Article

2007-05-18 Iraq

What's so wrong with taking sides in a civil war?

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Posted by Mike 2007-05-18 08:20|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 Because we have a group of people in Washington that are duplicitous schemers, that's why. This war has been the most fantastically lucrative development that the dems could ever hope for. No matter what happens they can bitch and moan. No matter what does happen they WILL bitch an moan. National security,national pride, regional stability, life and limb, those mean nothing to a liberal. Only the pursuit of their "enlightened" agenda matters, nothing else. There should be sedition trials for all the subverters of this cause.

Posted by bigjim-ky 2007-05-18 08:46|| 2007-05-18 08:46|| Front Page Top

#2 What's so wrong with taking sides in a civil war?

Maybe because when we have our next one, non-Americans had pretty much butt out. Payback for those who don't isn't going to be 'kinder and gentler'.

Posted by Procopius2k 2007-05-18 09:21|| 2007-05-18 09:21|| Front Page Top

#3 This is a point I've been making - with great effect - several folks ever since the latest teen fad took off. If anything, Goldberg understates the case. Our interests, our strategy, and judgements to effect them are all that matter - whether it means intervening (or not) in a civil war, non-civil war, food fight, towel-snapping contest, or anything else. Nothing magic about "civil wars" - in fact, often they represent good pickins': if the stronger side also happens to be the better one for our interests, then likely we can advance our cause on the cheap (comparatively).

It is a measure of the silliness of "debate" on most national security topics that Goldberg (an amusing and sharp-eyed generalist) has to point out such an obvious thing. One more item the administration and the few intelligent people in Congress should have picked up and settled when it first arose. The ignorance and unseriousness of the "debate" on war issues in DC is stupefying.

Posted by Verlaine 2007-05-18 19:55|| 2007-05-18 19:55|| Front Page Top

#4 Verlaine: This is a point I've been making - with great effect - several folks ever since the latest teen fad took off. If anything, Goldberg understates the case. Our interests, our strategy, and judgements to effect them are all that matter - whether it means intervening (or not) in a civil war, non-civil war, food fight, towel-snapping contest, or anything else. Nothing magic about "civil wars" - in fact, often they represent good pickins': if the stronger side also happens to be the better one for our interests, then likely we can advance our cause on the cheap (comparatively).

I think the idea that civil wars were "internal affairs" got some traction with the Treaty of Westphalia, which considered the nation state sacrosanct. The problem with this premise is that few states are actually composed of singular "nations" (tribes or ethnicities) - just about every state is actually the end product of wars that attempted to fit square pegs into round holes - meld people of different ethnicities and languages into a single state - i.e. an empire - to maximize the power and wealth of the ruler to whom it all belonged. The reality is that even after the signing of the treaty, states/empires continued to go after each other's territories for population and resources, or failing that, tried to assist rebels within their neighbors' empires in order to break them up.

My view is that a civil war within a state is no more an "internal affair" than the imperial wars that created the state were an internal affair. The concept of permanent fixed borders came about only with the advent of Pax Sovietica and Pax Americana. The day of Pax Sovietica is done. As Pax Americana fades, out of morale issues rather than physical or economic exhaustion, I expect borders to become fluid once again. Geographical features are more or less permanent. Political boundaries are not.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2007-05-18 20:58|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2007-05-18 20:58|| Front Page Top

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