| | Robert, thanks for the clarification on "relative" and "contextual". A contextual approach to morality and ethics certainly adds a lot more complexity -not that that's a bad thing, necessarilly.
Regarding your links to why the Iraq invasion was justified, thanks for providing them. There was a lot of information to cover, and I did not get to all of it, but I would like to offer some comments on what I read:
Concerning the "Why do they hate us?" bit, you referenced the book "The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad" by Yussuf al-Ayyeri, a senior al Quaeda member. In the book, al Ayyeri basically identifies secular democracy as an enemy of Islam because it leads people to value life in this world and forget about jihad. Therefore, you conclude that the reason that "they" hate us has little or nothing to do with our past policies in the region, and more to do with a fundamental dislike of our existence. While this may certainly be true of the fervent ideologues in al Quaeda, this does not necessarilly apply to the greater "they" of the Middle East. And to be sure, the general view towards the United States in the Middle East these days is profoundly negative. But if you were to talk to the average Arab, they would most likely not go into abstractions about Islam and politics. Instead they would specifically tell you that they do not hate the US for what it is, rather they hate our policies (I've debated too many Arab cab drivers to know). They would most likely start by indentifying one of the following two issues:
- Unfair treatment of the Palestinian side of the Arab-Israeli conflict
- The hypocricy of the American government declaring it stands for freedom and democracy while steadfastly supporting oppresive regimes such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the name of naked corporate interests.
The reason people like bin Laden are able to gain a foothold is because of such greivances - his message addresses those concerns. I highly recommend the book Imperial Hubris, which was written anonymously by a CIA middle east expert (he was the case officer tasked with monitoring bin Laden throughout the 90's). The author (who has since revealed his name, Michael Sheurer) asserts in no uncertain terms that the "they hate us for who we are" gambit is largely a fallacy. (And no, he's not some Leftist bureaucrat - he's a Reaganite Republican).
In general, if the goal of our project in Iraq is to facilitate a fundamental cultural and political change in the region, then it's important to be sensitive to what the masses think - it's a barometer for our progress in many respects. The current efforts of our military include police work and counter insurgency (which by the way is not the type of war soldiers prefer to fight), and you can only defeat a widespread insurgency by creating a perception of legitimacy in the ruling government. Period. Smart bombs and air power really don't mean much at this stage of the game.
Moving on to the issue of whether Iraq was a threat worthy of the action undertaken, you provided a link to Christopher Hitchens op-ed. In it, Hitchens cites a report describing the al Hateen facility a "munitions production plant that international inspectors called a complete potential nuclear weapons laboratory." Note the word "potential" - it's highly interpretive - it doesn't justify 1552 (and counting) Americans dead to me.
The report also says another facility "produced equipment used for uranium enrichment, necessary to make some kinds of nuclear weapons." What type of equipment? How specific of a purpose does said item have? We are not told. But assuming that the implicit assumption of the examples in this report are true, why then is the Bush administration not shouting this from the mountain tops for politcal gain? Might it be because under the scrutiny of people who actually know a lot about this stuff these reports would prove to be sketchy at best?
There are many who say, "well gee whiz, Bush was trying to do the best with the intelligence he had." Throughout the buildup to the Iraq war, there were many stories leaked to the media of CIA analysts being furious with how their information was being used by those pushing the war. Yet, it is true that Tenet told Bush that WMD's were a "slam dunk" case for pitching the war. It is yet unclear to me whether Tenet believed in what he was saying, or if he had ideological agreement with the neoconservative vision in the wake of 9-11, and did what he had to do to sell Bush on the war. A book I recommend on this subject is "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward. The book is based in part on hours of private interviews that Bush agreed to with Woodward (Bush himself has endorsed the book). This book gives the best account that I've seen on how Bush was sold on the war, and who was selling it.
(Edited by Pete on 4/15, 8:11pm)
(Edited by Pete on 4/15, 9:24pm)
(Edited by Pete on 4/15, 9:26pm)
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