and finally...

[electricland]

long interview by Doug Saunders (whom I want to marry -- can anyone arrange this for me, please?) with Michael Ignatieff (whose books I really have to read -- next week's library run maybe). The Globe's Review section was certainly packing a punch this weekend...

'Everything I've said and believed since I was 18 is on the line'

"We absolutely are at the tipping point," he says, his voice rising. "You can't do an occupation in the name of human rights and then use it to violate human rights, and hope to conserve any legitimacy.

"I cannot tell you how depressing this is, and how urgent it is for this to be a moment of truth for United States forces. Because it is much worse than just Iraq. It is a global detention problem, and they have messed with it, and they didn't listen to people about Guantanamo Bay, and now they are hung with the consequences of believing they can be judge and jury in their own case. It is a disaster."

Comments

[wanderingaengus.livejournal.com]

Stupid fucking idealists.

Thanks for the link, I'm looking forward to reading this.

I've read Ignatieff's first book, about prisons. It's very good.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Can't help wishing he'd been right.

Of course, things could have worked out very differently with someone else at the helm; it's just that the leaders of this war have taken every available opportunity to make the wrong choice. Much like the script of the Phantom Menace, but without the happy ending.

<rant>

[wanderingaengus.livejournal.com]

I read the interview on the bus home last night. Would it be offensive if I suggested that Ignatief was being a bit ... Canadian?

Actually, I think his problem is that he's attempting to act as a critical intellectual in a Canadian context. Attempting to prod a country that can tends to ignore how much power it actually has, because it is so overshadowed by its neighbors. I imagine it's easy for Canadians to be passive about overseas problems, because they imagine that those sorts of things are US problems. At least that's the argument I see MI making.

The problem is, that the arguments he's making about acting boldly and being willing to slight procedural justice in favor of larger goals are stupid and irresponsible in an American context. What a fucking moron. The US of A has never had much trouble using its power in bold and exciting ways. But gosh, who'd ever have imagined that power corrupts, and that nations can rarely be counted on to act in favor of anything but their own short-term interests. Sometimes one finds leaders able to take a broad and long-term view of what the national interest -- those were the kinds of people who established the United Nations, NATO, and all the other 20th-century institutions that GW Bush has kicked in the teeth.

To anybody who knew anything about 1) George W. Bush 2) America 3) human beings the gamble that destroying Saddam Hussein would make the world a better place seemed shockingly stupid. Democracy and reformers in the middle east are in worse shape than ever. America's moral standing in the world is crumbling. (Our military, economic and political power aren't doing as well as they were, either.) Iraq, which had not seen genocide since the last time a Bush was president, could be in the middle of a genocidal civil war in a year or two.

And if there is an ongoing genocide anywhere in a year or two, what are the odds that Michael Ignatieff's arguments will persuade anybody to take action, after the example America has set?

Ignatieff was wrong, wrong, wrong. He can't even hide behind the idea that he was wrong in principle, because the whole idea of his arguments seems to be pragmatic -- he's against holding to high-minded principles like pacifism, when such principles allow the world to wallow in misery. That's right enough. But that means that his words must be judged by the consequences of the actions that followed from them.

Fucking moron.

[wanderingaengus.livejournal.com]

I also read, last night, a better pro-war article. An interview with a Polish journalist who defended the war out of his personal experience of living under totalitarianism. Michnik has the advantage over Ignatieff, in that this interview is from January so that he hasn't yet seen how far things degenerated. Again, naive and foolish. Living as a citizen of the hyper-power, I am a little more skeptical of the limits of that power and of the interests of those who wield it as my representatives.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Oh well, if we're going back to January...

Ignatieff speech discussing preemption and multilateralism and stuff (http://www.cceia.org/viewMedia.php/prmTemplateID/2/prmID/4370)

Coherent follow-up to your rant to follow in a bit, maybe.

[john-d-owen.livejournal.com]

Terrific article, with Ignatieff articulating many of the issues that someone like Blair must be wrestling with right now. Blair's world view isn't that of Bush, and having hitched his wagon to the back of the Bush train, he ends up somewhere he wouldn't have otherwise gone. Now the wheels are coming off the train, and the best intentions in the world are no use against the fact that Bush's policies have proven to be wrong. What a mess!

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I was in the "well, this is a really bad idea, but since they've already gone ahead and invaded, maybe it'll all work out OK" camp.

Since then I've watched Bush & co. mishandle things so badly that I'm finding it harder and harder to believe they're just stupid, ignorant and misguided; I'm starting to believe, however reluctantly, that they may actually be messing everything up on purpose with some malign intent. Paranoid much?