The Costs of War - Chris Sciabarra

Subject: The Costs of War - Chris Sciabarra Tue Nov 11, 2014 4:13 am

The Crusade for Democracy

With bubbling democratic impulses being felt from Lebanon to Iran, some neoconservative commentators have practically declared victory in this war. They are focused on the most recent news as if it demonstrates the Hegelian inevitability of some Brave New Democratic World Order. Whether or not this was the actual reason for going to war in Iraq or a result of that war, the causes of which are open to debate, it is clear that, from the beginning, neoconservative policy-makers have equated this democratic quest with the quest for American security and hegemony. It is the same kind of democratic crusade that served as the ideological motivation for Wilsonians in World War I and the liberal interventionists in World War II, and that led inadvertently to the creation of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Soviet Russia in the first instance, and a half-century of Cold War Communist tyranny in the second instance.

As I have stated in an ongoing debate on the Atlantis II Yahoo Group Discussion List, this crusade has come at significant cost, both qualitative and quantitative: billions of dollars, 1,500+ US dead, 11,000+ US wounded, and 30,000+ total US medical evacuations. And there are unknown thousands of Iraqi dead�which brings sobering irony to the oft-cited sentiment that if the US had done nothing in the face of Saddam Hussein's brutality, "many Iraqis were likely to be killed." I suppose some will decide the long-term value of this war by weighing the number of corpses on each side of the scales of justice.

In truth, some neocons understand (or at least understood) that democracy is not enough. Unlike Charles Krauthammer of today, Charley the K of yesteryear (circa 1993) got it right when he argued that "Democracy is not a suicide pact" (hat tip to Atrios):

Two parts...
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/000373.html

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/000379.html

The Costs of War - Chris Sciabarra

The Costs of War - Chris Sciabarra

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