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The following stands out among the many comments to my previous post on Iraq.
How much is an Iraqi life worth? To me personally, about zero. Here’s why:
– I have no friends in Iraq (and doubt I ever will by the end of this post)
– No Iraqi signs my paycheck
– No Iraqi makes anything special that I can’t buy anywhere else (oil?)
– Iraq is on the other side of the globe
“But they’re being killed” you say. So are many other people. What about the North Koreans? What about the people who will effectively be killed because they cannot afford medical care due to this war? What about third world countries where parents have more children than they can afford to feed? Please make an objective, logical argument why the life of an Iraqi rates above (not just equal to) these others.
There are two issues in this comment. One is the old boring question “Why Iraqis and not North Koreans, or Chinese, or any other suffering people?” We have repeated countless times here on Samizdata.net that we do not consider lives of Iraqis above other individuals suffering elsewhere. Yes, I do want the world to be rid of North Korean, Chinese, Iranian and any other statist murderers. By yesterday, if you please. It’s long overdue and given that my taxes also pay for the army (or what’s left of it), I have no hesitation in supporting its use in cases when this becomes part of a government strategy.
The fact that the US and UK government policies are temporarily aligned with my view of the world does not redeem them in my eyes or make them somehow better entities. My objections to the state and my hatred of anything statist is not negated by my support of Bush and Blair in their determination to give Saddam his due. Samizdata’s eye will watch over the American attempts to establish democracy in Iraq with the same vigilance as ever and hurry to point out any misdemeanour by the inherently collectivist and kleptocratic state.
More importantly, the comment touches on an issue far greater than Iraq and the international pandemonium associated with it. Why do most of us hate to see people suffer? Why should we be moved by a sight of a child corpse, a woman tortured or a man shot? Why does the world remain shocked, moved and outraged by the suffering endured by those in Nazi concentration camps and Stalinist gulags (although unfortunately too few pictures serve to fuel the horror over those)?
I do not count myself among the emotionally incontinent (public expressions of grief) and the emotionally unsatiated (reality TV). My outrage comes from the belief that an individual is more important than a lofty idealistic concept, more so since every ‘utopia’ has built its edifice on a large pile of human bodies. The more idealistic and utopian the vision, the longer it takes to defeat it and the larger the ‘mountain of skulls’ left behind.
 
Savonarola’s Florence, Robespierre’s France, Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Kim Jong-il’s North Korea, Saddam’s Iraq, note that there is an individual’s name attached to every totalitarian nightmare. We are forced to ‘care’ about them, whether we like it or not. If we are lucky, we have not been affected directly, but they certainly had an impact on the way we live today, simply as a result of the international politics shaped by their existence. → Continue reading: Old style morality…
Those who oppose war with Iraq on the grounds that that civilians would be killed fail to understand that people are already dying due to Saddam’s misrule. Saddam Hussein has not earned his name “the Butcher of Baghdad” for nothing. He has been ruthless in his treatment of any opposition to him since his rise to power in 1979. A cruel and callous disregard for human life and suffering remains the hallmark of his regime.
The repressive violence of Saddam’s regime is the norm and not something used by the authorities in exceptional circumstances as it is in many countries. The repression, imprisonment, torture, deportation, assassination, and execution are strategies followed by Saddam’s regime in dealing with Iraqi people. The following are few examples of these crimes:
- The killing of Sunni leaders such as Abdul Aziz Al Badri the Imam of Dragh district mosque in Baghdad in 1969, Al Shaikh Nadhum Al Asi from Ubaid tribe in Northern Iraq, Al Shiakh Al Shahrazori, Al Shaikh Umar Shaqlawa, Al Shiakh Rami Al Kirkukly, Al Shiakh Mohamad Shafeeq Al Badri, Abdul Ghani Shindala.
- The arrest of hundreds of Iraqi Islamic activists and the execution of five religious leaders in 1974.
- The arrest of thousands of religious people who rose up against the regime and the killing of hundreds of them in the popular uprising of 1977 in which Shia cleric, Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Hakim, the leader of SCIRI was sentenced to life imprisonment.
- The execution of 21 Ba’ath Party leaders in 1979 in Iraq , the assassination of Hardan Al Tikriti former defence Minister in Kuwait in 1973, and the former Prime Minister Abdul Razzaq Al Naef in London 1978
- The arrest, torture and executions of tens of religious scholars and Islamic activists in such as Qasim Shubbar, Qasim Al Mubarqaa in 1979.
- The arrest, torture and execution of Shia cleric Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Sadr and his sister Amina Al Sadr (Bint Al Huda) in 1980.
- The war against Iran in 1980 in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed, and many more were handicapped or reported missing.
- The arrest of 90 members of Al Hakim family and the execution of 16 members of that family in 1983 to put pressure on Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Hakim to stop his struggle against Saddam’s regime.
- The occupation of Kuwait which resulted in killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and injuring many times that number in addition to the destruction of Iraq.
- The assassination of many opposition figures outside Iraq such as Haj Sahal Al Salman in UAE in 1981, Sami Mahdi and Ni’ma Mohamad in Pakistan in 1987, Sayed Mahdi Al Hakim in Sudan in 1988, and Shaikh Talib Al Suhail in Lebanon in 1994.
It is well documented that Saddam’s regime has produced and used chemical weapons against the Iraqi people and against neighbouring countries. Here are some examples of his use of such weapons:
- It is widely known that Saddam’s regime dropped chemical bombs by air fighter on Halabja in Northern Iraq in 1988. The reports of the UN, other international organisations and Western governments confirmed that more than 5,000 thousand civilians were died within a few hours. Eye witness accounts, photos and films have verified the horror of this attrocity.
- Saddam’s regime used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers during Iraq-Iran war. Many of them were sent to Europe to receive medical treatment and they were seen on TV across the world.
- General Wafiq Al Samarae, the former director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, admitted in his book Eastern Gate Ruins that Saddam’s regime used light chemical weapons against Iraqi people in the cities of Najaf and Karbala to crush the popular uprising of March 1991 which followed the defeat of Saddam after his invasion of Kuwait.
- After the crushing of the uprising, large number of people took sanctuary in the Marshes of Southern Iraq. In 1993 Saddam used chemical weapons against those hiding there in order to crush resistance.
 
Now tell me again that Bush or Blair are worse than Saddam…
I have no time for the those who took to the streets this weekend, de facto, in support of Saddam’s murderous regime. These are people who feel the need to soothe their morally atrophied consciences deafened by political correctness, the modern obsession with emotion and the life of comfort and material excess1.
Their act of protest is a far cry from a reasoned consideration of facts, the reality of international politics, of Iraq and the suffering of its people under Saddam or Iraq’s threat to the Western world. Theirs is a response based on emotions only, without thinking of the consequences of such action. Hate America? Join the protest. Hate Bush and the Republicans? Join the protest. Hate Tony Blair and the government? Join the protest. Hate Israel? Join the protest. Hate politicians? Join the protest. Hate the fact nobody takes you seriously? Join the protest. Hate your mediocre existence? Join the protest. Hate rational discourse? Join the protest. Miss the marches of the communists, peace movements, anti-Vietnam protesters etc of the Cold War era? Feel inadequate or need to feel important? Join the protest.
In fact, ‘peace and motherhood’ have very little to do with the global protests against the US and UK determination to remove Saddam. What is the point of peace, if the price paid for it is someone else’s pain and suffering? Proclamation of support for all things pink & fluffy and for general concepts of ‘goodness’ is the perfect anchor for those drawning in moral vagueness unable to reason their way out complex issues that defy simple solutions.
How much easier it is to look away, or to hastily cover the offending sight with excuses, defensive answers and idealistic slogans or level accusations against those who try to point out unpleasant facts. This type of anti-rationalism prefers slogans to serious consideration of complex reality.
However, this is a luxury not afforded to those who battle for their survival – physical and moral – wrestling the remnants of their humanity from the daily tyranny, whether they live in Iraq or Iran, North Korea or China. It is a fight that they are almost certain to lose without help, their oppressors poised to pounce on any expression of integrity and purpose as a sign of defiance. No-one can undo the suffering already inflicted on them. I protest against those who deny them the chance of living like humans for the rest of their lives.
Note1: I have nothing against comfort and life of excess, the point is that those who have it should not claim the moral high ground in deciding what is better for those who have to face different and starker kind of reality.
It is a strange experience finding myself supporting Tony Blair, the man who presides over my ongoing robbery by the British state, let alone quoting his remarks of yesterday approvingly, but I suppose these are strange times:
There will be no march for the victims of Saddam, no protests about the thousands of children that die needlessly every year under his rule, no righteous anger over the torture chambers which, if he is left in power, will be left in being.
I just wish the people marching yesterday would spare us the nauseating claim to the moral high ground and, if they still oppose the war, just acknowledge that theirs is an emotional rather than a moral argument and that the reality of their position is that if they get their way, Iraqi people will continue to die at the hands of murderous Ba’athist socialism in Iraq whilst they smugly congratulate themselves on their ‘having prevented a war’.
Preventing the overthrow of the people who did…
this…
and…
this… 
… to the people of Halabja with a weapon of mass destruction (poison gas) is the reality what those marchers are trying to achieve.
Regardless of how you feel about George W. Bush or Tony Blair or capitalism or Israel or the Palestinians or globalisation or anything else, that does not change the fact that the continuation in power of the murderous Saddam Hussain and his Ba’athist thugs will be the consequence of appeasement. Is that what you want? Is it?
So you thought that the impending war in the Middle East was about oil? Hah!! Or did you think it was all about zionist aggression? You dolt.
Thanks to Ron Liebermann, Illuminatus and Whistle-blower par excellence, the truth behind America’s plans in the Middle East have been revealed to us: it’s all about Euros:
“Simply put, the dollar has for several decades been positioned as the only way for an industrialized country to pay OPEC for oil. No matter who you were, you had to buy American dollars and then send those dollars to OPEC, who would then use the money to buy American debt, or American weapons.
It was the perfect set-up. Greenspan printed worthless dollars, and gave them to people who gave us free gasoline, and free TV sets, and free wicker furniture.”
No war for wicker furniture, that’s what I say.
“The game changed, however, when the Euro was introduced. Now, many oil-producing nations are accepting the Euro instead of the dollar. Saddam loves the Euro.”
Why only the other day he declared it to be the ‘Mother of all Currencies’.
“This new competition from the Euro makes Uncle Sam very angry. So Uncle Sam came up with a plan; he sent a secret message to all the Arabs: You will only accept American Dollars, or we will kill you.”
And to which the Arabs replied,’Sorry we can only take Mastercard, or we will bill you’. Besides if that message was ‘secret’ how does Mr.Liebermann know about it?
“In spite of the threats, the Euro is continuing to gain in popularity. So what? You might ask. If oil sellers take one kind of worthless note instead of another, that’s no skin off our backs. But the American government can’t print Euros. It can only print dollars.”
Mr.Liebermann, anyone with a packet of wax crayons and a photocopier can print Euros.
Oh but just hark at me quibbling with an analytical giant. Just read through to the end of the article but, a warning to you Americans; Mr.Liebermann has got some seriously bad news:
“No more Petro-Dollar reserve currency; no more free stuff for Americans.”
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
[My thanks to Richard Poe for the link]
Well, the days roll by and the uncertain drumbeat of war continues. Counting myself as a marginal pro-war type, I must say I have begun to wonder about how far and for how long a military campaign in the Middle East will spread. Will Bush’s pre-emption doctrine end with Iraq, or be applied to other nations? (France – heh-heh!). What about Saudi Arabia? And there are dozens of other countries, not especially chummy with the West, which could be places where folks are cooking up WMDs which could get into the hands of thugs of various descriptions. Just how far could the war on terror go? 100 years?
Here’s an idea: I think one key strategy for encouraging people to depose odious regimes and bring in something better must be a continuous push for greater free trade. I am not being naive, I think. Trade is the great solvent of social strife, while protectionism tends to be the harbinger of such strife.
For example, I’d be happier with the case for going into Iraq if it were tied to a clearly-stated willingness, on the part of the US government and its allies, to immediately lift ALL restrictions on imports of Iraqi goods (such as they are) in the event that Saddam and his thugs fall from power, as in “We will bury Saddam for you for a fistfull of dollars”.
And given that Iraq is probably one of the most secular states in the Middle East, a concerted campaign to promise Iraqis that they can join the capitalist party once Saddam has gone is sure to make it easier for his regime to crumble under pressure. This sort of policy may even encourage people in Iran, for example, who are currently trying to depose the Mullahs, to re-double their efforts.
There’s been a lot of debate about how much “stick” we should apply to defeat terror. I don’t think it idiotic though, to debate the merit of a bit more “carrot”.
You’ve probably all heard about the bin Laden martyrdom tape by now. In it, OBL says he will probably die in a martydom operation this year.
OBL is the leader and financial backer of al Qaeda. It is difficult to believe he would voluntarily remove himself unless there were a good reason to do so. I posit several possibilities.
- He’s actually been dead since Tora Bora. The new leadership has found him a useful bogey man against the West. They have tried to make the Afghanistan front look like a US failure by saying OBL escaped. They can’t run the game forever. As in a soap opera, they must remove the character eventually but wish to do so in a story enhancing way. If there is a successful and terrible attack on the US, they may claim OBL was personally responsible. If no identifiable bits are found, they claim he ascended bodily into heaven like Jesus. At the very least they create a Legendary Mythic Figure; at best they Deify Him.
- OBL’s kidney problem or complications from it due to his Tora Bora stay or perhaps injuries are such he has only a limited time to live. He has decided he will do more for his cause by becoming Mythic than by dying in a bed.
- OBL is having internal problems as has been hinted. We have been wrecking his organization and morale is bad. He is stepping aside and will use his death to become a Mythic rallying point for existing forces. He would expect a spectacular death, whether it was true or not, would bring in a flood of new recruits.
- OBL is simply a religious fanatic and wants to go to Allah and claim his houris. Perhaps, but I do not read him as stupid. He is probably willing to die in his cause but only if – in his eyes – it advances his over all cause.
- We have fatally disrupted his network. He prefers death to the humiliation of capture. If he does so spectacularly, he becomes Mythic and Immortal. He may hope to inspire another to arise and take up his cause in the future.
We should be prepared for the Diefication card. It’s not been played in centuries.
British soldiers currently stationed in Kuwait have broken with military tradition in order to deliver what they believe is a powerful message to the world.
Stripping off their desert khakis the men of the 7th Armoured Brigade laid down in a sand dune and spelled out the phrase, ‘SADDAM IS TOAST’ by arranging their own naked bodies to form the letters.
Lance-Corporal Steven Rowsley said afterwards:
“We were a bit embarrassed at first. And doing the ‘S’ was a bit tricky. But we think it was worth it in the end. My whole unit was really up for it.”
The officer in charge of the demonstration, Captain Roger Hackwood said:
“We realise that it’s a bit unorthodox and we know that some people will be shocked. But we couldn’t think of any better way to get the strength of our feelings across to the anti-war movement back home”
The Ministry of Defence has declined to comment.
The French libertarian movement is split over war with Iraq, though needless to say, not for the purely venal reasons of Chirac, the bespoke purveyor of nuclear technology to national-socialist dictators.
Most of the French libertarians I have been in touch with seem torn between a quasi-Randian view: “exterminate all practitioners of violent irrational beliefs” and the absolutist horror of any state violence. With a president like Jacques Chirac (imagine a cross between Richard Nixon, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton and George Bush senior: with NONE of their redeeming features), such scepticism about the morality of one’s own government seems reasonable. My fear about America is that unlike most Americans, I assume that the next US president could be almost as bad. But that’s another issue.
A distinctive voice in France right now is Jacques Garello – a French Catholic economist of the Austrian school. Professor Garello has hosted the summer university of the “nouvelle économie” at Aix for twenty five years, probably the most significant event of it’s kind in Europe. Here M. Garello considers the case for a “just” war:
The error consists in talking of a war against Iraq, when it really is a war against terrorism, and a legitimate case of self-defense of universal civilisation against barbaric forces which happen to find support and encouragement in Iraq.
He goes on to suggest that the real purpose of French diplomacy in refusing to side publicly with the US is the fear of the millions of potential Islamic militants in France: they would rather ignore the problem than fight it.
*= The Other France
Apologies are due for my short sabbatical away from the Samizdata but I’m afraid the prosaic concerns of keeping a roof over my head required attendance.
Having returned this evening, I have had an opportunity to scroll through the items posted since my last visit and, also, the comments appended thereto. It is among the latter efforts that I discovered this outpouring of hysterical claptrap:
“You are evading the fact that the United States Government is the foremost terrorist organisation in the world at the current time and its war plans are not designed to protect yours and my liberties but rather to extend its own power at the expense of me and you in terms of our money, liberty and increased risk of attack and at the expense of the lives of the innocents in Iraq who are about to be bombed.
For a moment, I thought we had been honoured with a visit from Noam Chomsky, but the actual author turned out to be Paul Coulam who I had, until now, credited with a bit more common sense. I won’t go as far as to say that I am shocked but I am disappointed; not because Paul is clearly against any attack on Iraq but because he has elected to employ the ludicrous rhetoric of the far-left in order to express that opposition.
If Paul honestly believes the things he has written then there is probably nothing I can do or say that will serve to change his mind but I am inspired enough to conduct a little Q&A session in which Paul and everybody else is invited to participate.
- America is indeed on the warpath. Is this because:
- They just decided that they want to dominate everybody in the whole world and enslave them for ever and steal all their resources?
OR
- They might just be trying to prevent another 9/11 type terrorist attack on their country?
- Paul is quite right to be outraged at the erosion of his civil liberties and the plundering of his wealth but are these processes occuring because of:
- American warmongering and ‘bloodlust’ for power?:
OR
- Because the majority of his (and my) fellow Brits keep electing socialist kleptocrats into Westminster and they, in turn, are only answerable to even bigger kleptocrats in the EU?
- Thousands of Saddam’s ‘Republican Guards’ will be deliberately targetted by allied forces in any attack on Iraq. These are the men who have tortured, murdered and terrorised a nation at the behest of their tyrant boss. Should they be regarded as:
- ‘Innocent’ Iraqi victims of the American terror machine?
OR
- About as deserving of our sympathy as the Waffen SS?
→ Continue reading: If this is Rothbard, count me out
The question of why the US is gearing up to fight Iraq and not North Korea has been explored at length, mostly by those who would like the US do nothing about either. The reasons given here are convincing but there is an even more likely scenario. North Korea’s power to blackmail the rest of the world by threatening or invading its neighbours is correctly put into perspective.
The maximum damage North Korea could inflict on the world, even with tactical nukes, would be to destroy the economy of South Korea. Certainly, a tragedy for the South Koreans but its catastrophic impact on the country and its population is not likely to spill over to the rest of the world to the extent Iraq’s success would, as I argue below. This scenario, of course, assumes rather vaguely that the South Korean army would not annihilate the 1950s-style North Korean army in the first encounter. Tactical nuclear devices are horrendous, however, with so much at stake, South Korea would put everything it has into defending its territory and ultimately free existence. Further, it is likely to be a one shot event, so to speak. Yes, the destruction of the South Korean economy would plunge the world economy into recession but ultimately even if Seoul is destroyed, it could be rebuilt just as the Japanese rebuilt their cities.
The point I want to make is that the same kind of ‘local incidents – global effects’ reasoning should be used for thinking about Iraq. My conclusion is frightening and adds an extra urgency to the removal of Saddam and disarming of Iraq. This is because Iraq armed with nuclear weapons, tactical ones that is, could not only destabilise the Middle East, it could hold the Western world to ransom for the foreseeable future. I am pretty sure it would. Here’s how: → Continue reading: It’s all about oil, after all
It must be something in the air today… couldn’t be the smoke from the controlled explosion across the street from me last night… I doubt that could have wafted over London yet. I was intending to write a longish article on the evils of Saddam. Most of what I wished to say has already been said today so I will just point out why I was going to say it.
I finally found time to read the Home Office report on human rights abuses in Iraq. I knew the Iraqi leadership were truly bad news. I knew they tortured some people, beheaded a few are were really quite beastly. I was totally unprepared for the magnitude of it.
Saddam and family don’t quite make it into the first rank with Adolf, Joe and Pol, at least not with the information we have so far. But give them time. They are working on it.
Read it if you haven’t already. You will be thoroughly appalled and ready to volunteer to release the trap door on them… or more satisfyingly, place a .38 between Saddam’s eyes so he can watch while you pull the trigger the first 5 times.
That would be a memory to treasure for life.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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