Re: Coalition of the willing (fwd)

Hey folks,

Here is the last of James'...uhm...thingies.

I sorta lost the will to reply at the "Depleted Uranium?  There's a reason
the word "depleted" is there." ("spent fuel rods", there's a reason
the word "spent" is there).

Anyone think it's worth replying? He did concede the "objectivity" term,
which puts him in a pretty bad place wrt my earlier *reductios*.

Cheers,
Bijan.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 01:17:29 -0500
From: James Robertson <[email protected]>
To: Bijan Parsia <bparsia-vEoVa6Jh+/J4piUD7e9S/[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Bonobos] Coalition of the willing

At 12:22 AM 2/22/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>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.


Ok, replace it with effectively.  Your preferred policy has the effect of
giving Hussein what he wants.


>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.

Neither work.  Iraqs borders are too porous, and they have too much of a
commodity (oil) that too many people want to make a sanctions regime
work.  It's conceivable that one would work against North Korea (assuming
Chinese help, which assumes a lot.  Bit if one assumed that, North Korea
could be isolated pretty quickly, given that they have precious little to
sell, and any shipments they made could be shutdown at sea.  Iraq - not
going to happen.  We saw that all through the 90's.

inspections don't work either.  North Korea has kicked out inspectors, and
what price have they paid?  None.  When Iraq pushed out inspectors in 1998,
there was no penalty either.  The UN has no will for these things.  All
through the 90's, there were efforts to end the sanctions and inspections
regime, and the UN just stood aside and let them become ineffectual.  What
makes you think it would go differently now?



>(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.)

No, we aren't.  There's a food for oil program, allowing Iraq to sell oil
in exchange for food, medicine, etc.  Funny how weapons programs and
presidential palaces get built there instead.


>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.

They accomplish nothing, as stated above


>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.

They have failed.  Ritter was apparently being blackmailed, so I trust
nothing he ever said.  Funny how no one else on that team agrees with
him.  Also note UN 1441, which states that the onus is on Iraq to detail
what happened to all the WMD that were known to exist after 1991-1998, and
never destroyed or accounted for.  The truce that ended the gulf war
required that compliance.

Sanctions and Inspectors did not get it.  What do you think will?


> >  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.

UN 1441.  Even Blix says Iraq is not cooperating.


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

nope


> > 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.

No, that's not the goal.  The goal is to keep any of his WMD from being
used against us.  Liberating his people is a happy side effect.


> >  i.e., following your path leads to many, many more deaths
> > than does war.
>
>Sheer assertion. War is risk.

Appeasement runs a far higher one


> > 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.

Which criminal actions?  There's a wild assertion.  Depleted
Uranium?  There's a reason the word "depleted" is there.  Best estimates
are that something like 1500 Iraqi soldiers and 100 civilians died due to
combat - i.e., just about the lowest level of casualties in any war
imaginable.  What 'crimes' did we commit, other than not finishing the job,
thus giving nutjobs the world over the idea that they were safe from
serious reprisal?


>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.

sigh

>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?

and we aren't causing that.  try reading the actual terms of Iraqi surrender


>Bijan Parsia.

<Talk Small and Carry a Big Class Library>
James Robertson, Product Manager, Cincom Smalltalk
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView
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