Letters to the Editor
Scientician
Published Letters: 525 Editor's Choice: 1
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shooter's ignorance
[Read the article: Major troop reductions imminent -- again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Looking beyond his evident bigotry, he betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of human conflict.
"Muslims" are not some coherent monolith who collectively agree to make Iraq a shitstorm. Instead we have rival factions who hate each other as much or (believe it or not) more than they hate Americans.
We also have opportunistic factions who are happy to have the Americans present because for whatever reason they benefit by it.
Finally we have factions that know the departure of the Americans would be detrimental to their interests. I would put the Sunnis in this category. Right now with the American presence they are able to compete with the shiites militarily because the latter are prevented from using their full might against them. Frankly the numerical advantage for the Shiites would eventually mean they would destroy the Sunnis in any protracted conflict.
But to shooter, it's much simpler to think of them all merely as "muslims" and write them off as stupid for not acting collectively in their best interest.
As if Americans do any better on such subjects: Was the civil war good for America? Wouldn't it have been better if the South had negotiated some financial settlement, freed the slaves and avoided being defeated militarily by the north, which also would have saved the cost in treasure and lives of invading the south? The slaves could have been freed several years earlier.
Is the war on drugs good for America? Why aren't Americans smart enough to stop taking addictive and harmful substances on their own without massive police state intervention?
Any half decent social scientist could give shooter a variety of issues where Americans (or any society) could benefit greatly through cooperative collective action, but no one to date knows how to organize such things where it entails asking individuals to sacrifice personally for a greater good. People just don't do that reliably enough.
Shit, the UN is exactly one such effort, but because of many people like Shooter who distrust it and work against it, it is often ineffective as it requires an often unattainable degree of unanimity to achieve meaningful action.
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Addendum about Iraq's best interest
[Read the article: Major troop reductions imminent -- again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While it certainly would benefit Iraqis in certain ways to cease all violence and allow Bush to have his way, I can certainly see an argument from any Iraqi saying "but having permanent US bases in Iraq is not in our long term interest and neither is being forced to privatize our oil fields to US companies"
There is increasing compelling evidence that the whole fiasco really is just about the Oil, was only ever about the oil and every other justification has been ad hoc or post facto rationalizations.
Those "no blood for oil" signs were more prescient than we thought.
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susan sunflower:
[Read the article: Major troop reductions imminent -- again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have a couple problems with this line of thought.
I have not seen evidence that anyone in the Democratic party is actually working to protract the Iraq war in order to win in 2008. It is possible such thoughts may exist in some people's twisted heads, but motive is not sufficient proof of this. Additionally, it is just as likely that voters will reject Democrats if they fail to end the Iraq war as voters expected in 2006. This would be a difficult conspiracy to manage without any overt leaks of such thinking by those who abhor such tactics.
Even if such thinking exists among some of the more manipulative and soulless leadership elements of the Democratic party, to cast aspersions at MoveOn (And by proxy blogs like DailyKos or other explicitly pro-Democratic party private entities) is not warranted. Some such sources will note the possibility that Iraq continuing will likely benefit Democrats, but their desire to have the war end seems genuine and their outrage over the supplemental, sincere.
Frankly, the supplemental has been a PR disaster for the Democrats (as well as a moral travesty, but I'm just sticking to a very cold analysis that a sociopath might engage in). It would take one hell of a clairvoyant strategic genius to have any certainty that this will pan out well for the Democrats.
I cannot reject your thesis wholly, as I cannot mind read, but it is not convincing compared to the more likely conclusion: The Democrats really are their traditional disorganized and conflicted selves, and weak centrist cowards in the party withdrew their support for timelines on the basis of bad advice from the consultant class working from a 2002 Conventional Wisdom playbook. That, as a whole, the Democrats would end the war if they had free rein, but simply chickened out, scared of the shadows of the past and the 28% President.
This is hardly a glowing endorsement of them, but by this picture they still remain a damn sight better than the lock-step lemmings of the Republican party willing to march the country off a cliff following the leader.
There is a moral difference between the man who does a wrong, and the man who is too cowardly to stop him. At least the latter would do no harm on his own.
Nonetheless, we should strive to make the Democratic party into the man who will step in and stop the crime.