It is a good ruke of thumb. It creaters an overwhelming presumption that an adavocate of intervention has to overcome, such that if there any significant reasons against intervention, it ought to be opposed. It ought to be supported only where, like WWII, there are no serious reasons against intervention.
under present circumtsnces, to
> > invade a country that is now and for some time doing no one else harm
>and
> > threatening no one else?
>
>I doubt you actually believe that the Iraqi government is doing no one any
>harm.
When I wrote that sentence, I reread it twice to make sure that I had carefully inserted "else" after 'no one" at least twice, so that it could not be misunderstood. Apparantly my labor was in vain.
And whether or not it's a threat to anyone outside of its borders is
>more controversial than you let on, I think.
Why? Sure, the Bushies disagree, buts ince they won't tell us why, that's nota reason to fear the Iraqis.
>
> > What does, then? Every day for almost two years the IDF has been
>shooting
> > Palestinian children, rocketing Palestinian leaders, levelling houses,
>etc.
>
>Guess it's just a matter of scale. If Israel killed a few thousand
>Palestinians within a calendar year
It has done so. I haven't checked the latest box score, but it's well over 2000, i think, at leastw ithin 18 months. Or does the extra sixth months get them out of the "massacre" category?
>and drove out hundreds of thousands
>more, I think that would qualify
But levellling thousands of homes is OK?
>(yep, I'm drawing an analogy with Kosovo).
>
There the massacre didn't start till the war did,a nd the war may have precipated it and probable did.
>Just another reiteration of my assertion that "preserving the peace" isn't
>a
>good rationale for non-intervention in places where many, many thousands of
>people enjoy no peace whatsoever.
Course the peace of other people counts for something too. If US attacks on Iraq (assuming arguendo what is not true, that the people of Iraq enjoy no peace whatsoever--a claim that could be honestly made about the Palestinians, however), and there is no peace to preserve there, so the people will not really notice if the US flattens their homes, blows up their electrical grid (again), destroys their water supply (again), and so forth--once you say it it's perfectly ridiculous, and it is a real testament to ideology or something that an intelligent person could purport to believe this--nonetheless granting all that, there si the further desatbilizing effect of theattack on the regiona nd the world and the further encouragement it offers the US for other military advaentures to consider. These things do not happen in isolation,
>
> > No, I'm not kidding.
>
>It seemed like you were trying to get some sort of rise out of me by
>implying that I might actually be objecting not to the "Bush doctrine
>stooge" tag but rather the "leftist" label.
Yes. I know you consider yourself to be on the left. But thens o did Sidney Hook in his later years.
>
>I don't see how a priori advocacy or opposition to US intervention is a
>left
>position.
My opposition is not a priori. It is based on over a century of bloddy history which I have recounted here many times, as well as on a realistic undferstanding of the nature of the US state.
>As I said, the disgusting foreign policy "realism" that grounds the Bush
>doctrine is quite distinct from the idealistic stance you sketch above.
Not in real world terms. Besides, I think the "idealistic" stance I sketched is disgusting. Frankly, I'd rather deal with great power realists than Wilsonian idealists. I their they are safer and smarter. Calculations of interest are manageable and leave room for negotiation. Ince they go all high-handed and moral on you, they'll do anything.
>
>BTW, thinking that a state, like a person, might occasionally act in part
>out of benevolence is far from whacky, and it doesn't fall under Wojtek's
>category of "enlightened self-interest," either.
"A state," maybe Holland or Sweden. Not an imperialist hyper-power.
>
> > Which means the abstract discussion is perfectly useless if untethered
>to
> > concrete analysis of the concrete situation.
>
>What "concrete analysis of the concrete situation" do you think should be
>added?
>
Talk about the real history of interventions and the nature of the US govta s an imperialist power. which I have been insisting on and which your flight to philosophy is avoiding. I'd like to hear more from them as knows about thespecific conjuncture, whether Iraq is more than a targer of convebiencea t the pointw here Bush needs an Enemy to distract us from a weak economy in an election year. That sort of talk is more productive than speculating about whether, in some hypothetical circumstances,a hypotherically benevolent state might do the right thing by attacking uts neighbors. jks
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