Reply #102: A thought-free slogan, not an attempt at rational argument [View All]

[Donald Ian Rankin]

Your post is not a rational argument, it's an attempt to avoid having to make such.

The argument you appear to be hinting broadly at is "Some of the accusations levelled at Saddam Hussein were false, therefore some of the accusations levelled at Gadaffi are false, therefore he may not be as bad as he is painted, therefore opposing him by military force is not justifiable". Is this a fair summary of your position?

If it is, I don't think it works.

I think that you could make a much stronger case against military intervention in Libya as follows: "While I acknowledge that Gaddafi is a Very Bad Thing, I don't think that military intervention is likely to be able to replace him by anything better".

But I think that the side of the equation that you're trying to attack is fairly unassailable. Although there were undoubtedly exaggerations and outright lies among the things Saddam Hussein was accused of (the most obvious one being the claim that he had WMD), there was also an awful lot of truth: he really was a spectacularly brutal, wicked and repressive, and indeed genocidal (aginst the marsh arabs), dictator who did have an awful lot of people tortured and killed (I'm not quite sure why you refer to "torture rooms!" in what I think is meant to be a dismissive tone - do you think that he didn't have people tortured?). Similarly, Gadaffi really is an appallingly nasty piece of work.

By trying to deny this, I think you put yourself in some fairly unfortunate company, to say the least - by emphasising "they were accused of things they were not guilty of" without even mentioning "but they were also guilty of an awful lot, too" you risk creating the impression that you sympathise with Saddam and Gaddafi.

If you want to make a compelling case against the war, focus on "it won't make things better"; *don't* try to argue "Gadaffi is not a monster", because he undoubtedly is.