the right to take matters into your own hands. Perhaps a
better analogy: If a murderer gets parole, and you "aren't satisfied" with
the "justice" achieved, you don't have a leg to stand on for killing him
and a few of his friends, and a few bystanders. This is elementary.

This is the imperfect world: Sometimes the innocent are
victimized; sometimes the guilty go free. Sometimes we have to decide how
much innocence we will sacrifice to wack the guilty and vice versa.

So, are we conceptually committed to the possibility that we can't always
make situations better? That sometimes doing nothing *is* the right
thing, even when there is risk that it's the *wrong* thing? Are we
committed to making the situation better when it's *easy* to do so (i.e.,
Rwanada)?

It strikes me that if one fails to prevent massive horror when all
evidence suggests it's trivial to do so, then worrying about the tough
cases is superfluous. 

>  If all 
> that we can do is say what is wrong, but we can not propose an 
> alternative, then we have failed.  We have infact failed doubly, since 
> our failure to create a pardigm to apply to future situations and 
> troubles, so that these situations will continue to arise, and abuses 
> from both sides will continue.

Hmm. Really. Let's just ask, pragmatically, which is likely to produce
more overall misery: Our current policies, or strictly binding ourselves
to the spirit and the letter of international law. Then add, massive,
actually humanitarian, aid. Hell, just add *modest* humanitatian
aid. Hell, just forgive the odius debt that cripples countries around the
world.

>      From the events of the last few years 2 specific question arise 
> is: what is the proper way to sanction a state which has wrongly acted 
> without unjustly harming its people? what is the proper way to respond 
> to a group of people that has acted unjustly without harming the people 
> and nations around them?

But these are much later questions. They presume that we're acting
remotely justly overall. I.e., that we have a role, period.

Take this specific question: What can the US do to reduce suffering
around the world?

Ask that *first*. Will either of your questions show up near the top?

You're best counter case, IMHO, is Rwanda. We didn't support the killers,
but we surely failed to even mitigate the massacures. We did so quite
deliberately, in full knowledge of our ability to help. Hell, we inhibited
*other* people from helping.

>  If we don't answer these questions then any 
> attempt we make to improve the current state of affairs is doomed to 
> failure.   

See above.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.