7 thoughts on “DAMSEL IN DISTRESS”

  • depressed capitalist says:

    The American Revolution might well have failed if not for the support the Colonists received from the French and other nations in continental Europe.

    So what did the French do right that enabled them to help the US without us harboring bitter resentment against them for years?

    Oh, wait… never mind.

  • comrade x says:

    The French sent thousands of Charville muskets to equip a Contienental Army formerly equiped with captured Brown Bess muskets and fowling pieces.
    They also defeated the British Navy at Chesapeake Bay, which isolated the British garrison at Yorktown, besides directly participating in the siege itself.
    French resentment of America stemmed from the fact that the United States congress welched on their war debt. As for it existing today, it is largely a figment of Fox viewers' imaginations and is a product of their feelings of cultural inferiority.
    As far as Iran goes, perhaps the rank- and- file neocons want to be the big action hero who saves the day ( and kill a hundred thousand brown people in the process) but the ruling class of this country, Republican or Democrat, wants to get their paws on Iran's oil resources.
    That is what will motivate them to intervene. If that oil wasn't there, they would sit on their hands and watch, like they did with Rwanda.

  • Mike says:

    Iran is a complex situation, and I agree that a US intervention is an awful idea. Were we to intervene it is much more likely that Khameini and the old guard would consolidate their power, having a target to switch the people's anger to. I would be another "see, look at the Great Satan" moment, one which we really don't need.

    Most people agree that what we are witnessing now is the external struggle of the internal battle between Khameini and Rafsanjani. On the individual level, Khameini will likely be willing to do anything to keep himself in power, while Rafsanjani now views himself as the man who can bring Iran into a new age of prosperity with the west. As each works to consolidate power, it is worth considering who will have the guts to pull the trigger first. Sadly, it is likely to be Khameini, and he's already showing it. If we're lucky the Iranian people will push on, regardless of who is standing with them. The people have already taken a life long insider with "revolutionary credentials," Moussavi, and changed him into a reformer. They have the power to make their world a better place. Sadly, it will take quite a bit of bloodshed to get there, and a successful outcome is hardly certain. Still, much like Khameini, the Shah had all the oil, all the military, and the secret police on his side …

  • Matthew says:

    Okay Mike, you probably didn't mean it, but I could not read your comment without thinking of the George Bush (Sr.) episode of the Simpsons. Just because you used the phrase "consolidate power" in relation to Iran.

    Marge: Can we get rid of this Ayatollah T-shirt? Khomeini died years
    ago.
    Homer: But, Marge! It works on any Ayatollah! Ayatollah Nakhbadeh, Ayatollah Zahedi! Even as we speak, Ayatollah Razmara and his cadre of fanatics are consolidating their power!

    Ah, 1996.

  • Owen says:

    This post couldn't be more correct if it tried. It should be required reading for all so-called "liberal interventionists". It never fails to annoy me that for some people "the situation in country x is bad" automatically implies "the West should send in troops/drop a few smart bombs and that will magically make everything better". You'd think there have been enough examples of how wrong that can go that they'd learn the lesson.

  • Brandon says:

    Owen, I read Ed's post as more of a criticism of neo-conservative militarism than of liberal interventionism. And your characterization of liberal interventionism as dropping smart bombs to make everything better is a bit off the mark.

  • Owen says:

    I freely admit that my depiction of liberal interventionists was a caricature – it was intended as such. And maybe that's intellectually lazy (actually there's no maybe about it), but I really only meant my comment to convey that I liked Ed's post – I wasn't trying to give a detailed account of what I think is problematic in the liberal interventionist position. However, since you asked…

    My comment was probably a bit ambiguous. Ed's post certainly was directed at neoconservatives, but I think it highlights very clearly an error that liberal interventionists can (though don't always) make as well: the belief that the way to get rid of unpleasant governments is unilateral military intervention from outside the country. Don't get me wrong; I'd like a world with fewer totalitarian dictatorships, and there are some cases (as Ed says) where military intervention can be justified. But there has to be a strong opposition movement inside the country as well, and as Ed pointed out, even that isn't sufficient in a large number of cases. Iraq (of course) is the clearest example of a war that many self-described liberals supported because it would get rid of a brutal dictator, and which went badly wrong precisely (though not exclusively) because it was an attempt to impose wholesale change from outside.

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