June 11, 2007

Oh, Shut Up, Joe

Much commentary in many places about Lieberman's latest bloodthirsty cries for wider war.

I honestly can't go through this idiocy again, and point out all the reasons that it is idiocy. Fortunately, I don't have to.

See this post, and this passage in particular:
[T]he administration is now attempting to convince everyone that Iran is the source of all our problems in Iraq. This is demonstrably false; see here for example. But many people, including almost all politicians, remain deplorably susceptible to a secondary ploy. If they're confronted with the argument, "But we have to protect our troops in Iraq! So if Iran is threatening them directly or indirectly, we have to do something about that!," they are all too likely to say: "Oh, of course we have to protect our troops! I would never recommend anything that undermined our troops!"

In this context, that or any similar response is completely wrong. It also happens to be the administration's argument. Try this response instead:
Iraq was never a threat to us either. And it's not true that "everyone thought Iraq had WMD." [Insert here any three or four of your favorite 300 citations on this point.] So we have no right to be in Iraq at all. Our presence in Iraq is only making a horrific situation worse. If we want to protect our troops, we should get them out of there as soon as possible, in six months at the most. And let me ask you this: how would you feel if Communist China "liberated" Canada, and had 150,000 Communist troops in Canada today? Would you buy China's argument that the U.S. was "improperly meddling" in Canada's affairs? Wouldn't you expect and demand that we do everything possible to get the Chinese the hell out of there?
Or as I put it more formally:
[O]ur war of aggression against Iraq and the current occupation constitute an enormous and continuing war crime. Because Iran shares a long border with Iraq, and because our criminal presence in Iraq includes 150,000 U.S. troops, Iran can hardly be blamed if it attempts to protect itself from our extraordinarily dangerous militancy.

I stress that no proof whatsoever has been presented that Iran is in fact directly attempting to aid those in Iraq who attack U.S. troops. But even if Iran were acting in this manner, we are in no position to complain -- not morally, not legally, and not strategically. We have no right to be in Iraq at all. If we wish to avoid further "sacrifices" by members of the American military, then leave. Our presence only worsens this disaster each moment that we remain. Because we commit additional war crimes with every day that passes, we would leave -- if we recognized even minimal moral constraints on our actions, constraints that we apply to all other nations.
Finis.