quote: Technically true, in the intentionally murky language of things like this, they only say stuff like 'shall be punished'. But we signed on to punish it, as did many other members of the UN. And we don't. All the time we don't. We're not doing it right now, in fact, in parts of the world. That's kind of my point. Just wanted to make that clear.
A point that means nothing? Again I'll just point you to my flawed legal system analogy as to why we still obey the laws generally even when justice isn't always fair or quick.
Your case comes down to that there are a "multitude" of "smaller" transgressions that Saddam's Iraq committed that warranted invasion, let's look at them:
1) Iraq is an awful place to live; we've been over this with kmboots I think in the most detail but for reference I believe this has been largely descredited, lots of places are allegedly awful places to live, but we don't invade them all neither is it a security breach of international law; there are processes in place to alleviate these such as through the Economic and Social Council one of the principle organs of the United Nations.
2) Iraq fired on us; Or something similar, you claim you didn't claim this and called me dishonest but it seems you went back to making this claim with the bit I quoted from you above: That morally we have a "right" to do whatever we want to Iraq if they give any sort of casis beli and fire on our forces. Aside from this actually being illegal reasoning under international law (note, rules of engagement and the signed principles to the non use of force and to seek peaceful mediation and armed response as a last resort stuff you don't know about because you've never studied international law) violated the principles of proportionality and various other white papers from international functionalist organizations.
So also descredited!
3) Iraq committed genocide; as with Kmboots case above, Iraq's crimes on this matter where years before 2003 and ceased to be of international concern well before then, also even then it is obvious that when Iraq *was* doing said genocide we *did* eventually put a stop to it with the no fly zones and provided humanitarian assistance to the Kurds (it was under Tony Zioni's command btw, see Battleready).
Then finally the fact is it isn't genocide, it MIGHT be ethnic cleansing, but its clear in intent it was a retalliatory strike against the Kurds for their (US sponsored) uprising against the government of Iraq. Using poison gas is certainly a war crime, but it isn't quite genocide, the intent to wipe out the Kurds isn't clear.
4) Iraq had/working towards possessing WMD! Or looked like they were! They were keeping the inspectors from doing their jobs...
As we note earlier in the thread this isn't the case, Mr Blis reported that Iraq was prompt in allowing access to various sites; Also that Iraq may have been as an intentional policy to "keep the world on its toes" is as I've mentioned a legitimate negotiating tactic and an accepted paradigm in international relations the belief that uncertainty brings about more stability and the rationality of irrationality encourages the negotiator to take you more seriously. Well within their rights as a nation to protect themselves from what we see was the justified fear of American invasion.
5) Our presence in Iraq turned out to be a net good.
Completely and utterly false. Just take a look around the Something Awful discussion and debate forums to see how wrong this is; Iraq is essentially on the verge of collapsing into its constituent parts and the whole thing is pretty much recognized as a "Win" for Iran who is actively playing power politics with various factions against each other. The government of Maliki is seen as Saddam 2.0 and quickly losing power to Kurdish and regionalist sentiment to the point that Exxon doesn't even do business with them but directly with the Kurds and the Shiites.
History will need some more time to confirm this but there doesn't seem to be much doubt.
Considering how armed intervention and invasion should require extremely high standards I just don't see how these together OR individually justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Are you saying that any attempt at injury - whether or not the offending party has or even can actually cause injury gives us the right to do anything we want to them? Really? Far beyond what is needed to prevent injury to us?
Nope. Not any. Please take note of the comparison I made above. [b] But, y'know, just because they were much less powerful than us doesn't mean we have to respond to warlike provocations with military force they can stand a chance against. [B]
I think this is really interesting, Rakeesh. I think you're completely right, and I think the root of this is similar to the idea that it's wrong to shoot someone who is trying to kill you with a knife (because that's excessive force), just writ large.
Repeat after me, nations are akin to individuals but they are not exactly so and are held to different standards.
You do not respond to some AA missiles on your patrolling aircraft with a nuke or invasion; neither to small arms fire or the like. had iraq tried again to invade Kuweit that might have been a different story, but border skirmishes are almost never scene as an actual casis beli for war except by war mongers.
-Hitler's invasion of Poland. -Gulf of Tonkin -Kim il Sung's invasion of S. Korea (this one is actually true) -Spanish American War
An individual with a knife can do you grievous harm, a third world country with pretentions of great power status short of a nuke cannot come remotely close to the same level of harm to a superpower. It is up to LOCAL forces operating under the rules of engagement to determine the correct response.
*Addendum; it is in fact believed by historians that S. Korea did in fact fire on N. Korea first and raided across the border; however they were some 2 days prior to invasion and 2) even if they gave a pretext for it, invasion was certainly dissaproportionate to the casis beli provided.
Under your logic rakeesh, North Korea would have been FULLY justified in its invasion of South Korea because they have then the moral duty to do whatever they want to South Korea.
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quote:Are you saying that any attempt at injury - whether or not the offending party has or even can actually cause injury gives us the right to do anything we want to them? Really? Far beyond what is needed to prevent injury to us?
Nope. Not any. Please take note of the comparison I made above. [b] But, y'know, just because they were much less powerful than us doesn't mean we have to respond to warlike provocations with military force they can stand a chance against. [B]
I think this is really interesting, Rakeesh. I think you're completely right, and I think the root of this is similar to the idea that it's wrong to shoot someone who is trying to kill you with a knife (because that's excessive force), just writ large.
More like the idea that it's wrong to shoot someone who's trying to poke you with their finger.
Anyway, I think it's obvious that sometimes you're morally obligated to respond to military force with no force at all. Suppose a crewman on one of the Soviet ships that threatened the blockade during the Cuban missile crisis had fired a gun at an American ship. Firing back would've been a heinous moral error.
In fact, it's a good thing Vasili Arkhipov didn't think like you guys on that fateful day.
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Good grief. After explaining myself as plainly as I can twice now, I admit I'm beginning to wonder just why I'm being misunderstood: any nation, should its military be attacked-whether successfully or not-by another while its military is behaving legitimately reserves the right but *not* the obligation to retaliate with military force.
That decision, for example during the Cuban Missile Crisis, might very well come into direct conflict with other rights and responsibilities, but it's still there.
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Blayne Bradley
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Your forgetting the key word there: Proportional military force. You can choose not to, but if you do, there is a "right" amount of force to be used according to the rules of engagement. Responding to small arms fire with a nuke would be dissaproportionate.
proportionality should be a guideline to war and this is why the justification to invade iraq has been thoroughly discredited.
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Rakeesh, I understand you; you are just horribly wrong. Inefffectual chest thumping may give us the right to do what we realistically need to do to defend ourselves not to rain down whatever destruction we feel like on a country and its people. If it did, half of Saddam's genocidal actions would also be justified.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I admit I'm beginning to wonder just why I'm being misunderstood: any nation, should its military be attacked-whether successfully or not-by another while its military is behaving legitimately reserves the right but *not* the obligation to retaliate with military force.
It's an issue with these guidelines — an issue that exists at any level of being plainly stated. What "rights" to retaliation do they reserve? Are these rights, should you sit down and write them in a book somewhere, governed at all by any degrees of proportional limitation? Does this hard and fast rule have clear delineations of what kind of 'attack' gives the 'attacked' country the ability to claim the 'right' to respond in any way they opt to?
You've distilled the core premise down in order to increase its transmissibility, but the core faults with the idea remain at any level of distillation — probably, they just become more observable. So you think you're being more misunderstood the plainer you speak. Well, that's why. You have explained it as plainly as you can, and it does provide clarification, but mostly in terms of allowing others to take issue with insufficiency as written as a moral system for 'allowing' how we can or are supposed to justify war. This doesn't have to involve my position in it at all, this is just what I can see is happening in relation to being 'misunderstood.'
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I agree. You're using the word 'right' in such a way that having "the right to do X" apparently doesn't mean that it's morally OK for you to do X. So you're robbing the word of much of its meaning and leaving it up in the air exactly what your statements imply about when the use of force is actually permissible.
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Not to mention that the caveat "while its military is behaving legitimately" makes it into an unsaleable sociopolitical morass. What is 'legitimate behavior,' and who besides the history book is going to be the arbiter of that, in the 100% of situations wherein the soon-to-be-warring entities dispute the legitimacy of the other party's behavior?
It just .. doesn't work. At all. You could hand it to academic philosophers and have them tear the moral presumptions apart in excruciating detail, due to its lack of larger cogency. More importantly, though, you could hand it to people who study international conflict and they would have a whole list of garish contraindications of the principle, as well as be able to explain why it does not suffice as a practical system for determining the legitimacy of counterattacks.
This all gets well beyond the specter of the Iraq war, which doesn't even really get to benefit from a self-assurance of legitimate behavior, or a free pass for the blanket "right to counterattack" — we have the advantage of analysis in great detail, seeing the actual motivations, convictions, and intents of those who perpetuated it, and knowing that those motivations, convictions, and intents — the real reason why we were committed to this war — are ultimately indefensible, no matter how many post-hoc official justifications they could subsequently try to slap on top of it. A moral methodology for justifying wars that grants a blanket justification for what the bush administration did is — and my wording is precise here — as practically useless as they come.
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quote:Rakeesh, I understand you; you are just horribly wrong. Inefffectual chest thumping may give us the right to do what we realistically need to do to defend ourselves not to rain down whatever destruction we feel like on a country and its people. If it did, half of Saddam's genocidal actions would also be justified.
You'll have to point out where I said firing on our soldiers gives us the right to rain down 'whatever destruction we feel like'. The comparison to Saddam's genocide attempts is absurd, by the way. Retaliating in response to years of brutality and attempts to wipe your people out clearly don't apply to what I was discussing.
quote:It's an issue with these guidelines — an issue that exists at any level of being plainly stated. What "rights" to retaliation do they reserve? Are these rights, should you sit down and write them in a book somewhere, governed at all by any degrees of proportional limitation? Does this hard and fast rule have clear delineations of what kind of 'attack' gives the 'attacked' country the ability to claim the 'right' to respond in any way they opt to?
The answer is "it depends". Yeah, not a concrete rule I'm proposing here. Even if I were an extremely educated, well-experienced expert in international law, I'm not sure I could just rattle off even a partial list of the kinds of provocations and responses that take place in the world as it is.
The reason I'm saying I'm being misunderstood is that, more than once, people have asked me, "So you think we can do anything when we're attacked?" or shades of that question, as though I hadn't clearly said something quite different.
quote:I agree. You're using the word 'right' in such a way that having "the right to do X" apparently doesn't mean that it's morally OK for you to do X. So you're robbing the word of much of its meaning and leaving it up in the air exactly what your statements imply about when the use of force is actually permissible.
We don't use the word 'right' like that all the time? For example, it would be my right to write into my newspaper that black people are inferior to white people, and we ought never ever intermarry, and man we'd all be better off if they moved back to Africa. I would be completely within my rights to do so, and most Americans I think would agree. Morally speaking, should I do that? Of course not. I don't feel I'm robbing the word of much of its meaning at all, I think I'm using the word in a different but commonly accepted way.
quote:This all gets well beyond the specter of the Iraq war, which doesn't even really get to benefit from a self-assurance of legitimate behavior, or a free pass for the blanket "right to counterattack" — we have the advantage of analysis in great detail, seeing the actual motivations, convictions, and intents of those who perpetuated it, and knowing that those motivations, convictions, and intents — the real reason why we were committed to this war — are ultimately indefensible, no matter how many post-hoc official justifications they could subsequently try to slap on top of it. A moral methodology for justifying wars that grants a blanket justification for what the bush administration did is — and my wording is precise here — as practically useless as they come.
quote: For example, morally speaking, if you shoot at us, and we're behaving legally, to me we're allowed to retaliate with our military, if we choose. Open and shut. Once someone has opened fire on us, even if they miss, well they've really just given us the decision over what to do with them. It then becomes a question of pragmatism and efficiency, to me, what we should do afterwards.
Do you want to amend that?
Also, you still haven't given me a reason why we had a moral obligation to invade 15 (or 12) years after the attacks on the Kurds.
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Nope. You're interpreting 'if we choose' to mean 'we've got a totally blank check, morally speaking, to choose what we like'. I've already spoken about that: whether and how we use our military are questions that must be asked after as well as before provocations.
As for the Kurds, alright, you're interpreting the shall we say shenanigans between the two wars as non-genocidal acts, using the word 'attacks'. *shrug* Alright, that's an outlook that can be reached reasonably. If I were a Kurd, though, I know what I would think it was.
And I don't think anywhere I've gone so far as to say we had a moral obligation to invade just because of genocide, even though we are bound to put an effective stop to it where we can. I think I've gone to substantial lengths to say that when something such as that exists alongside other criteria-firing on our soldiers, vitally important region, supporting terrorism-then the case becomes more compelling.
Is this the part where people insist I'm saying we had a right to do whatever we want to Iraq some more?
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quote:I think I've gone to substantial lengths to say that when something such as that exists alongside other criteria-firing on our soldiers, vitally important region, supporting terrorism-then the case becomes more compelling.
Don't you think that kind of reasoning, where "all these little factors combine" to form the casus belli, is a little overly slippery and easy to abuse as a justification for war?
I posted about this a little ways back:
quote:I understand the view, but you have to grant that it's a difficult one to argue against except in a piecemeal way. The "WMDs" by themselves weren't enough, the human rights weren't enough, the history wasn't enough by itself, but somehow each of these gives us a little bit of reason to invade Iraq, and together these little reasons add up to be enough to tip the scale and make invasion the right choice.
It's a very tough view to argue against. If the weight/importance you assign to one of these considerations (weapons, human rights, international lawbreaking) is a little bit off, that by itself could determine whether your view is right or wrong.
I'm not saying that makes your view false, but it does make it a very tough view to evaluate. In general, I don't like the idea of our government starting wars of choice on the basis of that kind of slippery reasoning, because it makes it too easy to trick yourself and others into making a bad decision. If you want to start a fight, your reasons for starting it should clear the bar by a wide margin. The default assumption should, if possible, be peace.
As a point about the dialectic here, too, when we attack you on one of the particular points (human rights, firing on our aircraft, WMDs), you don't need to interpret that as us falsely imputing to you the view that that one factor was sufficient reason for war. What we're trying to do is attack the idea that that factor was important enough to even contribute much to a justification. At least, that's my view: none of these factors was anywhere near worth starting a fight over, so even summing them all up we didn't have much of a case.
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Rakeesh, I am not diminishing the attacks on the Kurds; they were terrible and genocidal. I am saying that they weren't an excuse for invasion because they were over long before we invaded. We couldn't put an effective stop to them because we were 15 years too late to stop them. The Halabja attack was in March of 1988. The al-Anfal Campaign ended in 1989. It wasn't going on in 2003 so we couldn't have stopped it.
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Well, yeah, actually I do think it's prone to abuse. Though I dispute the qualifier 'little'. It seems to me, though, that humans will find a way.
quote:As a point about the dialectic here, too, when we attack you on one of the particular points (human rights, firing on our aircraft, WMDs), you don't need to interpret that as us falsely imputing to you the view that that one factor was sufficient reason for war. What we're trying to do is attack the idea that that factor was important enough to even contribute much to a justification. At least, that's my view: none of these factors was anywhere near worth starting a fight over, so even summing them all up we didn't have much of a case.
Attacking one of the particular points is fine-great, even. I'm glad to discuss it. But when I get asked, repeatedly, to explain why the human rights situation was enough to invade, full stop, after I've explained more than once that that was not the only reason I thought it was justified in Iraq...well.
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quote:Rakeesh, I am not diminishing the attacks on the Kurds; they were terrible and genocidal. I am saying that they weren't an excuse for invasion because they were over long before we invaded. We couldn't put an effective stop to them because we were 15 years too late to stop them. The Halabja attack was in March of 1988. The al-Anfal Campaign ended in 1989. It wasn't going on in 2003 so we couldn't have stopped it.
Those were not the only attacks by Saddam against the Kurds. I'm referring to those that came later. Were they explicitly acknowledged by the world as genocidal attacks? Well, no (which begs the question of when the world does acknowledge a genocide is going on). Would I have felt they were genocidal in overall goal if I were a Kurd? Probably, yeah.
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The response to the Kurdish uprising in 91 (or was it 92?) that led to the flight of the Kurds throughout Iraq towards the border, in which many thousands died. After the failed uprising, the places the Kurds lived, they didn't live there anymore. One might say they had been 'cleansed' from the region. I suspect this will be said not to have been another attempt at genocide, and I'm happy to be disagreed with on this. I'm pretty unhappy with the way the world handles genocide or even things that approach genocide.
To ask you a question, though-would you have supported military intervention, in Iraq, to stop the attempts at genocide in the late 80s? Please note that that is the question I'm asking. I'm not asking about the US's indirect but very real enabling of those efforts, which I've never denied and have thought since I knew of them were a disgrace on our part.
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Okay. That was in March of 1991. They reached a settlement in April of 1991. Those were the attacks that I was noting as being 12 years before we invaded. So, again, how were we stopping them by invading?
ETA: To answer your other question, I doubt we would have had to intervene militarily to stop the genocidal attacks in the 1980s.
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Blayne Bradley
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I would like to point out again that they do not particularly meet the criteria to be called/considered genocide. If we did then the situation in Gaza could probably also be considered "genocidal". There wasn't a systemic attempt to wipe out the Kurds, just brutally crush an armed ressurection, still war crimes but genocide is pushing it.
To answer the broader question though I feel that assuming it was a part of the officially sanctioned mandate and the response was proportional then sure; but it wouldn't need to be invasion. no fly zones were pretty effective in stopping Saddam post 1991 can't see why it still wouldn't be the case a little earlier.
We for example have virtually no boots on the ground in Libya, a few intelligence operatives doesn't make a commitment, it's all support and air strikes I support the Libya intervention it has a clear UN mandate, it is a coalition struggle, there was an ongoing humanitarian crisis and a viable military-political response.
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Blayne, they were devastating attacks and, despite being a part of the larger Iran-Iraq war, could certainly be called genocidal. The point is that they were over so stopping them could not be reason to invade Iraq.
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quote: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religions group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Saddam's war crimes against the Kurds I do not believe meet this definition, as best as we can see is an intent to crush an armed insurrection with dissaproportionate and indiscriminant force, there is no evidence that Saddam intended to kill all of the Kurds or destroy them as a cultural and ethnic-religious group, but to suppress an armed uprising to maintain power.
Using the term genocidal ie to say "something like genocide occurred" is a slippary slope and akin to the "Analogy to the crime of Aparthied in Israeli Occupied Territories" where people use emotionally charged language where it might not be appropriate. War crimes sure, there's been some trials to suggest that, but I cannot through some cursury searching find anything approaching to the language of "genocide" in anything the ICC, ICJ or the European Union Human Rights Commission.
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Blayne, this is a distraction. Whether or not the crimes were genocide doesn't matter to the invasion because they were over. Arguing this point will just allow Rakeesh to avoid the question of how an invasion in 2003 was supposed to be about preventing or stopping attacks that happened over a decade earlier.
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Blayne Bradley
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Then can we just use the word war crimes then? But one of Rakeesh's points was "we are obligated to stop genocide" well, pointing out that not only is the USA *not* in fact obligated to do so, but what Iraq did isn't even legally defined as genocide both serve the purpose to refute his argument imho.
My argument can even be considered in support of yours, not only was it *over x many years ago* and nothing to be "stopped" by invasion in 2003, but if they are not even genocide then that is double the reason to not invade.
Military intervene at the time of the acts in question while a completely different debate would be acceptable in theory, but neither here nor there because there was, as you suggest no such war crimes taking place in 2003 that we needed to drive right in and stop guns blazing.
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quote:We don't use the word 'right' like that all the time? For example, it would be my right to write into my newspaper that black people are inferior to white people, and we ought never ever intermarry, and man we'd all be better off if they moved back to Africa. I would be completely within my rights to do so, and most Americans I think would agree. Morally speaking, should I do that? Of course not. I don't feel I'm robbing the word of much of its meaning at all, I think I'm using the word in a different but commonly accepted way.
I agree with you, if we're talking about legal rights. A distinction that's often drawn is, if you have a legal right to do something, it's not illegal to do it; whereas if you have a moral right, it's not immoral to do it.
My impression was that you were talking about moral rights, since the arguments you were making sounded moral and not legal in nature.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: "Blanket justification"? *sigh*
Yes! As written, that's what you've given us! I note specifically that this is what I find when I root around for what is causing frustration with 'misunderstanding.'
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Wikipedia has a pretty good description of the difference between totalitarianism and authoritarianism.
quote: According to Karl Lowenstein, "the term ' Authoritarian' denotes a political organization in which the single power holder - an individual person or "dictator", an assembly, a committee, a junta, or a party monopolizes political power. The term " Authoritarian" refers rather to the structure of government than to the structure of society. An Authoritarian regime confines itself to political control of the state.
The governmental techniques of a totalitarian regime are necessarily Authoritarian. But a totalitarian regime does much more. It attempts to mold the private life, soul, and morals of citizens to a dominant ideology. The officially proclaimed ideology penetrates into every nook and cranny of society; its ambition is total.
Daddy China likes to do stuff to make this a much muddier issue. Or funnier, if you don't mind the end result of such a huge, corrupt government being excruciatingly terrified of social change and growing dissent.
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Well, there's a couple of issues there bundled together.
First, there's what the government wants and what actually happens. There's no doubt that there are elements of the CCP that want totalitarian control but then there's the reality that this kind of campaign has come and gone in the past and pretty much failed.
Second, individuals in the government are undeniably corrupt, yet that is actually one of the things that distinguishes an authoritarian government from a totalitarian government.
Third, the government in China is actually what I would argue an example of small government rather than huge government. There are large gaping holes in the types of programmes and regulations that the Chinese government offers as opposed to other countries such as, no universal healthcare, no welfare, no old age security, little in the way of food or environmental regulation, etc. Government spending by GDP in China is only half that of the United States with the end result that the government actually has a very small role in organizing the regular day-to-day life of an average citizen which is what I would consider another dividing line.
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I don't see much point in debating whether or not China is totalitarian or authoritarian when that distinction itself is controversial.
As best I can tell, the distinction was invented to rationalize the USs support for oppressive non-marxist dictators during the cold war. It was a post-hoc rationalization then and it continues to serve as a post-hoc rationalization for doing things like trading opening with China but continuing the embargo on Cuba.
The truth is that governments don't fit into any ridged academic classifications. Each one is unique. Trying to decide whether we should call China authoritarian or totalitarian is an exercise in splitting hairs.
Today's China is clearly far less oppressive than it was during the cultural revolution, its also clearly still denies people basic human rights we take for granted in the West.
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Well, not surprisingly I have a different view on the matter.
I don't think the distinction between totalitarianism and authoritarianism is interesting because of human rights (after all, as we've seen, a democracy is perfectly capable of legalising things like torture or indefinite detention of citizens) but is interesting because of how people understand the relationship between people and their government.
To go back to the simple example that was brought up by the law professor, news coverage in the US tends to say things like "China does/decides X" while it breaks down news about the US into "Congress decides X" or "State Y does X" or "Americans do X" when these kinds of distinctions are actually more important in China rather than less precisely because of how totalitarian rule has broken down into cliques of authoritarian rule.
But it does further than that, when we start talking about the individual differences on that table, such as how successful the government is at spreading ideology, one of the characteristic points of modern Chinese life is precisely how there is no dominant ideology. Which brings in questions like, where does the government go from here when no one really believes it's officially stated ideology?
Likewise, you can through each of the issues in modern china such as housing, infrastructure, economic policy, corruption, or personal points of interest such as the position of Hong Kong and the struggle of Cantonese and you'll find that a model of China as a unified totalitarian state is simply misleading. Understanding the balance of power between different authoritarian cliques in the government, provincial/city powerbases, and a restless population, both middle class and poor is essential to really knowing what's going on.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I don't see much point in debating whether or not China is totalitarian or authoritarian when that distinction itself is controversial.
As best I can tell, the distinction was invented to rationalize the USs support for oppressive non-marxist dictators during the cold war. It was a post-hoc rationalization then and it continues to serve as a post-hoc rationalization for doing things like trading opening with China but continuing the embargo on Cuba.
The truth is that governments don't fit into any ridged academic classifications. Each one is unique. Trying to decide whether we should call China authoritarian or totalitarian is an exercise in splitting hairs.
Today's China is clearly far less oppressive than it was during the cultural revolution, its also clearly still denies people basic human rights we take for granted in the West.
You make it sound like academia is the foreign policy tool of the United States, this is certainly heinously incorrect. 1) the distinction matters because it clearly illustrates that some people really do not know what they are talking about (because it is not controversial, it is commonly taught in University political science courses) and 2) To show more broadly that the reasoning in question is an erroneous generalization of no relevance or contextual importance to the conversation at hand. The key point is that raising a completely unrelated issue served nothing but to serve into deflection tactics.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I don't see much point in debating whether or not China is totalitarian or authoritarian when that distinction itself is controversial.
There isn't much of one. china's government is totalitarian in creed and intent. You can only get away with calling it non-totalitarian because it's very bad at it despite still attempting it and exerting pressure based on its obviously totalitarian desires.
I brought it up because it's interesting when put in relation to your Wikipedia quote, Mucus: "The governmental techniques of a totalitarian regime are necessarily Authoritarian. But a totalitarian regime does much more. It attempts to mold the private life, soul, and morals of citizens to a dominant ideology. "
According to that definition (with power word of the day 'attempts') you can easily make a case for totalitarian against authoritarian. In what turns out to be a startlingly meaningless definitional debate.
But that means only that it's not fair to say that china is "clearly not totalitarian" or "clearly authoritarian" —
idc much beyond that.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Stop saying "deflection tactics." You have worn it through the floor.
Screw off? If I say a true thing a hundred times, it doesn't matter if I say it 10, 100, or 10,000 because it is still true. You have certainly provided no evidence to support that is not true.
Your pedantic ignorance of basic and essential political science concepts continues to be unimpressive and lackluster. After all what is your best evidence? Nitpicking the grammarical wording of a wikipedia article?
One government suppresses human rights, so does another, therefor they are the same!
quote: When asked not long ago about the effectiveness of the European Union’s posture toward an increasingly assertive and illiberal Russia, former Czech president and communist-era dissident Vaclav Havel argued that the European democracies had lost their voice and needed to take a firmer, more open stand against abuses by their large and strategically important neighbor to the east.*
He warned that today’s Russia is advancing a new form of authoritarianism, with methods of control that are significantly more sophisticated than the classic totalitarian techniques of the Soviet Union.
Finally, the former Czech leader lamented that as democratic states increasingly gave primacy to economic ties in their relations with Russia, the promotion of human rights was being shunted to the margins. The Kremlin was intensifying its repression of the political opposition, independent journalists, and civil society organizations, but the response from established democracies had softened to the point of inaudibility.
Havel was referring only to Russia, but he could just as easily have been speaking of China, another authoritarian country whose high rates of economic growth and rapid integration into the global trading system have had the effect of pushing the issues of democratic governance and human rights to a back burner. China, like Russia, has modernized and adapted its authoritarianism, forging a system that combines impressive economic development with an equally impressive apparatus of political control.
A pro-democracy website making the distinction between the two? Colour me surprised.
quote:) the distinction matters because it clearly illustrates that some people really do not know what they are talking about (because it is not controversial, it is commonly taught in University political science courses)
A lot of things that are taught in undergraduate courses are controversial.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Stop saying "deflection tactics." You have worn it through the floor.
Screw off? If I say a true thing a hundred times, it doesn't matter if I say it 10, 100, or 10,000 because it is still true.
It's not; we have multiple examples in this thread where you throw the term out inappropriately against someone who's not trying to engage in 'deflection tactics,' and then do something suspiciously like deflection tactics. Certainly well more deflective than what you had accused others of, too. Speaking of which, you still haven't responded to my challenge.
quote:. After all what is your best evidence? Nitpicking the grammarical wording of a wikipedia article?
One government suppresses human rights, so does another, therefor they are the same!
Nitpicking the what? My best 'evidence?'
Anyway, I'm not saying that. Man up and re-read my post.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: According to that definition (with power word of the day 'attempts') you can easily make a case for totalitarian against authoritarian. In what turns out to be a startlingly meaningless definitional debate.
I think that is just because that sentence stripped of context is misleading. It goes on to say "The officially proclaimed ideology penetrates into every nook and cranny of society; its ambition is total."
Well, what is the official ideology? I think it's trivial to realize that they gave up on "communism" a long time ago and that nothing has really replaced it. "No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat" and all that. I don't consider the pragmatic propaganda that justifies the CCP being in power in and of itself an ideology.
Ironically, I think the only way that one can rationalize that "attempts" applies to modern day China IS to buy into the government's propaganda department and accept at face value their assertions. The reality is that there's very little ideology that affects regular everyday society and that their "ambition," far from total, is actually very constrained.
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quote:I don't consider the pragmatic propaganda that justifies the CCP being in power in and of itself an ideology.
I think that's unnecessarily narrow; in fact, requiring a totalitarian government to care more about ideology than remaining in power actually requires that totalitarian governments be among the most idealistic on Earth, if not completely fictional.
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Blayne Bradley
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More pot stirring, what evidence have you actually presented that China is in fact totalitarian and "not" authoritarian? You looked at the same wikipedia Mucus linked, that states clearly that there is a difference, and then seize upon "intent" and more or less make up some generalized intent onto the whole of CCP and the government of China as "intending" to be totalitarian, but there isn't evidence to substantiate this. I presented a link to an Pro Democracy Activism website that also makes the clear distinction, are YOU going to man up and admit that there's a difference?
Sure, it *is* a meaningless debate, just as how Rakeesh's original stupid comment that I have a "high tolerance for totalitarian regimes" was also wrong, meaningless, wildly out of context, and irrelevant.
But you were never going to call out Rakeesh for that were you?
quote: A lot of things that are taught in undergraduate courses are controversial.
Not when it's presented as say, the definition of something, in which case any controversy is fairly fictional.
Hey look, math teaches 1+1=2, let's disagree! teach both sides! Controversy created!
That Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism are different and distinct political systems is a commonly accepted academic fact.
quote: who would with the weakest of nudges go back to the former. Hooray?
Except that it can't so there's nothing to nudge?
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:I don't consider the pragmatic propaganda that justifies the CCP being in power in and of itself an ideology.
I think that's unnecessarily narrow; in fact, requiring a totalitarian government to care more about ideology than remaining in power actually requires that totalitarian governments be among the most idealistic on Earth, if not completely fictional.
Its pretty clear that authoritarianism/totalitarianism is a broad spectrum of where on the extreme end is totalitarianism, which seeks to control all facets of private life and subordinate everything to the will and whim and glory of the state; a "human boot on the face of humanity forever" of where even private thought is controlled. Authoritarianism doesn't dare go that far which is why China is authoritarian, it doesn't dare try to, it trades private control for political control.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I think that's unnecessarily narrow; in fact, requiring a totalitarian government to care more about ideology than remaining in power ...
I don't think I said that a totalitarian government has to care "more" about ideology than power.
Rather, I think a totalitarian government needs to at least take some concrete steps towards putting an ideology into practice. Propaganda on its own isn't sufficient.
One reflection of this is to see what kind of influence governments place on foreign governments. European governments usually tie aid in Africa to democratic reform for example. After Mao, the Chinese government isn't pushing Communism in Africa. It isn't even pushing the opposite of democratic reform (authoritarian reform?). Rather, it doesn't care what a government does as long as it is stable. I think thats basically a self-reflection.
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You know, by this definition Oceania from 1984 would not count as "totalitarian," since its ideology was only a convenient front to enable the higher party members to hold power.
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Blayne Bradley
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Oceania is clearly totalitarian because it takes concrete steps to control all aspects of private life, thought and will of its citizenry towards the glory of the state and the mythology of Big Brother. It's implied the Inner-Inner party are doing it For The Evulz but its clear that there conceptualization of power is the obliteration of any and all forms of private thought that could be contrary to love to the state. It is not enough to shoot Winston, they have to make Winston LOVE them before shooting him.
The difference I think is most starkly depicted between the differences between 1984; bleak totalitarian dystopia of where all economic and political freedoms are not merely suppressed, but erased from history and language itself and Huxley's Brave New World where every citizen is given jetpacks and all the drugs and sex they want in exchange for self determination.
To simplify, one form of oppression is total up from on high and all encompassing, they do what they want because they can. Authoritarians have to instead bargain for power, promising the people something concrete, the good of the many at the expense of the few. Totalitarians are the expense of the many for the good of the few.
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As for me *shrug* I'm not terribly concerned with the classification of fictional governments.
I do find interesting the differences between totalitarian governments like North Korea and Mao's China which often do/did put ideology before practical results and which didn't recognize limits on state power as opposed to modern day China which is pragmatic and contains a Hong Kong which has remained largely unchanged for a decade and a half.
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So you're saying that an authoritarian government is a totalitarian government that can no longer get away with it? Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
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Just as far as one could say that republic is a government for a country too big to be a democracy? That there be overlapping spectrum here on some facets here was never denied, but none of this was really the point in the first place.
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TomDavidson: Well, I would say that Hong Kong wasn't an authoritarian government under the British occupation because it somehow transitioned from totalitarian rule.
Likewise, I wouldn't necessarily say that Hong Kong retains the elections that were introduced at the last minute by the British because the CCP couldn't "get away" with removing them and going back to what it previously was.
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