Bartlett's Bizarre Bazaar

Andrew,
followed the link from Harry's Place. i left one more comment, but we should leave it at that. we can correspond here instead.

i don't think i agree with your assessment of El Salvador, and the fight against world communism(tm) at all. it seems to me that you are advocating that we in the USA should have surrendered the world to the Soviets simply because we were unwilling to get our hands dirty. i have to say that given what we know about the USSR now, our actions were on the whole, justified. that's about as good as it gets in the real world.

as for Saddam and our support of him. i think that when history has its say, we will understand that by aiding and abetting the viciousness of a secular jerk, we neutralized the ambitions of the religious jerk. at the same time, we kept Saddam busy. Sadly, when the USSR was around, we were unable to intervene directly an club them both into a well deserved coma. now we have the opportunity.

my email is attached to the Harry's Place comments should you need it.
Sean
 

I understand the realpolitik arguments for supporting Saddam and backing death squads, but I do not agree with them. If it was legitimate to support the torture and murder of people to prop up, say, Saddam's regime, then it surely exonerates Saddam for doing just that. After all, by your arguments, his depredations were necessary to combat the Communist revolution in the first instance, and, after the overthrow of the Shah, the Islamic revolution.

That you support these, yet still seek to punish the non-American perpetrators of these crimes, points to an amoral American exceptionalism. I.e. what America does in the pusuit of its ends is de facto right, even when they contradict its ends and demand the condemnation of events still supported in retrospect.

Your comments about 'keeping Saddam busy' speak of your utter indifference of the Iraqis themselves, except where they can be turned into tools for your own nationalist ambitions.

I doubt that I shoudl expect anything else from a contributor to a blog that regularly uses the dehumanising phrase, 'the turd world'.
 

Apologies, I thought you were recommending 'Diplomadic' as you were a contributor.

The US is not being judged against perfection, at least not by me. It is judged according to its own standards and values, or at least those it articulates as being its standards and values. It the past it has fallen short in way that, to an outsider, seems wicked. That it is less bad than those it opposes it not a sufficient argument for saying that it is good. I have made this argument before. US actions in Latin America during the Cold War seems to go much further than simply preventing Communist dictatorship, running right through to the establishment of right-wing oligarchal torture states. Importantly, these states were relatively unconcerned with distributing the wealth of the nations amongst the people of the nations, did not nationalise indutries or allow too much irritating democracy, and were happy to see the profits of the nations industries primarily swell the bank accounts of a few local strongmen and foreign corporations. These are not the standards and values that the US claimed to espouse at the time, so naturally, the US is judged harshly when considered against its public face.

Furthermore, there is the feeling that the US is a home of freedom, yet it disappoints, and sometimes is, as I have said above, seen to behave in a way that cannot be described as anything other than wicked. Consequently, if you are an Iraqi, or an Uzbecki, or a Chilean, it seems perfectly reasonable to look suspiciously, or even with hostility, at the US and its actions abroad. Here is a nation that stands on the principle of freedom, but it is one that was active in its support of governments that gassed your people, threw them out of helicopters or raped them with dogs, or boiled them alive, at least, were active in this support so long as it suited the interests of the US.

Now, you ask me and I will criticise many, indeed all, other governments too. But America is unique, especially now, in its global power. While many governments act in ways that can only be described as wicked, only the US can project this across the globe. Most nations only act within their borders, more or less. The government of the US has the power to affect the lives of all citizens on Earth in the course of fairly unspectacular, everyday behaviour, whether economically, culturally or militarily. That the US is a democracy is all well and good, for those within the US, but for those beyond the US it may as well be a dictatorship, for its power is unaccountable.
 

Sean, you misunderstand. The democracy of the USA legitimates the internal exercise of its power. When it exercises its power outside its borders, the fact that it is a democracy is more or less irrelevant. The people beyond the borders of the USA who are subject to the decisions of the USA have no (or proportionally very little) control or input over this exercise of power. This, whatever you feel are the benefits of this system, is best described as the dictatorial use of power - decisions are dictated, in this case, from the outside.

For example, consider a one party state. In The Party there is absolute democracy, but The Party governs the state by dictat, not democracy. Here, the democracy of The Party is irrelevant to the people of the state, as it is their relationship with the power that is exercised over them which characterises the form of government they endure.

Your comments on power are interesting, and sound frighteningly fascistic, in the sense that you see nothing wrong in domination by the powerful, as power is the legitimising 'virtue'. Consider converting your approach to US actions in the wider world to a domestic setting. Here, the powerful are justified in their power as a matter of course, and you would think nothing of a state organised in an undemocratic fashion, led by the powerful. Democracy is a means of empowering people in the decisions that affect their lives.

In previous posts you have argued that America's moral purpose is the spread of democracy. Your argument here appears to contradict this, suggesting that, in fact, you are happy with the unaccountable exercise of power over foreign peoples, just so long as a minority of the worlds most wealthy and powerful people do not dissent.

The UN is a means of preventing a state of international affairs that is governed solely by the exercise of self-interested power. That you think this is not only the way international affairs are, but that this should be the way international relations should be, you cast the democratising goal of the US in the mould of a fiction, a lie that legitimises war.
 

"[V]iolence is that higher court. [I]t is what keeps the food chain running the way it does."

Sean, I don't have to tell you that, with a handful of very rare exceptions, people don't eat other people anymore. If we draw a food chain, human beings all occupy the same level. Even if they did not, it is hard to see how you claim to find the basis of morality in 'nature, red in tooth and claw'.

Your argument about bullies is laughable. If we didn't delegitimise the role of violence in our social organisation, then it would not be the good kid who triumphed in the playground, as it might in some Hollywood movie. Rather, the bully would run the school. You know Sean, the process of moving away from violence as a legitimate means of organising society is roughly described as civilisation.

We build institutions to place violence as far away from our interactions as possible. We frame laws, build law courts and employ the police. We build systems of government that at least attempt to create the impression that political power is shared between the people. The UN is this writ large, an attempt to delegitimise war, except as the last resort.

Now, your vision of society seeks to strip all this away, to celebrate the use of force as a means of shaping society as desired. This, I'm afraid, the the kind of 'triumph of the will', 'uberman' ideology that so inspired fascism and countless militaristic dictatorships since.

Celebrating American power as if this legitimates its actions and its social organisation is a foolish manner of argument, as in 1939 you would have been forced to accept that Germany must have the best social and economic system, as it was the most powerful, and in 1900 you would have been full of praise for Britain as it killed, tortured and raped its way round an empire. I dare say that in the 1960s and 1970s you would have been singing the praises of Soviet totalitarian Communism.

You seek a world where violence legitimates and where tax is thought of as murder. What you seek is barbarity, but with that you are happy as you are a member of the strongest tribe. I seek a world that delegitimates violence and seeks to organise society increasingly on the basis of the common good. This is not a utopian dream, as we do see murder as legitmate, we delegate the power of force to a government bound by institutions, laws and distributed political power. This end can be achieved on an international stage also.