[Dean's World] Dave Price: Exceptionally Delusional

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dave Price:
Exceptionally Delusional
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1191435671.shtml


   Apropos Dean's post below, Paul Campos is one antiwar voice who is
   [1]most assuredly not accepting the moral case for the Iraq war, and
   based on his reasoning perhaps not even WW II or the Cold War:

     Fukuyama's main regret about the invasion is that the unpleasant
     consequences of the occupation (such as the deaths of between 1 and
     5 percent of Iraq's population and the transformation of a
     significant minority of the rest into refugees) might deter
     similarly "idealistic" efforts to use American military force to
     advance democracy and human rights.

   But this assertion about the consequences of the Iraq War does not
   reflect reality. The choice was not between Iraq under occupation and
   a peaceful Iraq free of violence; the latter never existed except in
   the fantasies and children-flying-kites propaganda of those who
   supported the continuation of Saddam's cruel reign. To assess the net
   number of deaths resulting from the decision to invade Iraq, we must
   also weigh the cost of inaction: the number of deaths the Hussein
   regime would have perpetrated in our absence. A conservative estimate
   is Saddam was responsible for some 2 million deaths during his
   warmongering reign (two invasions of neighbors, two major civil wars,
   two wars caused by the regime's intranisgence in the face of the
   international community's demands) which works out to about 7,000 per
   month â far below the reported death toll in any month of the war and
   occupation.
   Extrapolating from the regime's prior behavior, it would be more
   accurate to say we have probably saved a number of people equivalent
   to 1 to 5 percent of the Iraq population â and granted the rest some
   semblance of free press, free expression, freedom to own things like
   cars, generators, and cell phones, and (lest we forget the most sacred
   right of men, without which none other can long be preserved) free
   elections. And we would be remiss not to consider the end of the
   crippling sanctions the UN claimed killed 500,000 Iraqis, imposed
   because of the regime's behavior.

     I have no doubt that both the neo-cons and their liberal hawk
     enablers believe that their devotion to neo-imperialism is based
     not on the crass considerations that have always driven
     international politics, i.e., power and money, but on a virtuous
     urge to use whatever means were necessary to bring what Mark Twain
     referred to as The Person Sitting in Darkness into the light of
     freedom, democracy, etc., etc.
     That every imperial power since the dawn of time has claimed
     exactly the same thing has not the slightest effect on this
     touching faith in the purity of our own motives.

   Risible. "Every?" Try "hardly any." The Romans (occasionally) and the
   Communists (constantly) might have claimed altruism, but the former
   was arguably often correct as it extended to new subjects the benefit
   of Pax Romana as well as concepts like rule of law and individual
   rights, and for the latter these propagandistic claims were part of
   the mechanism for expansion and justification for the greatest mass
   murders in mankind's history.
   But from the Japanese to the Mongols to the Aztecs to the Persians to
   the Nazis, rare has been the Empire that even pretended to itself that
   its will to conquer was other than self-serving and self-aggrandizing,
   and none granted autonomy, spurned tribute, and spent its own blood
   and treasure to rebuild and rehabilitate those they conquered as we
   have. There was no Marshall Plan for Carthage, Baghdad 1258, or
   Nanking, no regard for the human rights of prisoners at Tenochtitlan
   or Auschwitz.
   One might even go so far as to call the efforts of the American
   empire... exceptional.

References

   1. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5712141,00.html