tripping point deux

miggidy writes:
"You use the _expression 'tipping point'; in one of your blogmails. Isn’t this the essential premise of the neo-con argument?

And looking at: S. Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, (Iraq), don't we have to at least pause and consider a stunning, scary, personally embarrassing, possibility?"

thnx - i love getting feedback/input :-)

i figured the questions/answers might be of interest to all - so ill respond here

i answered part1 here http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2005/03/tripping-point.html
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now to your 2nd point: "And looking at: S. Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, (Iraq), don’t we have to at least pause and consider a stunning, scary, personally embarrassing, possibility?"

it seems that what you are actually asking is: 'could it be that the neocons were right, and that maybe it really was worth it?'

its a good question, glad you asked, the answer is long, but its probably a good excuse to do an overview :-)

if we take as given the neocon premise that democracy is good, then we have to ask why they think that - there are 2 different answers - its either (or maybe both) a) good for people cos they have their 'freedom' b) its good cos 'democracies dont go to war with each other' (ie it makes america safer). ok - so i agree with the first point, the second point is disputable.

a subsequent purported neocon premise is the idea of democracy dominoes - democracy begets democracy or some such - people yearning to be free and all that. tipping points and all that. presumably this concept assumes that people of one sovereign nation can import lessons (and/or get hope/strength) from other democratic revolutions, which sounds reasonable.

we run into some problems pretty quickly however. firstly, we have the inherent issue of religion - what happens when a majority vote for a theocracy? we have this 'problem' in iraq already. western democracy, as we know it, doesnt really allow for this possibility - the entire notion is antithetical. secondly, if we take the pnac-ers as a proxy for neoconism, we quickly realise that they dont give a fuck about freedom or democracy, their stated goal is global domination. by america. perpetual empire. thirdly, the father of what we call neoconism is strauss - his guiding principle was that people are stupid and need to be told what to do, and in fact that they specifically need to be deceived - echoing plato. 'irregardless' of whether that is true or not, it certainly isnt democratic, and is specifically designed to merely give the illusion of freedom. not unrelated is the purported mossad motto “By way of deception, thou shalt do war”.

we are then forced to ask exactly what we mean by 'democracy' - and of course, it isnt simply the right to vote, it includes the right to have your vote counted, and having meaningful choices - it also includes an informed citizenry, and the rule of law, a splash of honesty hither and tither, and a bunch of other stuff - procedural integrity, minority protections, some transparency and all that. and we need to remember that if democracy has any significance at a national/sovereign level, then it also ought be extended at some level to the international community - jonk's 'global test' if u will.

the stark reality is that the neocon democracy-givers have a specific, public plan for global domination, are masters of deception, *actively* do everything they can to undermine (nee destroy) democracy in america, and *actively* destroy global law and order and the institutions designed to enforce them. they simply dont have any intellectual or moral integrity - and im certainly not ready to accept that a schoolboard election in egypt is vindication.

putin was right to scoff at american democracy - by any objective measure it really isnt, and the neocon goal is to undermine the remnants. and robertbyrd was right to highlight the parallels with hitler effectively operating within the pretense of the law. murdermonkey simply would never have been president but for one vote on the supremecourt in florida and the brooksbrothers crew. and he wouldnt have been 're'-'elected' in 04 without blackwell and his paper-weights and machine allocations and all. and that only assumes that they stole it 'legally'. these are the givers of democracy to the rest of the world - yet they patently dont believe in it. its my personal view that they specifically, literally stole the election, but even if that isnt true, then they effectively stole it through different disenfranchisment mechanisms, and even if that isnt true, then they effectively stole it by lying to people. krove and fauxnews might be proud that extraordinary %'s of the population believe the alq/saddam link, and the saddam/911 link and the saddam/wmd link and all the rest of it - but it is surely antithetical to democracy as we know/expect it. ergo, any suggestion that 'the neocons were right' is categorically fallacious - we pretend to bring democracy to the world, but we simply dont believe in / practise it at home (where democracy includes the concept of an informed citizenry). and lets not forget, the crazy takeover started before the iraq invasion - it probably started with the clinton impeachment proceedings, and it certainly included the overthrow of graydavis - i never knew davis and dont have any perspective on whether he was good or bad - but they totally threw democracy on its head to get arnie in, who certainly isnt any better - and it only cost them (issa) $1m. and what did they get? an inexperienced misogynist steroid-taking brownshirt felon who hasnt solved any of the problems that his predecessor couldnt. perhaps we ought not forget the fact that 80+% of congress seats arent effectively contested, or the silly gerrymandering in texas and elsewhere. and we know what they did in venezuela and haiti and other places. democracy? scamocracy. these are the people who profess to bring democracy to the rest of the world? fuck off. they categorically dont believe in it - so how can they possibly export it?

and so again we return to the question 'maybe it really was worth it?' - which begs the question, what is 'it'? presumably that refers to the invasion of iraq, and whether that was the trigger for democracy dominoes. firstly, we must consider that if we believe in democracy (the will of the people) then we must necessarily assume that the facts stand on their own. if that were true, then they wouldnt have had to lie about wmd, and they wouldnt have had to lie about the costs. 'informed citizenry' and all that. theres no doubt that they lied about all those things - which presumably means they didnt think they could sell it otherwise. and if they couldnt sell it otherwise, then they were lying, which means they didnt think theyd be able to get enough support, which means they dont believe in democracy, which, again, undermines their pretense of spreading democracy.

if we take the neocons at their word, then they apparently thought that invading iraq was worth it. they also thought that the war would only cost $20bn, that they'd be welcomed as liberators, and that it would only take fifty thousand troops, and most of the troops would be home by now. i dont think we know how many dead people they expected on either side, but lets assume that they guessed correctly for the period up till 'mission accomplished'. ok - so they figured the invasion was gonna be worth it, but we can assume that they figured it was marginal, otherwise they wouldnt have had to concoct the WMD, imminent danger malarkey. so they thought they only had a marginal case using their own metrics, and we can now see that the budget has blown out 1500%, troop numbers by about 2000%, troop deaths by 500% - and theres no sign of an end to the deterioration to any of these metrics. again, they had a marginal orginal case, and all the metrics have blown out. and then there are all the unknown unknowns - who knows what sort of blowback we might see? its hard to imagine that even they can now say it was worth it.

if we look at the costs for the iraqis - well, we've got probably 150,000 dead people, probably 20 maimed per death, so 3million maimed, untold revenue loss from disruptions to oil, $9bn missing from the coffers, intermittent electricity, malnutrition rates second only to somalia, the destruction of millenia of culture and a thick blanket of depleted uranium which will continue killing people for generations etc etc. and no sign of an end to the deterioration.

and then of course we have the global costs - lets briefly just highlight say, the damage done to international law, the precedent of pre-emptive strikes, the global economic cost of having oil prices twice what they might otherwise be, clouds of DU on the winds, the implications of the concept that america wont strike countries that have WMD, and the trashing of the geneva conventions. for starters.

which brings us to the apparently moral equation of the ends justifying the means. much has already been written/considered about this philosophical issue of course. to me, the major issues around this 'philosophy' are a) the hidden costs b) the determination of who is qualified to make the decision c) the blowback calculation. assuming that its true that the end result really does justify the means - then we must calculate both, and we must somehow be justifiably confident that we know both the costs and the benefits, and we must be morally justified in making the calculations, which means that we must also consider the probabilities of the costs and benefits of all of the outcomes.

and what have the democracy-bringers brought us in terms of democracy? well, we invaded afghanistan for reasons that still arent clear to me, murdering thousands, and we gave them an election where they somehow got 150% turnout, and it is a completely failed narco-state. we got a purplefinger election in iraq where at least a third of the parties pulled out for fear of being murdered, the sunnis didnt vote, none of the voters knew who or what they were voting for, it took two weeks to get the results during which time the turnout fell from 72% to 44%, scottritter says the results were fixed, we still dont have a government, and iraqis are dying at the rate of about 30 per day.

as for egypt and saudi arabia, its true that there are some smatterings of chatterings of voting. the sauds allowed some men to vote for some municipal councils, and the egyptians are thinking about voting, although mubarak gets to decide who can run for office, and it seems that elections were agreed on in 1999 anyways. if democracy comes to these places, then great.

as for lebanon, they arent strangers to elections - i dont know whether the May elections will be more or less free without syrian forces. it'd be fun to see what would happen if they were free and hezbollah picks up a whole bunch of new seats... its not obvious whether the street protests calling for pullout are legitimate, or if they are manufactured - i sense the latter. theres sposed to be a pro-syrian rally on tuesday, the media coverage of that will be interesting - given the urgency of Assad's withdrawal, the rally might be meaningless anyway. but lets not kid ourselves, nobody is trying to free the lebanese, it is a concerted campaign to demonise syria. theres no way syria did haririkiri. and theres no way syria set off the bomb in telaviv. as xymphora asked are "the Syrians are trying to destroy the state of Israel one disco-er at a time?" the neocons arent trying to bring democracy to lebanon, they are just squeezing the trigger on syria - it doesnt matter what syria does, they will not be able to satisfy the demands of the neocons - look at the language being used 'syria must withdraw its troops *and the secret service*' - what happens next is quite clear, the syrians withdraw, theres a terrorist attack in beirut (maybe at the May elections?) which gets blamed on syrian 'secret' forces, and thats the trigger to attack syria.

and of course, as goes syria, so goes iran. as with iraq, its not about democracy, or about wmd, the iranians could blow up their own nukular plants and it wont satisfy the likudniks. they could blow up their 'secret second program' and invite the whole world to come and watch, but then there'd be questions about the secret third nukular program. meanwhile israel isnt an NPT signatory and all is well.

its conceivably true that lebanon will become more democratic as a result of the neocons, but if that does happen, it would be a mere side-effect, not the intention.

in the meantime, remember why these people purport to give good freedom - 'democracies dont go to war with each other' (ie it makes america safer). but this is obviously fallacious - even if we accept their contention that democracies dont go to war with each other, the actions of the neocons actually makes america, and the world, substantially less safe, for 2 reasons. firstly, even the goss and myers say that they are breeding new terrorists, but perhaps more importantly, every country that isnt a democracy (and even some that are - cf venezuela, and probably brazil, and sthkorea) and hasnt been attacked yet is quickly ramping up deterrent capabilities - which means wmd proliferation. so we might be safer than we ever were from lebabon, and saudi municipals probably wont attack us any more, but northkorea is more dangerous. and pakistan probably isnt feeling very secure. and china. and russia. and u could go all the way down the list. AQKhan is probably still selling stuff to anyone with euros.

the linguistic fun will begin when america attacks a democracy, and someone points out that democracies arent sposed to attack each other, and the ams will reiterate their confidence that democracies dont attack each other, and then laugh maniacally, screaming 'we arent a democracy any more - we are fascista, and we like it'

in the meantime, we have to listen to the murdermonkey tell people that terrorist attacks in beirut are syrias fault because, at a minimum, they are the occupying force and ought to know everything that is going on, while the same isnt apparently true in iraq. and we hear the murdermonkey celebrate stainedfingers in iraq, while simultaneously saying that theres no way there can be fair elections in lebanon if theres an occupying force there. this necessarily makes the world less safe as the brains of reality-based folk explode at random all around the world. passers-by might get injured, collaterally.

so i think we can safely say that the neocons arent interested in democracy, and they arent interested in making the world safer - which begs the question what the fuck are they interested in? and its not exactly clear... the two closest guesses that i can come up with are that either/both a) they are crazed likudniks b) they have mastered the art of kleptocracy.

and if im wrong, ill be very happily embarrassed, and ill hope that someone actually tallies up all the costs one day to see if it really was worth it.

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four moron years.
wotisitgood4.blogspot.com