[quote=“spook”]Okay, I’ll go with that:
A white supremacist parolee suspected of weapons violations is surrounded by federal agents so intent on his capture because they consider him armed and dangerous that they recklessly kill his wife, son and dog instead. Later, they blame him for the deaths but a jury decides otherwise, pointing their fingers at the over zealous federal agents instead.
Eventually the white supremacist parolee is found not guilty of the original weapons charges and none of the people who actually fired the bullets are prosecuted.[/quote]
You can always count on spook to be a good sport
Okay, how about this wrinkle, spook: What if instead of killing the guy’s wife, son and dog, the authorities instead didn’t kill them, but rather let them live and specifically went after the parolee instead? And how about instead of killing the parolee, they just arrested him instead and put him on trial for what he’d done? And how about instead of blame or fingerpointing in the aftermath the federal agents showered the guy’s homestead with federal cash, and reconstruction workers arrived (paid for by the feds) to make the place better than it was before they came.
So the end result was that instead of living a life of terrified beatings and misery under the parolee’s thumb (it turns out he was a pretty disgusting character – they found lots of mass graves as they were reconstructing the place) the family was instead allowed to elect their own ‘family government’, and were given support and ecouragement for them to build a better life free of the parolee who they all feared and hated?
That change your thoughts on the event at all?
Probably not. I know that for you there is something of a non-interference principle involved (stating that the feds had no right to interfere in what this guy was doing to his helpless family). But it certainly makes the analogy a little more apt when it comes to the question of whether the intervention was a net positive or negative for those involved.
That is actually the very (limited) extent of the suggestion I’ve been making today you know: that the Iraqis are quite clearly better off (even if you use the “worse case scenario” numbers, as I did above). I share some of your and MFGR’s an whoever-else’s cynicism about the motives (although I don’t go in for the aliens/JFK assassination/it-was-all-about-oil conspiracy theory stuff) behind the action in Iraq. I also share in the frustrations of Andrew Sullivan and others who supported the war but disagreed with many of the specific policies/actions that were taken during and after. In my mind these are all legitimate reasons to have concerns. I also think that you and others who think that one nation shouldn’t involve itself outside its own borders have a defensible point of view – even if I don’t share it.
But the criticism that somehow the liberation of Iraq “killed Iraqis” (on net), or that any of the anti-war crowd can somehow cloak their objections under the guise of concern for the Iraqi people … that’s the one argument that just doesn’t pass the laugh test. There are enough legitimate reasons for objecting to the war without resorting to patently false or deceitful ones. If you objected to the war then fine, but don’t try and claim that concern for human life or the condition of the Iraqi people fall on your side of the argument.