Bloodless Coup

And yet, you supported a candidate for president who used economic improvements (job gains) in India as a threat to the American workforce, to scare union workers into voting. I bet they'd have loved Kerry even more. By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, India is pretty much indifferent to all nations that aren't an immediate threat to it, like most of the other countries in the world. But the neo-narcissism of our international brethren is no excuse for us to avoid taking responsibility for our children's security, even if others would rather get cheaper gas, and even if others accuse us of the kind of hypocrisy that is inevitable in taking any stand, yet makes the stand we take no less meaningful and right.

no excuse for us to avoid taking responsibility for our children's security, even if others would rather get cheaper gas, and even if others accuse us of the kind of hypocrisy that is inevitable in taking any stand, yet makes the stand we take no less meaningful and right

huh? i mean, taking a stand inevitably entails hypocrisy?

actually, i give you credit for implicitly acknowledging the elevated prices of gas. the ten cent reduction in the past few weeks is the sort of thing myopic bush spin-meisters tend to turn into the second coming of alan greenspan or some such. this administration is pounding the country's head into a wall so that it feels good when, rarely and briefly, it stops.

Joshua,
If terrorists or anyone else want to hurt people, to makes themselves feel powerful for a moment before they go back to blaming the Israelis, the Americans, and the Shiites for their lousy lives (and thus giving up their responsibility for their own futures), then we have to hurt the terrorists to keep them from doing this. We are hurting people to stop them from hurting people, ergo it is hypocrisy. But, as I said, it's the kind of hypocrisy that Americans, Jews, and Shiite Muslims can live with, as opposed to waiting for a perfect solution, waiting for the UN to act when it's members are more concerned with cheaper gas prices,waiting for anything else John Kerry or Kofi Anan have offered in its stead.

Mo - Kerry bashing? What, suddenly tired of Clinton bashing? You keep bringing up people who aren't responsible for leading the country - how about noting the failures of those who actually are. For example, India is probably more concerned about getting help to stop terrorism than it is with the election-year protectionist rhetoric of Kerry and Bush (neither candidate could have done much of what they claimed). What has Bush done to help India on that score? What has Bush done re: Kashmir? Or to limite the proliferation of WMD in states that threaten India? I think you can make a strong argument that the Bush administration has been friendlier with China and Pakistan (India's traditional enemies) than with India. If we supposedly have this moral and meaningful foreign policy why are we supporting a military tyrant and a bunch of Communists instead of the largest democracy in the world?

Indifferent - no. Self-interested - yes. You find that odd? Did you ever pass an economics class?

Beyond that ... I have trouble making sense of your posts. What's this "cheaper gas" stuff about? You don't think we fight wars for cheaper gas? Of course we do. And what, you think we shouldn't? The economy is dependent on it. And surely you're not suggesting that 1990-1991 were all about protecting democracy in Kuwait and Saudi. And you don't think that this issue matters in terms of your policy now? Our war costs (in money and sadly in blood) are, in a way, something we take on to ensure cheaper gas that helps keep our economy strong (sort of an indirect tax I guess). It would be nice if we had leaders who were trying to transform our energy system so that wouldn't be necessary - but we don't have those leaders.

And waiting for the UN to act? Huh? What - you think the UN acts on its own? The STATES in the UN make it act - so it's our choice (and that other countries) if we want it to act or not - and on plenty of measures the US, France, Russia, etc. hasn't wanted that. Yeah, Annan could send in more election monitors. But I don't think anybody thinks that will really solve anything in conditions, so I don't judge him that harshly for wanting to keep them alive if killing some of them isn't likely to make that much of a difference in a few weeks.

If terrorists or anyone else want to hurt people, to makes themselves feel powerful for a moment before they go back to blaming the Israelis, the Americans, and the Shiites for their lousy lives (and thus giving up their responsibility for their own futures) . . . .

i love the dime-store psychologizing the iraq hawks do to justify their positions, especially the whole "hating freedom" thing parroted by every neo-con with an axt to grind. i won't fall into the far left trap of villifying all US efforts in its own self-interest, because i wouldn't be in a position to bemoan the right (i have m. moore in mind here) unless we did many of the unpleasant things we do. but it's unconscionably naive to think that america and israel (through america) don't have anything to do with arabs' lousy lives. are there other causes? -- of course. but these days they tend to fade behind a foreground of an invasion, occupation, and installation of a puppet government by the very americans you claim they shouldn't blame for their plight. need i remind you who propped up saddam? osama? myopia. it was yesterday's word, and it's today's word, too.

Joshua,
I have more than fourty hours in graduate psychology and more than half that in undergrad psych, so it's not exactly "dime store" psychology. Dr. William Glasser sees feeling powerful as one of the five components of happiness within his Choice Theory, and Dr. Frank Pittman sees almost all human problems as related to a failure to take responsibility, both of these positions are integrated into my argument. I realize they're no Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura, but I guess my professors save their books for more advanced courses. Your liberal idea of saying these terrorists/insurgents are justified in butchering our troops because we invaded their country ignores the responsibility held by these Sunnis for their butchering; may I remind you that we would have never invaded if Saddam had only let the inspectors inspect, and if his regime didn't kill a hundred thousand of the Iraqi people. Yes, we are responsible for propping up Osama and Saddam when they were the lesser of two evils (that goes back to Sun Tzu, if you've ever heard of him--the enemy of your enemy is your friend), so why do you bemoan the fact that we're rectifying our past wrong. The fact is, the Iraqis can have a great future if they stop sabotaging each other, that's the responsibility they have to take, or they can keep blaming us(spell that U.S.) and the Jews.

Armand K.,
Actually, I have taken a course in international economics, as well as the basic courses. The idea of self interest is not exactly beyond my grasp, but there is more to what's important to me than cheaper gas. Actually, I don't think the first Gulf War was about oil. Why didn't we take Iraq's oil if that's what we were interested in? Why didn't we take it this time? Yes, it would be nice if we could get a better energy system, but the voters decided it just wasn't worth the trade off of seeing Al Gore on the news for four years, and who can blame them? Even after getting a Howard Dean haircut, he's still boring. It's funny you mention Clinton bashing, because as I recall when Clinton was getting all that money from the Chinese, and we just happened to be losing our secrets to them in the 90's, the left loved that because all that experience with capitalism was going to be a running start for the Chinese democracy, we were doing a great thing by having a close relationship with the Chinese. Now it's suddenly a threat to the great (and horribly corrupt) democracy of India. Make up your mind; which is it? Whenever the President gets tough with a country, the left calls him reactionary, and when he plays nice the left says he's being inconsistent or not being tough enough with the bad guys. Which is it?

i'm sure all of your education has taught you volumes about analyzing individuals. it's dimestore psychologizing when you try to apply theories designed to account for individual behavior to an entire people. all americans think all arabs should die; all americans support israel because they hate arabs and love oil. how long would that sort of rhetoric go before you went ballistic in rejecting it. yet you behave as though that's an appropriate way to discuss and account for iraqis, their conduct, their behavior, and why Daddy America has to come in and save them from themselves.

as for "justification" of butchery, i really shouldn't choose my words as carefully as i do since you don't bother to read them with comparable care. what i said, in effect, was that it takes a moron to feign surprise or indignation that a people, with their god-given freedom, take arms to reject an invading army, no matter how irrationally, no matter how much it disserves their self-interest.

as for inspections, we were inspecting, and making progress, and you know how we know that? because we haven't found WMD's. and if you think it's the hundreds of thousands of iraqi dead we were concerned about, we didn't mind when saddam was the enemy of our enemy, when he was engaging in his greatest acts of butchery, did we sun tzu?; nor did we mind when we pulled out after desert storm and saddam killed the very people who welcomed us because we didn't see fit to give them the protection we'd promised; and how about the sudan, where the brief caesura has given way, tens of thousands have died, and tens of thousands more will die. where are we? oh, that's right, we're in iraq, avenging the very atrocities in which we were complicit with more ineffectual atrocities and more american blood.

i'm not naive enough to believe in an end to war. nor do i kid myself that we'll remain a superpower, many of the privileges of which i so blithely take for granted, if we aren't prepared to fight. but this war is a joke, an embarrassment, and it has destroyed the credibility we so desperately need in dealing with the rest of the world and hunting down the real perpretrators of 9/11. what does sun tzu have to say about alienating willing allies over trivial disagreements? about perpetuating rather than admitting mistakes as a command ethos?

Joshua,
It's interesting hearing from a lawyer about how a common standard should not be applied to all people. Of course the humanistic theories (you might have heard of Carl R. Rogers?) embrace the uniqueness of individuals while at the same time holding them responsible for their lives. And, to be frank, psychoanalyzing is not really in vogue for the last fifty or so years; or do you think the most famous psychoanalyzed person in the world (Woody Allen) is a model for how people should live? Or maybe it's not always wrong to mess around with your stepdaughter, and we should accept his unique experience might justify his actions? As Milton Erickson would say, psychoanalysis is useless because insight has nothing to do with changing behavior. The type of psychotherapy you suggest is often practiced, that mental health is about relieving guilt; but that guilt often has a purpose, and while a person's shame and belief that they are incapable of doing the right thing should be undone, guilt is about a person recognizing they've done the wrong thing, so they can do something better next time. Your attitude that every individual is different and should be treated uniquely is actually what William Glasser suggested in his work on schools, but no community can afford to hire a teacher for every student. And we can't wait to find out the reasons for their behavior (butchering) before intervening to stop it. And actually it's Mor-ris, not Mor-on. What's important here is that the insurgents are behaving in a way that's harming other Iraqis and Americans, and we can't tolerate this behavior even if we can understand it. It's their responsibility for them to come to grips with having tortured their Iraqi brothers, and we can empathize with their cognitive disonance about believing they were the rightful possessors of that country and finding out they were deluding themselves, but we can also empathize with the Shiites and Kurds who they have tortured and killed by tens of thousands. As for inspections, if Saddam had nothing to hide, he should never have kicked out the inspectors. Let's not forget what Duelfer said, Saddam had everything in place to resume WMD production once sanctions were lifted, and the oil for food bribes were breaking down the support for sanctions. Tell me, since you're so eager to find fault with Bush for not having an exit strategy in Iraq, what would it be in Sudan? Yet again, I'll point you to the vast number of coincidences about the 9/11 hijackers just happening to meet people who happened to have the same names as Iraqi security agents before they just happened to mysteriously get a big infusion of cash that no one else can account for. I don't see the thousands who died on 9/11 as an inconsequential part of a trivial disagreement. Let's not forget that the willing allies we alienated were taking bribes from Saddam of UN money, most of which the US pays for. With friends like those...

good lord, morris, where did you find psychoanalysis in what i said? what i said was, the sort of syllogisms that begin, all people who reject a foreign power's lethal occupation hate freedom -- aside from leading to circular reasoning (no one can demonstrate, nor is anyone trying, that the people who are now attacking our troops were hurting anyone prior to the occupation) whereunder they kill us because we're there and we're there because they kill us -- are facile and incoherent. i was rejecting generalization, not invoking psychoanalysis. furthermore, it's a fallacy to say we can't give everyone individual instruction where we can't achieve a 1:1 ratio. that's just ridiculous.

What's important here is that the insurgents are behaving in a way that's harming other Iraqis and Americans, and we can't tolerate this behavior even if we can understand it.

What's important to me is that we are behaving in a way that's hurting more innocent civilians than insurgents. And it's this phenomenon, among others, that leads me to reject so forcefully anyone's attempt to explain to me what iraqis do, how the feel, what they want.

Tell me, since you're so eager to find fault with Bush for not having an exit strategy in Iraq, what would it be in Sudan?

When did I fault Bush for a lack of exit strategy. When you occupy a nation and install a puppet government, there can be no real exit strategy. Aside from which, your response is nonresponsive, since my question concerned how you can attribute the egalitarian save-the-children motive to a president who, coincidentally, chooses to save the children only in a country run by a man who preoccupied the neocon advisors closest to him, and who, coincidentally, chooses this war where the oil market is at stake (and yes, in this you should here a simple rejection of your earlier the-only-economic-benefit-to-intervention-for-oil-occurs-where-our-intention-is-to-take-all-the-oil-home-with-us nonsense; market stability is a legitimate economic goal served by taking control from the hands of an unpredictable dictator with a significant influence on the supply of a crucial commodity, notwithstanding that said commodity is not "taken").

bush's goals are, and remain, atavistic rather than egalitarian; he doesn't have an egalitarian bone in his "compassionately conservative" body. nothing he's done has suggested the contrary.

by the way, for someone so disdainful of psychoanalysis, your rebuttals read an awful lot like free association exercises.

Morris - What do you mean "take" the oil? The only way we could do that would be to actually make Iraq a colony. That was never exactly in the cards. But owning it isn't what matters - it's a matter of (for a few) leasing, distribution, etc. and ESPECIALLY price. Petroleum is fungible. While some is cheaper than others to produce (say Saudi versus Russia) what matters for the state of the overall economy is the price. And that means we want it flowing relatively cheaply. That's probably easier to accomplish if we don't actually go to the trouble of seizing the oil (since that would produce political pressure leading to embargoes and higher prices).

Why didn't Bush just throw out Saddam Hussein in 1991? Several reasons. I presume you know most of them.

As to getting tough versus playing nice - I think "the left"'s (are Bush's critics only leftists? that's surely not the case in foreign policy circles) problem is that Bush plays nice with tyrants and murderers like the governments of Uzbekistan, Pakistan, China, Saudi, frequently Putin, while doing all he can to piss off the democratically elected governments of the Americas, much of Europe and India (among others). One would think for all his moral righteousness he'd be a little less shameless about who his friends are.

And what's with the dig at India being corrupt? So is China. So is "sorevreign" Iraq. So are most countries. One would think that corrupt or not our noble president would side with the democracies given his rhetoric - not the godless Communist aggressors.

Armand K.,
I agree that taking the oil was never in the cards, but we certainly had the military force to do it if we wanted, and the left always talks about blood for oil when they sing their hippie songs and smoke pot with Michael Moore. We were never there for that reason, but the left wing conspiracy types say we were when they forget not to take the yellow acid. Joshua's gonna be upset you broke out with "fungible", that's a bigger word than he's used for a while. The cheapest oil of all went to our democratic friends in the UN. I don't understand how you talk about the Bushes and Saudis being such pals in the other post, but here you suggest the Saudis would embargo us if we took Saddam's oil, what happened to the conspiracy? I don't exactly see how Bush is doing all he can to piss off Europe unless maybe asking them to give back all the money they've embezzled puts them on the hot seat, or maybe it's letting out the Duelfer report that exposed how our "allies" were selling Saddam missile guidance and defense systems in violation of UN agreements. If our Iraq position was as abhorent as you suggest, India wouldn't be friends with Australia who is supporting our policy there. Corruption in India is (according to my friend who's been there a few times and who's extended family lives there) much worse than it is in most countries. Or if you don't trust him,
"CALCUTTA, India, March 15 (UPI) -- When the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. released a report last week that rated India as the second most corrupt country in Asia, with a corruption index grade of 8.9 on a scale of 10, it didn't come as a jolt to most Indians. After all, over the past five years, a series of such reports released by global agencies such as Transparency International, the International Monetary Fund to Asian Development Bank, said much the same thing."
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040315-010738-8794r

How meaningful is a democracy if a citizen has to bribe a public official to receive their rights?
"One has to bribe someone to get a good education, to get a deserving job and to avail services which one is entitled as being a citizen of India."
http://www.india-reform.org/articles/corruption.html

Of course, if you don't think the oil for food corruption is a stain on the democracies of Europe, I guess you wouldn't think endemic corruption in India is any worse.

Joshua,
Your first sentence actually refers to my analyzing, and since you're talking in the psychological frame of reference it didn't seem like a great leap that you're suggesting psychoanalyzing. I don't see how our society as it stands now from a cultural and political standpoint would be willing to commit itself to and pay for a 1:1 ratio of students and teachers; I agree that would be a noble goal, but right now many of our children don't even have two parents in their lives because parents would rather do what they can to avoid marital unhappiness and/or seek extramarital pleasure, more than do what's best for their own children. And until people will make sacrifices for their own children, I don't see them making sacrifices for the children of other parents.
I think many if not most of the Iraqis are safer with us there; just run the numbers, a hundred thousand dead Shiites and Kurds killed under Saddam over thirty years is about seven thousand every two years, less than the number of innocents who've died since we've been in Iraq. I'm not sure my biology-based understanding of atavistic reveals to me what you mean when you use it; good word, though. Actually, almost everything Bush does shows he's compassionate, more than the wooden Al Gore or the botoxed kerry who were the only alternatives. Thanks for the parting shot at me; you'll never guess what I'm freely associating with you right now.

i'm glad you picked up the reigns and pointed out that a 1:1 ratio isn't possible. what you didn't do is respond to my observation that it's a fallacy to say individual instruction only occurs where there is such a ratio, something you suggested a couple of responses ago.

the idea that the rate of iraqi death since we've been there, innocent or otherwise, is below 7,000/year is so absurd it's not even worth responding to. the government doesn't answer questions about civilian death, and the only agency that's tried to put a number on it comes up with 100,000. i have little trouble imagining that that number is inflated, but i don't think it's inflated by the 85,000 or so it would have to be to make your death toll argument true.

One has to bribe someone to get a good education, to get a deserving job and to avail services

the horror! -- here you just need to have a name ending in bush.

as for the rest, attributing drug use to those who disagree with your opinions is a highly effective rhetorical method. the greeks probably had a term of art for it. i just call it a waste of everyone's time.

Joshua,
If you go to iraqbodycount.net
they have detailed civilian losses that range from a minimum of 14,880 to a maximum of 17,076, far less than the 100,000 number you've come up with. Their number includes civilians and insurgents who've died from US and terrorists/insurgents, and the most interesting entry to me is the 572-616 "insurgents" killed in Fallujah in April, including those responsible for killing the four contractors; I never heard the media report that we'd gotten those killers. I still think it's worth it to the Shiites and Kurds, for as Shakespeare said, "A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man dies but once." Yes, I remember now how Socrates was accused in the Apology of "hitting the Buddha" and "smoking the ganja weed."

rhetoric, morris: i was referring to classical rhetoric, which nobody did better or talked about more than the greeks.

here's what IBC says its tally relies upon:

"media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq resulting directly from military action by the USA and its allies in 2003"

first of all, we all know how good the toadying media has been at pressing the administration for details and criticizing the information it's been spoonfed. second, on the site itself it quotes Gen. Franks as saying "we don't do body counts." so where does the media get its information that makes it more reliable than the NGO's and nationless humanitarian organization's tallies? second, only in 2003? maybe they misstated the dates encompassed their tally, but it's awfully slipshod of a data-mining operation that in nearly a year it's never gotten around to correcting it, and in either case it makes their work suspect for purposes of the present discussion. finally, note the caveat: the count incorporates only deaths caused by the US and its allies and only those that are inflicted _directly_. does that include 'disappeared' POW's at abu grhraib? does it include kids who die from dehydration due to the lack of infrastructure? does it include civilian deaths that occur at the hands of insurgents which almost certainly would not have occurred had we not invaded?

furthermore, the war hasn't been going on for two years, so the best case scenario for you, 14,000 deaths as reported by IBC, would still be greater than 7,000/year. plus, aside from a spate immediately following the first gulf war, most of saddam's most hideous conduct occurred in the eighties, and so it's basically a mathematical certainty that fewer than 7,000 had been dying per year over the past five or so years.

thanks, though, for making my argument for me.

I think the number Joshua mentions comes from the Lancet study (read about it here - http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3352814 if you don't want to read the whole thing) which deals with how many more deaths there have been than if the invasion had not taken place. The Lancet study has a huge margin of error, but it clearly argues that more took place than there would have without the invasion: http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/11/ilanceti_update.html

That seems important if you think that "helping" the people of Iraq was a good reason to go to war.

Joshua,
If you actually look at the body counts, many of the larger numbers come from hospitals and morgues. Again, if you actually looked at the data, it encompasses 2004 into December. This is slipshod work by you for not examining the data more than the web site. Actually, the count includes death tolls caused by insurgent-terrorists (unless the US has started using roadside bombs and suicide car bombs), although again you would have to actually look at page one of the data set to realize this. The whole point of my argument is that these deaths WOULD have occured if we had not invaded, as they have been occuring by the thousands every year in Iraq for thirty years. And the number of Shiites and Kurds dead is LESS than the 14 K number because if you looked at the data you would see it includes insurgent-terrorists in the death toll, perhaps because they do not engage in the tactics of a regular army (they would have to wear uniforms, carry arms openly, conduct operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war, etc) that would require our treating them according to the Geneva convention. And of course if you want to get technical, reports of the number killed by Saddam in Iraq are as high as a million.
"Spelling out the bitter legacy of the Saddam years, he said Iraq has 1.5 million people handicapped by war wounds, or crippled physically or mentally by Saddam's forces. Another 1.5 million are internally displaced. And a million have simply disappeared off the face of the earth."
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041127/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_rights_germany_041127185305

Armand,
I know you'll love this source, but the article this cites is more than a month old so I can't get to it:
"As a recent article in the Financial Times reported on Nov. 19, even the Lancet study’s authors are now having second thoughts."
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed120204a.cfm

The study sampled 998 families in 33 locations. By contrast, 11,900 people in 250 locations were sampled in our own exit polls and ours were pretty screwed up in a country that wasn't even at war. So the probability that these numbers are even accidentally wrong (let's not even get into anti-US Iraqis lying to overestimate deaths) is huge because they sampled about a tenth of the exit poll number. The actual number of deaths reported in the study is very small, so even a few Iraqis motivated by anti-US sentiment exxagerating would have a huge effect when multiplied by the size of the country. The study also says that when Fallujah is not included (outlier), the death toll over the first 18 months is one and a half times what it was before. I'm sure there is a statistical variation in this number itself, and the study doesn't even suggest more than 60,000 deaths would be violent (if they existed at all).

merry christmas, or whatever else is appropriate, bloodless coup. and you, morris -- merry christmas to you.

Merry Christmas, Joshua.

Mo - "The study sampled 998 families in 33 locations. By contrast, 11,900 people in 250 locations were sampled in our own exit polls and ours were pretty screwed up in a country that wasn't even at war. So the probability that these numbers are even accidentally wrong (let's not even get into anti-US Iraqis lying to overestimate deaths) is huge because they sampled about a tenth of the exit poll number."

How screwed up do you think ours were? I think you are referring to the early projections - which are different.

As to your comparing the numbers re: sample size - depending on the sample 1000 can give you a much more accurate view than 10000. Actually polls of the US (which if much much much bigger than Iraq) very rarely include samples of more than 1500 - and often rely on just several hundred. Accuracy depends on who you ask - not the basic number of people.

Armand Bro,
If the projections weren't based on the exit polls, on what were they based?
There's an interesting article here:
http://www.ilcaconline.org/freeman.pdf
"The likelihood of any two of these statistical anomalies occuring together is on the order of one in a million. The odds against all three occuring together are 250 million to one."
(referring to the exit polls from Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania).
The author of this paper quotes a senior gallup poll editor who says that Kerry voters being much more "willing to participate" could account for this discrepancy, then the author dismisses it because it hasn't been independently verified. But if one of our top polling experts believes motivation to be a key factor that could skew exit poll results to a one in 250 million chance, think about the motivation of Saddam loyalists to overestimate deaths and how that would skew their results. I would agree that it depends on who we ask, not the basic number of people.