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mishalakChristopher Hitchens is an idiot. But many of you probably already knew that. For those who do not know of him, he is a Fundamentalist Atheist (as opposed to an Orthodox Atheist, which is what I am) who wrote a book entiteled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything which is not worth reading or refuting. If you want to read a thought provoking book about the subject go pick up something like Julian Baggini's book, Atheism: a very short introduction instead.
But I am not here to give you a pocket review of the book. I am here to refute the idea that one can support the Bush Aministration's War and be a good Atheist. Anyone who does is not only not Orthodox, but also a fool allying himself with the forces of darkness. Hitchens is like a French Royalist saying he's supporting Robespierre and the Jacobins, because they have the guts to restore public order with blood when needed. He does not perceive that his head is in the guillotine, that if the out of touch fools running this war had their way he would be in a 'reeducation camp' or something of that nature along with me and every other Atheist. That's my first point. This is not the West against the Islam. This is Fundamentalist Christians against what they think are the dusky Mohamedian hordes that must be stopped to preserve the world dominance and purity of the Christian End Times Republic.
Secondly he proposes genocide without understanding. He wants to bomb and kill enough Muslims that they'll go away and leave us alone (except when we come to them to buy oil, of course). Forget the morality of this for a moment, practically speaking this is crazy. The percentage of the one and a half billion Muslims in the world we would have to kill to make them all so afraid of us is mind boggling. I'm not sure it could be done. Look at the Soviet Union under Joe Stalin. Bloodthirsty dictator and all people fought for him against the Nazis and did not give up with 13% of their population dead and the enemy controlling half the country that was worth having, not to mention the ethnic divides and so on. So the number of dead would have to be something more than two-hundred million just to get started. That's rather a lot. I'm not sure that the rest of the world would put up with it either. I suspect that if we did something like that other nuclear armed nations might think of dropping one on the District of Columbia.
Secondly if this is about stopping Muslims there are a number of other countries we should have bombed 'back to the stone age' (as American troglodytes are fond of staying) first. Iraq, until our invasion, was rather secular, though trending more religious with the economic deprivations of the sanctions (people do tend to turn to religion when poor). Perhaps it was never as secular as Turkey, but it was light-years beyond nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran.
It also was a complete botch of a set piece demonstration of what America could do when it set its mind to it. We should have finished with Afghanistan and the boarder regions of Pakistan before biting off another regime. But as always it is too late for should haves and could haves, we can only move forward.
Should or should not Atheists of Orthodox or any other leaning support continuing the war in Iraq? There are two levels to this question, as a practical person who wants the best for his country and from Atheistic morals.
On the first count it looks very bad. I think because of how humans react to pain that every death and wound we make recruits another two religious fanatics against Americans. If we were willing to spend the blood and treasure I think Iraq could be pacified by learning from actual experience rather than just assuming that it is simply more soldiers or enemy deaths that will win it. More soldiers are necessary to bring order to Iraq, but the current policies do not work and cannot work. Even a reading of ancient cynics like Machiavelli (no friend to human rights) would tell the most dense observer that. We are doing lots of little harms to many people every day while trying to kill off a deep seated insurrection. We need to coddle everyone we do not destroy. Men who are hurt do not fear the people who wounded them, they hate them. Hitchens needs to learn that ruling by fear is not accomplished by making everyone hate the regime. Unless we are willing to have a lot more American dead as well as Americans soldiers over there to produce order in Iraq that this cannot be successful. Yes, American dead, not Iraqi. We would need to be more surgical about destroying only those who violently oppose us and our satrap government. But at least half of America opposes this war even with the present level of casualties and I do not see them suddenly becoming convinced that it can be won with more blood.
On the moral level we are probably killing a good many secular and/or Atheist Iraqis in our blundering attempt to get at Al-Qaeda. Evidence (the prime truth for any good Atheist) shows that a great many of those who oppose us in Iraq do so on nationalistic grounds rather than religious ones. Plus all the innocent bystanders we kill every day because they were in the wrong place or because our military made a mistake about a suspect. Remember it is not for the sake of the criminal that we have human rights, but because it is not possible to tell which person is an innocent wrongly accused and which is a criminal. We are accomplishing more evil to both ourselves and to Iraq the longer we stay over there.
But what of our moral duty to put right what our government has done in our name? This is a harder question, but it is answered by what it is possible for us to do rather than what ideally we should do. Ideally we should impeach the President, but his party will not stand for that no matter what morality tells us should be done. And doing a half job would be worse than none at all in both cases, though I can understand why others would think otherwise.
Lastly we need to question even if this was a good cause if good would come of it given the preponderance of Christian Fundamentalists involved in its planning and execution. A huge amount of the mistakes made so far can justly be laid at their feet in the administration of occupied Iraq and it is reasonable to assume that as long as there are Christian Fundamentalist operating on their completely flawed world view and in place because of their religion rather than competence at their jobs that this will continue to be a disaster.
Therefore I think all Atheists must oppose this war on practical grounds as well as being horrified by an unjust, ill-thought out, and Christian Fundamentalist war. The only way this would be otherwise is if we Americans were willing to step back and actually use the experience of other occupying powers and our own history as an occupying power to see what sort of strategy would work rather than just doing the same thing over and over and expecting that this charge up the hill with the same force will finally carry us over the top.
I do not make any comment about which particular candidates or parties an Atheist should vote for, because voting is complex. We do not just vote as Atheists but also for all the other issues facing American voters. Not to mention that all the candidates are to greater or lesser degrees religious and often willing to inject religious positions into their political policies. However, some candidates would be more willing to go with secular positions should the political tide favor them at the moment.
But I am not here to give you a pocket review of the book. I am here to refute the idea that one can support the Bush Aministration's War and be a good Atheist. Anyone who does is not only not Orthodox, but also a fool allying himself with the forces of darkness. Hitchens is like a French Royalist saying he's supporting Robespierre and the Jacobins, because they have the guts to restore public order with blood when needed. He does not perceive that his head is in the guillotine, that if the out of touch fools running this war had their way he would be in a 'reeducation camp' or something of that nature along with me and every other Atheist. That's my first point. This is not the West against the Islam. This is Fundamentalist Christians against what they think are the dusky Mohamedian hordes that must be stopped to preserve the world dominance and purity of the Christian End Times Republic.
Secondly he proposes genocide without understanding. He wants to bomb and kill enough Muslims that they'll go away and leave us alone (except when we come to them to buy oil, of course). Forget the morality of this for a moment, practically speaking this is crazy. The percentage of the one and a half billion Muslims in the world we would have to kill to make them all so afraid of us is mind boggling. I'm not sure it could be done. Look at the Soviet Union under Joe Stalin. Bloodthirsty dictator and all people fought for him against the Nazis and did not give up with 13% of their population dead and the enemy controlling half the country that was worth having, not to mention the ethnic divides and so on. So the number of dead would have to be something more than two-hundred million just to get started. That's rather a lot. I'm not sure that the rest of the world would put up with it either. I suspect that if we did something like that other nuclear armed nations might think of dropping one on the District of Columbia.
Secondly if this is about stopping Muslims there are a number of other countries we should have bombed 'back to the stone age' (as American troglodytes are fond of staying) first. Iraq, until our invasion, was rather secular, though trending more religious with the economic deprivations of the sanctions (people do tend to turn to religion when poor). Perhaps it was never as secular as Turkey, but it was light-years beyond nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran.
It also was a complete botch of a set piece demonstration of what America could do when it set its mind to it. We should have finished with Afghanistan and the boarder regions of Pakistan before biting off another regime. But as always it is too late for should haves and could haves, we can only move forward.
Should or should not Atheists of Orthodox or any other leaning support continuing the war in Iraq? There are two levels to this question, as a practical person who wants the best for his country and from Atheistic morals.
On the first count it looks very bad. I think because of how humans react to pain that every death and wound we make recruits another two religious fanatics against Americans. If we were willing to spend the blood and treasure I think Iraq could be pacified by learning from actual experience rather than just assuming that it is simply more soldiers or enemy deaths that will win it. More soldiers are necessary to bring order to Iraq, but the current policies do not work and cannot work. Even a reading of ancient cynics like Machiavelli (no friend to human rights) would tell the most dense observer that. We are doing lots of little harms to many people every day while trying to kill off a deep seated insurrection. We need to coddle everyone we do not destroy. Men who are hurt do not fear the people who wounded them, they hate them. Hitchens needs to learn that ruling by fear is not accomplished by making everyone hate the regime. Unless we are willing to have a lot more American dead as well as Americans soldiers over there to produce order in Iraq that this cannot be successful. Yes, American dead, not Iraqi. We would need to be more surgical about destroying only those who violently oppose us and our satrap government. But at least half of America opposes this war even with the present level of casualties and I do not see them suddenly becoming convinced that it can be won with more blood.
On the moral level we are probably killing a good many secular and/or Atheist Iraqis in our blundering attempt to get at Al-Qaeda. Evidence (the prime truth for any good Atheist) shows that a great many of those who oppose us in Iraq do so on nationalistic grounds rather than religious ones. Plus all the innocent bystanders we kill every day because they were in the wrong place or because our military made a mistake about a suspect. Remember it is not for the sake of the criminal that we have human rights, but because it is not possible to tell which person is an innocent wrongly accused and which is a criminal. We are accomplishing more evil to both ourselves and to Iraq the longer we stay over there.
But what of our moral duty to put right what our government has done in our name? This is a harder question, but it is answered by what it is possible for us to do rather than what ideally we should do. Ideally we should impeach the President, but his party will not stand for that no matter what morality tells us should be done. And doing a half job would be worse than none at all in both cases, though I can understand why others would think otherwise.
Lastly we need to question even if this was a good cause if good would come of it given the preponderance of Christian Fundamentalists involved in its planning and execution. A huge amount of the mistakes made so far can justly be laid at their feet in the administration of occupied Iraq and it is reasonable to assume that as long as there are Christian Fundamentalist operating on their completely flawed world view and in place because of their religion rather than competence at their jobs that this will continue to be a disaster.
Therefore I think all Atheists must oppose this war on practical grounds as well as being horrified by an unjust, ill-thought out, and Christian Fundamentalist war. The only way this would be otherwise is if we Americans were willing to step back and actually use the experience of other occupying powers and our own history as an occupying power to see what sort of strategy would work rather than just doing the same thing over and over and expecting that this charge up the hill with the same force will finally carry us over the top.
I do not make any comment about which particular candidates or parties an Atheist should vote for, because voting is complex. We do not just vote as Atheists but also for all the other issues facing American voters. Not to mention that all the candidates are to greater or lesser degrees religious and often willing to inject religious positions into their political policies. However, some candidates would be more willing to go with secular positions should the political tide favor them at the moment.
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Date: 2007-10-16 06:37 am (UTC)Heck, I come from a family with a long tradition of serving in the US armed forces, and the veterans in the family are not pleased at all with this military mess. That's saying a lot, since they're also usually very Republican.