This is bad news, as is this from Urban Empire. And this, via LGF, is downright terrifying.
Time is not on our side, I'm afraid.
Posted by Ideofact at August 11, 2004 11:57 PMKristoff can rest easy, as there is almost no chance that any nukes will make it to Times Square. Maybe as far as a ship in the East River, but far more likely a container port, like the one on the Jersey side of the Hudson, so Nick is probably safe.
Americans need to understand two things. One, we are at war. In war, people die. The answer is to redouble our efforts to kill the enemy until he surrenders and gives up the fight. Until then, we are all at risk. Even Nick Kristoff.
Two, any nuclear nonproliferation scheme, including the hugely expensive one currently underway, can only shave the odds a little bit. This is a dangerous world, and as the pages of the calendar turn, technology advances militate that a smaller and smaller effort can result in larger and more dangerous destructive tools. State based diplomatic solutions can do little to stop radical groups wilth the money and the will to play this deadly game.
What Kristoff and many other liberals fail to realize is that their view of how the world works is only one of several equally possible models. In fact, I identify myself as a conservative when I say that, as believing that politics is a debate between two or more sides flies in the face of liberal doctrine, which states that there are only two sides, their side and the wrong side. Yet when they were in power, they did exactly the same thing that our government is doing today. The dirty little secret of politics is that there is almost no daylight between the two great political parties in this country.
Posted by: Michael Gersh at August 12, 2004 02:32 PMWell why doesnt anyone understand that this war will not end if you keep on killing people. The answer to the end is JUSTICE that the world powers are not ready to give.
And then again there is no point in living in terror all the time. The american Govt. is trying to frighten the nation by sending useless terror alerts. they serve more of Bush's election purpose than anything else.
Bush used same pretexts to attack Iraq and now as ever before evidence tells us that he was lying to us about the iraqi nuclear capability.
Moiz:
How was Bush "lying"? That immplies that he actually knew ahead of time that Saddam apparently didn't have any kind of weapons at all, yet went ahead and told everyone there was anyway. Plus, there's that whole issue of, um, Germany (an anti-war country) saying in 2002 that Iraq was 2-3 years away from a nuclear bomb. Then there's this:
"The Iraqi regime's record over the decade leaves little doubt that Saddam Hussein wants to retain his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and to expand it to include nuclear weapons. We cannot allow him to prevail in that quest. The weapons are an unacceptable threat." -- John Kerry, 10/9/02Almost everyone believed Saddam had WMDs... Posted by: LJ at August 12, 2004 11:20 PM
ideofact,
Firstly, thank you for the links in this post, I used a couple of them in my Thurs. post on Iran.
Secondly, Michael Gersh's comments are baffling. What, in the end, is his point? Is it that we should be damn glad about a nuclear blast in the East River? That we should be impressed by his fatalism and savior faire?
"In war, people die" is so trivial as to be meaningless. Who, beyond Moiz perhaps, needs to be reminded of the horrific nature of a nuclear attack in a US city? What is crucial is not the fact of war, but the fact of the kind of war we are in, and what matters is who dies, where they die, and how they die.
While many in the Bush Administration apparently share his wishful thinking about the economics of non-proliferation--witness their castration of the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty and the lukewarm support of Nunn-Lugar--reducing a catastrophic attack to market forces seems beyond odd. In fact, the economics of non-proliferation efforts make eminent sense, if you understand market forces.
Only a state has the means to produce weapons-grade material. That is why al-Qaeda has focused its efforts on trying to obtain material from some source within a nation-state. Rogue states and failing states provide the market with material. Terrorists provide the market with demand.
Non-proliferation efforts like the FMCT and Nunn-Lugar deal with the supply dimension, as it is actually the most economically feasible way to address proliferation problems. Securing material in failing states like Russia, and denying the ability of countries like Iraq and Iran to produce new material is the most efficient means of denying supply to the demand. Is it sufficient? Of course not. Demand still exists, and we must anticipate that the supply-control effort may fail.
Thus, a state-oriented effort like Nunn-Lugar and the FMCT are of course insufficient in countering the threat from non-state, transnational threats. However, the state-oriented effort is necessary to do so. In the end, it is only one dimension of a counter-proliferation effort that must be multi-dimensional. Yes, "this is a dangerous world," but does that mean we put our thumbs up our butts and do nothing to make it less dangerous. Such a dystopian view is as mystifying and useless as the utopian view of any "liberal" he may find exasperting.
State-oriented solutions--whether diplomatic or military--are necessary, but not sufficient conditions to control the spread of nuclear weapons and nuclear material.
Lastly, after Mr. Gersh's dismissal of Kristoff and the "liberals" (Graham Allison a liberal?) and his self-congratulation of his complex worldview is just as strange. Why is it such a serious issue, one that unites Americans across any political divide as soon as they take it seriously, is reduced by him to yet another round of the dualist "liberal-conservative" gotcha that he simultaneously patronizes?
http://stygius.mindsay.com/
Posted by: Stygius at August 12, 2004 11:27 PMLJ: Well i would put it this way. It was bush's predecessors how helped saddam come into power when they needed him to fight Iran. Iran Iraq war was used to exhaust the huge stores of ammo and all heaped up in Iran and sold to it by the american govt. The ammo was sold to shah of iran and now it had fallen into the hands of the new revolutionary govt.
So how can a man have a unhealthy record 'over decades' wwhen he was brought into power by US will and support. This means that someone who serves US purpose is healthy and someone who stops doing that has a bad record and must be brought down at all costs?
so staying on the point i think he was lying because if he wasn't sure of any weapons of mass destruction he must not have said so with onviction. Also you don't go on attacking other soverign nations just because you think their track record is bad and all. You have united nations for that and it seems now that united nations was doing a fine job in terms of nuclear inspections in iraq.
so you see you can believe what you want to but then there is truth and there is lie. In order to take a step as big as Attacking and then slaughtering children and women in a place you need to have 100 percent assurance that yo uhave the right reason.
Moiz,
If the U.S. did indeed install Saddam (I have my doubts on that score), then we were honor bound to depose him. Surely, as someone who's opposed to the indiscriminate slaughtering of women and children, you'd agree. (And why is it that, do you think, that we didn't need to go to war to impose Saddam on the Iraqi people, but to get rid of him, we had to send in the army?)
Stygius,
I agree with you on nuclear nonproliferation -- it's one tool in the arsenal and has been sadly neglected -- but I also agree with Michael Gersh when he stresses the importance of -- here I go again -- killing the enemy. By all means, make it more difficult for them to acquire the world's deadliest weapons, but that's no substitute for eliminating them.
LJ,
Your point is well said and well taken. I generally shy away from partisan politics. Not so much because I don't follow it or am not interested in it or don't think it's important, but there are so many other blogs that cover it so well that I never feel any particular need or desire to throw in my two cents. For a Moiz, the fact that Kerry's position on WMDs and the like wasn't much different from Bush's is largely immaterial. They're both, after all, American politicians. Clinton wasn't much more popular with Islamists than Bush is, for that matter.
Posted by: Bill at August 13, 2004 11:08 PMBill,
Here, here. Killing terrorists is another necessary condition for security, naturally, but of course it is not sufficient. Dead terrorists, after all, can't kill you.
Understanding and "empathy" for terrorists and their motivations (my blog has a 7/21 post on "therapy as homeland security") is only useful to the point that it makes it easier to kill them.
As for Moiz, unless you are blaming Carter somehow, Saddam Hussein came to power on his own, through a coup within Iraq's Baath party and consolidated by a vicious purge afterwards. That is only the beginning of your series of non sequiturs.
The U.S. supported Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war for any number of reasons. Turning a blind eye to Saddam's use of chemical weapons on his own people is one of the most shameful acts in our history. However, the argument that that invalidates our invasion of Iraq (through the convoluted relativism that, "who are we to judge?") is silly, and is morally disgusting while reflecting an indifference to the Iraqi people. That is why you then have to talk about the integrity of a country's sovereignty and, by implication, the legitimacy of Saddam Hussein's government. I highly doubt you are so committed to sovereignty that it takes precedence over all other considerations (systematic state terror, for instance). If so, why?
And if you don't like the motivations of the Bush Administration--fair enough--why are you unable to consider that the consequences (a liberated Iraq, Saddam deposed) may be a little more important than motivations you don't like?
Posted by: Stygius at August 14, 2004 01:02 PMWhile you both think you are right so i would not argue.
visit
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.18A.neswk.us.iraq.htm
here they have the refrence to the original article in newsweek and i have read it with my own two eyes in paper edition of newsweek
Sigh. Look, Moiz. You should read that article more carefully. Try using only one eye, that may work better.
I quote: "America did not put Saddam in power. He emerged after two decades of turmoil in the '60s and '70s, as various strongmen tried to gain control of a nation..." (my emphasis).
America's friendliness with Saddam didn't develop until the early eighties, when he was useful in sapping Iran's power militarily and financially.
Posted by: Stygius at August 14, 2004 03:42 PMWell Stygius i think your and my areas of interest do differ in the article where i accept that i was wrong. This time i suggest you read it again and use your better eye if you have one which is not blind folded and read through
"The history of America's relations with Saddam is one of the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and again, America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw him as the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat him."
"The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds."
aww
Viewing someone as the lesser of two evils hardly means one views him as a good. And the mad mullahs of Iran certainly are worse -- but it would be militarily difficult to topple them without going through Iraq. That won't be a problem now.
I know I've seen a chart somewhere showing that the U.S. provided far less military support to Saddam than other countries -- the Soviet Union/Russia was first, followed by France and Germany.
However, Moiz, this still doesn't answer my question, to wit: If the U.S. was indeed responsible for installing Saddam, or merely for missing opportunities ("flinching") to depose him, didn't the U.S. finally live up to a moral obligation by ending his tyranny?
Oh, and one other question -- of whom would you rather be a subject -- Saddam or Allawi?
Posted by: Bill at August 14, 2004 11:11 PMMoiz,
I'm glad you are still with us and are sticking to your guns. While you'll be happy to know that despite occasional dryness, I actually have better than 20/20 vision. Nonetheless, I wish you would read my posts better before playing *gotcha*:
Turning a blind eye to Saddam's use of chemical weapons on his own people is one of the most shameful acts in our history. However, the argument that that invalidates our invasion of Iraq (through the convoluted relativism that, "who are we to judge?") is silly, and is morally disgusting while reflecting an indifference to the Iraqi people.Calling people hypocrites is easy, but why do so many people think it is the end-all of debate? But in the end, arguing about who said what when and how honestly is pointless.
What we are all interested is your take on the moral issues Bill Allison has kindly raised.
Posted by: Stygius at August 14, 2004 11:55 PMBill: I would crtainly agree to the point that leaders like Saddam should be done away with as soon as possible and i emphasize as soon as possible. The only problem that i see with your question is that Its not a moral victory if you depose someone once he has done all the damage while you were there to support him when he was doing most of that damage. Just because he doesnt like you and you dont like him doesn't mean that you go invading his country. I would rank both of them as the same saddam and allawi both are installed components. And when you are going into a country invading it why not tell the people the truth why try putting up a moral face to the invasion by saying that you are going there to actually evict them of the evil. Also
And in all this discussion my sole point has been lost and it is that we must not kill a single someone at the cost of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
Stygius: For occasional dry spells i would suggest rest and tear drops from aventis. they are good believe me.
and noone here is playing *gothcha*. It is just a matter of understanding;)