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View Full Version : M's "Mr. Blonde" Defense


02-20-2002, 02:19 PM
M write below, in response to the claim that U.S.-backed sanctions against Irag caused the death of tens of thousands of children, that "Saddam caused these deaths: he had plenty of money for everything political and military, and simply put food and medical care for his people dead last in his list of priorities. ... it wasn't the sanctions which killed those children, it was Saddam's priorities and the chance he saw to make the sanctions look bad so hopefully he could have them lifted."


Let's start with the (inarguable) premise that the sanctions were intended to have some effect on Iraq, such as the following effects noted in Ramsey Clarke's 2/28/01 letter to the UN Security Counsel, link to full text below:


"Infant mortality from selected llnesses caused by the U.N. sanctions against Iraq has increased from a monthly average of slightly less than 600 deaths in 1989 to more than 6700 in 2000, or eleven times. The percentage of total registered births under 2.5 kgs in 1990 was 4.5%. In 2000 it was nearly 25%, up five times. For children under five years old the average number of reported cases of kwashiorkor, marasmus and other malnutrition illnesses caused by protein, calorie and/or vitamin deficiences rose from less than 8550 in 1990 to 190,000 in 2000, an increase of more than 22 times."


It wasn't that Saddam shifted priorities to cause these effects, it was that the U.S. led the West into the sanctions campaign and Saddam failed to shift his priorities in response. The idea that Saddam therefore bears full responsibility for what followed is an argument we hear a lot in certain circles:


“I told 'em not to touch the alarm. They touched it. I blew 'em full of holes. If they hadn't done what I told 'em not it, they'd still be alive.”


Mr. Blonde

Resevoir Dogs


The precise analogy would be a hostage situation: we told Saddam that if he didn't do what we want, we'd force much of his population to starve. He didn't do what we said, they starved, so just like Mr. Blonde our leaders and propagandists claim that "Saddam caused these deaths."


I don't want to pick on M, who's merely echoing a typical propaganda line that Saddam Hussein is the only responsible actor in these events. I think a lot of people agree with this. If you do, you might want to confront the implications of this belief.


You might believe, as Madeline Albright and Mr. Blonde believe, that the deaths they caused were justified, but denying our role in causing them is simply dishonest. Accordingly, you either (1) believe that such acts can be justified, and that causing mass deaths of tens of thousands of innocent children is a legitimate tool of policy, that threatening such a thing does not negate the legitimacy of the demand accompanying it; or (2) that fault lies with those that fail to comply with the demands of those threatening to cause the deaths, so that if any country that fails to comply with such drastic demands is the "cause" of what follows.


If you buy into the first argument, then you can have no principled opposition to the tactics of terrorist groups and states that threaten to kill a small fraction of those that have died from sanctions against Iraq. If you buy into the second, it follows that demands backed up through threats of terror are not automatically illegitimate, that one should consider the justification for the demand rather than the nature of the threat, and that those who refuse to negotiate with adversaries on the grounds that their adversaries engage in terrorism are principally the ones at fault for the terrorism that follows.


My preference is to take the easy road: threatening mass murder to accomplish policy goals is criminally immoral, and people should oppose any state or group that engages in such action.

02-20-2002, 03:07 PM
My hero!


And that's your excuse for going on a kill-crazy rampage?


Sincerely,

Harvey Keitel

02-20-2002, 04:50 PM
Only Alger could claim that the USA forces Saddam to kill his own people.


I'm not surprised. That's why I posted the poll. I knew that Alger couldn't help himself. He would have to answer with the nonsense that the USA is evil and that Saddam, and other murdrerers, are saints.

02-20-2002, 05:15 PM
Mr. Blonde:


"What are you talking about? I didn't kill anyone. They killed themselves. I just pulled the trigger."


In the movie, of course, even the psychopathic Mr. Blonde wasn't so deluded. It says a lot about the character of many that pretend to be patriots in order to mask their delight in the mass slaughter of little kids.

02-20-2002, 05:18 PM
' USA is evil and that Saddam, and other murdrerers, are saints.'


one mark of small minds is the inabilitybo think in any terms but polar opposites.


brad

02-20-2002, 08:01 PM
Saddam's priorities are essentially this: 100% guns, 0% butter. Therefore even if the sanctions were not applied to Iraq we might well have seen something similar taking place. I suspect that the sanctions, however, gave him the perfect scapegoat to divert attention from the fact that he was not going to waste any money on humanitarian purposes in his country anyway.

02-20-2002, 08:09 PM
'Therefore even if the sanctions were not applied to Iraq we might well have seen something similar taking place.'


lets compare with the very costly iran-iraq war (of course the US bankrolled iraq in that, so the comparison might not be so good.)


brad

02-20-2002, 10:46 PM
Chris,


I'm not saying that sanctions wrre irrelevant or didn't play a role...no doubt they did and perhaps we would not have seen these tragedies if the sanctions wren't applied (although given Saddam's priorities it is still a possibility).


What I am trying to say is that the ultimate responsibility rested with Saddam, and that he chose guns over butter in the most extreme sense.

02-20-2002, 11:30 PM
Dennis Halliday, former United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, responds to your argument as follows:


"That's absolute garbage, the fact is that before Saddam Hussein got himself into trouble in Iran, and then of course in Kuwait, they had invested massively in civilian infrastructure. Health care clinics, rural clinics, education, 10,000 schools scattered throughout the country, an educational and healthcare system which was the envy of all its Arab neighbours. Iraq had a very widespread food distribution system of its own before we got involved."


Iraq also had drinking water. But the potable water system destroyed by U.S. bombing remained unrepaired as a result of sanctions, dooming thousands of infants to death from waterborne disease.


Halliday resigned his position in protest, citing five to six thousand infants deaths per month from malnutrition, "directly attributable" to UN sanctions. If I recall correctly his successor did the same.


If several thousand children had been killed in the U.S. or any other Western country just once as a result of some action by Iraq, we'd be driven to tearful fits of outrage and piety, there would be endless TV interviews with the families of the victims, national leaders expressing their disgust, vowing revenge, "we will not let this stand," and so forth. Yet when someone accuses us of doing the same, our fist reaction is to pretend that it must be someone else's fault, or make arguments as feeble as Mr. Blonde saying "those people might have died anyway from some other cause."


And we gasp at reports of widespread hatred against the U.S., concluding that they must be fundamentally opposed to the enlightened character of our values, unappreciative of the selfless good we do, blinded by ignorance, etc., ad nauseum.

02-20-2002, 11:39 PM
But Saddam's priorities after the war were basically all guns and no butter. He also wanted those children to die because it would strengthen his case for lifting of sanctions; hence he continued to spend massive amounts on the military and let the kids die.

02-21-2002, 12:18 AM
It couldn't have possibly have strengthened his case for lifting sanctions if there weren't a causal link between the sanctions and the suffering, and your point was that the sanctions didn't "cause" the suffering.


I don't question that Saddam bears considerable responsibility for the suffering in Iraq. But I don't have to even consider his responsbility in condemning the U.S. and other Western countries for the sanctions anymore than if I had pushed someone into the water and they drowned, I would have to consider the responsibility of others that could have intervened to mitigate my crime.


Why do you keep obsessing over terrible actions of others, especially officially-designated bad guys, over which you have little or no control while ignoring those that you, as a citizen in a democracy, have a great deal of control over? How can that be right?

02-21-2002, 12:55 AM
Well, I'm not saying there was zero causal link, only that the ultimate responsibility rested with Saddam, and I suspect that he exploited the political fallout from the deaths--it wouldn't even surprise me if he exacerbated the effects somehow in order to reap greater political gain from this--something like how placed weapon stores under hospitals and mosques so he could claim we were bombing civilian targets.


As for your question, I focus on theworst bad guys because they are so terrible and cause such widespread anguish. I also think that perhaps the world will, in the modest future, be about ready to do away with with all of them if the free world unites to this purppose. In other words pretty soon the free world will be strong and possibly concerted enough to lireally get rid of all tyrants, and to a large extent instill democracy in countries which have long suffered under totalitarianism. In other words, I loathe the brutal totalitarian dictators throughout history, and in the past the world had no choice but to put up with them. However that may change before too long. On this basis I don't buy that we cannot have an influence over such things...I think NATO could, at some future point, simply get rid of all these bastards, and before the next century, all countries could be democracies.


As for those closer to home, I do agree that we need some focus in this area too. However I consider the net evil (if there is such a thing) to be by far the greatest in countries run by despots, and in totalitarian regimes like China. So by focussing on where the evil is greatest we may be able to make more things right with the world. Of course we need vigilance and action closer to home too; I just feel that the areas such actions are most needed are where the greatest evils spring from: hence my focus on the tyrants and authoritarians (and more recently, on terrorism too, because I feel this is a new form of horror which must not be allowed to grow).

02-21-2002, 01:00 AM
Actually I think Saddam placed not only weapon stores, but anti-aircraft batteries in and next to hospitals and mosques...

02-21-2002, 09:11 AM
would you care to name a couple democratic regimes the US has installed? i can name a few totalitarian ones.


brad


p.s. by the way, i think it really weakens your argument when, after the Dennis Halliday quote, you just ignore it and state your own opinion. i mean, these are people in positions of power, and their opinions cant just be summarily dismissed (especially when they are acting in a way that is not in their own self interest).

02-21-2002, 10:37 AM
The attacks on the West Bank Settlements by the Palestinians were simply the "Mr. Blonde" approach.


"We told the Israelis if you place settlements on the West Bank we'll kill every single settler."


So, after the palestinians made it clear that there would be reprisals it's easy to see that it's Israel's fault for provoking the situation. Now, if Mr. Alger feels that the West Bank is rightfully Palestinian Land (pre 1967 borders) then he also must agree that pretty much everything on this continent is Native American land. I belive there were many skirmishes with man of the western tribes and unwanted settlers.


I'm wondering if in Mr. Alger's opinion there are any countries that are rightfully entitled to the land they occupy. I suppose he could make the argument that land won in war is rightfully awarded to the victor, well, as long as the victor isn't Israel. Right Chris?

02-21-2002, 10:56 AM
You hear this a lot from knee-jerk types: other countries murdered and plundered to acquire territory, build their countries, etc., to deny such rights of "self-determination" to the Jews is suspiciously exlusionary. It's a dumb argument, as it equally justifies the odious practices of conquest and colonization by anyone, anywhere.


The obvious answer was that the genocide of American Natives and other crimes by Western powers was wrong, and worse than what Israel wants to do to the Palestinians (perhaps not all Israelis, such as the former Shin Bet section head that was quoted yesterday as saying "we should do to the Palestinians what Iraq did to the Kurds"), but that doesn't mean you can rewrite history. The history of the attempted conquest is happening now, Israel now killing dozens daily, the brutal conquest not yet complete. So we should oppose it just as we should have opposed stealing Indian land and killing the inhabitants. This doesn't mean that the Indians have no rights or grievances, no claims for compensation, or whatever, just that putting the egg back into the shell is practically impossible. Not only is it "not impossible" for Israel to withdraw and live in peace within it's 1967 borders, it is not likely to find peace by attempting to colonize what remains of the Palestinian homeland.

02-21-2002, 12:36 PM
Chris-


Although I know how tempting it is to joust with clods like anonymous, I think your best approach would be ignore these types of dime-store straw man arguments. When you're going to debate something like the sanctions against Iraq, you have to first determine who wants to engage in a serious discourse and who wants to flip you the bird. Obviously you should ignore the latter.

02-21-2002, 12:36 PM
The new Afghn government will be democratic (provided it survives) and the US helped install it.


I did respond briefly to Halliday's quote by pointing out that it refers to before the war, while I am talking about after the war.

02-21-2002, 12:42 PM
Just as a curiosity perhaps--this just struck me:


We told Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait or else. He saw our massive buildup and eventually knew we were serious. He had many chances to withdraw and didn't. So if we say he brought the war on himself are we just using a Mr. Blonde-type argument or are we making a valid point?

02-21-2002, 03:09 PM
No.In alger's logic the USA is resposnible for the gulkf war. The USA is always responsible for every war, per Mr.ALger.

02-21-2002, 04:14 PM
Just because people have trouble connecting with the world doesn't mean you shouldn't take them seriously, or semi-seriously. Although it's a silly thing to say, it's hardly a bizarre response by U.S. norms, even among respectable educated types in the mainstream. Imagine how Fox news would treat a visiting cleric who denounced U.S. or Israeli "terrorism," or consider the outrage over the "Karine A" arms shipment, about the audacity of Palestinians to defend themselves against invaders armed by us. What passes for serious discourse is often equally removed from reality, this guy just puts it in cruder terms.

03-05-2002, 09:31 AM
so would you attack the threats, or the backing up of the threats? is threatening action against foreign adversaries an inacceptable way of negotiating? how would you suggest we use our military edge?