[extropy-chat] Re: US not right to invade say Iraqis

[Jeff Davis]

I find myself in the rare but pleasant situation of
agreeing with John Clark.  Of particular note is that
I find in John two uncommon and admirable traits. 
First, he seems not at all hesitant or stressed over
admitting when he got it wrong.  I like this because
it suggests that he can and does separate -- as should
we all -- his sense of self -- I might say
self-respect -- from an issue that is outside himself,
and the rightness or wrongness that must inevitably
result when he(one) takes a stand.  It makes it easy
for me to move forward with him to the next issue.  No
hanging around interminably arguing a dead issue
because you've got an ego stake in being right/not
being wrong.  Thanks John, for that.

And the second thing is something that I sense rather
than have hard evidence for, so I may be going out on
a limb here.  I sense that John is consistent in his
views, and that this reflects a certain high
quality/clarity of thinking.

Why are these things worth mentioning?  Well, for one
thing there is an old saying, "Applaud in public,
reprove in private."  The second is that when you
experience a feeling of respect or admiration, it cost
nothing to speak up and say so.  And this is helpful
if and when, later, you find yourself all snarly over
some point of passionate disagreement.

So there it is.    

--- John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:

> [The Iraq war] was dishonorable not because it broke
some 
mythical thing called "international law" but because
it was based on something that was untrue, the entire
Weapons of Mass Destruction crap. I don't know if they
were lying or if they really believed that load of
putrid shit.

> And I don't know which is more disturbing either.

They were lying.  But in an odd,
effective-men-of-action sort of way.  They had an
agenda.  A "reality" that they were committed to
forging.  To accomplish this thay used words to
further their ends.  Words deliberately and precisely
crafted so as to achieve a precise effect.  Words
directed at certain groups to elicit behaviors that
would move the agenda forward.  Words as tools.  The
truthfulness or factualness of the assertions formed
by the words,... well, ... that was not something they
were much concerned with.  They were agnostic on the
issue of truth.  Truth and truthfulness were the
considerations of that vast legion of inevitably
ineffectual people who gain power but let the
opportunity slip, people who foolishly hobble
themselves with quaint codes of conduct, with
considerations of ethics (if you can believe it!) 
Cheney et al (among the "et al" was Bush the meat
puppet front man) were better than that.  They were
smarter than that.  They had achieved the long sought
goal.  They had in their hands at last, the reins of
power.  They were the real deal.  For a fleeting
moment they had the means to actually make a
difference on the grandest of scale in the great game.
 At this crucial moment the Straussian super-realists
knew that the key to success, the key to great
achievement, lay in cutting a certain Gordian knot, in
acting "outside the box" of restrictive quaintness, of
dispensing with the emotional self-indulgence of
honor, ethics, truthfulness, and nobility.  When you
succeed, when you succeed big no one quibbles about a
little lie here or there.  

So it wasn't that they were truthful or untruthful,
but rather that such considerations had no place in
their plan.  So they crafted their words, and they
achieved their "success".  "Mission Accomplished!"  Or
not.

<snip>

> Or suppose Bush invaded without the UN seal of
approval but he found loads of weapons of mass
destruction just as he said he would, and the Iraqi
people really did greet American soldiers as
liberators, and today Iraq was peaceful free and
prosperous; would you still say bad things about Bush?
I 
> wouldn't.

Yes, indeed.  That's the beauty of it.  Nothing
succeeds like success.  They expected to succeed and
be covered in glory and be vindicated as the bold
geniuses that they knew themselves to be.  Expected
that the naysayers would be scorned, spat upon, and
derided as small visionless men.  Men of impotence,
mediocrity, and no importance.  The sort of men whose
incompetent leadership was responsible for the failure
of human promise down thru the ages.  Blah, blah,
blah.  

Cheney et al expected that success would wash away
whatever sin of expedient action they might have
committed along the way.  Whoops!  Now they find that
arrogance, cluelessness, and delusional self-adulation
lead to deep-shit catastrophe.  And that deep-shit
catastrophe doesn't wash away sin but rather amplifies
and aggravates.  And that deep-shit catastrophe
mediated by dedicated unrelenting serial mendacity --
ie Professional Lying -- leads first to public
humiliation, then to political implosion, then to
impeachment, then to indictment, and finally to
comeuppance.  

In the case of Cheney et al, public humiliation is
virtually complete, and political implosion is well on
its way.
But the game is not over, and the reins of power are
still in the hands of those who have shown a talent
for incompetence.  They still have time and
substantial resources.  Will they pull out of our
death spiral?  Or will they draw on the creative
potential of their talent for incompetence and fuck
things up even more?  Will we trade Darth Cheney for
Ayatollah Bush?  When the iconic warm and fuzzies of
Thursday's election fade, and American dead pass three
thousand as our own iconic November approaches, will
"impeachment" and "twofer" be on everyone's lips? 
Will someone nuke Iran?  Or will five hundred thousand
Iraqi troops finally subdue unemployment and the
insurgency, and gushers of fifty-dollar-a-barrel Iraqi
oil bring smiles to Halliburton, Bechtel, and the
Iraqi pupp...er, client state protected by it's
"enduring" garrison of fifty thousand American troops?
 

We'll just have to wait and see.  

We live in interesting times.        

Best, Jeff Davis

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of
the people. On some great and glorious day the plain
folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at
last and the White House will be adorned by a
downright moron..."  H. L. Mencken



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