The art of compounding your crimes
Published by punkass marc January 17th, 2007 in Imperialism for Dummies, McCainery, WingnutsThe new conservative party line on Iraq is simple: now that we’ve gang-raped the bitch, now that she’s all choking and sobbing and looking a mess, we have to kill her, or else we’ll really be in big trouble. Sure, maybe we feel bad about raping her now — we didn’t know she’d put up such a fight and get this upset, but now that she has, well, we can’t just leave her like this. If we do, she could seek vengeance, or go to the police and get us thrown in jail — basically, if we quit now, our first mistake will really come back to bite us in the ass. So, regardless of how we feel about rape, and even about murder, we have to kill her if we don’t want our lives totally ruined.
Really, what’s different between that line of reasoning and arguing that, even if it turns out we were wrong to go into Iraq in the first place, we have to finish the job, whatever that means, or else it could be even worse for us than life was before we screwed up in the first place?
Isn’t that precisely the implication here?
If we walk away from Iraq, we face the prospect of a strengthened Iran with a half-crazed madman threatening nuclear annihilation, the entire Middle East in flames, as our economy here in the U.S. takes a nightmare nosedive beyond anything even imagined in the Great Depression. America’s enemies would have us by the throat. As we’ve outlined before in this column, the Islamofascists and Marxist regimes the world over are just waiting for the time when this nation is as helpless as Gulliver was when tied down by the Lilliputians. That’s when they will move in for the kill.
The only justification offered by this nutcase at Renew America* is that we’ll be in deep doo-doo if we don’t keep fighting. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that is classic Machiavelli. Apparently, we have to keep fighting an unjust war because the goal of a stable puppet regime in Iraq would still be tremendously beneficial to us. The ends justify the means.
McCain’s quote on the troop increase strikes the same chord:
McCain said those advocating the start of a troop withdrawal, which includes many Democrats, ”have a responsibility to tell us what they believe are the consequences of withdrawal in Iraq. If we walk away from Iraq, we’ll be back, possibly in the context of a wider war in the world’s most volatile region.”
I hate to burst Johnny “The Reb” McCain’s bubble, but we don’t have to explain the consequences of a dadgum thing. All we have to do is demonstrate the morality or immorality of our actions. The results are irrelevent.
America was built on precisely these principles. Founders insisted the process must be just above all, regardless of the outcome. Our judicial system, flawed as it might be, is the shining example of this ideology. So why are we presented with this conservative line of questioning as though it’s anything but deeply un-American?
The bottom line is that we don’t know what’s going to happen in Iraq, whether or not we stick around. Even if Republicans think they’re pursuing just ends, they can’t guarantee those result will come to be. That’s why we can only worry about the morality of our actions, not their odds of bringing prosperity.
Nobody thinks of themselves as a bad person. That’s why doing whatever you have to do to protect yourself always seems like such a justifiable motive. I guess that’s why wingnuts feel just fine about all the blood on their hands.
*Something I’ve never understood about Renew America: what the hell does that name mean? Is America an overdue library book? Is it a prescription? A subscription? Maybe a driver’s license? If we don’t renew it, will the President get pulled over by the UN for expired tags? This is all very confusing.
Not only has America “gang-raped” Iraq (to use your phrase), while eying Iran and Syria for the same treatment, but there have been neighbors video-taping (metaphorically) the whole mess while we did it.
When the cops attacked Rodney King they thought no one would pay any attention to just another black man having the hell beat out of him. The tape made the difference. There was proof.
In the US, we may be able to pretend that no one will care once we pull out of Iraq, but there is a whole world that knows the truth. We won’t be able to wiggle our nose, snap our fingers, and fast-forward past the bad parts.
The Bushites may think they can pull the trigger on Iraq’s head and then go to a bar, get a soothing drink, and close their eyes, making the whole thing magically disappear, but there are witnesses and evidence that won’t just go away…
America needs to be nuked. We cry rivers when a couple office buildings collapse, but think it’s ok to destroy an entire country full of buildings and people.
America needs to experience first hand what it is like, maybe we won’t do it anymore. More likely we would destroy the whole world, because most americans think they are somehow entitled to do so.
I wouldn’t be sorry if some other country did bomb us, we deserve it.
Sparky,
Americans definitely don’t appreciate the cruelty and harm they inflict, but there are 2 problems with that idea:
1) Most Americans are ignorant, not evil. They bear responsibility for enabling Bush, but wishing their actual demise just to “teach them a lesson” isn’t a particularly strong moral position.
2) If America is attacked again, are you sure it will “teach them a lesson?” Again, the ends can’t justify the means. Even if you believe in that end, you can’t ensure your unjust means will get us there, so let’s not be evil to prevent evil.
Yeah, Americans need a wake-up call. No, I don’t know what that call is.
But no, nuking them isn’t an answer, either.
Sparky, while I am sympathetic to the idea that Americans (in general) do not understand our place in the world, do not understand the harm we cause in the world, and do not appreciate the existence of other people/cultures/ideas/etc. on the planet we share with 6-billion other humans, what you are suggesting would not be helpful.
As much as the US has run roughshod over Iraq, and been a poor citizen of the world in many ways, the fact is we have been relatively benign, in comparison to the harm we could do if we really got going. We many not have the largest military (in terms of actual manpower), but we have an immense capacity to harm people on Earth.
That fact is bad enough, but there are RWA’s (Right Wing Authoritarians) who are convinced that the US has not yet achieved its proper role in the world, and who are looking for any excuse to make everyone else our bitch.
A nuclear explosion here would be right up their ally. In fact it would be so convenient, if one occurred here, I would suspect the Rechwing of arranging it long before I would suspect bin Laden or other middle-eastern provocateurs…
Americans are (more or less) nice people, in general. But there are enough wolves here to wreak unholy hell on everyone who isn’t white/Christian/English-speaking, given enough prodding…
“We” don’t deserve anything. BushCo deserves it, and Little Green Footballs deserves it. I had nothing to do with it, and neither did you.
I hate it that so many would call me unpatriotic or un-American for not wanting to look the other way when government does bad things or does stupid things.
America was created by colonists who called bullshit on their king, and it should be the height of American patriotism to call bullshit on our government when it deserves it.
Iraq is a diversion. As the army attacks Iraq, the US gov’t erodes rights at home by suspending habeas corpus, opening mail, stealing private lands, banning books like “America Deceived” from Amazon, rigging elections, conducting warrantless wiretaps and starting 2 illegal wars based on lies. Soon, another US false-flag operation will occur (sinking of an Aircraft Carrier) and the US will invade Iran, (on behalf of Israel).
Final link (before Google Books bends to gov’t demands and censors the title):
America Deceived (book)
Remember the Maine!
“Remember the Maine!” - Ha!
Good or bad, we got Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines as a result of that. That really kicked the US’s imperialism into high gear…
All we’re likely get from AfghanIragIranistan is a really bad hangover and a summons to appear before the judge on multiple felony counts…
But at least Commander Codpiece looked good in that flight suit on the USS Abraham Lincoln…
Punkass Marc: If America is attacked again, are you sure it will “teach them a lesson?” Again, the ends can’t justify the means. Even if you believe in that end, you can’t ensure your unjust means will get us there, so let’s not be evil to prevent evil.
There is the crux of the matter. Do the ends justify the means? Don’t you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette? You treat the question as though the answer is self-evident. Maybe that’s your inner philosophy major shining through…
I have the feeling that if you ask most people this simple question, divorced from any context, they will answer, “Yes, sometimes at least.” They haven’t thought it through enough. It’s a good avenue of approach though, and one which might have a chance to change some minds. After all, war isn’t an omelette, and we’re not breaking eggs by dropping bombs. Well maybe sometimes, if they’re eggs owned by Iraqis, but I have the feeling those eggs don’t end up delightfully fluffy in a pan with sauteed onions and peppers.
Nobody thinks of themselves as a bad person. That’s why doing whatever you have to do to protect yourself always seems like such a justifiable motive. I guess that’s why wingnuts feel just fine about all the blood on their hands.
I love how your tone manages to encompass compassion and disgust at the same time. That takes very special skills.
Hey Quin,
Well, like I said at the end, “we don’t know what’s going to happen in Iraq, whether or not we stick around. Even if Republicans think they’re pursuing just ends, they can’t guarantee those result will come to be. That’s why we can only worry about the morality of our actions, not their odds of bringing prosperity.”
And again, if you stand against that philosophy, then you stand against one of the primary driving ideological forces behind our Constitution. Given how many of their Machiavellian mistakes are done in the name of the flag, that has to count for something.
test
Hey– I wasn’t arguing against you. I’m with you, brother. But I think loads of people think any act can be moral if performed with the “right intentions”. No matter how vile, as long as you have beautiful visions of a better world, it’s okay. Yes, there’s so much uncertainty involved in situations like war. But it’s the thought that counts.
I wish more people understood the implications when they say “the end justifies the means”, is all. It’s not a phrase that, in this day and age, rings any alarm bells. We live in a society which condones torture of people who are merely suspected of being connected in some way to terrorists, as long as the particular method of torture is not officially labeled as such by our
Inquisitor-in ChiefCommander-in-Chief. You don’t even need to bother resorting to “24″ style thought experiments in which the suspect is a notorious terrorist who is the only person who knows the stop code for the nuke that’s set to blow up the eastern seaboard in 10 minutes to get people to state their eagerness for torture to be an option.So you can forget about it when it comes to war in a far-away place which doesn’t seem real like Iraq. I mean, I live in Tokyo– it’s not like I’m in the middle of Texas or anything– and even here I can’t seem to avoid arguments with people who think that going to war with Iraq was justified because the goal was to make the world a better place.
So I would contend that “The end justifies the means” is not really a discredited position for the public at large. We’re just going to have to work that little bit harder to educate Americans that Machiavelli was just an evil prick, and not a Founding Father.
You mean his signature isn’t the big one int he middle?
Son of Test
Maybe a new IP address will help?
Rock.
Jack, I had some problems with every comment I made on Pandagon going to the spamcatcher, but only when I was posting from home.
Because I don’t have a fixed IP address (although it will stay the same for long periods - thanks to DHCP), I was able to release my IP address, wait for a while, and get a new one from my DSL provider (without having to call or any other bullcrap…)
This was 6-months ago or so, and I don’t know what evil changes Marc has done since then.
(If I remember correctly, Marc said he’s in university IT - pure evil! ‘Course I’m in university IT too, so I can say that…