What I Think of the Opinions of Someone Called Raymond S. Kraft (a Rant)
Okay, gigantic disclaimer here: I like to keep this blog fairly politics-free, not because I am apolitical, but because there are many better-qualified folks to read out there, and I chose to focus on the weird things I think up that maybe others wouldn't otherwise think about.
This post is drastically political. A friend of mine emailed me an essay by Raymond S. Kraft and said he hadn't found any kind of reply to it, so I thought I would take the time to pound one out. It's an issue I take pretty seriously. Please ignore at your pleasure:
World War Two was a war the US initially didn’t want to fight, but it’s a good thing we did end up fighting, especially if history begins at about 1936.
Raymond S. Kraft’s essay, Why are we in Iraq?, is an explanation of the US government and military actions of late. These actions are supported by a worldview that I think is narrow, paranoid, fatalistic, and self-righteous. He compares the unwillingness of Americans to go to war in the 1930s with the same unwillingness today. He compares the death tolls and dollars spent on each war, and suggests that although Americans had more reason to oppose World War Two, if we had been as pacifist then as we are today, we’d all be kissing Hitler’s grandson’s boot right now. Similarly, if we remain pacifist now, our grandsons will kneel before Allah.
I take issue, first and foremost, with the comparison of the war in Iraq with World War Two. World War Two, when we entered it, was an ongoing war (by which I mean rattattatt, boom! SSSSSSSSssssssssssssssshhhhhkaPOW! Oh God, my leg! &c.) between two comparably-capable sets of armies. One side was the aggressor, meaning that it had entered foreign, sovereign states, overthrown the government, and set itself up as ruler. Never since 1776 has there been a more appropriate time for the United States to use force.
Let me begin to illustrate some pacifist reasoning here: if World War Two weren’t actively happening, that is, people dying and losing legs day by day, we should not have started fighting in it. The side that draws first blood is morally culpable, in whole or part, for every death that results. (Kraftians are pulling their hairs out and screaming “9-11!” – I’ll get to that. (Do I really need to get to that?))
If the sides aren’t roughly equal, force is less appropriate. If two roughly equal armies have a dispute, it may be naive to think they will simply settle their differences diplomatically. But war between two drastically unequal forces is cowardice versus heroism. The threat of force by the more powerful side should suffice. I know Iraq is an exception, as Hussein’s minions were so deft at moving his stockpiles of WsMD from place to place, frustrating the efforts of Hans Blix and the weapons inspectors, that Blix threw up his hands in disgust and asked the UN to take the bastards out . . . wait, that’s not how it happened at all. Iraq is no exception; the threat of force was, in fact, enough to keep Hussein harmless.
If there is no aggressor, if no nation is under attack, fighting should not begin. An arguably-applicable, but eventually not-applicable, exception: if some country is run by a tyrant, an outside force can invade to overthrow it, if the outsiders’ interests are truly those of the abused citizens. However, and I may sound cold and isolationist here, a revolution by the tyrant's own citizens needs to start before a foreign power gets involved. These citizens may be thoroughly incapable of actually toppling their government and freeing themselves, but let’s have some token sacrifice, at least, as a sign that the people of a nation so hate their leadership, and that they show such broad solidarity against it, that it is right and just for a powerful outsider to invade.
I have illustrated three attributes of World War Two that made it arguably worth fighting; Iraq fails all three tests. There was no fighting going on. The dead Kurds had been dead for fifteen years. We ask native Americans to forgive much graver aggressions. If we had stood up for the Kurds then, when they were actually being gassed, it would have been acceptable. But we were too busy giving Hussein that very gas. The sides were not equally powerful. Iraq was no match for us, militarily; we risked virtually nothing to completely overthrow Hussein’s regime, and Hussein knew it. Continued carrot-and-stick diplomacy would have literally saved tens of thousands of lives. There was no aggressor, no army illegally occupying another country. There was no Iraqi revolution we were helping out in.
Kraft compares the money and lives spent on World War Two and asserts that American pacifists have a “short attention span.” He says that wars are not like TV, which is well-scripted enough to deliver a satisfactory ending to an American audience spoiled by decades of instant gratification. But what time frame are Americans supposed to expect? Kraft notably omits time spent from his war comparison. As of this month, the US has spent more time in Iraq than it spent fighting the Nazis. Why has it taken so long? The part of the fighting which was analogous to that in World War Two (eerily similar, in fact, to Hitler’s blitzkrieg) ended days after the war began. But instead of being (here we go again) lauded as liberators, as we were after World War Two, we have been viciously assaulted. Why? Please re-read the above, especially the part about the interests of the outside invaders being truly those of the oppressed citizens. And think about it. We are now an occupying force that the local citizens, for better or worse, do not trust or accept as leaders. Is it ours to reason why? It’s pretty apparent that our form of government is better. It is arguable that there are better forms of government than ours. But Americans, particularly southerners, will just dare some foreign power to come over here, set up a couple of military bases, and show us how. (Kraftians reply that it is a few loner terrorists, mostly foreign nationals, who are instigating the violence in Iraq. This is mostly false.)
Iraq is no World War Two. It is an ongoing police action in a foreign land against a nebulous enemy who has been ideologically vilified by the US executive branch. I will give you a hint at a much more appropriate comparison: it rhymes with Giet Nam.
Let’s go back to World War Two and pacifism then. In retrospect, it probably was a war that needed to be fought. But it could have been avoided had people acted earlier. And a broad war against Islam can be avoided today.
Adolf Hitlers don’t come to power in a vacuum. Hitler may have been a crazy lunatic, may even have been evil, but were the German people evil as a whole? I don’t think so. They were poor and humiliated after the Great War and the harsh punishments levied against them by the victors. Whether by fear, religious fervor, or intellectual laziness, they put their support behind someone who would fight to restore their dominance, and who had given them an enemy to blame their misfortunes on and to ideologically despise. Several enemies, actually; the pursuit of whom could have given Hitler and the German war machine indefinite support, had he not bitten off a bigger bite than he could chew. It is in this way that crowds support evil leaders.
(It is also by spreading the culpability of the evil acts thinly among the perpetrators – Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obeying authority are illuminating.)
If we forget how Hitler came to lead good, reasonable people, if the only lesson we learn from that terrible chapter of our history is “don’t be evil, and don’t be a Hitler,” then we do the victims of the Holocaust a terrible disservice. The next World War may be avoided, saving millions of lives, if we defeat the next Hitler at the ballot box instead of the battle field.
Kraft was right to distinguish both National Socialism and radical Islam from liberalism. Neither aims to empower the citizens of a nation. And I’m sure it is confusing to conservatives when liberals, who are the true ideological adversaries of Islamic fundamentalists, are reluctant to wage war against the enemy. I’m sure it’s vexing that a group that is generally ambivalent about belief in God at all feels morally compelled to ask what Jesus would do when our enemy strikes our cheek. I’m sure conservatives feel betrayed when liberals won’t, apparently, put their lives on the line for their own ideology, and leave that to small-government conservatives. I can’t speak for all liberals, but I won’t support a war that my side started. I won’t be convinced that it is necessary to start a fight in order to avoid a bigger fight later. I won’t be scared of being dominated by a Hitler or a bin Laden, because I am a strong, empowered, liberal American. I won’t kiss anybody’s boots, so why expect me to kiss Bush’s?
Kraft moves on to scare tactics about how Muslim fundamentalists will, if we let them, control the oil and bring the energy-thirsty West to its knees. Aside from the fact that this is morally neither here nor there, it’s also not true. Oil will be gone in a hundred years anyway - that’s why I vote for conservationalist legislators. The logic is not complicated.
Kraft says we can defeat Jihadists now or wait until they are powerful, when we will defeat them while suffering many more losses, or lose to them. I see it differently. We can fight a mysterious ideological enemy, surrendering our tax dollars and human rights to the effort, to a war that’s over when the US government says it is. We will make more enemies than we destroy. We will have more Hadithas than war crime trials. We will catch more Jose Padillas, but we will not catch all those we create.
Or we can recognize the moral responsibility that comes with being the far-and-away world superpower, and start being the good guys again. We can stand for life and justice even when it’s risky. We can recognize torture as an abomination. We can help struggling nations who don’t have the natural resources to pay for our help. We can rebuild alliances with our historical friends who will stand with us against true tyranny. We can turn the other cheek, even when our enemies won’t.
This post is drastically political. A friend of mine emailed me an essay by Raymond S. Kraft and said he hadn't found any kind of reply to it, so I thought I would take the time to pound one out. It's an issue I take pretty seriously. Please ignore at your pleasure:
World War Two was a war the US initially didn’t want to fight, but it’s a good thing we did end up fighting, especially if history begins at about 1936.
Raymond S. Kraft’s essay, Why are we in Iraq?, is an explanation of the US government and military actions of late. These actions are supported by a worldview that I think is narrow, paranoid, fatalistic, and self-righteous. He compares the unwillingness of Americans to go to war in the 1930s with the same unwillingness today. He compares the death tolls and dollars spent on each war, and suggests that although Americans had more reason to oppose World War Two, if we had been as pacifist then as we are today, we’d all be kissing Hitler’s grandson’s boot right now. Similarly, if we remain pacifist now, our grandsons will kneel before Allah.
I take issue, first and foremost, with the comparison of the war in Iraq with World War Two. World War Two, when we entered it, was an ongoing war (by which I mean rattattatt, boom! SSSSSSSSssssssssssssssshhhhhkaPOW! Oh God, my leg! &c.) between two comparably-capable sets of armies. One side was the aggressor, meaning that it had entered foreign, sovereign states, overthrown the government, and set itself up as ruler. Never since 1776 has there been a more appropriate time for the United States to use force.
Let me begin to illustrate some pacifist reasoning here: if World War Two weren’t actively happening, that is, people dying and losing legs day by day, we should not have started fighting in it. The side that draws first blood is morally culpable, in whole or part, for every death that results. (Kraftians are pulling their hairs out and screaming “9-11!” – I’ll get to that. (Do I really need to get to that?))
If the sides aren’t roughly equal, force is less appropriate. If two roughly equal armies have a dispute, it may be naive to think they will simply settle their differences diplomatically. But war between two drastically unequal forces is cowardice versus heroism. The threat of force by the more powerful side should suffice. I know Iraq is an exception, as Hussein’s minions were so deft at moving his stockpiles of WsMD from place to place, frustrating the efforts of Hans Blix and the weapons inspectors, that Blix threw up his hands in disgust and asked the UN to take the bastards out . . . wait, that’s not how it happened at all. Iraq is no exception; the threat of force was, in fact, enough to keep Hussein harmless.
If there is no aggressor, if no nation is under attack, fighting should not begin. An arguably-applicable, but eventually not-applicable, exception: if some country is run by a tyrant, an outside force can invade to overthrow it, if the outsiders’ interests are truly those of the abused citizens. However, and I may sound cold and isolationist here, a revolution by the tyrant's own citizens needs to start before a foreign power gets involved. These citizens may be thoroughly incapable of actually toppling their government and freeing themselves, but let’s have some token sacrifice, at least, as a sign that the people of a nation so hate their leadership, and that they show such broad solidarity against it, that it is right and just for a powerful outsider to invade.
I have illustrated three attributes of World War Two that made it arguably worth fighting; Iraq fails all three tests. There was no fighting going on. The dead Kurds had been dead for fifteen years. We ask native Americans to forgive much graver aggressions. If we had stood up for the Kurds then, when they were actually being gassed, it would have been acceptable. But we were too busy giving Hussein that very gas. The sides were not equally powerful. Iraq was no match for us, militarily; we risked virtually nothing to completely overthrow Hussein’s regime, and Hussein knew it. Continued carrot-and-stick diplomacy would have literally saved tens of thousands of lives. There was no aggressor, no army illegally occupying another country. There was no Iraqi revolution we were helping out in.
Kraft compares the money and lives spent on World War Two and asserts that American pacifists have a “short attention span.” He says that wars are not like TV, which is well-scripted enough to deliver a satisfactory ending to an American audience spoiled by decades of instant gratification. But what time frame are Americans supposed to expect? Kraft notably omits time spent from his war comparison. As of this month, the US has spent more time in Iraq than it spent fighting the Nazis. Why has it taken so long? The part of the fighting which was analogous to that in World War Two (eerily similar, in fact, to Hitler’s blitzkrieg) ended days after the war began. But instead of being (here we go again) lauded as liberators, as we were after World War Two, we have been viciously assaulted. Why? Please re-read the above, especially the part about the interests of the outside invaders being truly those of the oppressed citizens. And think about it. We are now an occupying force that the local citizens, for better or worse, do not trust or accept as leaders. Is it ours to reason why? It’s pretty apparent that our form of government is better. It is arguable that there are better forms of government than ours. But Americans, particularly southerners, will just dare some foreign power to come over here, set up a couple of military bases, and show us how. (Kraftians reply that it is a few loner terrorists, mostly foreign nationals, who are instigating the violence in Iraq. This is mostly false.)
Iraq is no World War Two. It is an ongoing police action in a foreign land against a nebulous enemy who has been ideologically vilified by the US executive branch. I will give you a hint at a much more appropriate comparison: it rhymes with Giet Nam.
Let’s go back to World War Two and pacifism then. In retrospect, it probably was a war that needed to be fought. But it could have been avoided had people acted earlier. And a broad war against Islam can be avoided today.
Adolf Hitlers don’t come to power in a vacuum. Hitler may have been a crazy lunatic, may even have been evil, but were the German people evil as a whole? I don’t think so. They were poor and humiliated after the Great War and the harsh punishments levied against them by the victors. Whether by fear, religious fervor, or intellectual laziness, they put their support behind someone who would fight to restore their dominance, and who had given them an enemy to blame their misfortunes on and to ideologically despise. Several enemies, actually; the pursuit of whom could have given Hitler and the German war machine indefinite support, had he not bitten off a bigger bite than he could chew. It is in this way that crowds support evil leaders.
(It is also by spreading the culpability of the evil acts thinly among the perpetrators – Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obeying authority are illuminating.)
If we forget how Hitler came to lead good, reasonable people, if the only lesson we learn from that terrible chapter of our history is “don’t be evil, and don’t be a Hitler,” then we do the victims of the Holocaust a terrible disservice. The next World War may be avoided, saving millions of lives, if we defeat the next Hitler at the ballot box instead of the battle field.
Kraft was right to distinguish both National Socialism and radical Islam from liberalism. Neither aims to empower the citizens of a nation. And I’m sure it is confusing to conservatives when liberals, who are the true ideological adversaries of Islamic fundamentalists, are reluctant to wage war against the enemy. I’m sure it’s vexing that a group that is generally ambivalent about belief in God at all feels morally compelled to ask what Jesus would do when our enemy strikes our cheek. I’m sure conservatives feel betrayed when liberals won’t, apparently, put their lives on the line for their own ideology, and leave that to small-government conservatives. I can’t speak for all liberals, but I won’t support a war that my side started. I won’t be convinced that it is necessary to start a fight in order to avoid a bigger fight later. I won’t be scared of being dominated by a Hitler or a bin Laden, because I am a strong, empowered, liberal American. I won’t kiss anybody’s boots, so why expect me to kiss Bush’s?
Kraft moves on to scare tactics about how Muslim fundamentalists will, if we let them, control the oil and bring the energy-thirsty West to its knees. Aside from the fact that this is morally neither here nor there, it’s also not true. Oil will be gone in a hundred years anyway - that’s why I vote for conservationalist legislators. The logic is not complicated.
Kraft says we can defeat Jihadists now or wait until they are powerful, when we will defeat them while suffering many more losses, or lose to them. I see it differently. We can fight a mysterious ideological enemy, surrendering our tax dollars and human rights to the effort, to a war that’s over when the US government says it is. We will make more enemies than we destroy. We will have more Hadithas than war crime trials. We will catch more Jose Padillas, but we will not catch all those we create.
Or we can recognize the moral responsibility that comes with being the far-and-away world superpower, and start being the good guys again. We can stand for life and justice even when it’s risky. We can recognize torture as an abomination. We can help struggling nations who don’t have the natural resources to pay for our help. We can rebuild alliances with our historical friends who will stand with us against true tyranny. We can turn the other cheek, even when our enemies won’t.
posted by john at
6:20 PM
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