That it’s fine for another democracy to withdrawl aid. this is the kind of appropriate response to awful rhetoric. but, as per Fukuyama’s general point, such “soft” weapons aren’t macho enough for neo-cons. I take your position to be that it’s desirable for the US to unilaterally declare war on a country whose leadership has previously called for genocide or warmongering. Face it, you dont *want* to allow Hamas a chance to be responsible.

And as for actively suporting democracies that engage in intemperate rhetoric (an Israeli defense minister in the 80s said, “we wont be the first to use nuclear weapons.. and we wont be the second, either” also, it was the position of the Kach party and many in Likud that Palis were “Amelekites”, to be dealt with as the OT demanded — if this is not a call for genocide, there’s no such thing) and democracies that engage in, if not, thank god, active genocide, then ethnic cleansing (which is not necessarily murderous but is immoral; and yes that is the proper term for the policy of bulldozing evictions of Palis from their land in the name of Jewish settlements), and democracies that engage in either (if you believe that Pali problems are “internal”) bills of attainder (so horrible a legal concept that they are explicitly forbidden in our constitution) or assassinations of foriegn leaders (if you believe tha Pali problems are “external”), which are forbidden in America by executive order, then we’ve been doing that for a long time anyway, not to mention Hitchens’s old point, still very valid, that US support for the Israeli settlements amounts to a government funding of an establishment for religion, something that is explicitly forbidden by the first amendment — we’ve been doing all these things for years, thank you very much, though the pearl-clutching at Hamas’s rhetoric is touching.

IF Hamas makes good on their rhetoric, then it’s time for either Israel to deal with them via war a super-national entity to deal with them with force. Until then, deal with their rhetoric and STFU, is my position.

“If to my liking means not committing genocide or not annexing neighboring countries, than yes, since those are precisely the sort things that will strip a country of its sovereignty.”

really? if this is your interpretation of international law, i wonder if you’d mind if it was applied post facto? Or is what was okay in 1898 or 1948 for that matter no longer okay now because the US, at least, does not overtly annex neighboring territory anymore? (Of course Israel still does, but somehow THAT’S DIFFERENT.) When did it stop being okay? Could it be precisely when the US decided that hegemony in the form of military bases was preferable on a practical as well as PR scale to outright annexation?

Last night I found Sidney Blumenthal’s collection of 80′s essays. I’d forgotten just how silly the Reaganite line was toward the Philippines. Put another way, it was worse than i’d remembered in writing this essay. Reagan himself slagged Walter Mondale in the 84 debates in defense of Marcos’s latest “election”. This pro-Marcos line was echoed by Jeane Kirkpatrick in her columns, which typically excoriated the Left’s moral concerns with propping up dictators. Yet you guys still want the neocons to have been on a side of history they never were.

In short, you only allow for soveriegnty and self-determination when the results are to your liking.

If to my liking means not committing genocide or not annexing neighboring countries, than yes, since those are precisely the sort things that will strip a country of its sovereignty. Consider this: if an intervention force invades a country in order to stop genocide, and after it does, it holds an election which results in the party responsible for the genocide being elected, should the intervention force allow the party to stay in power? Is that to your liking? Wouldn’t preventing that popular party from running be “undemocratic�?

Funny you bring up Kissinger’s behavior with regard to Timor.

Sure, let’s talk about Indonesia and East Timor. I’ll again point out that unlike your claim that Wolfowitz supported Aquino only when Marcos was doomed, Suharto’s main political rival befriended Wolfowitz almost a decade before the fall of Suharto. It was Wahid who by his own account said that Wolfowitz’s one speech invigorated the popular opposition, and it seems Wolfowitz didn’t pick the horse, the horse picked him. It was also Suharto who claimed in an interview several years after that speech, and while he was in still in power, that the one line in that one speech had caused him a lot of problems. I’m not claiming by delivering that one line Wolfowitz is responsible for the ousting of Suharto, I’m simply pointing out that he is in the curious position of being considered a Suharto apologist by some, and a loyal friend by the opposition.Like I mentioned before, my claim is not that Wolfowitz was a relentless human rights activist, but to go from that to say that there is no reason to prefer him over Kissinger is something else.

If you look at East Timor, Wolfowitz didn’t speak out against Suharto about the atrocities and is accused to have supported Indonesian military’s atrocities there. Then why is it, I wonder, that Jose Ramos-Horta the East Timorean Nobel Prize winner and foreign minister had said that he had met Wolfowitz during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor between 1986 and 1989 and welcomed his post at the World Bank, saying: “Those who have suspicions and reservations should not have them because Wolfowitz is very humane and sensitive.” You have to admit, it doesn’t quite add up. Do you think Ramos-Horta would say the same thing about Kissinger?

And obviously Wolfy and the Reaganites considered this price a bargain, the bases expendable; obviously they gauged the cory aquino government as not substantively unfriendly, and they were right — they lost the hard accoutrements of imperial presence but maintained hegemony while gaining the ability to say “hey, see we dont like tyrants”, a valuable lie considering their other dealings with the Ayatollah, Hussein, Suharto, etc, that they had going at the same time or were to have going in a few years.

Did Wolfy and Kissinger think *identically* per each “crisis” or country? No. But that doesn’t mean that the former is this bleeding-heart democracy-lover, as his fans like to say, and that the latter is a uniquely malevolent thug. My point is that they more resemble each other than not.

Funny you bring up Kissinger’s behavior with regard to Timor. I addressed that in the post I linked to. Funny that there were no protests then from that well-connected bleeding heart Paul Wolfowitz, nor did he do anything later in his capacity as representative in Indonesia to rectify the moral imbalance.

As for my calling Kissinger amoral, I don’t know why you seem to consider this a compliment. IMO he deserves a cell in The Hague.

“You can, if you want, argue that being opposed to a democracy where the majority chooses to systematically cleanse a minority or wishes to wipe another country off the map is in fact hypocritical, but the reality is that a democracy that pursues those goals is liable to lose its soveriegnty under UN law, and supporting such a concept of democracy is likely to get you back where you started.”

It’s not that I or anyone can argue it’s hypocrisy. It *is* hypocrisy and those who deny it do so at their intellectual peril.

Even Hitchens for God’s sake has argued that Hamas will be forced into a position of responsibility with their election. And if they aren’t, and they take action on their rhetoric, then other nations can hold them accountable. Your protest betrays your internalisation of the stupid and inherently immoral pre-emption doctrine by which democratically-elected parties are condemned and their countries deemed worthy of top-down regime change from an extranational entity (the U.S.) just because you don’t like what you hear and don’t believe that any country anywhere should not like the United States or Israel. In short, you only allow for soveriegnty and self-determination when the results are to your liking. That’s a fair-weather democracy lover, and they deserve contempt just as fairweather sports fans recieve from genuine fans.

ummm, okay…

I suspect that Wolfy’s crew had already inquired through backchannels if the new government would be friendly with the US

So friendly in fact that it was under Aquino’s reign that a century of US military presence ended when the Phillipino Senate shut down the bases at Pampanga and Zambles. This is the sort of thing Kissinger feared despite being “out of the loop”, and clearly he didn’t think it was necessary to abandon Marcos just because Aquino was assasinated.

Funny though that when Wolfowitz was for intervening in Bosnia (along with–shock–Blair) and Iraq in the 90s, he wasn’t in government through most of it, which makes it somewhat difficult to argue that he was using government backchannels to secure US national interests. Perhaps you could explain what his alterior immoral national interest motive was for Bosnia?

I don’t claim that there were people in the US government that stood up for moral causes at every turn, anyone whose been in four or five administrations has been there because he has at times been able to convince his superiors that his proposed actions are in US national interest. Then again, the same could be said for UN Humanitarian Coordinators who get member states to fund their activities by convincing them that its in their national interest to do so (which is often how they get those countries to act).

You can, if you want, argue that being opposed to a democracy where the majority chooses to systematically cleanse a minority or wishes to wipe another country off the map is in fact hypocritical, but the reality is that a democracy that pursues those goals is liable to lose its soveriegnty under UN law, and supporting such a concept of democracy is likely to get you back where you started.

And for you to say that Kissinger was pragmatically amoral and not immoral is hilarious. This after all is the same Kissinger that pretty much gave the green light to Suharto’s adventure in East Timor by telling him right before the conflict that “whatever he does in East Timor needs to succeed quickly.” Awesome.

Dunno. Maybe for the same reason that Eric Alterman felt sorry for him at that party.

Why is it that if the Shultz/Wolfowitz wing weren’t purposely undermining Marcos, and if the “untenable” situation wasn’t a result of US prodding did Kissinger take an op-ed piece out of a newspaper and decry the policies that ended Marcos’ reign and, with respect to bringing democracy to the Philipines, wrote something like “Don’t we have any other overriding interests?”

I suspect that Wolfy’s crew had already inquired through backchannels if the new government would be friendly with the US or would engage in some retribution that we deserved from propping up Marcos for so long, and recieved the answer they wished for. What you dont want to remember is that after the Begnino Aquino assassination, there was no way to hold back the forces against Marcos. He’d sealed his own fate. But until Marcos did that the US was glad to keep him afloat. Kissinger, being out of government, probably worried that there’d be hell to pay to our interests with Marcos gone. Wolfy, being in the know, didnt swaet this sort of thing knowing that he did how he and his fellow hacks could spin the regime change.

But if you want to continue being a pompous, dissembling fucktard then by all means, you’re welcome to.

Why is it that if the Shultz/Wolfowitz wing weren’t purposely undermining Marcos, and if the “untenable” situation wasn’t a result of US prodding did Kissinger take an op-ed piece out of a newspaper and decry the policies that ended Marcos’ reign and, with respect to bringing democracy to the Philipines, wrote something like “Don’t we have any other overriding interests?”

Now where does the Chickenhawk fit into this…

Hell, Yes!

That was a full cup-o-joe post right there. Reminds me of what a friend related to me about a month ago.

He had received a string of email forwards from a Right-minded friend, with the final one in the series relating the story of a man explaining to his son just why the US is in Iraq. The man in the story used the analogy of ‘If you see our neighbors being robbed, beaten, and raped, how does that make you feel?’. The boy in the story becomes angry and declares that he now understands why we’re in Iraq.

So my friend replied to that mail with a continuation of that story:

“But Daddy, by didn’t President Bush say that before we went to war? And why don’t we help the people in Uzbekistan and their neighbors? And what about the people in Sudan? And North Korea?”

“It’s late son. Brush your teeth and go to bed.”

aimai

I’ll start working on that Kevin Phillips post right now, Jillian.

Teh, you make me all melty inside. And i’m still laughin at that Negroponte joke.

:D

Great essay.

btw, it’s been argued by ppl smarter than i that the hamas victory had less to do with embracing hamas outright than selecting representatives that offered at least the resemblance of independence in the face of u.s./israeli meddling, a sort of protest vote.

If you’re feeling sympathetic, you could always claim that it isn’t really their fault – their faith position demands it.

I’m just not feeling overly sympathetic lately.

And of course the governments being backed by the US government in the 80s in Central America included the friendly death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala.

So, you see, the lying started right from the beginning.

“KIRRRRRRK!”

We are the Good Guys (because the author says so). Anything We is do OK, because we are the Good Guys. In fact, Good is defined as “that which we choose to do.”

They are the Bad Guys. Anything They do is–by definition–Bad, even if it happens to be exactly the same thing We do. It’s Bad, because They are Bad Guys. The Author said so.

Maybe it’s worse than that: it’s more like “badly-run role playing game” morality: We are the player characters. We can do anything We want to, because nobody else is real.