| | Quoth Jason Pappas:
"Tom, your legalistic use of the quantifier 'some' obsures the overriding picture. Everyday, jihadists and/or Baathists target and kill dozens of Iraqi civilians and pro-democracy Iraqi partisans in an attempt to terrorize the population into submission and re-establish tyrannical oppression."
I'm not sure how the use of the word "some" is "legalistic." There are insurgents in Iraq. There are also terrorists in Iraq. Some, but in likelihood not all, of the insurgents (although not all) are terrorists; some of the terrorists (although not all) are certainly insurgents. This is just a fact of reality.
"Do I want to help those Iraqis who aspire to some modicum of a liberal democracy? I haven’t said. But I can still see the vast difference between the goals of both sides."
You're assuming that there are only two sides. There aren't. There are a whole bunch of sides with numerous disparate goals and varying methods.
There are the Ba'athists in the insurgency, and the Ba'athists in the occupational authority, Mukhabarat and "interim government" ministries.
There are the Sunni Islamist insurgents and the Shiite Islamist backers of the new government.
There's the Iraqi Communist Party -- as well as the Iraqi branch of the Fourth International -- and about 200 other parties, most of which presumably field some sort of military or paramilitary capability.
There are Kurdish factions ranging from the democratic to the doctrinaire Marxist, as well as Kurdish Islamists.
There are some liberal democratic elements as well, but they've been pretty much invisible.
And there are the foreign occupying troops.
Do I regard each of these factions as morally equivalent? Hell, no. They're to be judged by their actions.
"Your moral equivalence – expressed by the usual ploy of pointing out that neither side is perfectly good nor perfectly bad"
Funny that you should describe that "ploy" as "usual," given that I've never, ever used it. I regard the Ba'athists as evil, period (and so regarded them when most of you here didn't have the slightest idea what the hell a Ba'athist was). I regard the Islamists as bad, period.
I regard most of the US troops as good people who have been put in the position of doing bad things. To the extent that there's an evil factor there, it subsists mostly at the top, where the US government has connived in reconstituting the Ba'athist Mukhabarat, and creating a Shiite Islamist government (just wait -- you'll see), both for the purpose of fighting the Ba'athist and Sunni insurgencies.
And ultimately, I have to hold the US forces more accountable, because I, as an American, am, with some justification, held partially responsible for their existence, funding and disposition. If your kid is running around the neighborhood throwing rocks through people's windows, I probably won't like it, and I might be in a position to do something about it. If my kid is running around the neighborhood throwing rocks through people's windows, I have a responsibility to take my kid in hand and put a stop to it -- even if your kid was doing it full-time and mine was doing it only a little, and giving blood, helping little old ladies across the street, etc. at other times.
"a polemical ruse to soften up the reader for the ultimate goal of arguing that our side is the force of evil."
I'm on the side of reason, right and freedom. I don't know, or particularly care, which side you're on. But whichever side you're on, be advised that that side is -- and those who support it are -- responsible for what it actually does, not just what it says.
Tom Knapp
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Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them.
