It’s easy to say that a people should rise up without help, but that’s a rarity in history. We Americans couldn’t have done it without French help. When the French did their own rising, they botched it so badly that they set back the cause of widespread suffrage for half a century.

As I said to Lex, history is relevant in that it should help us not make the same mistakes again — theoretically of course. For that reason, we Americans should know a helluva lot more of it than we do. But when it comes to intervening in, say, Afghanistan, the fact that we helped make the damn mess is not a reason not to help clean it up.

I’m absolutely not equating Hitler with Hussein, and have gone on record many, many times refuting that argument when made by others. I used the Hitler example because I finally wanted to get a handle on whether you thought intervention could ever, ever, ever be justified. Now that I know that you believe it can be justified, we can have a useful conversation about when. Until now, none of our conversations have enlightened neither of us.

I haven’t been avoiding the question of “what of all our friends/allies/clients that do terrible things and we look the other way?” I haven’t found it relevant to any of our conversations so far.

Have you ever played backgammon, Lex? I’m a middling backgammon player, at best, because I don’t adjust as well as I should to the changing board. Poor backgammon players pick an initial strategy and stick with it. Good backgammon players look at the board each time they roll the dice as a snapshot. They change their strategies based on how the board looks now, this minute, when they roll, and how best to apply that roll to the current board conditions and probabilities. I think US intervention should be the same way.

When the first Gulf War came around, there were many people who insisted that we shouldn’t recapture Kuwait from Hussein because we had made a mistake in diplomacy, causing him to think he had a green light to invade. That may be true, but I found it irrelevant and still do. The fact at the time was that we had a dangerous man astride a good chunk of the world’s oil output and reserves, and poised to bite off even more, which would allow him to finance and recruit an even larger military establishment while holding the oil dagger at the world’s throat. Bush 1 screwed up, but that wasn’t the point. We needed to play the board the way the board looked at the time.

The US definitely SHOULD learn some hard-earned lessons from supporting people like Hussein and financing mujahadeen. You’ll get full agreement from me on that. But if a situation is badly broken, even if we broke it, it still needs to be fixed.

The Taliban most certainly did hear a peep for the US, from both Hillary Clinton and Madelein Albright, when they discovered what the Taliban were doing to women. The US also didn’t recognize the Taliban as the legitmate government of Afghanistan. And it wasn’t Chevron that wanted to build a pipeline. It was Unocal. And Unocal pipline — always a pipe dream — had limited involvement with the US government other than the usual offer to help persuade the Pakistani government to buy any gas actually shipped over said pipeline. (Still, Unocal’s HQ in Kandahar was right next to bin Laden’s compound.)

The US screwed up in Afghanistan in a big way, but the biggest screw up was in walking away from the place after Najibullah fell (and we never should have worked to overthrow him in the first place), losing all our intelligence assets there, allowing the Pakistani ISI free rein so that they developed the Taliban as potential Kashmiri Islamic guerrillas, believing Bhutto’s lies when she told us that Pakistan had little to do with the Taliban, and letting Massoud die on the vine. All of that came, essentially, from neglect that began during the Bush 1 administration, continued through the Clinton one, and the Bush 2 one until 9/11. We simply didn’t think Afghanistan was important and, well, we thought they should work things out on their own (not making that up).

I’m like you in that I don’t think the West has a stranglehold on truth and justice. The West has exploited and bumbled around so much that many of today’s problems are just chickens coming home to roost. But we still have to deal with the chickens, and there are people who need our help in those countries.

For instance, if we were to walk away from Afghanistan now, the Taliban would take control. They would massacre the Hazara and there would be renewed fighting with other factions, particularly the Tajiks of the Panjshir. Once again, girls and women would be unable to obtain an education or even leave the house without a male escort.

As for Iraq, what we have there is a Mahdi Army that’s gone dormant because it’s important for the US to leave so that they can manipulate a friendly government to their own ends. Or some other faction will do it to the detriment of the other factions. The warlords are being paid off … for now. The Kurds have their very own country … they think. Iraq can be a stable nation. It has been in the past. It can be stable the way Yugoslavia was stable under Tito.

And I agree in principle that the internal affairs of sovereign countries should, in most cases, be their own to resolve. I wonder what would happen in Georgia, for example, if the US and Russia weren’t pulling the strings. Would South Ossetia and Abkhazia just break off and try to fend for themselves? Would the rest of Georgia, without Russian and American factions at work, really care? If a people are oppressed, shouldn’t they rise up when they reach the tipping point and throw off their oppressors, without the big boys feeding the rivalries and picking at the bones? This is a purely rhetorical series of questions, I know, since history can’t be erased…

There is a time when the world (or nations) must step in and put a stop to behavior that is beyond the pale. That isn’t questioned by me. But you’re not going to seriously try to equate anything Saddam Hussein or the Taliban did with Hitler, are you?

And i will return to the point that you always avoid when we debate this…what of all our friends/allies/clients that do terrible things and we look the other way? Saddam was a murderous brute and a tyrant when Rumsfeld was shaking his hand. The Taliban enforced extremist religious practices without a peep from the United States when Chevron thought that they could build a pipeline. That list goes on and on, way far back.

And, again, it is not about isolationism. I believe that we should be deeply engaged with every nation on Earth…i just don’t think that the engagement should involve killing them unless they start killing first.

And i’ve been to enough places to know that how the “West” looks down ours nose at every way of doing things that isn’t ours is utter bullshit. We are not the greatest thing since sliced bread; we do not have some stranglehold on truth and justice.

We don’t know if Iraq can make a stable nation of itself because we will only let them determine their own future if that future suits our desires. The SOFA issue is a perfect example. You can have “sovereignty” so long as you let our military do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, without fear of punishment. You can be your own nation, so long as you do what we say. That’s not democracy anyhow.

We talked about this issue before on this blog. First off, history matters, but current conditions matter more. I have never, never, never argued or disputed the fact, in any way, that many of the messes around the world were caused by, or heavily influenced by, Western colonialism. Nor do I think it’s relevant except in determining how to solve the current mess.

You would have been perfectly OK letting Hitler and the Jews work out there little differences all by themselves with no interference from the rest of the world, wouldn’t you?

And let’s face the fact that many (if not most) of the serious trouble spots on the planet are leftover muddle from previous, imperial projects. That would include the better part of Africa to start with. We have no idea what Afghanistan is capable of on its own; it has been meddled with by great powers for so long that the nation hardly knows anything else.

J.S., the rest of the world allowed the United States to figure it out for ourselves. We had a civil war with plenty of death and destruction. No one came in and forced us to give up our apartheid system that lasted into the second half of the 20th century.

And i wasn’t suggesting isolationism. We can promote peaceful self-determination and the institutions that it requires…and we should. But we should also realize that how we do things is not the only right way to do things. We should try recognize the right to self-determination even when it doesn’t line up with our foreign policy desires. We should not spread “democracy” at the point of a gun. And we most certainly should not prop up tin-pot dictators and pawn it off as “democracy”.

Finally, i’m not so sure that Americans are capable of getting democracy right…at least i’ve seen very little evidence of it in my lifetime. The system that we do have is not of our own making; it was an inheritance. The question is: have we invested it wisely so that we might pass it on to our children or squandered it? I’m inclined to think it is the latter, partly because i cannot imagine any of the men who founded the system being remotely electable today.

Now, they get to be anonymous, so they say what the really think to everyone.

1) For the record, the sense in which Ann suggested the word “tribal” may have been used, by me, in my post was correct: it was not meant as an imperialist judgment but as an impartial (in intent, anyway) descriptor of a social condition, and

2) And, as far as Abraham not knowing who is friends are… I also visited his blog and was disgusted — just sickened — by the vile comments spewed at him by one of his detractors, so heinous and hate-filled and foul that I wouldn’t deign to suggest here what they said. For some reason, I was able to hit “delete” and make them go away, so I did: about five of them, from a poster called “Some Random Guy.” I don’t know if you read them before, Abraham, but they were worse than emanating from a toilet — they were from the pit of a human being’s capacity for evil thought. However harsh you come across, you do not deserve those invectives — but neither do we, here at S&R, even in your milder yet still uncivil and dismissive, mean-spirited version. This will thus be my last effort to engage you.

Nope, too many people in each group for a working tribe, according to Dunbar and company. Actually, there’s a big debate over whether “ideal tribalism” is even possible in today’s world (groups too big, population too mobile, cultures too fluid). So from the original theory, you get philosophical factions like the Neo-Tribalists, the Modern Primitivists, the New Tribalists… well, tribes, I guess.

Funny how that seems to happen over and over again.

I have no idea what will make us more civilized, or even what that really means, but I know that intelligent discussion in good faith gives me hope for better things.

You’ve provided no point to which anyone can respond cogently. You know, I’ve visited your blog. I actually agree (partially and provisionally) with some of what I saw there.

You don’t even know who your friends are.

Perhaps if we adopted the Code of Hammurabi we might be more civilized?

Mick, with regards to the pabulum you posted in comment #26, allow me to reply to each point:

1. You’re a douchebag.
2. You’re a douchebag.
3. You’re a douchebag.
4. You’re a douchebag.
5. You’re a douchebag.

Now, you may think that each of these statements is the same, but note that the emphasis on certain syllables is different in each response.

At this point I’m waiting for you to ask, “Now, how do you like them apples?”

If you would cease with the textual vomit and actually respond to any of my points then I might be bothered to engage in a debate with you, but until you pull that sausage out of your ass I am just going to have to ignore you.

As far as “banning” me? Well, go ahead and try.

The Hebrew seemed more fitting, somehow.

Apparently, I got Abraham’s name wrong, too.

I believe Avram is quoting Wendy, not me. I didn’t use the word “tribalism,” but you’re right, of course. In an anthropological sense, “tribalism” in conflict describes the Hatfields and McCoys, the Earps and Clantons, and the behavior of chimpanzees (our close cousins) that murder chimps from other “tribes” because of what is certainly a built in chimp/human trait. It explains ten Cates’ studies on the high anxiety caused by “the familiar in unfamiliar guise.”

I don’t know who it is you want to reply. You seem to be talking to one person, but quoting more than one.

Still, I’ll try to explain to you why most people on this blog will probably ignore you.

1. You cannot come here expecting to obtain a free history, anthropology, and sociology lesson from one of us without providing some expertise of your own. The way this works is that you cite specific evidence in refutation, then someone else comes back in rebuttal — or agrees with you. You appear to want us to do all the work. Most of us aren’t suckers (at least in that way).

2. The way you write and the things you say reveal very wide gaps in your education. For instance, you fail to recognize a reductio ad absurdum argument and its usefulness in revealing false Korzybskian “allness” statements and narrowing definitions of terms and concepts. Instead of using it for its intent, you attack it an an entirely unhelpful way. What you have revealed to all of us is that you’ve probably read no Plato, failed to study even the rudiments of logic and rhetoric, and reveal no desire to do so.

3. Your arguments are wholly based on ad hominem attacks. Since good teachers don’t allow their students to get away with that in their classrooms, it suggests that you have not been well-served by the educational institutions you have attended. I’m sorry about that. It’s not fair to you. But it is what it is. Very few are going to want to engage in discourse with someone who knows how shouting works, but doesn’t know how reasoned discourse works.

4. You make good points about the antecedents of the situation in Iraq, but you do so in a way that suggests you are refuting someone else. In fact, you are doing nothing of the sort. When introducing new information, don’t pitch it as an attack on others who never made the statements you seem to be refuting.

5. You have revealed a deep ignorance of cultural anthropology, mass motivational psychology, and Mesopotamian history. No one is going to want to engage in conversation with you if they have to laboriously build all that from scratch for you. It’s just not worth it, even if your writing style were not so ridiculously confrontational and laced with ad hominem attacks.

All is not lost. You may start over and I, for one, will engage with you. But if you insist on drafting copy heavy on vitriol and light on useful content, you’ll be banned from the site. I’d hate to see that.

But are you aware that “tribalism” can also refer to a field of anthropological and ethnographic study which suggests that tribal living is probably hard-wired into primate brains, is not a “primitive” social construct but a natural one, and that this preference for life in small groups is a universal human characteristic, not limited to any race or region? “Tribalism” isn’t the best name for these studies – for one thing, it’s got that awful prior meaning – but it seems to be the generally accepted term in popular media. In this sense, it’s simply a descriptor of what may well be the original and most natural state of human social organization. It is not meant as a pejorative, nor does it imply that a democracy is an inherently superior or more “advanced” society.

I can’t speak for JS or for you, but I have a feeling that there are two conflicting usages of a very complex term going on here.

Whether Iraq can or cannot become a lasting democracy (it can) is besides the point. What you said can and has been said about any group all around the world by racists and bigots who, for lack of a cogent argument, will simply resort to making silly blanket statements about a people or region or culture that is based wholly on ignorance and their own (apparently unrealized) prejudices.

A Democracy forming in Iraq NOW and in this current situation is impossible because of the way the US government has attempted to impose one. The same can be said of any country onto which Democracy is forced. Iraq and the Iraqi people are fully capable of adopting Democracy for themselves. I don’t imagine we disagree on this. But that’s not what you said. You said:

…lasting democracy in Iraq or central Asia is a highly unlikely scenario, given millennia of tribal enmity and authoritarian regimes.

Could you please tell us what you mean by “millennia of tribal enmity and authoritarian regimes”? Can you elucidate on your qualifications for making such a statement? Are you implying that Saddam or men like him ruled Iraq for “millennia”? On what historical facts do you base this statement?

Your statement is ridiculous on the face of it. It’s the result of intellectual laziness; someone simply trying to fill copy for a blog posting. You are trying to make political points at the expense of Iraqis who are stuck in this mess that your tax dollars paid for, and that the governments YOU voted into power over the past several decades made.

You think George W. Bush started this fiasco? Oh sure, he FUBAR’d it but good, but do you remember that it was the Clinton admin that imposed the sanctions and bombed Iraq every week for nearly his entire 8 year term in office? Do you remember that it was George H.W. Bush who invaded Iraq? Do you remember Reagan sending Rumsfeld to shake Saddam’s hand and give him all the chemical weapons he could lob at Iranians and Kurds?

What history do you claim to have studied here? You know nothing of these people and their region other than what you need to make a larger partisan attack at their expense.

Then we get some joker trying to conflate this argument to that of teaching biotech to rainforest inhabitants, who then follows up with his masterpiece in comment #11 whereby he exhibits beautifully the White Man’s Burden syndrome I previously mentioned. Ostensibly, letting these brown people “make their own way” results in refugees and orphans. No, there is never any catalyst for this, it all happens in a vacuum in which only brown people exist. And THEIR wars always affect us. It’s never OUR wars that affect them. It’s OK when we warmonger and create refugees and orphans, but when those browns do it they only confirm what we already know, that they are barbarians and are incapable of governing themselves and they need US to show them the path to enlightenment, notwithstanding the fact that most of the strife of the 20th and now 21st century was initiated by Western powers.

Now that you have no room to complain about “naughty” language, please reply.

P.S. The reason I labeled you a “neoconservative” is because you use the same language as they do, whether you’re aware of this or not. We can argue over this after you’ve provided a response to the above.