More on this Renderosity thread about the war in Iraq. Anyway, read on while I explain global politics to the heathens. In this post I was helped in finding the quote I was looking for thanks to this great post on the Rocket Man blog.

51. Re: Explain it to everyone again by soulhuntre on 3/13/04 01:38

“USA are bent on doing whatever they please whenever they want just because they want it and have the power to do it.
Just a rogue state.
A big rogue state.”

A “rogue” state as opposed to a what, “herd state”? A “conformist state”? If a rogue states is< as it seems to be, one that will act to preserve its own security and make sovereign decisions then I am happy the USA is “rogue”, and I hope we remain so.

The alternative to being a “rogue” state seems to be to remain open and vulnerable, to not have the freedom to act in our own defense and to have decisions about our security made by Germany, France and others in the UN. No thanks. I addressed this just under a year ago in a post on my web log.

“The UN is a fine arena for global politics. It is a good place to attempt diplomacy and it is a good forum for trying to reach consensus.

When push comes to shove, however, the US is a sovereign nation with a absolute responsibility to protect itself, its citizens and its interests. We should take the UN’s wishes into account – but by no means should we surrender our security, survival and defense policy to a voting body of nations that for the most part don’t really care what is good for us or each other.

This nation MUST not allow its very existence and right to defend itself exist at the sufferance of the Security Council.” – my full posting

The reality is that geopolitics is a game played for keeps. No “do-overs” and you don’t get to run home to mommy and tell her the other kids were being mean to you.  When a nation is destroyed it is gone forever, so you don’t have the luxury of playing a waiting game on national security. If ensuring that there will be a USA in the future means taking unilateral action then I say take it.

“Besides, your reasoning is exactly the same that the terrorists use”

Of course there is a similarity – because human nature is what it is, and what it always will be. I don’t consider the use of force to achieve geopolitical ends to be unethical in all circumstances – even preemptively if necessary (Iraq). The ethical difference between our actions and those of the terrorist forces arrayed against us is much more complex than some naive view of “violence bad” or “UN good, self governance bad”.  I consider our actions in Iraq  ethical because I fundamentally believe in what the USA stands for, what we are a force for on the global  stage and I believe we are acting in our own credible defense. I believe none of those things about Al Queda.

I think that fundamentally the US acting to preserve its national security against a growing threat by taking military action that avoided civilian casualties as much as possible and resulted in a state that is no longer throwing citizens into wood chippers to be a good thing. I believe the actions of a group of religious fundamentalists murdering women and children ina  deliberate attempt to cause the maximum civilian loss of life because their god tells them to hate us to be bad.

The motivation behind a violent action is a crucial component of the ethical judgment of that action. The basic precept that the only way to make your point is sometimes through violent action is ethically neutral, it is simply a reality.

“It is untrue because the basis for it is that you can scare the other side into doing what you want. This is not true. It has never been, and it will never be. You can scare the other side into using devious ways to shoot at you, that’s all.”

Bull. Deterrence absolutely does work when properly applied. Deterrence is what kept the world out of a nuclear conflict during the cold war. Deterrence would have prevented WWII. Deterrence absolutely can limit the escalation of violence. Will we be able to deter the terrorist forces who wish our downfall into taking no actions against us at all? No, I doubt it. But deterrence and the application of force absolutely can limit the scope of the damage they can do to us, and the resources they can gather to use in the operations intended to cause us harm.

Those who believe violence never “solved” anything have paid no attention to world history. Despite the source of the quote (Starship Troopers, a science fiction novel) the quote below is totally on the money…

One girl told him bluntly: “My mother says violence never solves anything.”

“So?” Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. “I’m sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn’t your mother tell them so? Or why don’t you?”

They had tangled before – since you couldn’t flunk the course, it wasn’t necessary to keep Mr. Dubois buttered up. She said shrilly, “You’re making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!”

“You seem to be unaware of it,” he said grimly. “Since you do know it, wouldn’t you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea – a practice I shall always follow. Anybody who clings to the historically untrue – and thoroughly immoral – doctrine that ‘violence never solves anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedom.” – [[wp:Starship_Troopers|Starship Troopers]], [[wp:Robert_Heinlein|Robert Heinlein]]

“geoegress, I think a lot of people realized the strategic reasons behind the invasion of Iraq. But whether you agreed with them or not, those aren’t the reasons we were given”

They were the reasons I heard at the time. The points layed out by the President at the time were, as I recall…

• That the Iraq government was a supporter of terrorists, and that terrorist activity was clearly the #1 security threat to the USA at the time.
• That the elimination of the Iraq government would dramatically lessen the resources available to terrorist forces in the region.
• That there was credible evidence that Iraq was working on the acquisition of WMD’s and that there was no conclusive evidence that they had destroyed their existing WMD’s stocks from the last war of aggression they launched.
• That Saddam was a vicious dictator who would have absolutely no qualms about using such weapons against us, or providing them to terrorists to be used against us.
• That as a result of the above, in a post 9/11 world it was clear we could no longer tolerate this threat, and that our security would be increased by the downfall of the Iraqi government.

Sounds to me like that’s all still true. Was the evidence of WMD’s weak or inaccurate now that we have invaded the country and been able to finally gather the intelligence we (and the UN) were denied while Saddam was in power? Yup. Is it possible that the WMD thread was deliberately overstated by the President at the time? Sure. If we were deliberately misled should we as a nation vote his ass out of office? Yup.

However saying that the only reason we were given was the WMD threat is not at all correct.

EVERY NATION on this planet is acting in their own best interests. All co-operation between nations is transitory and situational. Each and every nation is “rogue”… the thing that pisses so many people off is that the US has the ability to act without begging permission from nations who clearly do not have our interests as a priority (the UN).

Hell, I am not even mad at Iraq for ignoring the UN. The only reason I consider it a valid contribution to the case for invasion is because their willingness to take unilateral action made them a less easily controlled threat.

Ethically? I consider it a failing for any nation to subsume the interests of it’s citizens to the UN. Any nation that deliberately gives up is sovereignty to others lives at their sufferance. That is a fine trade for many nations, they don’t have the power to defend themselves and only by joining together can they hope to survive. But for a nation like the US that is capable of unilateral action it would be criminal for us to allow harm to come to pass to our nation and our citizens in the name of turning over our self determinacy to the vote of the UN.