perfidy

Bucketman, with all due respect, I feel it necessary to point out that the use of the term Mohammedan is archaic. More importantly, followers of Islam regard the use of the term as offensive. I do not seek to scold you for this. I recognize it is an oversight, and merely wish to indicate that the term Islamic, or better yet, Muslim, are the best ways to go. Perhaps it is silly, but your posts would indicate that the United States must enter this new terrain in Middle Eastern foreign policy in the spirit of cooperation with its people, especially Muslims. To that end, it's better to use the word Muslim as an adjective. 

Just who is next? And other tangents 

I believe that widening the war to Iran and Syria would be a tremendous mistake at this point. As someone whose maternal grandmother was Lebanese Maronite Christian, I have serious qualms about the rule of al Assad. His father occupied my grandmother's country, and to my knowledge, Syria maintains a military presence there. He has some nerve bragging about his campaigns in Lebanon. Al Assad is a bastard, like his dead father. Of course, the Israelis still have troops hanging around the south, and not long ago, seemed to think they could bomb Beirut whenever they felt like it. To be fair, within the Lebanese context, they both suck. 

But that's neither here nor there. I maintain that Hussein posed no significant threat to the United States, and that the war cannot be justified on those terms. The notion of liberating Iraq, the way I see it, only came after many people weren't buying the weapons and threat to the U.S. argument, so the administration changed its tune. It's an excuse, not a causal factor. Rumsfeld and Cheney had no problem with Hussein gassing Kurds before; I don't think they really have a problem with Hussein's treatment of his citizenry now. The administration has not really told the truth about why it is fighting this war. I don’t believe that it is about oil; it is political. But beyond that, the administration has not been forthcoming. 

But that is also beside the point. The war against Iraq has inflated the possibility of terrorist attacks. A war against Syria and Iran will inflate it further. I fail to understand how a war against Iraq, which created a greater possibility for further attacks, simultaneously lowered the likelihood of attacks. Oh, right, after Hussein was deposed, then the threat was lowered. But he didn't pose a threat in the first place. It's enough to give me motion sickness.

There are other ways to deal with Syria and Iran than war. Iran has a significant population of moderates. Why doesn't the United States attempt further dialogue with them? Why did our President just slap them with an axis of evil label, alienating moderates? Can't we work with those who would listen rather than calling them evil and shooting them? Steve, you indicate that the prospect of further war is dodgy, and that encouragement of democratization is possible. I couldn't agree more. But to make sure I'm clear, we can't make people be democratic or republican by holding a gun to their head, or shooting them. Dialogue and diplomacy with moderates and reformists is infinitely preferable to war. You also correctly point out that Saudi Arabia is probably the biggest problem. You bet it is. But the United States thus far has been committed to assisting the Saudi monarchy and helping to preserve a system that does everything you said it did, plus it stones women to death for adultery. The U.S. will have to withdraw its support for that monarchy? Is the administration willing to do that? I doubt it, but we'll see. 

Again with the Nazis?

Steve, Steve, Steve. First, Vichy administered Syria during World War II, not Germany. Vichy was a puppet state of Germany, but don’t you think if Germany ruled it directly the campaign in Egypt would have gone quite differently? Iraq was in the British sphere of influence during the war, not France. Any colonial administration of Iraq was performed by the British, not the French. 

The Ba'athist party thus did not stem from German influence during the war. It was an anti-colonial nationalist movement directed against British influence in Egypt, Iraq, and elsewhere. It was also an anti-colonial nationalist movement against French influence in Syria. If it was influenced by German nationalism, then it was also influenced by every other nationalist movement in history. 

Secondly, it was a pan-Arabist movement with the ultimate goal of uniting the Middle East under a single government. Egypt and Syria briefly played with that one, until they realized they couldn't get along. But how was that a product of German influence? I'll keep it short for now. Further discussion can be engaged at your discretion. 

Conclusion: on the left, Hussein's removal, and widening the war 

Steve, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you were engaging in generalizations of the European and American left for purposes of brevity. But I will nevertheless weigh in with some of my own views. As a teacher of history, I have never hesitated to be honest with my students about Stalin. I give them the numbers. I mention Robert Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow, which argues that Stalin artificially engineered the Ukrainian famine. I do not excuse the mass slaughter of innocents under anyone just because they claimed to be Communist. I reiterate: it was only a claim because they never launched the global revolution of class war. Anything less was not Communism in the strict letter of Marxist/Engelsian prophecy. 

Some other people, who paint themselves as leftists, have excused Stalin, Mao, and others. I have argued with them, stating that there was no excuse. I can remember one jug-head at a conference a couple of years back who will remain nameless. He argued that the USSR could not be industrialized without mass slaughter. I asked, who gives a shit about industrialization if it has to be accomplished that way? The preservation of human life unfettered by oppressive government with a roof over every head, clothes on every back, and food on every plate are the goals, not lip service to bullshit, bastardized, half-baked, "I can't believe it's not Marxism" so-called falsely asserted Communism blown out the asses of functionally illiterate imbeciles like Stalin and Mao who looked at the pictures in the Classic Comics edition of The Communist Manifesto. But human life is the main thing for our purposes. 

To that end, is the removal of Saddam Hussein a good thing? Ultimately, probably, unless somebody worse comes along. But even with a more democratic government, how free will Iraqi citizens be with American tanks and troops occupying their country? Was it the place of the United States to remove him? You argue, yes, it is. I'm not so sure. Is the United States going to attack every oppressive regime? Will we fight Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, China, and Britain? The UK is still occupying the north of Ireland, and has engaged in human rights violations against Catholics there. Let's go to war with Britain. So what constitutes an oppressive regime? Who's going to decide that? Could we end up with a global witch hunt? We're on a slippery slope, and widening the war to Syria and Iran will only increase our velocity. Cheney and Rumsfeld and the other neo-Reaganites got their war. Enough.