Celebrity Deathmatch: Saddam vs. Milosevic Last night I watched The Horrors of Hussein on the History Channel. Documenting the rise of Saddam to power through the decades along with his growing tolerance and appreciation of sadistic methods to ensure loyalty from the populace, the show chronicled the evolution of his torture machine from his early days as head of the secret police up until his removal from power. Much of the show revolved around interviews with survivors of Iraqi prisons who told about being beaten with electrical wire while hanging from a hook by their hands (which were tied behind them) or having their rectum ripped out by a piece of jagged tube. However, I found the most interesting part of the show to be some videotape of a younger Saddam smiling and smoking a cigar while an informant calls out 20 names of over 200 off the Baathist elite that were gathered in a closed doors session. As he called out the names of these "conspirators" who were then led away, you could see the rest of the crowd starting to frantically scream support for Saddam in eliminating these enemies in an effort to save themselves. To reward them for their allegiance, Saddam then offered the remaining leaders the honor of executing their colleagues.
This morning, while reading the news, I started wondering if their was a sizeable difference in human rights violations between the Iraqi regime under Hussein and the situation in Kosovo a few years back during the Clinton era. Some statistics-
Iraq-
- Internal displacement of 900,000
- 250,000 killed in 1991 uprising
- 400,000 children dead of malnutrition
- 10,000ish executed in prison
- 50,000-100,000 dead in chemical attack on the Kurds, including this kid
Bosnia-
- 800,000 displaced of which thousands were raped and beaten
- approximately 10,500 dead
A quote from CNN, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, said events in Kosovo justify sending troops. "We can't stand by and let that killing continue," he said. "That kind of brutality should not be allowed anyplace in the world because it encourages it in other places." hmm...
Same senator, different war. "The arrogance of undiluted power in the hands of elected officials who are not bound to respect the law is manifesting its deadly consequences every day as Bush's Iraq invasion unravels into non-stop bloodshed and carnage. The human toll is staggering and there is no let up in sight."
I'd be lying if I said I understand, so basically, I'm looking for responses and opinions on US intervention in the Balkans (compared or compared not with Iraq) and I want to know if there is a threshold of human rights violations that demands intervention. Have at it.
This morning, while reading the news, I started wondering if their was a sizeable difference in human rights violations between the Iraqi regime under Hussein and the situation in Kosovo a few years back during the Clinton era. Some statistics-
Iraq-
- Internal displacement of 900,000
- 250,000 killed in 1991 uprising
- 400,000 children dead of malnutrition
- 10,000ish executed in prison
- 50,000-100,000 dead in chemical attack on the Kurds, including this kid
Bosnia-- 800,000 displaced of which thousands were raped and beaten
- approximately 10,500 dead
A quote from CNN, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, said events in Kosovo justify sending troops. "We can't stand by and let that killing continue," he said. "That kind of brutality should not be allowed anyplace in the world because it encourages it in other places." hmm...
Same senator, different war. "The arrogance of undiluted power in the hands of elected officials who are not bound to respect the law is manifesting its deadly consequences every day as Bush's Iraq invasion unravels into non-stop bloodshed and carnage. The human toll is staggering and there is no let up in sight."
I'd be lying if I said I understand, so basically, I'm looking for responses and opinions on US intervention in the Balkans (compared or compared not with Iraq) and I want to know if there is a threshold of human rights violations that demands intervention. Have at it.
posted by Justin at 9:35 AM 
17 Comments:
Your post is comparing apples and oranges: the apple was a UN peace keeping mission to Bosnia to expressly combat human rights violations, the orange was a US invasion of Iraq to prevent the sale and use of WMDs against America in the age of global terror. That said, I think that there definitely is a threshold and I think the Balkans as well as Iraq meet that standard easily. The problem is that we didn't invade Iraq to end human rights violations; we invaded Iraq because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Since that was - and was, even before the war effort, almost certainly known to be - untrue, then we cannot attribute good consequences to anything except but the unanticipated. Motive is as important to ethical considerations as is action.
j. morgan said exactly half of what I was going to say, and he said it well. I can't say it enough: had GW made the case for invading Iraq based on human rights violations and gotten other nations on board, we'd have to go back and re-assess the situation, and I might be in.
The other half is to say that if you isolate the RHETORIC of Democratic senators, they come out sounding awfully hawkish during Clinton's war and awfully--well, hypocritical and weasel-like--but also dovish during Bush's war. In that sense you're right. But (1)the flipping and flopping of demoweasels has nothing to do with justifying a war; and (2) human rights violations have SOMETHING to do with justifying a war, but are only one among a number of important factors. If we could simply sling statistics around, the US would have wanted to invade the USSR after World War II--not because of the nuke threat but because of Stalin's pogroms.
The right thing to be upset about in Iraq is not the war itself or its outcome, but why we're there. If Bush had said we were going for humanitarian reasons, I could roll with it a lot easier.
I do disagree with J. Morg that "we cannot attribute good consequences to anything except the unanticipated." I know I've said this before, but the reasons the government does things and the reasons it publicizes are often vastly different. We did not invade Iraq because Sadaam had weapons of mass destruction. We invaded, we weren't told why, and that's all that you can honestly say. Good and bad consequences both can and have can be attributed to our invasion.
I think the invasion is the best thing that's happened to Iraq in 100 years. If we don't wimp out or screw it up here at the end, Iraq is going to come out of this as the most stable, productive, and decent country in the middle east. The people of Iraq are going to have lives that are vastly improved over conditions under Sadaam. Most of them recognize this, and while they're anxious for the war to end, they're absolutely not sorry to see their evil dictator taken away.
redhurt said that, “the reasons the government does things and the reasons it publicizes are often vastly different. We did not invade Iraq because Sadaam had weapons of mass destruction. We invaded, we weren't told why, and that's all that you can honestly say.”
Now, doesn’t that strike you as a problem? I mean, that is a radical departure from the historical conception of civil, democratic republics. Isn’t that in itself a subversion in the most radical way of democracy and of everything that America is about?
Those of you that disagree with me here (I think that includes redhurt and jackscolon), please do not ignore, skirt, or otherwise avoid my contention; answer my claim. If you think I am wrong, propose a counter argument that is rooted in ethics and not in utility to demonstrate an alternatively ethical understanding of this war effort.
J. Morgan- I agree that the set of circumstances for each war was totally different, and that the rationale needed for a police action and a war should vary.
However, I disagree that motive is as important to ethical considerations as action. Does it matter if celebrities donate money to Katrina victims out of generosity or public compulsion? In law, action is recognized with or without motive and not the other way around- motive without action is worthless, and action stands without motive.
I'm not trying to be excessively utilitarian here, but I really don't care why the government says it's going to do things, I care about the end result. Hypothetically, if I want to invade Iraq because it's something we should have done in '91, you want to do it for human rights, somebody wants to do it for the treatment of women (which we know of course wouldn't be a liberal feminist ironically), and Bush wants to do it for WMD's- what's the difference? We all think it's worthy based on one rationale, so let's freaking do it already.
(I think I may have rooted that more in utility than ethics, but that's the best I can do J. Morgan. I've never taken an ethics class or read a book on it, I'm unfamiliar with the lexicon, and I don't have a single random ethics quote from some great thinker to try to bullshit you wiht. I'll bow to your superior education but reserve my right to disagree with your opinion. I can teach you how to play golf though.)
I agree that there is a problem if the government seeks to conceal information or deliberately mislead the public, but I stand with Barnabas here when he says it was quite possibly a failure of global intelligence. Our intelligence agency was crippled in the nineties when Gaius Julius Clinton issued a feel-good decree eliminating the CIA's ability to pay informants who might be suspected of criminal activity, thereby gutting the agency of sources with legitimate knowledge. I'm not trying to shift the blame here to Clinton here, but I really want to see some proof that GW and all 98 senators knew the whole war was ridiculous when they voted to do it.
Also, I realize we aren't going to get far on the whole rationale for the war, so I'd like to forgo (is that right?) the whole WMD argument and the subsequent enjoyable bashing of democratic weasels (If you are interested just scan the archives- I think we have dozens of related posts) and instead focus on the role of motives, ethical considerations, government disinformation and/or the second half of Barnabas' comment.
I've been up one side of the Iraq war and down the other, so I'm going to narrow my comments to a few specific issues.
(1) barnabas18 asked for defense of j. morgan's claim that the WMD evidence was false. You can start with this post on my blog:
http://pragmaticism.blogspot.com/
2005/08/iraq-ironically.html
This proves that Colin Powell's staff knew it was all BS. Does it prove that the whole planet knew? No. What it proves is that people let themselves get caught up in the momentum, the drive to war, and ignored their consciences. jackscolon pointed out in the comments on that post that it's easy to come out after the fact and say "I knew something then!", but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the truth or falsehood of the information. "There were no WMDs" is TRUE, and MUST come into play in our debates. "Bush knew there were no WMDs and went to war anyway" will forever remain arguable.
jackscolon: you wrote "I disagree that motive is as important to ethical considerations as action."
That's a philosophical hornet's nest, but it tells me that you view the Iraq war as a simple "action" involving brave American soldiers, an action divorced from people's wants, desires and intentions and any history. That's...wrong. While we don't want to dishonor the soldiers fighting, the lead-up to war and new information that comes out has to be factored in--otherwise, how are we going to make good choices in the future? You pretty much think the war was justified no matter what--short of a videotape of Bush and Cheney sniggering about taking the American people for a ride to fill Halliburton's coffers showing up, you're not waiting for any new information to come in. Some of us are, and some of us will use the lessons we learned from this war to question the actions of politicians in the future.
redhurt has the only tenable pro-war position I've seen. redhurt, correct me if I'm wrong, but you now think that while Iraq was probably still justified, the case for it has been weakened by what's happened since March 2003, right? You also attempt to bracket off the government's motives for war, which is noble of you, but as j. morgan says, it makes civic life impossible.
A brief lesson on ethics:
If I were to assign one book for an ethics class, it would Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, because of the centrality it has played in Western conceptions of the ethical ever since it’s authorship. Basically, the entirety of the Western legal and ethical ideology can be traced back to this work in one way or another. The best summary of Aristotle’s ethics comes from Book II, Section 9:
“That moral virtue is a mean, then, and in what sense it is so, and that it is a mean between two vices, the one involving excess, the other deficiency, and that it is such because its character is to aim at what is intermediate in passions and in actions, has been sufficiently stated. Hence also it is no easy task to be good. For in everything it is no easy task to find the middle, e.g. to find the middle of a circle is not for every one but for him who knows; so, too, any one can get angry- that is easy- or give or spend money; but TO DO THIS TO THE RIGHT PERSON, TO THE RIGHT EXTENT, AT THE RIGHT TIME, WITH THE RIGHT MOTIVE, AND IN THE RIGHT WAY, that is not for every one, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble.” (capital letters added for emphasis)
A brief lesson on law:
In the common law tradition, where due process is recognized, criminal liability is proven by demonstrating actus reus – the guilty deed – as well as mens rea – the guilty mind. In order for a crime to have been committed, there must be a concurrence of both proven beyond a reasonable doubt. As first articulated by Edward Coke, "an act does not make someone a criminal unless (their) mind is guilty."
A brief response to Barnabas:
The WMD claim is a well-trodden road that need not be taken once again. I do want to respond however to this statement:
“Can you not objectively say, whether you like Bush or not, that it is worth the sacrifice of American lives to secure freedom and security to an enslaved people?”
To caste the war and the subsequent potential to improve the conditions of existence for millions in such a light as this obscures a crucial point: as per the public record, we are not fighting a war in Iraq to counter atrocities. The war was not portrayed to the American people before the invasion as a humanitarian venture, but as a necessary, pre-emptive maneuver to ensure American security in light of Saddam Hussein’s possession of WMDs in the age of global terror. As far as the public record is concerned, that is STILL why we are at war, despite the current White House spin.
So, I can gladly assent to the terms of your challenge, but that is wholly apart from the war itself. Simply because I should support a war effort that is identical in every way but motive does not say anything about whether or not I should support the current war effort.
A brief response to Jackscolon:
“Does it matter if celebrities donate money to Katrina victims out of generosity or public compulsion?”
Absolutely. In fact, I would argue, it is of definitional importance.
“In law, action is recognized with or without motive and not the other way around- motive without action is worthless, and action stands without motive.”
That is an objectively false claim. See Coke’s Institutes for more detail.
“I really don't care why the government says it's going to do things, I care about the end result.”
That might be fine in the context of a system in which the government is autonomous from the governed, and thus their moral culpability is also. In a civil system, particularly a democratic republic, the government is a facet of the governed. As such, whether or not you care about it, citizens of the United States are, by definition, concerned with the motives and intentions of their government.
“We all think it's worthy based on one rationale, so let's freaking do it already.”
Again, that is an insufficiently low standard of ethics when dealing with a free, democratic republic. In order for those systems to work – and in fact by definition of how those systems are designed to work – transparency is essential for order. Transparency is achieved through public record. Public record not only chronicles the acts of a government, but the deliberative process and rationale for those acts.
Simply because everyone here could conceive of one rationale or another to invade Iraq, that has no bearing on the objective reality concerning why we actually invaded Iraq. Your argument is that motivation can be an afterthought so long as it applies an acceptable meaning to events. My argument is that action is qualitatively dependent on motivation. From my perspective, then, action is not “based” on rationale, but bound up in rationale.
I do not know that I would argue that the war in Iraq was started ethically, j. morg. I think I'd argue against it, but as I don't want to flesh out a case here, I'll stay indecisive. I never said it was ethical. I'm only saying that the reasons for entering the war are both 1.) more complicated and 2.) possibly more useful than you know. I'll absolutely grant that it's the right of a citizen to know why they're going to war, and the duty of a president to tell them, and that I tend to believe that George Bush acted unethically by sending American's to war under false pretense.
I only believe this because of slight but significant evidence I've read stating our intelligence was twisted and doctored to show what we wanted it to show (that Saddam had nukes) and not what it tended to show (that he did not have nukes.) However, given that Saddam had used WMD's in the past, and given that they are so ridiculously easy to make, and given that they are also so ridiculously easy to hide, I see very little reason to rule out that 1.) he had them and 2.) we'll never find them. This does not, however, remove culpability from the President if indeed he sent us to war with any purpose other than to rid the world of these WMD's, which it seems he did.
j. morgan - here's a question for you. If not WMD's, why DID we go to Iraq? I haven't heard a good alternate solution. Having heard none and believing the pretenses to be false, I fall onto my previously mentioned claim that there are reasons and we don't know them. J. Morgan, are there any reasons that might be so good and so necessarily secret that they'd out-weigh the "misinformation" we were told instead?
Does living in a country that operates under false pretense make "civic life impossible" chuck? I don't think we have a choice. I don't believe there ever was a government that operated totally honestly or treated it's citizens with too greater a degree of ethics than was forcefully demanded of them at the time. For examples of this, read your own copy of Zinn's People's History of the US.
If all governments and all societies are inherently unethical, utility has to have some part to play.
I certainly think we should fight this defect caused by our inherently flawed character as human beings, but that does not allow us to ignore it in the name of idealism. I want an entirely ethical society, but in the absence of one, I will choose the closest alternative with the most utility.
I do not believe John Kerry would have been any more ethical.
Look, redhurt, John Kerry supports you and doesn't support you, okay?
I still think Jack has a point here. While he might be mistakenly comparing the two wars more directly than some (we) might think is appropriate, his primary focus is on the utility of the war and not it's initial justification.
Notice that in the original post Jack never said the war in Iraq was justified because of human rights violations. He just asked where the threshold was, and whether Iraq COULD be justified in such a way.
And he's right that Frank Lutenberg is completely inconsistent. Frank argues that any war which prevents the wholesale slaughter of people is justifiable, which is an argument for utility. But on Iraq, Frank doesn't say, "Since there are no WMD's, our president lied, and that makes any good from this war tainted by it's bad beginning." No, he instead cites the "mounting death toll" and "no end in sight" (which there is) as reasons to hate on Bush.
WMD's or not, Frank, when you got into this war, you didn't think it would be quick, did you? You did realize that people would die, didn't you?
The Iraq war is NOT a disaster and it's going very, very well. The terrorists can't bomb recruitment centers fast enough to keep Iraqi citizens - people who do respect the rule of law - from signing up for the police force and the army. Lutenberg's comments reflect total ignorance. If he's simply frustrated with feeling lied to, he should say that instead.
redhurt, point by point:
(1) "The Iraq war is NOT a disaster."
Granted.
(2) "It's going very, very well."
False. Terrorists/militants/ insurgents are killing hundreds of Iraqi civilians every month, and the American soldier death toll has not dropped since the war started. Here's 2003 by month, starting in March:
65, 72, 37, 30, 46, 36, 30, 43, 82, 40.
Here's 2005 by month:
106, 56, 37, 52, 82, 74, 54, 85.
I did a CNN search for "Iraq people killed civilian" and here are just 3 articles with summaries:
6. Car bomb kills 30 in Iraq (09.17.2005)
A car bombing in a town on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad killed 30 people and wounded 38 others on Saturday evening, emergency police said.
7. Suicide car bomber hits Iraqi worshippers (09.16.2005)
More than 20 Iraqis have been killed in a third day of increasing violence in Baghdad and across the country.
8. Iraq suffers second day of deadly attacks (09.15.2005)
Three suicide car bombs erupted Thursday in a south Baghdad neighborhood, part of a series of attacks that killed at least 30 people -- many of them police officers.
So it's not Vietnam, but how in the world can you call that "going very, very well? (With TWO very's?)
(3) "The terrorists can't bomb recruitment centers fast enough to keep Iraqi citizens - people who do respect the rule of law - from signing up for the police force and the army."
So what?
(4) "Lautenberg's comments reflect total ignorance."
False. His comments reflect an attempt to capitalize politically on the anti-war sentiment in the country.
(5) "If he's simply frustrated with feeling lied to, he should say that instead."
He should, but he's not frustrated--he's a hypocritical weasel. But his weaselness doesn't have anything to do with anything. Don't vote for him.
(6) "[jackscolon] just asked where the threshold was, and whether Iraq COULD be justified in such a way."
Yes, it could. It was not presented as such.
Let me give you an analogy from bioethics. Suppose (1) a wealthy man has decided that he would like his heart-lung machine to be turned off and he be allowed to die. He loves his doctor and (2) he's put him into his will, which will give him large sums of money. The doctor doesn't know (1) OR (2) yet.
Case 1: the doctor, SUSPECTING that he's been written into the will, unplugs the man without talking to him or his family in order to hasten his death.
Case 2: the doctor, after talking to the man and the family, and the family saying goodbye to the man, unplugs the man.
Same outcome, different motives. We'd regard the doctor in case 1 as a murderer, but not in case 2. The man's wish for death is just like the Iraqi wish for freedom: it's related to, but still independent of, the motives of the doctor.
That's why it makes a difference how the war was presented and what the people carrying out the war were thinking. GW is the doctor in case 2.
Sorry, got lost in my own analogy. GW is the doctor in case 1.
First I'd like to call attention to this from Redhurt:
"If not WMD's, why DID we go to Iraq? I haven't heard a good alternate solution. Having heard none and believing the pretenses to be false, I fall onto my previously mentioned claim that there are reasons and we don't know them. J. Morgan, are there any reasons that might be so good and so necessarily secret that they'd out-weigh the "misinformation" we were told instead?"
I think that is a question that definately needs to be addressed especially with the importance that has been placed on motive. If not WMD's, then what? I currently don't have a theory for this question yet, but I'm working on it.
Now, I want to clarify my original post a little. I tried to leave it deliberately vague and see where you would take it. I never really tried to make a case to directly compare the two, I just thought the statistics were particularly interesting, especially in the light of the comment by Lautenberg. I would love to be a reporter long enough to ask Lautenberg, "You said in reference to the 11,000 that were killed in Kosovo that, "We can't stand by and let that killing continue, that kind of brutality should not be allowed anyplace in the world because it encourages it in other places.", how can you reconcile that statement with your opposition to the Iraq war and its removal of a regime that has killed 60 times as many?" As Redhurt said, the two statements he made are totally irreconcilable.
J. Morgan-
In regard to mens rea and actus reus, I stated that action is punishable without a "guilty mind" in reference to criminal convictions for actions such as drunk driving or others under strict liabilty. I do recognize that many of these are torts and not criminal proceedings, but my point remains that there is no reciprocal that I'm aware of for these exceptions on the mens rea side of the law.
As for celebrity donations- I really don't see how their state of mind has any effect. Either way the money does the same amount of good (ideally) regardless of whether they give it grudgingly or not. The same goes for corporation, it doesn't concern me whether they are genuinally concerned or whether it's a public relations ploy. This is really a minor issue in relation to many of the other things in this comment string, but if you want to elaborate on its "definitional importance", I'm interested.
Charles-
I think that Redhurt's two "very"-s imply that except for a few hotspots, the war is nearing completion. Violence is not widespread across Iraq, it's relatively confined to a couple of areas. I will agree that two "very"-s was a bit optimistic, I think 80% of a "very" is more realistic.
As for your analogy, I think the difference is not a matter of motive- but a matter of consent. In the first example, the doctor is killing without sanction (hence the murder) and in the second he's more of a facilitator than a prime mover.
Let me rephrase it-
1) The doctor has consent from the man and is going to unplug him because he wants the money
2) The doctor has consent and he is going to unplug him to honor his friend's wishes
In the first case the doctor is a greedy bastard, and the second he's a compassionate friend when motive is considered- however, the result is the SAME, the sick man is dead and the doctor has the money. Also, motive is impossible to judge (people will always say they acted on the best of intentions) and action speaks for itself.
Charles: Wars can't be summarized as going well or poorly by body counts. Especially not urban war. Body counts are part of it, to be sure, but not the entirety of it. Here's why it's going so well:
1.) more Iraqi recruits every day
2.) Increased participation by Iraqi military and Iraqi police force
3.) Decline in local insurgency - proportionally far more of the insurgents are from neighboring crazy nations
4.) Continued favor and support of the Iraqi people
5.) Continued stabilization of an Iraqi government and formation of a constitution
This war is about nation building. We certainly want to keep everyone alive we can, but civilian deaths don't imply a failure on the part of the war. I'll downgrade myself to 1.5 very's.
Here's an analogy for you. Let's say a man walks into a bar wielding two jack hammers in each hand. The bar tender looks at him and says, "Those are some pretty big jack hammers. Would you care to hammer some jacks?" and proceeds to pour a triple of jack daniels for the man. The man says, "listen, you idiot, this isn't some stupid bar joke", and then jackhammers the bar tender to death right there in front of everyone with both hands. Then the jackhammerer jackhammers through the wall and makes out with a hot babe. GW is not the hotty.
"Wars can't be summarized as going well or poorly by body counts."
I don't completely agree, but for the sake of argument I'll temporarily grant that.
Now I'm going to ask one of those questions that I sometimes ask when I exasperatedly feel jackhammered, even to my utmost:
What set of conditions would you accept as the Iraq war going badly? What would it take for you, redhurt, to look at the war and say, "This is not going well?"
I've never said, like a stupid two-faced hypoweaselcrat, "This war is a quagmire Vietnam degenerative debacle that we cannot win big mistake."
But for me to say the war is going well? Things like this would have to STOP HAPPENING:
"Insurgents on Wednesday unleashed a spate of suicide car bombings and other attacks in Baghdad and other towns, killing at least 151 people and wounding more than 300 in one of the war's most violent days."
One of the war's most violent days--as in, the violence is not stopping.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/
WORLD/meast/09/14/iraq.main/
My verification word is "aiuolffs", which is the sound the bartender made as he was jackhammered.
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