Iraqis Went to the Polls & Saddam Goes on Trial
 

So, Iraq spent Sunday going to the polls for their referendum on the new Iraqi Constitution -- I think it deserves a capitalizing. Looks like good ole Yusuf al-Iraqi is tougher than either the terrs trying to blow him up and the naysayers on these shores who have been moaning for a year and a half that this will never work.

Ha! -- looks like the constitution is going to pass, and as written.

This tends very much to vindicate the neocon idea that humans like democracy and will try it any chance they get. Being very persuaded of the worth of democracies and genuine republics myself, I'm very sympathetic to this view.

The forces of tyranny mustered about nineteen attacks total for circa 3700 polling places, and did they manage even nineteen fatalities in these? I reckon it was no coincidence we were giving them a blasting in Ramadi, and to effect, during this election weekend. Kept the other tyranno-bozos' heads down. Keep their heads well down and keep 'em bent over, I say, while we drive the SCAT bus (narsty local pun) -- until they look like a unicorn.

Meanwhile, the Iraqis, more resolute in going for democracy than all the anti-democracy dopes over here, continue their march to something better than all the Saddams of the world could offer. Hats off!

For his sins, Saddam goes on trial starting tomorrow, the nineteenth. There's rumor he might not get tried on every count that might be brought against him because in this first trial, he might get convicted, sentenced to death by hanging, and exhaust his appeals before they finish indicting and trying him on everything else. Well, maybe in due course they could do a variation on those C-4 executions of videotape fame: exhume his dessicated corpse, pack it with plenty of plastic explosive, and blast it to ions. Sic Semper Tyrannis.

The fat lady hasn't sung yet. :headshake

We have yet to see if the Taliban will let it happen.

I have heard and read that Saddam has refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the court...refused to answer questions...complains that only the presiding judge is visible...inisists on his position and authority as sovereign ruler, and its attendant immunity from prosecution, and then, almost as an afterthought, enters a plea of not guilty.

Also, this is an Iraqi court, not an international court, and it is (I think) televised, but with a 20 minute tape delay, to prevent his holding forth and communicating, rallying those outside.

I see absolutely no sense of the presumtion of innocence. Perhaps that's a quaint American judical tradition. Why not just summarily execute him?

It's interesting.

I refuse to acknowledge the ligitimacy of all comments here with the exception of this one.

And where's my headscarf? I'm not listening to anyone until I get my headscarf.

(plugs ears with fingers defiantly)

...I've got your scarf...um..... never mind.

Due to rotten weather, nobody even has the final voting results for areas outside the capitol. The known results show blatant fraud in many polling places, both sides admit it and there will be an investigation. One of Saddam's defense attorneys is Ramsay Clark, our former Attorney General, and he plans to denounce US policies with Saddam's regime which created the environment where most of the charges against him occurred. That should be enough comedy to last for the week. Oh, and they already requested a delay, naturally.

And given his pouty displays of "I'm still dictator, though nominally President, and you're all a bunch of American pogues and puppets, so I'm going to mouth off a lot, since I can't order you blown in half," a tape delay seems a good idea in one sense. Thoughtful Iraqis, however, would no doubt conclude the man's AFU in the head from too much dictator time logged were they to either read or see his rants. He seems to believe he could still rally enough Iraqis to bust him loose, and will probably continue to believe that until the moment the rope snaps taut and breaks his neck. Again, or still, he's playing the mafioso. His career more resembles that of a Mafia torpedo who rose to capo di tutti capi than a politician's.

Not the kind of guy anybody wants controlling the world's second- or third-largest share of a unique mineral and energy resource. We want ethical and altogether sane people in there. Why the f@ck anybody would object to this remains obscure to me.

Why not, indeed? Well, frankly, a fair trial and a fair hanging look better than summary execution. We (and by this I also mean at least two very large blocks of the Iraqi population) want to de-martyrize this man before we punish him. An active presumption of guilt would lead naturally to execution without a trial -- that a trial is being held, and held by Iraqis, with a thoroughly hands-off attitude from American officialdom (Ramsey Clark is in there with no connection to the American government), suggests more of a presumption of innocence than you're seeing.

:lol:
Not that it really matters in the end, but you can't seriously believe that.

I can. Why should I not? Ramsey Clark hasn't been an ambassador for -- how long?

I've worked in the Federal government, Monkey, and in the DC area to boot. That's why I don't buy conspiracy theories about the US government. In my experience, they don't have the time, let alone the inclination, for plotting.

Saying that the administration is less hands off than they're letting on hardly rises to the level of conspiracy theory.

Regardless, it's an unusual libertarian who trusts the Federal government so implicitly.

Thank you for noticing.

Hell, you already know I don't go in lockstep with Paul Ireland -- the Non-Aggression principle will be shown to be not only useless (and only likely to be in force with an expansion of gov't power in any case, to enforce it) -- and moot, as antilibertarian regimes can be relied upon to initiate the aggression in any case (But why allow them the first punch? It might be overly effective, and kill you if you're the one trying to make libertarianism in the places that need it most.), but worse than.

The Non-Aggression principle gets even worse when you note it causes people to allow something as antilibertarian as a totalitarian to exist -- in the name of Libertarianism. There seems to me something VERY wrong with that picture. I doubt I'm the only one.

Also, I simply never credit conspiracist thinking, which is the usual failing of those determined to distrust the Fed in all things. You can be strengthened against the temptations of conspiracy theory's frustrated-romantic viewpoint by reading Why People Believe Weird Things, available in softback. Conspiracy theory fails in being too complex an explanation: it attributes to malice what can be more simply explained by stupidity, either temporary or ongoing. The most recent case in point is Louis Farrakhan and the New Orleans levees. As for the other NOI leaders who've chorused Farrakhan's view -- well, they know what they need to do to keep receiving their paychecks, don't they? Quite the nest of bigots -- "You've got to be carefully taught..." -- South Pacific

Saying that the administration is less hands off than they're letting on hardly rises to the level of conspiracy theory.

I believe that will instead be the title of the textbook study of Jr.'s "reign" which history students will refer to fifty years from now. :headshake

Nothin' weird about what the Reagan era did to the totalitarians. The Bush era will show the same lack of weirdness -- both eras are democracy's righteous triumph over totalitarianism. And hallelujah. I'm a happy man about this.

If it goes the other way, kiddo, you are likely going to die. Best to kick ass on totalitarian oppressors -- and if you thing GWB is one, you are a) utterly unrealistic, b)unrealistic to the point of being fucked in the head, c) somebody who doesn't know shit from shineola about totalitarians, having zero experience of totalitarianism. As you can see, I have zero patience with this sort.

*yawn*

And it's spelled Shinola.

It's not a matter of walking "lockstep" with actual libertarians such as myself, it's that you aren't a libertarian at all. The non-aggression principle does not invite aggression, and it does not mean you can't use aggression in your own defense. It just means you can't use it against those who have not used it against you. Your so-called thoughts, are laughable.

You also say that the non-aggression principle fails because it "allows" totalitarianism to exist. You're too dim to realize that it's not our place to "allow" or "disallow" any form of government to exist. You're too clueless to realize America is a well wisher of freedom and liberty to all, but the vindicator only of our own.

You're a fool, not a libertarian.

It is our place as human beings to allow or disallow, Paul. Do not suspend your moral sense in aid of a political ideal. That was the error of the Communists, the ultimate antilibertarians, and the butchers' bill for that one was circa fifty million. I'm not going to make the same mistake, thank you.

Paul, you treat libertarianism like a religion, and a fundamentalist religion at that. If somebody isn't lockstepping with you, you don't want them in your club. I say phooey on that; it is the grave error that if allowed to take over the libertarian movement will destroy it. I do not conceive that party purity is at all necessary to undertake party action; since there is room within the Libertarian Party, if not within the Paul Ireland Club, for variances of opinion, I'm not too impressed with your hysterical, unstatesmanlike namecalling. So quit it, and grow some maturity, if you value not looking like some radical-politics bonehead. I am a libertarian, and all your naysaying cannot keep me from it. I am prepared to resist your shrieking for at least four decades, by which time I will be about ninety and you not far behind me. Now, Paul, if you think you can take being outthought and outpunched in the arena of ideas for four decades straight, I invite you to try me.

I never treat a political idea or system as a system of religious belief. For one thing, I don't expect any political party whatsoever to mesh entirely with the things I want in politics. I figure it's a pretty good matchup at eighty percent or so, and I assume there is a large number of people out there who feel the same. In politics, I invariably pick and choose. I seem to recall a Libertarian Party plank some elections ago that at least could be read as permitting spiritous liquors to any person age three and up -- or at least so went the story. Ideologically correct perhaps -- but real-world? Nah. We don't need stupid party platform planks, do we? Not only would I reject this kind of thing in a party caucus, I'd work to undermine it also were it to be adopted. Liberty's a fine thing, license is an absurdity, and worse than that if it kills.

No, it's not "our place" as human beings to allow or disallow other people to live under another form of government, with different laws that we might find offensive, or to do things we don't agree with. Others have thought it was their place to use force and coercion to decide the destiny of others based on their own vision of what is right and wrong. Among them, you'll find names like Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Bush, Ghengis Khan, Hussein, Bin Laden, etc. They are murderers who think themselves above others and who consider those who live differently below them. They think themselves saviors when they are just scumbags.

I don't treat libertarianism as a religion. I treat it as a math problem for which I already know the solution. There is only one correct solution, and one way to arrive at it. It's also a very simple equation. You want to convince people that 2+2 = 7 and you're upset when people don't buy into it. No matter how long you live, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you will NEVER get the LP behind your nonsense. I, and other actual libertarians, will outlast you.

As far as your accusations of "namecalling" go, I could care less what the opinion of a worthless fleeb like you thinks about me. What I've done is not so much namecalling as it is providing an accurate description of an annoying little troll and none of it was "hysterical".

I find it amusing that you, who advocate wholesale murder for political gain, has the nerve to call me a radical and yourself a libertarian. It only proves the depth of your insanity.

I had to stop for a moment when you claimed you'd outthink me or outpunch me because I was laughing so hard. Not only have you never outthought me, I really doubt you've ever had a rational thought of your own.

In all of your incoherent, illogical, twisted, ranting you did manage to accidentally say one thing that is true. No party will ever match your personal beliefs 100%. But the Libertarian Party is much further from your beliefs than nearly all others. A pro-aggression (aka non-libertarian) who supports spreading American hegemony and imperialism with bullets, would fit in well with the Republican Party. You and Eric Dondero would get along well. You're both assholes, and morons who claim to be libertarians, and who couldn't be further from libertarianism if they tried.

I see you fumbling around stupidly trying to fit a square peg (yourself) into a round hole (libertarianism) to no avail and it's pathetic. You will never change the LP enough for you to fit in and neither will a thousand more like you.

Unless it's someone you don't like. :eyebrow:

Well, Radar, I see you start by contradicting yourself. Those are just the very people we should use force and violence against; you list the poster boys for Augustinian just war. It is self-evident that it is our place as human beings to disallow these people their evil ends.

At least, it's self-evident to the moral man, one who understands totalitarianism is evil. You don't. No wonder you're having such a hard time selling Libertarianism to the CellarDwellars -- they think all Libertarians resemble you in this moral absence. Really, why do you think you're a libertarian, big L or small, in view of your unwillingness to move against the slavemakers? How can you be libertarian if you refuse to break its opposite?

I'm more interested in human good than you are, that is clear. You don't seem to be able to work up any interest in it, let alone commitment to it, preferring instead to devote yourself to some -- what? Meditative abstraction? -- that I'd consider, at the end, a waste of your time. If you're a sociopath, Paul, that would explain your approach to libertarianism in a single word.

Nope, really what you're doing is trying to play the Inquisition, defending the orthodoxy as defined by yourself (letting yourself stand for any others about of like mind) -- a religious approach, for all you care to conceive it as quasimathematical, which isn't a methodology I'd trust for thinking about politics. If there was ever a nonmathematical paradigm, it is politics. At bottom, politics isn't mathematical -- it is emotional, as you demonstrate with your posts: when you see an intellectual challenge to your construct, you react with an increasing, over-the-edge, rabid fury. This isn't a thing of the mind for you any more, Paul. You're now working up on a visceral hate. Disgraceful. Your limbic system is controlling you now. Your lizard-brain, Paul. You expect to win converts with displays of this kind?? Come on, you need better salesmanship than that. You can't sell me on an idea if I go to my control panel and enter you on the Ignore Member list.

As for the rest of your ranting (and laddie, you're losing it) -- try me. There are already three distinct schools of libertarian thinking within the LP: left-, right-, and anarcho-libertarian. It may be that I will found a fourth. It may be one you'll never accept or believe in -- but then, so what exactly?

OK, forgive the intrusion here, but I have a question.

Isn't one of the main tenets of Libertarianism (of which I consider myself one) that we only defend our shores and borders from attack?

Wouldn't "going after" Hitler, Pol Pot, et al, be unprovoked aggression on the part of a 3rd party?

I understand the Holocaust really did happen, and that it is tragic beyond words, but in the scheme of politics and national soverignty (sp), it was none of our business. Morally, it can be argued that we should have done something sooner, but then we're not talking religion, which in effect governs a persons moral choices, we're talking political parties and the idea of providing "defense" according to our Constitutional rights versus aggression and sticking our nose where it doesn't belong, which as we have seen over and over again, has led to nothing but more problems and coffins for our cemetaries.

edit:

Isn't one of the points of Libertarianism to NOT be world cop?

Radar, I'ma bust on you so I'ma go into third party,...

Radar's instinct is not to convert at all, but to purge. Purity is his goal and eventually the party will be a party of one.

When I came into the party in the early 80s there was a movement to convert. You would find reasons somebody WAS a libertarian and point out that they were. Since then there is a movement to purge. You find reasons somebody is not a libertarian and force them out. Radar was outreach director of California. Can you imagine? It means he was the one most interested in converting people at a California state convention one year and nobody objected or intervened. Can you imagine?

Radar can be a tough pill to swallow sometimes, but on this point he is absolutely right. The two major parties are all about military interventions and as a consequence growing the number of America haters in the world. If the LP rolls over on the idea that we should not be the aggressor in a conflict, they may as well send everyone back to their old parties. If you read the web stuff out there the left libertarian, the right libertarian, and the anarcho-libertarian all oppose the liberventionist because he's not a libertarian, while they recognize the others are.

Even tougher suppository. ;)

I would like to know just how in hell we could have won the war in Europe any faster?

If you can't do it sooner, you do it -- then. The moral man works to stop evil. Totalitarianism is not only evil, but blatantly so -- easiest call there is. It's that simple.

Radar may believe I'm no libertarian, but such believing also helps you believe in the flat Earth and the Easter Bunny -- an oviparous one at that. He doesn't get to stop me from being one.

If libertarianism is good for American-humans, it's good for Ghanaian-humans, Iraqi-humans -- and it goes the same right to the very last -humans on the list.

Sovereignty. It should not be conceived as an armor protecting abuses. The Russians were particularly obnoxious about this -- remember how crabby they'd get about "this is an internal affair?" -- and this killed fifty millions. Sovereignty, phooey. Better that abuse be avoided or prevented. Some abuse-crazy people take a lot of preventing just on an individual scale. Imagine how it is when there are the resources of a nation exerted on behalf of an abuse. How many nations (generally recognized as run by shitheads) come to mind? Somalia... North Korea... Uzbekistan... Iran... we can all come up with a lengthy roll of dishonor.

And the "only defend our shores" thing -- I don't believe that will work in this day and age. The LP might hanker after it, but hankering after and getting are two different things -- in their luxury of not actually having any responsibility for the nation's doings, they are free to hanker. But it won't last if Libertarianism comes to power: isolationism is untenable unless the global economy collapses back to the levels of the eighteenth century, and the speed of communication with it. Isolationism worked a lot better when economies were pretty much only on a national scale, and when the fastest communication was a letter on a six-knot sailing ship. Even in those circumstances, isolationism would be only temporary. Once communication and trade and money move around faster, isolationism becomes increasingly unworkable. I do not conceive that Libertarianism can exist in an isolated, hermit society and remain robust -- but I do see it being robust, and with abundant and varied practical experience rather than beautiful theory, if it's of global reach and scope. Libertarian social ordering makes strong middle classes. If Mexico had a strong middle class, the United States wouldn't have any inmigrante problem. All of Central and South America could become wealthy beyond what they've hitherto dreamed of -- if they become more libertarian in social order and governance. It seems to me libertarianism is the thing they lack. What happens if they get it and use it? And what will those whose present lifestyle depends on the applecart not being upset do if they see this happening? You know down there they think economics is a zero-sum game. All this seems mere horse sense.

Libertarianism strikes me as the strongest, most coherent antitotalitarian philosophy there is. It can be the means by which totalitarian governance everywhere can be cast upon history's ash-heap, where it belongs. The totalitarians have shown themselves good at whipping otherwise intelligent people into frenzies of, well, religious devotion to the aims of the dictator. The opposition to these slavemakers haven't had that advantage. Why should this continue to be?

The earlier manifestations of the technological revolution allowed a particularly pervasive form of the absolutist state to take hold and run rampant without let or hindrance, as the state could control information with the use of expensive communications apparatus like radio stations and high speed printing presses and so forth, along with all the supporting factors of the infrastructure like controlling the populace's access to travel by passports, border closures, et cetera.

Now it's going the other way, what with the Internet. Joe Sixpack and Jane Chardonnay can cheaply talk to a mass audience. If they're good at it, it will be a really large mass audience. To rephrase Warhol, everyone's going to be a columnist for fifteen minutes. The classical "information dictatorship" is in its last days.