thedeadlyhook

No, it doesn't bode well. On the other hand, it's nothing new either - it's not as if the Israelis had suddenly woken up to the idea that excessive force was an option after decades of restraint... So while I agree that America's actions in Afghanistan and Russia's in Chechnya are appalling, "setting a bad example to Israel" is low down on my list of reasons why it's appalling.

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Agreed, yeah, but I just get this horrible feeling of "why not?" coloring international politics right now. What reason is there, really, for any government to show self-restraint anymore? That's what scares me most - all the rules and treaties going away, and who even has enough credibility to mediate something like this anymore? Certainly not the US.

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The US not only has no credibility but is, frankly, no longer the good guy. The rest of the world is shit scared of you - not you as individuals, obviously, but the decent people no longer seem to have any influence at all over the government. On the contrary - one of the scary things about the current government is that it's started trampling on its own citizens in a way that makes me fear for the future of democracy. If they don't care about their own people's rights, what hope have the rest of us got?

Um, this week's anti-US rant was brought to you courtesy of having just read "Stuff Happens".

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Believe me, it's scaring us here too. And I worry even more about the cascade effect - could it be any more obvious that a new world order is up for grabs? It feels like we're in a stage of reorganization on a global scale, and it's unclear as yet who the new big players are going to be, or what their priorities are, but the rising fanaticism on all sides is certainly a bad omen. I keep hoping somehow this will provoke a stronger leadership out oof the EU, but... gah, I have no idea what's going to happen.

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I don't really see how the EU is going to provide stronger leadership without giving up it's greatest strength, which is diversity. I don't WANT to live in a Europe that's governed from the top. Having said that, I don't want to live in a world where "US national interests" justify disregarding sovereignty everywhere else, so it's a tough call. Maybe I should pin my hopes on China... I never thought the day would come when I looked back on the Soviet Union with fondness, but at least in those days the West was eager to show how morally superior they were to the Reds. Now that they've got Terror as the enemy, they can take moral superiority for granted.

If I were North Korea or Iran, I would be building nuclear weapons too. As you say, the cascade effect is bloody terrifying.

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Personally, I don't think I'd put America's actions in Afghanistan on the same level as Russia's handling of Chechnya. The handling of Iraq has been a national disgrace, though, and the upcoming push to formally renounce the Geneva Conventions rather than apply them to terror suspects is probably going to be the last nail in the coffin of America's moral standing...

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Oh, I completely agree re. the relative awfulness of Afghanistan/Iraq, it's just that Afghanistan was mentioned in the previous post, so I felt constrained to stick with the example.

I didn't know that America was hoping to renounce the Geneva Conventions - I mean, not that they're observing them anyway, but as La Rochefoucauld said, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. When the so-called leader of the free world doesn't even feel the need to be hypocritical about human rights any more, then - well. Not the good guys anymore.

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I didn't know that America was hoping to renounce the Geneva Conventions - I mean, not that they're observing them anyway, but as La Rochefoucauld said, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.

Now that the Supreme Court has confirmed that even terror suspects have to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, it's put the administration in a bit of a bind. The Geneva Conventions unambigously rule out, say, stripping detainees, standing them in a freezing cold cell, and dousing them with buckets of cold water, which the Bush administration currently consider a suitable interrogation technique. I've seen a couple of press reports that, rather than changing its operating procedure, the administration may have Congress pass legislation to redefine its treaty obligations or possibly even discard parts of the Geneva Conventions altogether. (After all, the attorney general has gone on record calling them "quaint.")

So, yeah. If you think America's global reputation is bad now, just imagine the world reaction if it renounces the Geneva Conventions. I think that would probably use up the last scraps of the moral capital the U.S. has accumulated since World War II.

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Am I the only person in the universe who doesn't see the US as morally compromised? Well, I don't. I think the US invaded Iraq out of too much idealism, rather than not enough. It's those who lack idealism who say: you should never intervene, you should let things play their course, these people aren't ready for democracy/don't deserve democracy. Part of the reason it went wrong is pretty bad planning but also because there is still a massively self-destructive thing going on in the Arab world where factional poltics and violence matter more than the chance to build a nation. Taking Saddam away just let it all out -- just like the former Yugoslaiva. It's the fact that the US is soft, not too tough, that's let things fall apart in Iraq. The Nazis knew how to occupy a country. Just publicly hang 10 people in every village if they aren't playing nice. That gets people to behave. That's why they behaved under Saddam.

And I'm not suggesting anyone should use that tactic.

What's going on in the MIddle East doesn't frighten me too much (though of course it would if I lived in northern Israel or southern Lebanon) -- there are big forces at play there and when they get out of balance, something gives. Iran and Syria are the big players trying to influence things through Lebanese factions. They are the bad bastards. I don't see why it's so wrong for Bush to say so, even if it gets heard through the wrong mike. I think Israel is playing hardball and probably overreacting. However I also think Israel, with US push and shove, has bent over backwards at various times, to get a peace deal with the Palestinians and time and again the Palestinians turn it down. The classic was when Clinton was in power and Ehud Barak was PM in Israel. An extremely good deal was hammered out and Arafat turned it down. Why? Because he was stuck in the past, because he didn't want to give up the heroic status of victim-leader and get on with governing Palestine, because that wasn't as sexy. And Iran and Syria and organisations such as Hamas and Hizbollah, as much as they claim to love the cause of the Palestinians, have NO interest in the Palestinians making peace with Israel. In fact that's the last thing they want since then there would be no propaganda tool to rouse their masses against the West. So who's really the enemy of the Palestinans?

I get so angry when I hear people say that Bush is somehow more dangerous to the world than say Osama bin Laden. Now THAT I find morally reprehensible. On relative merits, I'm still very happy that the US is the world's only superpower.

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I'm not sure if I should respond to this, because it seems like you're reacting to the opinions of assorted third parties rather than commenting specifically on my political views. And that's perfectly fine, because Lord knows we're all just venting here anyways.

But just for the record, I should note that despite everything that's happened in the last three years I'm still glad the U.S. invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein, no matter what the motivations were. It's the way the Bush administration has handled Iraq since then that I'd characterize as a national disgrace. Just so we're clear on that...

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Yes, I am venting, with lots of things in my head from taking in news and views from all over the place. It wasn't exactly in response to you or aimed at you. I think I just kind of plonked my view in the middle of all the comments there. Just a wodge of opinion and frustration.

I'm glad you think that about the invasion of Iraq. I wonder how many of your fellow Americans now think that. I wonder whether what is happening now in Iraq would have happened anyway, regardless of how tight and on-the-ball the Americans had been. Maybe, maybe not.

I was saying to someone yesterday that I believe the strength and viciousness of the insurgency there now reflects the importance of what is at stake. To me, it reflects how threatening a functioning and tolerant democracy in the middle of the Arab world is to powerful forces in the region -- the forces of tyranny and religious extremism. For Iraq to succeed would be an overwhelming blow to them. It's very very sad. So you can say America has fumbled the ball (sorry for the sporting metaphor) but I also think there is more to it than that.

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I think I just kind of plonked my view in the middle of all the comments there. Just a wodge of opinion and frustration.

Gotcha. That was what I figured, and I think it's pretty much what everyone else was doing. :-)

As for the Iraq issue, I suspect I'm probably an outlier here. I'm no master pollster, but my impression is that most of the Americans who supported the invasion did so either because they believed Saddam Hussein was about to get nuclear weapons, or that he was personally responsible for September 11, or both. I don't think Bush himself really misled the public on these points, but Cheney and Rumsfeld most certainly did.

As a wooly liberal internationalist who reads lots of superhero comics, I think it's a fine thing for America to use its might to get rid of monstrous dictators and spend billions of dollars on humanitarian relief efforts. But I don't think that's a mainstream American viewpoint, and a lot of the people who supported the invasion as an exercise in revenge or self-defense are now pretty pissed off about it.

Meanwhile, as angry as I am about the postwar handling, I guess there really is no way to know if the reconstruction effort might have succeeded if it had been run in a halfway competent fashion. A lot of commentators now seem to be deciding that it was doomed from the start, with the accompanying political spin - the left-wing version being "Nyah nyah, we told you neocons it wouldn't work," and the right-wing version being "This proves that Arabs and/or Muslims only understand brute force and can't handle democracy after all." But I guess I'm still too idealistic to buy that.

Whew, this is running a bit long, so I'll spare you my own half-baked ideas about "Iraq: What went wrong." But I think it's all probably a lot more complicated than most people would like to think - a lot of different forces, a lot of different agendas. Just for one example, there's the way the late, unlamented Zarqawi refashioned Bin Laden's goal of uniting the Muslim world against the West into a pogrom against Shia Muslims. Now that the Shia are striking back, the Sunnis who started the insurgency are belatedly looking to the U.S. for protection. A U.S. adminstration that spent years denying there even was an insurgency is going to have a hard time managing such a complicated situation, but I guess it's pretty much out of their hands at this point.

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I'm in complete agreement with you on Iraq.

And I too am idealistic — too idealistic to be cynical. I think most Arabs anywhere want peace, freedom and security and to have a flatscreen TV and send their kids to good schools, just like all of us.

BUt I also feel that Arab/Muslim civilisation in general hasn't gone through the same kind of reformation that the Christian West went through in centuries of warfare in Europe that lead to the slow, painful and bloody buildup of the institutions that lead to stable democracy. It's a long slow thing, and I think America has been idealistic in thinking that it can happen quickly. But I think I would err on the side of idealism too, rather than be cynical and hands off which is how I see a lot of European foreign policy. And it intrigues me to read in the Washington Post yesterday (second lead story) that the Bush administration is now under fire from the right for being too moderate and soft in its foreign policy. If you're being castigated from both the left and the right, then maybe you might just be doing OK...

I found an interesting article a few weeks back, which suggests that the West should perhaps just pull back and let Iraq fight itself to a standstill through civil war, and only when they get sick of bloodshed will there be peace. I'm not sure I'm that utilitarian/machiavellian/hardnosed (I'm not clear which word to use) that I would agree, but it is still a very interesting argument.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/05/07/do0709.xml

I would consider myself an internationalist too, perhaps a very dry liberal, or a moderate conservative. I remember discussing the whole free trade issue with people at work — most of our clothes here are now made in China and I don't have a problem with it. I said: all those billions of Chinese workers have to do something. I remember when I was a kid, things like teeshirts and jeans were so expensive that my parents couldn't afford to buy them.

Cheers : }

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I'm in complete agreement with you on Iraq.

What? But we're talking about politics! On the Internet! That just doesn't seem right somehow. :-)

I think your comment about "the institutions that lead to stable democracy" is very apt. Elections are groovy, but they're not enough to secure peace and freedom all by themselves. You also need the kind of institutional framework that guarantees individual rights and freedoms, private property and private belief, the rule of law and all that other good stuff, or else you basically just have mob rule with a scorecard. (Fareed Zakaria, one of America's best international journalists, recently wrote a book on this subject that I sincerely mean to read some day.) And that's obviously going to be an issue in a heterogenous country like Iraq.

Of course, it's a lot easier for me to sit in my cozy swivel chair saying that to go out and try to build these kinds of institutions. I don't think it's necessary for people to go through centuries of war and turmoil in order to establish these foundations - at least I hope not, considering how easily even civilized nations can lose them again - but I doubt it helps when you have people actively trying to tear your society apart while you're doing it.

If you're being castigated from both the left and the right, then maybe you might just be doing OK...

I'd really like to think so. For all the idealism in Bush's speeches, it seldom seems to filter down the chain of command, and he's entrusted the day-to-day implementation to people who seem fairly indifferent to the state of Iraqi democracy - or even, like Donald Rumsfeld, apparently "bored" of Iraq in general. At least with Condoleezza Rice installed at the State Department, there's finally somebody with both a genuine interest in implementing Bush's goals and the bureaucratic power to do so. I don't have the greatest faith in Bush's foreign-policy instincts, but I'll take them over Cheney's and Rumsfeld's any day of the week. :-)

I found an interesting article a few weeks back, which suggests that the West should perhaps just pull back and let Iraq fight itself to a standstill through civil war, and only when they get sick of bloodshed will there be peace.

Interesting article. I don't think I agree with all the analysis, but I may be able to get behind Luttwak's conclusions. Unlike America or England, which were tied together by ideology and force of habit, there's not much holding Iraq together but the passing whim of a long-ago British bureaucrat. Luttwak's advice would probably just lead to Iraq breaking up into segregated mini-nations, which is kind of the opposite outcome to the American civil war, but at this point that might be the best thing for everyone. I gather Baghdad used to be the kind of place where people of all races and creeds could coexist (at least when they weren't getting bushwacked by the secret police), but then again so was Sarajevo, and look how that turned out...

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Ah well, Toys, better minds than ours have been stumped by these questions. If we knew all the answers, then perhaps the State Department would be paying us lots of money to advise Condi where to go and what to say!

When you think about the breakup of nations along ethnic lines, there's been quite a bit of those tensions all across central and eastern Europe since the collapse of communism (how blithely we use that phrase ``collapse of communism'' but who would have thought 20 years ago that it would ever be so). I think it's always an ongoing thing. Look how Europe has been reorganising itself since the huge empires of the 18th and 19th century — the Austro-Hungarian, and the Ottoman Empire which ran most of the Middle East. And Scotland and Wales still don't quite want to let go. ;-} So many Scots still loathe the English, the bitterness of centuries, still a lot of ``shouting across the border'' as they call it. C'est la vie.

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I'd have a longer reply for you if time weren't a little tight for me right now, but I understand what you're saying, and from other conversations we've had, I think we're generally on the same page of thinking that a right action is a right action regardless of political considerations. And there really isn't anybody here, frankly, who was sad to see Hussein deposed, or didn't think it was a good idea. The part that's worrying me, and a lot of other people here, is the way that action was used not so much to export freedom as to occupy another country and then to cluelessly exacerbate their existing internal issues. I know the Middle East situation is far from simple; it's been a powerkeg my entire life, so it's not that the area has ever lacked its own self-lighting fuse, but to see other countries following suit after the U.S., abandoning diplomacy and deciding to go straight for the guns, scares the crap out of me. The world does not feel a safer place to me right now, does not feel like a place where rational thought is driving a lot of the decisions. And a lot of innocent civilians caught in the middle.

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Cheers TDH! I guess you are getting ready for Writercon and I hope you have a good time.

to see other countries following suit after the U.S., abandoning diplomacy and deciding to go straight for the guns, scares the crap out of me.

I think there has been a lot of behind the scenes wrangling over the years between Israel, Syria, Lebanon, the UN and Hizbollah, over the vexed question of Hizbollah continuing to be armed and building up a great stock of Syrian missiles in south Lebanon, pointed at Israel. The UN told Hizbollah years ago they had to disarm. So I think there is a lot of diplomatic context. But yeah, innocent civilians are caught in the middle — they are and I fear they always will be. It's not like the great battlefields of WW1 where the battlefield was over there and the people were over here. In fact your less palatable militias make sure they embed themselves right in the middle of populous neighbourhoods, in mosques etc.

I guess I still don't feel the world is as scary and unstable now as it was during the cold war. I did feel scared then. Not now, for some reason. Maybe I'm just old and mild and accepting these days. I guess I feel that things happen for a reason, and will resolve themselves in time. And I feel very lucky to live where I do. I may live in a country that no-one thinks of, and which has no influence (the polar opposite of being an American) but it's a pretty safe place. Then again a bus could hit me tomorrow.

The thing that really does get on my wick though, and I'm certainly not saying this is true of yourself or Toys, is kneejerk loathing of the West by western liberals who seem completely blind to the freedoms they take for granted, and completely blind to the huge conflicting pressures on America during any international crisis. It's a balancing act.

Anyway, have fun on your trip! Hope it's not too hot...

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danceswithwords.livejournal.com

I am really, really concerned about what's going on. Not only is leadership by example important, so is having a functioning foreign policy apparatus that is capable of stepping in and defusing the situation using diplomacy, and we don't have that either.

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It just gets scarier and scarier every day. That footage of Dubya last night making jokes on The Daily Show gave me chills. I don't think anyone in that administration really has any conception of actual negotiation that doesn't involve "I'm bigger and meaner than you are." And that's certainly not going to help here.

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paratti.livejournal.com

We're all so screwed.

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I wish I didn't agree. But I do. This is bad.

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rahirah

Sometimes I just want to send the whole damn world to its room. :/

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I wish you could. There really is a general air of bratty childishness is international affairs right now, isn't there? It's like all the adults have left the building.

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lynnenne

I'm normally very sympathetic to Israel, but this time I think they've over-reacted in a big way. The difference between what the U.S. did in Afghanistan and Iraq, and what Israel is doing in Lebanon, is that the Lebanese government is democratically elected. Hizbullah is only a minor player in the coalition government. It's true that the Lebanese government may not have done all it can to pressure the party into surrendering its weapons, but Lebanon has about as much control over Hizbullah as the Irish had over the IRA. I really don't think the invasion of a democratic nation, and the deaths of dozens of innocent civilians, is an appropriate response to an attack by a rogue terrorist group.

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They're not quite a rogue terrorist group - as you say, they're in the government. Sinn Fein at least had the sense to pretend the IRA was a different organisation, whereas Hizbullah's political wing doesn't distinguish itself from the armed wing. On the other hand, sheesh, attacking one of the few functioning democracies in the region isn't going to do Israel any good at all in the longer term.

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I think the part that gets me the most is that this was so obviously a revenge strike, not a tactical one. Just a message that Israel is willing to be ruthless and indiscriminate, that they didn't care about the difference between legimate governments and rogue terrorists. In that sense, it is very much following in the footsteps of the Iraq action.

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