I couldn’t cinch my gorge tight enough to get passed paragraph two, where he basically called everyone who disagrees with him stupid. Not a good rhetorical choice, generally.

What a lot of bunk this argument this is. Is this supposed to be convincing arguement for Canadian involvment in Iraq? Basically it sounds like we are a weak nation so we better do what the US says and join in their hare brained scheme in Iraq because?….yes that appears to be the whole argument. I did like the thought process behind the lampost analogy though.

It’s been a powder keg for about 5000 years.

That a myth. Of course, our religious traditions lead us to believe that there is something inescapably important about the Middle East, but it’s largely the interference of foreign power and power abuse that are usually at the root of social and political unrest, anywhere in the World.

The Golden Age of Islam was a pretty tranquil period, relatively speaking, wasn’t it?

I’m having trouble responding to RJ’s post, because amorality is a foreign concept to me. Immorality and morality, I have an easier time with. Still, I think what he’s saying is that Canada is Lithuania just before the end of WWII. Or, rather, we should strive to be Lithuania.

Off-topic.

Not really. You can choose a specific cultural, religious or philosophical moral framework, and discuss what is moral and immoral very concretely within it. Amorality will, by definition, fall outside any discussion that is guided by moral principles (whatever they may be).

There is no objective morality though, as it’s a symbolic construct.

It’s commendable for RJ to take us up on our challenge to present a case for increased Canadian engagement in Iraq, and I sincerely appreciate appreciate his willingness to make a statement that goes beyond the shallow fencing on these issues that we’re all tempted to indulge in (me worse than most).

On “reality vs. magical thinking”, I think we can all agree that policy, in order to have real impact in the real world, needs to be grounded in reality rather than the impeccable development of a logical framework from a set of fondly held premises. That, to me, is what separates ideologues of the right and left from useful thinkers, and one of the things that bothers me about American neo-conservatives: they share with Mao’s Cultural Revolutionaries or Hoxha’s cadres an unquestioning faith the certain principles, if pursued with sufficient vigour and purity, will inexorably lead to real world outcomes. Reality, of course, is more complex than any system or model.

RJ’s main argument is quite straightforward (I am trying in good faith to do it justice here): it seems to run sort of like this.

Violence in the pursuit goals is neither intrinsically evil nor good, but a simply means to an end. It involves certain costs, which must be weighed against the anticipated outcomes.

The Middle East is a region which now houses several groups for whom the costs of violence are minimal and whose interests can be served through the use of violence.

Canada has traditionally relied on alliances, diplomacy (direct and through supra-national bodies), and trade measures to protect its citizenry, as opposed to a massive military force. However, since in addressing the threat of Islamic terrorism, we are not dealing with armed nation-states engaged in alliances, diplomacy and trade, those measures are inadequate to protect Canada. We must therefore

a) increase the costs to these groups of doing violence, and
b) promote an environment in which trade and diplomacy become the principle vehicles for interaction between states.

That, I believe, is the gist of the argument. It is then followed by the dismissal of a number of arguments occasionally advanced against Canadian involvement (of the “Iraq is NOT a quagmire, and even if it was…” variety), which I don’t find as compelling as his main argument; they all smack a bit of straw men. So let’s go back to the main thesis.

For a rather large number of reasons, the United States has invested an enormous amount of its resources into creating and maintaining armed forces an order of magnitude beyond those of anyone else on the planet. Canada has invested its more limited assets in other areas. RJ, let me ask you to apply that hardnosed, amoral realpolitik perspective to the situation you describe situation.

You are proposing that we invest a lot of money and a lot of lives by putting our troops in harm’s way in Iraq order to “increase the costs to terrorists of doing business”. I submit that our extremely limited contribution would have a negligible effect on the capacity of the terrorist organizations operating in Iraq. (You’ve been quite clear on the shocking inadequate state of our armed forces in prior postings, so I’m sure you’ll agree.) This begs the larger question of whether or not the current American strategy is a viable one at all, which you didn’t raise: I’m simply looking at the probable return in impact and effectiveness versus the cost in lives and money, and suggesting that it’s not a worthwhile investment for Canada. I prefer to see our money spent on debt reduction and health.

I do not see involvement of Canadian troops in Iraq enhancing our domestic security in any way. I do not see the engagement in Iraq as diminishing terrorism: I see it as fanning the flames.

Since you’ve limited the sphere of discussion to the desirability of supporting violence against Iraq, without discussion of right or wrong, I won’t get into my views on the ethics of supporting the creation of a dependent American client state in the middle East, if you refrain from trying to convince me that this was all a sacred mission to create “democracy”.

It’s impossible to argue this seriously in a framework that suggests violence is morally neutral. Violence used defensibly (even in a pre-emptive offense) can be justifiable, but it’s morality is inescapable and informs how each and every one of us make choices; in how we choose to make a living and, very importantly, in how we choose to be governed. The only way this can be altered is when the citizenry no longer think about the morality of violence and this is done by controlling information, marginalising dissent and undermining the democratic process.

SL, violence as currency is mechanism–it is a tool that can be used for achieving both long-term and short-term goals. If the costs to using violence can be changed, then that will affect an actor’s decision on whether to use violent means to achieve his goals. There are other mechanisms–other currencies, if you will–which can be used to achieve goals.

But why would an actor choose a method which is intrinsically weak? An opponent will only fight where he has an advantage, or where he has no choice. An actor will never choose a method of achieving his goals which is either a) more expensive than other methods, or b) less likely to succeed than other methods. The only reason that they would do so is if they have made a flawed analysis as a consequence of magical thinking.

You do draw a very solid observation on the effect of changing technology on maintenance of concentrations of power. The diffusion of power to individuals in military, economic, and political settings has caused significant changes in the old order. There are three predominant trends emerging as a consequence of technology diffusing power:

1. The growth of large, albeit toothless supranational entities such as the UN and Europe as well as various NGOs,

2. The increase in tribalism as people begin to identify with smaller and smaller ethnic groups and seek to influence the world through these groups, and

3. Citizen as client rather than citizen as subject.

None of these bode well for nations. Note that these trends do not change the analysis–they merely change the actors. The contemporary Middle East is caught up predominantly in the second of these trends, where the increase in the destructive capability of small groups since WWII and a relatively low cost to using that destructive capability has meant an increase in violence and instability in the Middle East. Also, the growth of travel networks have allowed small groups to project their destructive capability around the world, striking North America, Europe, Russia, and Southeast Asia.

Increasing the costs of violence by hunting down and killing the perpetrators will result in a reduction in violence and a pursuit of alternative means. As a long term solution, keeping the costs of violence to the perpetrators high relative to other means EVEN WHILE THE DESTRUCTIVE CAPACITY OF INDIVIDUALS INCREASES will work to ensure years if not decades of relative stability.

Cait: Thanks for trying to understand the points I was trying to make. If I can, may I correct your phrasing of “Might makes right.” That’s a moral judgment, and I was explicitly trying to keep morality out of the discussion since the subjective nature of morality forces people to see through a particular lens which can distort the view of reality.

Woman, Robert: I’m afraid that you both missed the point. Set aside your preconceptions and re-read the argument. Robert, I’ll address your point on the effectiveness of the Canadian military below as Balbulican makes the same argument.

Ti-Guy: The world is amoral. More to the point, the world doesn’t care about your morality. In fact, if you look throughout history as the costs to doing violence decrease, morality becomes more and more of a luxury. The cost of deploying a suicide bomber is both financially and militarily cheap, but the deployment of suicide bombers is utterly immoral. People use suicide bombers because the costs are low, and the morality is so far out of their “price range” as to be irrelevant.

Increasing the costs to doing violence makes morality more affordable.

Balbulican: Thank you for the very well though-out response. You have grasped the fundamentals of the argument I was advancing.

However, you take up Robert’s point that the Canadian military is ill-prepared to project itself into Iraq and would have negligible effect in doing so. I myself have made the same statement a few days ago. However, you have charged me with making the case for arguing for Canadian military intervention in Iraq, so I must, for the sake of the argument, find a method to do so.

It is tempting to think in simplistic terms about military deployments–that soldiers are foot soldiers deployed in formations of cannon fodder. Certainly in WWI and perhaps in WWII, such a perspective would have been appropriate, but we have to take into account the Revolution in Military Affairs which has occurred since the 1980s. As the nature of the threats have changed, militaries have adapted to meet those threats. Strategies are developed, tested, and refined as a matter of course in warfighting. In much the same way as infantry and cavalry charges gave way to trench warfare in WWI, and trench warfare gave way to combined-arms operations in WWII, the growth of asymmetric warfare has meant that combined-arms operations have beed superceded by network-analysis, special operations, and precision-guided munitions.

A Canadian deployment in Iraq would not necessarily resemble the deployment in Afghanistan in terms of stationing a battalion of troops in-country. Rather, the Canadian military, if their political masters had tasked them with operating in Iraq, would look to means by which they could multiply the effectiveness of their thinly-spread forces. There are several methods by which this could be done:

1. Alliances. This is an older method where militaries of different nations have cooperated in a common goal. This means less of a draw upon a nation’s military resources and allows a much larger pool of military resources to draw upon for operations–resources that the terrorists plaguing Iraq cannot hope to match.

2. The use of cadres to build up local troops. The use of local auxilliaries trained and sometimes led by our forces would work to transform a Canadian Company into a Brigade. The method has been used since the dawn of warfare, and was one of the reasons that Britain was able to enjoy a vast empire under Queen Victoria. A variant of this is being used by the United States, with the intent of building up the Iraqi military as the US Military draws down its strength in-theatre.

3. Training local police forces, through deployment of both military police and RCMP instructors. Canada has had experience with this in Haiti. This also helps to instill Iraqis’ faith in civil order and reduce the costs of non-violent methods.

4. Diplomatic measures. By reducing the costs of non-violent methods, diplomacy fosters the growth of non-violent methods (trade, diplomacy, and on a smaller scale, litigation) instead of violent methods for pursuit of a group’s objectives.

5. Special Forces deployments. The nature of special forces missions is to specifically target the perpetrators of violence with death, providing the ultimate cost to the actor of the use of violence. The use of Special Forces in combat operations can quickly use up a nation’s SF capacity, but matching violence with overwhelming violence is an effective means of increasing the costs of violence.

Through a combination of these methods and others, the Canadian military could have a substantial effect in Iraq.

As I explained in the initial piece, it is in Canada’s national interest to do so since reduction of groups that prefer the use of violence as a means to an end works to encourage other actors to treat with Canada on terms that favour Canada’s strengths in trade and diplomacy.

“I do not see involvement of Canadian troops in Iraq enhancing our domestic security in any way. I do not see the engagement in Iraq as diminishing terrorism: I see it as fanning the flames.”

You’re going to have to justify these opinions.

This is a really interesting discussion.

I do question the notion of violence as currency in one respect. In the example of Islamic terrorism, the reward and cost of the violence in a suicide attack comes in the afterlife - seventy two virgins for the bomber and a ticket into immortality. They appear to not take into account some of the costs to violence that might be more typical in Western values. If the sheer number of terrorist attacks since intervention in Iraq may be used as a benchmark it would suggest that they attach little or no cost to the violence they are inflicting.

RJ, the world, absent intelligent observation of it, is indeed amoral, but that world doesn’t exist. Once we observe the world, we apply whatever morality we have when we judge things to be good or bad or indifferent. Powerful agents will of course try to make the case, as you are doing, that events in the world just happen with a certain inevitability that we should just accept, but that’s just wrong, because each of us is participating in a liberal democracy and has some pretty powerful choices concerning our fate. The only way people can make choices with no regard to morality is if they are completely unaware of the consequences of their actions, or if they’re psychopathic.

In any case, I’m not sure if you’re simply adopting “the world is amoral” as a ruse to frame your arguments within a system of reason that would be difficult to challenge, or if you really don’t understand morality. When you called deployment of suicide bombing “utterly immoral”, I found that curious, because I happen to think suicide bombing is one of the most moral forms of aggressive violence around…where the aggressor is assuming the direst of personal consequences while committing the violence. As for the morality of those deploying suicide bombing: it is not any less moral or immoral than the deployment of any other kind of weapon, even if the deployment is to cause terror among the civilian population. Other weapons do, as well.

My point remains that for events to unfold as you are suggesting, changes that most people in a liberal democracy would find intolerable over even the shortest period would need to be implemented: a government that no longer considers it important to communicate what it’s doing to the electorate and a mass media that focusses on marginalising challenges to its factual reporting and marginalising dissenting analysis and commentary. If these changes are so intolerable that the electorate as a whole starts indicating it will change how it is being governed, then the democratic process (comprising all of our institutions as well as the electoral process) would also need to be subverted.

The case you are making is replete with facts selected from history (and I’m not that interested in revising history right now) but that doesn’t tell us all we need to know, especially since history is written by the victors. History is useful in telling us how we got here, but doesn’t really tell us where we’re going.

It’s an intelligently presented argument…until the end paragraphs at least where people that disagree are called ‘racists’ (Americans are not a ‘race’…they’re caucasians as Canadians are?) and other names and told to “stick pins in GWB dolls”.

What all this ignores is that the United States is causing mass political instability in the Middle East. Let’s not forget that these countries have existed for thousands and thousands of years and have not needed help for the most part in doing so.

To think they will be ‘better’ if the American wand of hegemony is waved at them and ‘regime change’ is installed is naive, and dangerous.

I fear that the U.N and its component countries will have to take arms against the U.S. in the near future as the rogue regime there becomes too dangerous for the planet.

TH: You and Windsorite make similar points, but from alternate directions. You both bring points to bear regarding ideology, but you forget that ideology is a motivational tool. Nothing more. The difference between Tony Robbins “Personal Power” and Marxist-Leninism is the degree to which they are used to kill people. Ideology can be used to reduce the costs of violence to the perpetrators, be they individuals, groups, or states.

Windsorite also makes the argument that: “They’re not fighting a conventional enemy, they’re fighting an ideology. You can’t defeat an ideology with tanks and bombs. Tanks and bombs only serve to propagate the ideology via anger and resentment.” which is so incorrect, it’s hard to know where to start except to characterize it as an perfect example of magical thinking, and he follows it up with this one as well: “Try this one on for size: the only way to guarantee a terror attack on Canada is to join the USA in Iraq.”

Actually, the way to guarantee a terror attack on Canada is NOT to join the USA in Iraq. It’s called being a soft target.

Hoping and praying that the bandit king doesn’t rape you does not guarantee that the bandit king will leave you alone. For an actor who pursues his interests through violence and has a low cost to doing violence, he will be inclined to continue to do violence. The way not to be raped by the bandit king is to kill the bandit king, or make it so expensive for him to use violence that he seeks other, less expensive prey.

Does no-one watch Kurosawa anymore?

Also, an ideology can be defeated very easily. We have seen may ideologies fail over the past fifty years–fascism, Japanese imperialism, nazism, collectivism, stalinism–and the list goes on. These have been defeated in some cases by force, in others by commerce. But they have been defeated.

Actors use ideology to motivate other people–to promote the benefits of following the particular ideology. When the costs of following the ideology become too high, then the ideology fails.

Balbulican: You miss the point. When I speak of the cost of violence, I mean the cost borne by the perpetrator, not the victims.

Your first point is a cheap anti-Rumsfeld shot combined with the standard “but they do it too!.” I’m pleased you were able to hold off for this long before trotting it out.

Your second point is the more interesting one, but like many in this discussion, you have been missing the point because you want to ascribe a moral quality to violence or those that argue that violence exists as a method by which nations and other groups pursue their objectives. The example of the children in the playground learning that it is to their advantage to give their ability to use violence to a super-entity fails because the mandated body–the teachers–are imposed from without. What you have described as a “mandated body, which in turn agrees to exercise it solely to enforce collectively agreed to social or political goals” applies just as well to a gang of bullies as it does to a student government. It would be a better argument to say that the current situation in Iraq is like the playground, and the Coalition forces are the teachers. Remove the external authority, and the bullies start to dominate the playground.

This is simple group dynamics.

Also, violence is not the ultimate arbiter of affairs between nations, it is merely one choice of many. It is, however, one that speaks to the survival needs present in all human beings, which gives it a straightforward and high degree of effectiveness. Increasing the costs of doing violence relative to other choices means that there is a disincentive to use violent means. For groups whose most cost-effective option to achieving their goals is violence, the only way to combat them is to reduce the cost-effectivess of their violence.

There is the defensive option–becoming a hardened target or turning the nation into “Fortress Canada” (you refer to it as enhancement of domestic security measures). This is a strategy that was rendered impotent centuries ago through the use of siege warfare tactics. If an enemy wants to destroy the fortress, they will do so–all it takes is time. Warfare is Darwinism writ large, and the constant evolution of warfighting means that the domestic security measures have to continually adapt to meet ever-evolving threats. Eventually, however, the fortress falls.

The next option is diplomatic, but there are entities whose interests compete with Canada’s and the sponsorship of terrorist groups may well be an acceptable tactic to them. The Soviet Union, for example, sponsored dozens of terrorist groups outside its borders to destabilize the West during the Cold War. It is a maxim of warfighting that effective tactics get adopted, and if terrorist groups are seen to be effective, there is little to stop nation states from deploying them as proxies or auxilliaries. At that point, you’re hoping that other nations’ moralities are the same as yours and that they would never use such methods–which brings you back to magical thinking.

You’ve just put Canada in the position of France, 1940, sitting confidently behind its Maginot Line.

Pursuing warfighting without going to the third step–actually killing the bastards–is a recipie for failure. There are times when you have to kill to increase the costs of violence among the perpetrators. This is one of those times.

As far as the third point, I believe that God wants us to look both ways before crossing the street. Enough said.

Lovely Lefty: Causing mass political instability in the Middle East is a desireable thing in terms of Canada’s national interests. The so-called “political stability” of the Middle East is what has bred threats to Canada.

And no, you can’t have my GWB doll. Get your own.

Ti-Guy: My heart goes out to you. I can see you struggling with the concepts, but they are very basic economics. Simply replace money with violence in economic equations, and you will see that the analysis works in a rather chilling way.

You keep trying to relate this in moral terms, but you simply can’t do that. Morality, as has been said, is subjective. When you assume the responsibility for a nation’s well-being, you cannot gamble that a competing entity subscribes to your morality. Instead, you have to look at what his incentives and disincentives for behaviour are–and plan accordingly. And this happens every day in every nation of the world–and there is no mass psychopathy among the Canadian populace or subversion of the democratic process as you fantasize about.

Perhaps the best example of this from Canadian History is the Ontario Premiership of Bob Rae, who tried to govern according to progressive principles, until reality came up and smacked him in the head. Then, when he tried to accomodate reality, the progressives turned on him. To paraphrase Bill Whittle: “He had stolen their magic.”

As far as your rather bizarre analysis of the morality of suicide bombers, might I refer you to Treehugger’s 72 Virgins? Aren’t those virgins an inducement for a suicide bomber to carry out his mission–effectively lowering his personal costs of doing violence? In that sense, he is not assuming any dire consequences in his own mind.

Further defense of magical thinking, should you be uninspired by social causes:
moonwalks and skyscrapers; the pyramids; the cyber-hand; the difference engine; the internet; flight; psychology; charity; religion and mythos and mysticism; calculus; art; love; General Relativity…
Advance predicated on dreams and realized through work. And what of accidental discovery - which often happens in the course of working on something that didn’t work out? Like alchemy. Science thanks the alchemists for many gifts.

It is possible to be more than we are.

“Also, an ideology can be defeated very easily. We have seen may ideologies fail over the past fifty years–fascism, Japanese imperialism, nazism, collectivism, stalinism–and the list goes on. These have been defeated in some cases by force, in others by commerce. But they have been defeated.”

I applaud your ability to exploit my lazy choice of words.

Do you really not see the difference between the “defeated ideologies” you listed, and what the Bushies are up against today? The “terrorists” are not only following a nutbar Hitler-type who has some crazy ideas—it’s bigger than that. The “terrorists” truly believe they are engaged in a “holy war” against “western crusaders” who seek to “destroy Islam”. I’m not saying that’s what I think Bush is trying to do, but that’s the impression the enemy is getting, and with every passing day the Americans are only further reinforcing that impression. Cliff notes version: unless you’re prepared to say that tanks and bombs can scare these people out of their piousness, your argument doesn’t work.

The ongoing failure of the US to obtain anything resembling security in Iraq despite the unspeakable money and manpower they are throwing at the problem would seem to support what I’m saying, and soundly debunk your claim that their “ideology can be defeated very easily”.

Regarding your insistence that terrorists have Canada in their sights, I would love to hear why you think so. You seem too bright to buy into the sophistic Bush tenet that “terrorists hate freedom” and therefore they hate Canada, and want to bomb Canada. So please elaborate—how does hitting Canada further their goals, and how does it work into your violence economics model?

I think that as long as we keep our boots off of their holy ground, they won’t be bothered with us. As soon as we go in, start the stopwatch, an attack is coming.

I’ve always had problems with realism, which this argument reeks of. Realism is a misnomer and rarely depicts an accurate picture of how the world itself works. By focusing on how, in an anarchic world, the state becomes the primary actor wholly consumed by its own quest to fulfill its own interests its interests often get side tracked by the act of fulfillment. That is, the ends are rejected in favour of perceptably successful means. The Machiavellian “the success of the means justifies the means” is repeated until the very success of the means replaces the ends, that is national interest.

Another problem with this realism is that it spawns paranoia and, thus, aggression. Every time one ruling cadre buys into realism they begin to see assassins in the shadows. Every other nation is out to harm their “national interests” and as more and more ruling elites buy into the idea international politics becomes what realists construct it to be, at least in appearances. Each state, as an impersonal yet self-interested body, is seen to be working against “Us”. “They” become alienated and demonized, any rationality is boiled away in games of brinkmanship, intervention, and war all for the sake of preserving the “national interest” that is only available through the use of force. The use of force spawns more use of force, which must be counteracted with the use of force. But when “they” use force in turn against “us” we must use force against them or else we’ll lose the upper hand in this cyclical argument that has no end except the rejection of the argument that created the circle in the first place–or a cataclysmic war were one side forces itself upon the other and visibly defeats it on its own territory (That is the First World War did not see an end to realist thinking in Europe because the Germans, while defeated, where not humiliated at home. That occurred after the Second World War).

Yet another problem with realism is its focus on states. States are not, regardless of what one may think, the ultimate actor in any game. As one commenter has said states are a product of “magical thinking”. This fact cannot be ignored. To percieve states, impersonal and abstract entities, as holding any kind of agency in and of themselves ignores that individual human beings are at the root of every action of every state. Humans are the ones who sign the documents, who set the course, who fire the guns, who accept this dogma over that not states. Realism engages in the “magical thinking” it abhores because it believes that its construction of international affairs is real.

Kenneth Waltz, a “neorealist”, has proposed a ‘levels of analysis approach’ to international relations. This approach looks at the interconnectedness between the First (Individual), Second (Interstate), and Third (Intrastate) levels of analysis to try and figure out how and why international relations work-out the way they do. This system, while granting agency to religion, community organizations, international bodies, ect, gives equal weight to the individual amongst these concerns. This is why I have a problem with the example of France in 1812, 1815, 1870, 1914, 1939, 1954, and 1956. The dates are listed. It is assumed that the state FRANCE, not the individuals, movements, and organizations that make up the nation France is the actor responsible for what happened. It also assumes that there were not opposing (ie economic, personal, ect) factors that led to French defeat. The historical examples, if we can even call them that, are defeated by the arrogance of presupposition. Through the level of analysis we can see that the demoralization of the French army prior to the First World War following the Dreyfus Affair meeting the Schiefflen Plan that lay the road to Moscow through Paris, or the meeting of the defensive strategies that dominated the First World War with the Blitzkreig of the early Second World War (whose legacy as an effective strategy did not outlive the war itself) were viable factors of why France failed–not because France was unable to support its international heckling with force.

Let me carry forward that last point, the inadequacy of the ‘historical examples’ provided in the original post, to show how they may, in fact, argue the opposite of what they were meant to. The overengagement of French forces following over two decades war in 1812 and 1815 (Napoleonic Wars/Russia and the 100 Days) (remember even after the Short Peace in the early 19th Century 40 000 Frenchmen lost their lives trying to re-enslave 500 000 Spanish armed Freedmen) suggest that engaging in wars that do not have a forseeable end for the sake of realist policies will result in national ruin. The 1870 (Franco-Prussian War) example suggests to me that following a leader struggling for internal support who lacks loyality amongst a good portion of his military leadership or to fight a war without knowing what is in opposition will lead to national ruin. 1914 (First World War) tells us that the conventions of warfare change with technology, that the industrialization of war leads to holocaust, that a demoralised army cannot fight a highly trained and dedicated force on equal terms, that defense is superior to offence, and not to trust long term war plans that make you address Paris before addressing Moscow, especially if it leads you through neutral Belgium evoking the rage of the British Empire as they lead to national ruin. 1939 (Second World War) tells us that fighting wars against percieved enemies may be initially successful but if one cannot win over the conquered populations and cannot achieve some sort of lasting peace–and force alone will not bring this– the result is national ruin. 1954 (Algeria) tells us that you cannot subject a people who wish to be free, even your subjection of them is supposed to lead to their freedom in one way or another. 1956 (French Indochina) tells us the exact same thing as 1954.

Basically the examples that we’ve been asked to remember suggest that going into Iraq is a very very bad idea, even in the abstract terms of realism that depersonalizes conflicts and ignores that fact that states–such as Switzerland and the Kingdom of Savoy/Piedmonte-Sardinia/Italy as well as Spain and an independent Turkish state in Asia Minor–have existed for hundreds of years not always interferring in other’s affairs or going out of their way looking for conflict (of course their are exceptions to each and everyone of those rules). The realist argument fails because it engages in the same “Magical thinking” it critiques.

The depersonalization of international forces and underemphasis of peace (indeed the assumption that peace is not the natural state of existence) usually hijack and derail realist arguments.

With my long-winded annoyance at Realism and Realists in all their forms over I must say one thing: not once in has it been argued that going to Iraq is in Canada’s national interest*. Without the existence of such an argument the well written post is a pretty vessel without a cargo. It looks and sounds nice, but it doesn’t deliver any goods.

Cheers
———————————————————
* Of course my tirade against realism may have discredited these arguments in the comments following the original post. Arguments that it is better to be a ‘hard target’ than a ’soft target’ do not argue the point that they may have been intended to. Instead they support the idea of lying low and turning isolationist.

“I think its just wrong…”

Ah. That’s your first mistake. Divest yourself of these primitive, atavistic notions.

Shoot. All those plates spinning in the air, and apparently, I’m the one plate that RJ let crash to the floor.

Remind me never again to bother.