[Peace-discuss] Re: [Peace] "Iraq and Recession" press conference noon today (Thu), IDF, Springfield & Wright

[Stuart Levy]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 04:46:02PM -0500, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> But it's a mistake and worse to use false arguments against the war, if for 
> no other reason that that they're falsifiable.

But are they false?  We really *can't* afford this Iraq war.
Capacity limitations aren't nearly enough to prevent all aggression -- 
we could afford to invade Granada or Panama without a blink,
and I don't think it strained the US military very much to take
part in bombing Kosovo.

But if arguing that it's beyond our means turns out to drive us
to back out of our Iraq invasion, or to prevent starting a hot war
with Iran -- and if we can use the current fiasco to remind ourselves
in future, at least for a few years while memories are fresh,
that even "easily winnable" wars aren't -- then isn't that a
good argument to use?

I'd agree -- of course! -- that economic arguments aren't the *only* ones
that should be used against waging war.

In one of Ray Bradbury's stories he talks about creatures with
additional senses beyond our familiar ones.  For each new sense,
he explained, there were new sins that they could commit.  

We (US) may be sense-less but we are powerful.  If our power is less --
and better, if we realize that it's less -- then less harm will be within
our grasp.


> Worse, it's unethical to oppose a crime because it costs you money.
> That's straining at a gnat and 
> swallowing a camel, like the imagined German cost-accountants.

?

> I'll look for Sterling's story.
>
> In the meantime I'm reminded of Robert Harris' 1992 novel "Fatherland," 
> which imagined a world in which Germany had won World War II.  The novel 
> caused a scandal in the UK and the EU when it was published because, 
> despite the difference in outcome of WWII, it described Germany as 
> occupying roughly the position it in fact did in the contemporary world.  

Oh good, I will look for that.

> --CGE
>
>
> Stuart Levy wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 02:10:31PM -0500, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>> I'm not so sure.
>>>
>>> The Third Reich didn't fall apart from the economic effect of its war 
>>> policies.  Just the opposite: it was German rearmament after 1933 that 
>>> saved Germany from the worst of the Depression.  It took the US until the 
>>> end of the decade to catch on.
>>>
>>> The New Deal never solved the Depression (of course it was forced by 
>>> popular pressure to do some good things) -- only war spending after 1940 
>>> did that. (It also produced the Great Fear in American planners after the 
>>> war: since war spending ended the Depression, the end of the war meant 
>>> the return of the depression; the only solution was continued preparation 
>>> for war.)
>>>
>>> What economic health the Bush II era has enjoyed may be due to Iraq war 
>>> spending.  You know that, absent 9/11, the president and Congress would 
>>> not have  spent anywhere near so much money on anything else, especially 
>>> not anything worthwhile.
>> I agree -- but I'm interested in how history judges us -- or how we judge
>> the Germans of that time, which we can safely do since they were clearly 
>> defeated.
>> Extravagant deficit spending can & has propped up the US for a while, but 
>> can't
>> indefinitely, of course.
>> And we don't necessarily have to suffer a military defeat to become 
>> impotent,
>> we can trip over our own shoelaces economically too.  When we're down,
>> others will be more willing to point out our past (present) faults.
>> Though that may not make *us* any more willing to look at them...
>> There's a nice short story with one prescient scenario for this, by
>> Bruce Sterling.  Google "we see things differently" and it's the first 
>> link:
>>     "a 1989 story from the perspective of an Arab visitor to a future,
>>      run-down America"
>>> It is true that there's an argument about diminishing returns in this 
>>> "military Keynsianism"  -- for one thing, a greater tranche is 
>>> non-domestic than was the case 60 years ago -- and there's all sorts of 
>>> other reasons to condemn how the current administration has and hasn't 
>>> spent money.  But it's at least not clear that current war spending is 
>>> economically ruinous for the US.
>>>
>>> The liberal argument against the Vietnam War, 40 years ago, was that of 
>>> course it was a good idea if it could be done, but it was costing too 
>>> much.  I didn't think much of that argument then, and I don't now. --CGE
>> If we can find arguments that will be effective in countering the endless
>> proponents of war, I hope we will use them.  Even if we know that there is
>> more truth than is represented in those arguments.
>>> Stuart Levy wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 11:36:52AM -0500, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>>> Suppose the German anti-war movement had the freedom to operate that we 
>>>>> do, and they chose in 1943 to mount a campaign with the theme "The War 
>>>>> is Costing Too Much"...  --CGE
>>>> If they'd succeeded, I'd have been happy to cheer them on.
>>>> If the US falls apart as a result of these ruinous & immoral
>>>> policies, future mainstream historians may well look on us as we look
>>>> now on the Third Reich.  We have that luxury now because the Germans
>>>> had to admit defeat, and were judged by those who defeated them.
>>>> But if the US survives this, who will get the chance to look at us
>>>> that way?  Or better, when will that widespread judgement come?
>>>> Until then we can still expect that many people will oppose war as
>>>> an economic burden, even if too few see it as a burden on their
>>>> consciences as well.
>>>> When Derrick Jensen spoke here a few months ago -- talking about
>>>> the essential violence and essential unsustainability of industrial
>>>> civilization -- one of his comments was that he suspects Bush & co.
>>>> are closet Luddites.  How could they have been more diligent
>>>> in hastening our downfall?
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