<snip>
[This war] will be followed by something unknown, the omens for which do not
look very promising. This isn't what you disparage as hypothesis, simply
opening the other eye. [CW]
But it is the cheap wisdom of Unintended Consequences. [FP]
<snip>
We're both just sorting through the entrails whilst they're warm. But I
don't see my negative prognosis as any cheaper or less wise than your more
positive one, that what Bush may manage to achieve might be better than his
purpose.
A complex ethnic identity based on mutual respect has had an increasingly
Spartan time in Iraq for more than 40 years, from before the original
Ba'athist coup against the Sovereign Council in 1963. So my pessimism finds
some evidence. And the evidence I adduced about how 'stupidly' the US has
dealt with both Iraq and Iran -
<snip>
I don't see what you think you're proving [FP]
<snip>
- does not, I think, encourage the view (you phrase this in a distanced way,
as though opportunity were like grace) that the US should be allowed
'another chance'.
<snip>
As for Bush's motives, I've more than admitted they are not mine [...]
Bush's motives may help to create a situation more benign than they are.
With the help of practical political, i.e. opportunistic, action [FP]
<snip>
To the extent that Bush is capable, the results will be in his hands and
match what he intends. To the extent that they are not, the result will be
either entropy or a vacuum; not something more directed. So who steps into
the breach? At this hypothetical stage you again have to consider the
abilities and motivation of those involved.
Your original rejection of the motives of the Bush camp was hygienic,
severing (his) effect from (your) approbation or intention and his motives:
the point I made in my last. You answer that charge by positing
'opportunistic action'. Though not by you or by me since we're too busy
writing.
That simply _postpones_ causality into the middle distance.
<snip>
the murderous Shah (who antagonized people in part by deshadorizing women
[FP]
<snip>
A little more to it than that.
There are dangers in gendering Muslim history too early on, too firmly and
from a Western perspective.
Just recently, US troops made the mistake of handing girlie magazines to
horrified Iraqi males. Ali Hassan al Majid was known as Chemical Ali, which
at least makes use of his forename. Not so Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, one of
Saddam's inner circle, who lost her own Arab name altogether, whose nickname
(Chemical Sally) plays on that of her notional *husband* in crime.
<snip>
You're Brit, aren't you [...]? You know how stupid Top People can be.
<snip>
Brit - ish: I carry an Irish passport. And yes, we do have Mr Blair.
CW
|