American "Hypocrisy"

[Stone]

This should be pretty simple. Many of you out there have criticized our liberation of Iraq as hypocritical, given actions taken by Americans in the past - "Conveniently forgotten was our support for this tyranny before the First Gulf War, our betrayal of the Kurdish resistance and Iraqi uprising, and the deaths and suffering we had inflicted on the Iraqis over thirteen years of bombings and sanctions," is a good quote that sums up this line of thought.

If someone in the US Government had said something like: "We should not have maintained sanctions. We should've finished the war in 1991. We've made some mistakes with our handling of the area in the past. We're going to correct our mistakes now," would you have felt, I don't know, better about the whole situation?

[Fe 26]

I'd felt better if Bush would have just been honest and said "he is really evil, we are going to kill him" instead of all this other drama. I just want some honesty, is that to much?

[James]

Nah, it's a total cock-up at this point. We had no business being there and nothing we would have said would make us have a reason to be there.

We don't kill evil bastards because they're evil bastards, that kind of thought leads to people flying airplanes into buildings. If we can kill them because we don't like them, they can do the same to us. Very simple.

James

[Stone]

Nah, it's a total cock-up at this point. We had no business being there and nothing we would have said would make us have a reason to be there.

We don't kill evil bastards because they're evil bastards, that kind of thought leads to people flying airplanes into buildings. If we can kill them because we don't like them, they can do the same to us. Very simple.

James

Dude, evil /= good. Evil does not equal good. Wrong does not equal right. Evil does not equal good. Say it with me now.

Understand this and you'll be less of a moron.

[arjue]

...yet you see good and evil as a black and white quality, without any shades of grey inbetween.

who's the moron?

[Tommy Tallarico]

Dude, evil /= good. Evil does not equal good. Wrong does not equal right. Evil does not equal good. Say it with me now.

Understand this and you'll be less of a moron.

You're using two subjective terms and stating that in every case that they are never the same thing. You're smarter than that.

[PaCrappa]

We had no business there in 1991 so I guess the answer is a pretty solid NO.

Pa

[Calliander]

Stone - What do you think of Wesley's Clark saying that the government had a five year plan with specific countries being targeted? That's a pretty heavy allegation to levy against the government.

I think that the majority of people, now, are beginning to believe that we shouldn't have been there with all of the news stories about lies and whatnot coming out. The average American, I think, is probably under the impression that we were lied to on a grander scale than Clinton (since this affects us directly - i.e. taxes, deaths of American troops, etc. - rather than some imaginary ideal like "family" or "integrity of the Oval Office").

Personally, I don't fully agree with this pre-emptive strike idea. I don't believe that the Bush Administration or the PNAC are sincere in their reasons for them. That's just me. I honestly don't believe them. I probably wouldn't believe it were it Gore in the White House... well, I'd like to think I would, at least. Hehe. Morally, I agree with the idea of taking out dictators and generally evil people for the good of the people being oppressed by these assholes.

I wasn't going to vote for Bush, so I guess them coming out and saying that wouldn't affect me (partially because I don't believe that's their real motive and partly because of my anti-Bush thing). However, I think it would have been better for them to have simply said that. We were going into Iraq no matter what, so we should have just been honest about our intentions.

And you know what? I think the rest of the world should be willing to help like this. The argument that we killed innocent Iraqi citizens is stupid, to me, because Saddam was killing them, too. And that was in addition to oppressing them. I think we should make concessions and let the U.N. help out now, because the Iraqi people are not doing as well as they could be without Hussein.

I think the "good does not equal evil" argument is very sound. I don't understand how it couldn't be sound. Many shades of gray? What, are we evil forecasters now? "Well, Hussein is partially bad, with a chance of evil." NO! I know I'm against calling names on here, but if you think Hussein was anything other than evil, you're a moron.

[Stone]

I thought I could toss-off a comment like this without making obvious clarifications - evidently not. You guys ought to know all of this stuff already.

...yet you see good and evil as a black and white quality, without any shades of grey inbetween.

who's the moron?

You're using two subjective terms and stating that in every case that they are never the same thing. You're smarter than that.

Good and evil aren't ever the same thing. Many, most issues have upsides and downsides (there are your shades of gray, arjue), offering varying goods and evils in differing amounts, but once everything's tallied, I believe you can call an act objectively good or objectively evil.

We don't kill evil bastards because they're evil bastards, that kind of thought leads to people flying airplanes into buildings.

Killing an evil bastard with a daisy-cutter is more okay than killing an officeworker with an airplane.

On top of that, we kill evil bastards because they're evil bastards - who want to kill us. If they were content to quietly stew in a cave somewhere, never actually plotting, never actually doing anything, we'd happily ignore them.

If we can kill them because we don't like them, they can do the same to us.

This isn't about "like". This isn't me killing you because you think Tupac's better than Biggie, and then your brother killing me because I think Biggie's better than Tupac. Free will, humanism, and equality are BETTER than oppressive, racist, destructive religious fundamentalism. If they kill us because we like the former, and and then we kill them because they like the latter (and because they're going to kill us), we're better, we're good, they're not.

Morality isn't fucking aesthetics. Yes, yes, there are shades of gray, yes, we can have somewhat differing takes on the morality of a particular event based on our own failings of judgment, but, no, "good" and "evil" are not subjective. "Right" and "wrong" are subjective, yes, but the words good and evil exist outside those sorts of choices.

The beliefs of your average Wahabbi Imam from Saudi Arabia are LESS GOOD and MORE EVIL than the beliefs of your average Protestant priest in California. This is true. I'm equipped to say that. So are you - we know it. So, stop fucking around, stop equivocating.

Can we make the same statement about average US Christians, Muslims, and Jews as a whole? No.

Stone - What do you think of Wesley's Clark saying that the government had a five year plan with specific countries being targeted? That's a pretty heavy allegation to levy against the government.

Ahh, bah. The idea isn't, I don't know, diplomatically prudent, but I don't exactly see the problem. They're all terrible regimes, all dangerous to Americans, all dangerous to their inhabitants, all with potential to be harmful, although Wesley Clark's right that Saudi Arabia should be at the top of any 5 year plan. He's said something like - “there were no obvious connections between Iraq, Iran, and North Korea,” - the connection is that they're all potential threats (nothing new) with, importantly, the desire to become more significant threats.

Personally, I don't fully agree with this pre-emptive strike idea. I don't believe that the Bush Administration or the PNAC are sincere in their reasons for them. That's just me. I honestly don't believe them. I probably wouldn't believe it were it Gore in the White House... well, I'd like to think I would, at least. Hehe. Morally, I agree with the idea of taking out dictators and generally evil people for the good of the people being oppressed by these assholes.

I appreciate this criticism, or hesitancy, over the sincerity of actions like this, but I don't quite understand the fervor. Where were a lot of you when Clinton rocket-attacked Sudan? At least Almaci was out there, somewhere, bitching. Most of the US left, even the parts of "The Nation" crowd that don't involve Counterpunching unrepentant Stalinists, were quiet.

I think the "good does not equal evil" argument is very sound. I don't understand how it couldn't be sound. Many shades of gray? What, are we evil forecasters now? "Well, Hussein is partially bad, with a chance of evil." NO! I know I'm against calling names on here, but if you think Hussein was anything other than evil, you're a moron.

Thanks, man, and most people know this sort of stuff, whether they supported the war or not.

[Matt]

This should be pretty simple. Many of you out there have criticized our liberation of Iraq as hypocritical, given actions taken by Americans in the past

Just remember that Iraq isn't "liberated" yet. Saddam may be gone, but the Iraqis are far from a free people. Only time will tell if the American invasion really was a liberation, or just another pointless war that did nothing but kill several thousand of their people.