I don't buy it.

For the state, Realpolitik* and even Machtpolitik are the same as "moralpolitik."

There was a time to keep Iraq in existence as a balance in the great game of manipulating the middle East. The winking out of THE FORMER SOVIET UNION changed all this, making it time to unleash the contradictions of the spiritual jailhouse.

The game now is to establish new balances, exploiting the conradictions of the jailhouse until their old, rotten world comes crashing down.

Thus they remain as they have long been, weak and divided, while their reformation is perfected by a process of cultural penetration and diffusion.

Now the shortcut to the Endlosung** would be for the jailers to reach out for restructuring--to reform their economies and their militaries. To achieve this, they allow openness, cultural reformation, and then the walls fall.

Tell me now, is not this vision of the Endsieg more "moral" than that of appeasement, which leaves the lesser breeds to languish in their loved Egyptian night, forever?
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*All one need do to sound "monstrous" is to drop a phrase or two in that language. We can tell what Tolkien was thinking of when he wrote the scene in which Gandalf freezes the Council of Elrond in horror by reciting the ring inscription in the language of Mordor.

**More monstrous language--so much better than "ultimate resolution," better even than "final solution."

Lou:

You miss your own point. There's no Realist reason to care about the quality of their lives. All the Realist cares about is stability, which is achieved well enough by a system of dictatorships. If exterminating the arabs would make the United States more secure the rationalists would have no argument against it, but the moralists could not countenance it.

I suggest that I have not missed it. The point is that bearing the sword not in vain is the best thing for the World Government to do, and thus becomes the moral thing for individuals to advance. The world is better because good men conducted affairs of state like "monsters" when necessity drove them.

We maintain that wars arise when evil men mistakenly assume that the good men will not so respond, as when Germany commenced general war without a stategic bombing capability, childishly neglecting deterrence of our counter-value warfare.

The decision that Iraq had outlived its usefulness was within the sound discretion of statecraft, the old system having gotten out of balance.

My point remains that the distinction between Realpolitik and "moralpolitik" is illusory. Sacrificing peace to indulge one's personal squeamishness is anything but moral.

You stumble towards insight. You can't pursue peace as your highest aim, as the rationalists do, and be moral. Realism is just Multiculturalism in foreign affairs.

We fought Saddam in 1991 because we were afraid he was going to seize control of the Saudi Arabian oil fields just as he had invaded Kuwait. It was not in our interest to allow someone like Saddam from controlling the world's oil supply.

Likewise, after 12 years of various struggle to get Saddam to comply with the '91 armistice terms, some resolution was bound to happen. We could either accept defeat, or depose him once and for all.

There is a reason we intervened in the Middle East but not in Myanmar or Rwanda although those latter two cases offended our morality as well. The article is idiotic.

Of course it was in our interest for him to take over. He desperately needed to sell us oil and would have created pressure for Iran to sell more and faster.