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22 November 2005

Staying with Iraq Can’t Be Done on the Cheap

In his Op-Ed piece in the New York Times of November 20, 2005, David Brooks claims that the U.S. is “the one source of authority that prevents [Iraq] from imploding.” Iraq is already imploding because our Administration stubbornly insists on “staying the course” at the woefully inadequate troop level that was selected as part of the “botched American occupation.”

Congressman Jack Murtha is right that it is unfair to our brave soldiers to keep them in Iraq in a losing and dangerous effort. They deserve a better chance to defend themselves. After all, that is what they are fighting for. If the Administration really put them there to remake Iraqi society, their numbers and equipment strength would be much higher. Of course, the cost would be higher, too. Along with that, the political stakes would be more serious, and potentially riskier.

What the Administration has chosen to ignore is that Iraqi society is not something that our forces can “rebind.” Iraq has been held together only by means of oppression in the past – Sunnis over Shiites and Kurds. The Bush regime has always sought easy solutions to problems. It sets high-blown objectives in order to convince the American public to keep it in power. But it avoids making the investment necessary to carry out those objectives.

Genetic Testing and Individual Rights

In her article in the New York Times on November 20, 2005, Amy Harmon cites the fear of Andrew Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, that “science is trying to remove at least some of us.” Likening the prevention of illness to eugenics, Mark A. Rothstein of the University of Louisville decries “not accepting the normal diversity within a population.”

Isn’t it as important to spare individuals from the suffering of Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs disease, or other crippling, genetically detectable disabilities as to maximize their possibilities and happiness once they are born? It is specious to argue that the less affluent will bear the burden of grappling with these conditions because they are unable to afford the cost of pre-natal genetic testing. Living with many of the disadvantages of poverty is an emotional strain; but that is better alleviated by programs paid for by society at large than by restricting the right of those who can afford it to avoid such tragedies.

Is first cousin intermarriage, known to cause frequent genetic disorders, a social harm that merits prohibition? There are many arguments in its favor based on cultural considerations, like shared values and personality traits. Perhaps the frequency of illness among the offspring of first cousin parents can be reduced by pre-natal genetic testing; however, for this strategy to work, pre-natal genetic testing, and possibly abortion, would also have to be consistent with the cultural values that favored first cousin intermarriage in the first place.

Tabooing first cousin intermarriage also deprives society of the diversity brought by genetic disorders. This genetic selection tool is used even in cultures that accept prenatal genetic testing and abortion. It is not labeled eugenics -- nor should the use of science to prevent avoidable disabilities.

18 November 2005

Congressional Staffers’ Attitudes

In a recent Zogby International poll, the staff members of U.S. congressmen were shown to be out of touch with constituents on the issue of relations with China. It begs the question how distant their views are from those of the residents of their districts on other matters. More to the point, how reflective of the general public are their representatives? Does this demonstrate ignorance of their sentiments? Or is it a willful refusal to use whatever means available to discover their views and efficaciously perform that representative function?

Perhaps efficacious representation is not essential to how congressmen define their jobs in the U.S. After all, politicians are motivated to do what gets them reelected. They can’t represent the views they know if they don’t continue in office. And getting reelected is not necessarily related to efficacious representation of constituents; rather it results from effectively representing the views and interests of those whose resources and power are essential to winning elections.

The crucial role of persuasion through the media, as expensive as it is, has distorted the American political system. To be sure, people can be convinced by costly persuasion that they are being fairly represented apart from the findings of an objective analysis of their representatives’ performance.

Iraqi Torture

The government of Iraq denied on 11/16/2005 that it was suppressing the Sunni minority by torturing over a hundred in a prison in the basement of the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad. It then admitted that as many as seven of the tortured prisoners were actually Shiites. And in any case, according to the Minister, “Only a few prisoners were mistreated.”

If nothing else, the new Iraqi leadership seems to be a quick study of the doublespeak that greases the skids of democratic rule in Washington. Unfortunately, the opposing sides in disputes like those exposed in the Interior Ministry prisoner abuse situation are more embittered rivals than the institutionalized antagonists (e.g., the press vs. the government) in Western political systems. They are tribal or sectarian enemies; moreover, they are armed.

Of course, scandals such as Abu Ghraib loosened the American moral standards that were supposed to be introduced to Iraq by our invasion and change of regime. That was the disappointing result of our government’s adoption of a militant strategy for dealing with opponents that we define as non-state terrorists. We relaxed the bounds on the behavior of our own soldiers, principally because they were placed in locations not subject to an internationally recognized legal order. Now we are forced to live with the consequences – a world where we impose rules like ours that are unsuitable for regulating cultural environments that are more diverse and quite different

12 November 2005

Destroying Our Way of Life

On Veterans’ Day, President Bush said, “As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them.” No, the elected leaders who threw our unsuspecting volunteer soldiers into a hopeless and dangerous situation won’t abandon them. Indeed, that is the real reason for the rest of us to “Support our Troops.” More to the point, that is the real reason that those soldiers are fighting as well as they do – they know that individual bravery is the best way for all of them to come out of the war alive.

It turned out to be the Bush Administration’s strategic deception that invading Iraq had any clear connection with fighting terrorists. Or in the more diplomatic language of Nicholas Lemann in the November 7, 2005 New Yorker, setting Saddam up as a threat to the security of the world was the “stagecraft” needed to validate the armed overthrow of his regime. It was a forceful demonstration of his determination to make the Middle East more like America. His advisors convinced him that only by wielding a big stick will leaders of Southwest and Central Asian countries be made to collaborate with us peacefully.

There is a big personal cost, to our victims and our soldiers (not to mention a tax dollar drain), to being the bully in the playground of world politics. If our way of life entails imposing it on other societies, it should not be a surprise when members of those cultures try to destroy it.

04 November 2005

Jarhead

“To the grunt, the political context is irrelevant. They're not worried about politics. They've simply got a job to do. And this movie is concerned with how they do that job.”

William Broyles, Jr., a screenwriter of the new movie, Jarhead, has put his finger on the anomaly of the U.S. attack on Iraq. The power of America, in the form of its defense establishment and, most importantly, its willing fighting men and women, has been hijacked by political operatives in Washington. Under the acquiescent leadership of George W. Bush, they have won popular support for a policy of remaking the world through the violent imposition of “democracy” in societies whose political cultures are quite different from our own.

Unfortunately, at the human level this translates into a question of personal survival for each soldier placed in harm’s way. The success and effectiveness of marines and other warriors in battle and the subsequent reconstruction program have nothing to do with the political theories that have been used to justify the U.S. intervention in Iraq. Their survival is simply a matter of loyalty to comrades in arms and the application of their skills and intellect.

Power brokers in Washington use neoconservative ideas to inspire the actions of the federal government. They also enjoy the advantage of having at their disposal a marvelously effective force of fighting men and women that, unfortunately, makes it very easy to carry out an international interventionist strategy. That advantage also permits them to confuse individual soldiers’ struggles for life with achieving “liberty” for the victims of the military’s mission.

It is admirable that the peoples of the world strive for freedom. However, invasion is the wrong way to help them.

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