Posts by Christiaan
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do you realise just how similar this sounds to the zero-middle-ground arguments that helped get the US and the rest of us into this clusterfuck in the first place?
Actually I think it has more to do with the fact that so many self-described moderates didn't take a stronger view against Blair, Bush and their fanaticism. They were too busy telling themselves how great Blair and the bombing of Yugoslavia was.
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This is why I only care about the trees.
And that's why you've made the mistake of decontextualising something that should be condemned into something that is, oops, just a mere mistake... move along people.
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Just sayin'
And, yes, I feel bad now...
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I wouldn't say the idea that moderate liberals create an imbalance towards jingoism is an old argument.
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Simon, sometimes I just think the real enemy is the moderate liberal who can’t see the forest from the trees. To look at this situation and suggest it might simply be a “mistake” is a kind of “moderate” extremism and hugely immoral. It’s almost as if there is a craving to take black and white issues of morality and try and turn them into something grey.
Such people have a lot to answer for with regard to where we’re at in the world today. In a world where jingoist war-mongerers are running amok the last thing the world needs is liberal moderates propping them up by suggesting that the outcome of their actions might just be a mistake.
My point regarding Saddam is that we’ve supposedly learnt over and over again that regime change is not a legitimate case for war. We’ve supposedly learnt this through the unspeakable numbers of people who have died and suffered as a result of such wars. And here again the moderate liberal can be found propping up the war-mongering jingoist with arguments about interventionism and removing the bad guy.
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Agreed, but lets not forget that Saddam too, as part of an Iraqi tradition, very violently removed the one he replaced some years back.
The old two wrongs make a right trick. At least Saddam was an Iraqi.
Legit governance of any sort is not something most Iraqis have had the chance to ever experience, but the current lot of thugs, gangsters, petty warlords and power hungry religious beacons are about as close as they've come.
Ah yes, democracy we bring. Except for the millions dead of course but that's the price you pay for not living how the West tells you to.
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Keith, what do you think about Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Bleichwehl's comment to the New York Times that "There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force"?
Do you think this may have been just a terrible mistake too?
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And not only did they not ask the opposite question but they actually lied about "a guy shooting."
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"If those people actually *were* a group of insurgents with weapons on their way to an ambush, would it look different?"
And shouldn't these rednecks have been asking the opposite question?
How many journalists has the U.S. killed in Iraq now I wonder. Seems to be working out quite well for them so far.
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Keith asks "Is it possible for this to be a genuine, reasonable, yet catastrophic mistake?"
The answer is no, this is simply an adjunct to the initial illegal act of aggressive war, the supreme war crime.