Re: Coalition of the willing

Note: You still fail to respond to my actual arguments, or even
acknowledge them in any way. I still find that offensive. I will try
responding to what *you* argue, in hopes that reasonablness is in the
offing.

On Fri, 21 Feb 2003, James Robertson wrote:

> You don't have to be supporting Hussein in order to be objectively
> supporting him.

You really need to define "objectively" supporting him, especially as
distinct form supporting him, such that your above statement is coherent.

I gave several reductio examples where, afaict, I would be, on what i
can derive of your criteria, "objectively supporting Hussein" but clearly
I wouldn't be. Or so I think, and so I think *you* think based on your
failure to repond germanely, much less decisively, to them.

Until you fix this, the rest of your message is moot. But I'll make a few
points along the way.

>  Sanctions won't work.  Evidence:
>
> 1991 - 1998.  Many, many weapons (see UN 1441) not accounted for,
> inspectors thrown out.  The sanctions regime doesn't work.

In this sentence you 1) assert what you aim to prove (sanctions don't work
because sanctions don't work) and 2) conflate weapons inspections with
sanctions.

(Besides, sanctions are just evil. *WE* are starving Iraqis. We are
engaged in seige warfare and have been for 12 years. Ugh. I find that
much more compelling a point.)

You have to specify what sanctions are to accomplish to argue that they've
failed. "Objectively", if the goal, as is often stated, is to contain
Iraqi agression, then there's at least a correlation between their
existence and their goal.

I take it that you will assert that weapons inspections have failed.
Again, I need to know what you think they were to have accomplished, and
you'd need to counter folks like Scott Ritter who, ahem, were the
inspectors.

>  Stating that it
> will now is simply looking at the evidence and deciding that it doesn't matter

Until you state something coherent, and add some evidence (and,
presumably, we mean the whole body of evidence), you've not established
*any* point.

> So, we have sanctions that won't work, ignoring the regime, or war.

Clearly a false trilemma.

> You apparently favor one of the first two.  Both will keep Hussein in
> power, terrorizing his people - since sanctions and inspections don't
> prevent that.

Ah, the point is to keep Saddam from terrorizing his people. Better to
have stated it up front. Before I respond, might I ask what you feel we
should do about East Timor? Or Tibet? I want to make sure I understand the
general implications of your position.

>  i.e., following your path leads to many, many more deaths
> than does war.

Sheer assertion. War is risk.

> i.e., regardless of how you want to think of it as a more "responsible,
> anti-war" position, your position leads to endless Iraqi suffering, and
> continued threats of WMD in Iraq.  The war path solves that problem quickly.
[snip]

Strangely enough, if I'd know what kind of sanctions regime we were going
to put on for what length of time, given our criminal actions in the last
war, I might have thrown up my hands and pushed for "finishing off"
Hussein in Gulf War I, in the hopes that we *wouldn't* be so brutal
against that country afterwards. That we'd sate our presidential
bloodlust.

But that's saying that to avoid evil I must stand with evil. Given I must
stand with *some* evil, I don't see how the mere charge of standing with
evil is to have any punch.

Oh, I take it we agree that starvation is an evil. As a libertarian, how
do you apply this not to oppose evil is to stand with it to the issue of
foreign aid? How about AIDS drugs? Or medical care in general?

Bijan Parsia.