“If we caricature the political spectrum as equality-emphasizing on the left side and liberty-emphasizing on the right, Galloway is classic case of an extreme leftist. ”

IMHO, this goes beyond caricature; the past few years have clearly demonstrated that the right-hand 50% of US voters, at the least, are very happy giving up freedoms. They don’t even ask for good performance, in return.

”2) You can’t impose democracy in a region that has no history of it.
This means that the U.S. accomplished the impossible in setting up democratic Japan.”

The reason why the US can’t impose a democracic system in Iraq is because not enough people are willing to cooperate with the new system. Having a democratic history would have helped helps, but it’s not a necessary condition.

What makes a democracy function is not really the fact that the majority decides, rather that decisions taken by the majority are almost unanimously accepted. To derail a democracy it is more than enough if 1% of the population are willing to use violence to get their way. In Iraq there are tens of thousands of insurgents who are supported by many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The US has chosen to fight them. This will do little to get closer to the unanimous support you need in a democracy.

According to a recent poll, about 50% of the Iraqis think that attacks on US soldiers are lawful. Iraqis are thus not going to cooperate sufficiently with the US military or the Iraqi government to get rid of the insurgents. And as long as the insurgency is going on, you’ll have terrorists; if you want to make a bomb to blow up civilians, you should go to Al Anbar, because there you can make bombs without your neighbors asking questions.

So, perhaps one can say that bringing democracy to a country using the military doesn’t work if the military needs to use a lot of force after installing the new government.

George Galloway at the very least provided a silver lining to the results of election day, and proved that at the very least, British Democracy hasn’t completely become a forgone conclusion.

I’m certainly no fan of Blair. I think that he’s the most harmful PM we’ve had for a long time. Mind you, I’m pretty much on the conservative side, so I dislike his time in office for basically every reason going.

I am also under the impression that King was a pretty high profile Blair supporter on the backbenches, certainly (at least) the most so of the MPs of constituencies where Galloway might have a chance of winning.

I don’t think that Gorgeous George is renowned for his hard work on behalf of his constituents, although I may be doing him a disservice. The tabloids love to go on about the amount of time that he spends in his Iberian villa, but they love to hate him in any case. However, I’m not convinced that the role of the constituency PM is generally as important as the role they can play in Westminster on the wider scale; the UK legislative system doesn’t allow for the extraordinary porking-up of bills that can happen in the US system (which does have the merit of connecting local issues to national ones, even if it’s an expensive way to do it).

Also, I don’t think Oona King was picked out as a particularly egregious supporter of the war, more that she represented an appropriate constituency, but maybe you know more than me. (Slavish seems a bit too strong, but I guess she did support the war from the backbenches). I think perhaps her losing her seat to Galloway is more unfortunate than unfair.

Just to remind you: Blair is a seedy and devious trickster too.

-cvj

I think he’s a seedy and devious trickster to some extent, but I don’t think that he was elected so much for admiration of his ethics so much as his stance against Blair’s Iraq policy and that is a pretty justifiable use of one’s vote, I think.

It’s kind of like visiting the primate section of the zoo. Fascinating yet disturbing. Note that there, too, the amount of noise generated is inversely related to the intelligence of the specimen.

I think that the problem with the claims that Iraq is a disastrous mission is that the dice are still rolling. Disastrous mismanagement of the postwar, largely due to execrable planning for it (poor old Jay Garner isn’t really at fault here, he was given too little time and too few resources), sure. The US is large and powerful enough and its population appear willing to borrow any amount of money for their children to repay that maybe the US can achieve what it aims to.

I don’t think that the biggest problem with a democratic Iraq being set up is the lack of democratic history (although that is a big problem; even my father, who supports Bush but who lived in the Gulf for 10 years, thinks that was a big ask) but the promise made beforehand not to allow Iraq to split; this promise had to be made, so personally I think that promising a democracy, which appeared to be largely done to garner domestic US and UK support based on some touchy-feely rhetoric, was the biggest error. Certainly, a stable, democratic undivided Iraq is going to be very hard to achieve. Not to mention the uncertainties of what their democracy may bring; The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq is a major power in the government and until relatively recently they were basically a terrorist organisation operating from Tehran. If the Shia progressively fall in with Iran, the American taxpayer will, at great financial cost have enlarged Iran’s sphere in a way that was impossible for Iran to achieve while Saddam was in power. That would be a spectacular own goal, and it’s certainly possible that it could happen.

about the Iraq war:

“Agree or disagree with the war, I don’t think that it can accurately be characterized as a disaster.”

and about the Katrina fiasco:

“But I can think of no disaster of similar scale anywhere in the world to which there was a superior response.”

I’m sort of shocked speechless at this point. With respect, and for no particular reason, I’d like to point out that you called Mr. Galloway a loon in an earlier comment, and then wrote these things.

I’ll point you to earlier posts by myself and others on these subjects, and numerous discussions in the associated threads. Look at the archive and filter to posts on “politics”. I’m not being rude, it’s just so depressing that I just can’t summon the energy right now to go over the well-documented and well-known factual contradictions to every point you made.

Cheers!

-cvj

I can’t say that I was much impressed by what I remember Mr. Galloway saying about Iraq and Katrina. For example,

1) It was wrong of the U.S. to invade a country that did not attack it and was not a certain military threat.
Leaving aside the issue of whether Iraq was a threat, this means that the U.S. was wrong in invading France during WWII.

2) You can’t impose democracy in a region that has no history of it.
This means that the U.S. accomplished the impossible in setting up democratic Japan.

3) The American project in Iraq is a disaster.
Viewed from a historical perspective, what’s being accomplished is, frankly, amazing. The U.S. has deposed a brutal Arab dictator, held an unprecedented free election in an Arab country, is fostering the establishment of a constitutional democracy at five time the speed at which the American constitution was established, and has kill thousands of violent opponents to this democratization. All this at the cost of 2K American lives, on the order of 15K Iraqi deaths and concomitant injuries, and 1 percent of GDP. [More perspective is to be had by recalling that the annual death rate of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is less than the accidental military death rate in the peace time militaries of the eighties and nineties, and that the U.S. endures 40K deaths per year just for the privilege of driving (how many more would we endure not to be ruled by a dictator?).] Agree or disagree with the war, I don’t think that it can accurately be characterized as a disaster.

4) The federal response to Katrina is shameful.
Am I the only one who is amazed by the federal response? *Ten thousand* people were rescued by helicopter. *An entire city was evacuated in a couple of days.* The evacuees were given food, shelter, and cash. Yes, there was suffering due to the failure of the local first responders. Yes, the federal government was reluctant to invade Louisiana, when its governor was slow to invite them in. Yes, there was cronyism in FEMA. But I can think of no disaster of similar scale anywhere in the world to which there was a superior response. And the singling out the current administration for blame in the longstanding problem of New Orleans’ inadequate levee system seems totally unwarranted, especially given the fact that it was the levees whose reinforcement projects had been completed that failed. Moreover, any planned reinforcement projects would not have been completed by the time that Katrina struck.

Thanks.

-cvj

I fall into this pattern of thought sometimes, too, but I think it’s dangerous to consider yourself a fraud for not being hardcore enough. You can be “positively middle-ground” and still be passionate about it, and even make common cause with people to your left. If you think that authenticity and extremism are the same thing, you’re likely to become one of these David Horowitz or Christopher Hitchens types whose only response to disillusionment at an extreme position is to flip all the way over to the other side.

Perhaps.

I did not hear him demonize America. In fact, he spent a lot of time saying that he was *not* going to do that. There was also no discussion of regret over the disappearance of the Soviet Union’s regime. What he spoke about was the war on Iraq, the lies about it, terrorism, the lies about that, and the neglect of your own country’s infrastructure in order to pursue those lies…… He made a lot of sense on all of those. I don’t care if he does not make sense on other stuff. We must not throw out the baby with the bathwater….that’s all I’m saying.

Adam,

On these issues, I’m happy to be one of the rabble, rather than not-rabble.

-cvj

He is not the total loon that I expected him to be. Although he is irritatingly evasive, his coherence is several orders of magnitude greater than that of, say, Cindy Sheehan.

Were he a physical theory, I would describe him as being more or less internally consistent, but having dubious initial assumptions.

If we caricature the political spectrum as equality-emphasizing on the left side and liberty-emphasizing on the right, Galloway is classic case of an extreme leftist. His over emphasis on the value of equality leads naturally to his demonization of America (because it acts as the superpower that it is, rather than as an ordinary member of the community of nations). He has expressed regret over the fall of the Soviet Union. To him the loss of a check on American power (a rise in the inequality between nations) is worse than the continued enslavement of millions within the Soviet empire would have been. Equality trumps liberty.

This elevation of international equality over individual liberty strikes me as a faulty initial assumption. So, while Mr. Galloway is not the looniest of loons, I believe he is nonetheless a loon.

On the part about activism, I remember when I was quite young with my brother at a local park, where religion was past to the group I was with as we listen to the bands that played every Sunday.

Next thing we know, we are down at this hall in the questionable part of town ,entered this room with benches. We noticed this white curtain draped across what seemed to be a stage. It wasn’t long before this curtain was drawn back and revealled this large tub of water that you could immerse yourself in.

Well you can guess my surprize to see my younger Catholic brother, getting baptized:) I was to say very perturbed by this “activism” to join the talk given to us and berated my brother for this. It is very funny in retrospect. I was to hard on him.

Activism can have a very draining effect on a person as you imply. Bascially, if we can ever do the “right thing”(?) will this carry one? Enough conviction?