“Any claim that we invaded Iraq for some high moral purpose doesn’t even pass the giggle test in light of our past and present policies for supporting bloodthirsty depraved dictators (for a really horrendous ongoing example, take Uzbekistan).�

I must confess I’ve always found this type of comment completely unpersuasive, if not downright silly. To use a more common example: How many times do we hear about the alleged hypocrisy of not invading North Korea, or even China, because of the abuses committed by governments there? The apparent purpose in drawing these types of comparisons is to impress upon the listener the alleged hypocrisy of the United States in attacking Country A, but not Country B, when, based upon some alleged objective benchmark of “heinousness�, the behavior of the regime in Country B is at least as heinous, if not worse, than the behavior of Country A. I suppose it’s easy to point out all sorts of “hypocrisy� like this when you insist on analyzing international affairs in a vacuum. Unfortunately, the realities of international decision-making, even if informed by “high moral purpose,� aren’t amenable to this simplistic analysis. Any decision to invade a country is likely to be predicated on a multitude of factors, and not just one lone, moral calculation. That’s life. There are competing considerations. There are costs and benefits to attacking one country that aren’t the same for attaching another, even assuming that the “moral� argument, in isolation, would seem to mandate equal treatment of the two regimes. In any “moral� foreign policy, you would have to do what you can, all-the-while acknowledging that there are tradeoffs, choices are hard, and life is messy.

Also, consider this oft-repeated claim that the United States, in the past, has supported “bloodthirsty depraved dictators.� Let us grant the truth of this, and further, let’s assume for the sake of argument that there were no legitimate factors that morally justified such support in light of some greater good. If I’m an American voter who believes that that my country’s past actions were reprehensible, or that my country has propped up a bloodthirsty depraved dictator in the past, then that observation, it seems to me, becomes an argument in favor of a war for regime change, not against it. I truly don’t get how this “America is hypocritical, ergo it has no business engaging in military action� argument is supposed to work. Those who bemoan America’s past bad acts often bolster the case for military intervention, all other things being equal.

Finally, I think that arguments about “hypocrisyâ€? in America’s international affairs are problematic for a rather obvious reason: We live in a democracy where we elect a different leader every four years who may or may not retain the foreign policy philosophy of his predecessor. This may be unfortunate at times (surely there is an argument to be made for foreign policy continuity, for the sake of stability and predictability), but there it is. As a result, I don’t think observations about the hypocrisy of the United States — as if American presidents are personally responsible for the sins of their predecessors – are as compelling as they would be if, say, George Bush had been President for the past 50 years.

Aaron B

Which is to say, that the Iranian Islamic revolution had removed a very, very nasty and bloody despot that the United States had installed and supported — and that we had installed by overthrowing a democratically elected government, BTW — so, having lost our favorite dictator in the region, we just switched tyrants and started supporting Saddam.

(remember the hostages?)

But of course. The hostage-taking by the students in the U.S. embassy was primarily motivated by the fear that we would install another dictator the way we had when we deposed Mossadeq in 1953, the first time the Iranians tried to get rid of Pahlavi.

Far from ignoring the context, I think this pretty well underscores my overall point that we don’t have much claim to any high-falutin’ moral standing. Our methods have been, and continue to be, rather despicable.

Sorry that I’m apparently being unclear. My assertion is that we are being entirely consistent with the past, and would be supporting Saddam and his atrocities still, just as we are now supporting Karimov and his atrocities, if we thought it were in our interests to do so. Our invasion of Iraq has nothing to do with correcting past mistakes, only with present opportunism. We haven’t learned a thing and our hands are just as bloodstained as ever.

I like your approach in general … that our support of the Iraqis had some legitimate place in the context of the times. I can still remember how angry the United States was at Iran, even though I was a just a kid at the time. For years, as a result of the news coverage I subconsciously associated Islam with Ayatollah Khomenei’s austere bearded visage.

Let me quibble a tiny bit over one little idea you present though.

My understanding has been that Iraq invaded Iran (rather than the other way around), that Iraq was attempting to take advantage of the societal confusion and the military purges that followed the Iranian revolution. From Saddam’s perspective, these events weakened Iran militarily and made it ripe for the picking. I believe Saddam was also encouraged to do this by Iranian military leader refugees who were understandbly upset at having lost their positions in the Shah’s government.

Also, there had been previous agreements with Iran (regarding the Shatt al-Arab waterways — a contested border with Iran) that Saddam signed under some duress. And so Saddam had a personal grudge that he felt needed to be avenged.

Of course, I don’t doubt that (as is often the case in conflicts) it is disputed as to who started the fighting, or who invaded who. But I don’t think Iran was the original aggressor on this one, as Iran was too busy at the time trying to put its own house in order.

Unfortunately for Saddam, starting this war created a rallying cry for the new Iranian religious government and united the Iranians in a common cause. If there’s anything Iranians are ultra-sensitive to, it is the intervention or interference of outside powers.

Which reminds me of a rather caustic joke. Supposedly when he was asked what he though about the Iran-Iraq war, Menachem Begin (prime minister of Israel) said: “Good luck to both sides.” I think in its own way, the United States was playing that joke out. Let me tell you, Saddam was the person in the world who was most displeased with the news of the Iran-Contra scandal.

The Khomeini revolution had removed a friendly (to the US) regime in Iran, and Iran had invaded Iraq. The overt antagonism of the Iranian leaders (remember the hostages?) and the concerns about the spread of fundamentalist Shiism from Iran to other parts of the Middle East led to US support of secular Iraq against the Shiite Iran.

We can argue now about the wisdom of opposing the Iranians, or the seriousness of the threat they posed to the Middle East or to the important sources of petroleum there, but any aid to Iraq must be viewed in the context of that conflict. If we aided Iraq, it was because, in our view, Iran posed a greater threat to us than the internal repression of the Iraqis by Saddam Hussein.

“Any claim that we invaded Iraq for some high moral purpose doesn’t even pass the giggle test in light of our past and present policies for supporting bloodthirsty depraved dictators (for a really horrendous ongoing example, take Uzbekistan).�

I must confess I’ve always found this type of comment completely unpersuasive, if not downright silly. To use a more common example: How many times do we hear about the alleged hypocrisy of not invading North Korea, or even China, because of the abuses committed by governments there? The apparent purpose in drawing these types of comparisons is to impress upon the listener the alleged hypocrisy of the United States in attacking Country A, but not Country B, when, based upon some alleged objective benchmark of “heinousness�, the behavior of the regime in Country B is at least as heinous, if not worse, than the behavior of Country A. I suppose it’s easy to point out all sorts of “hypocrisy� like this when you insist on analyzing international affairs in a vacuum. Unfortunately, the realities of international decision-making, even if informed by “high moral purpose,� aren’t amenable to this simplistic analysis. Any decision to invade a country is likely to be predicated on a multitude of factors, and not just one lone, moral calculation. That’s life. There are competing considerations. There are costs and benefits to attacking one country that aren’t the same for attaching another, even assuming that the “moral� argument, in isolation, would seem to mandate equal treatment of the two regimes. In any “moral� foreign policy, you would have to do what you can, all-the-while acknowledging that there are tradeoffs, choices are hard, and life is messy.

Also, consider this oft-repeated claim that the United States, in the past, has supported “bloodthirsty depraved dictators.� Let us grant the truth of this, and further, let’s assume for the sake of argument that there were no legitimate factors that morally justified such support in light of some greater good. If I’m an American voter who believes that that my country’s past actions were reprehensible, or that my country has propped up a bloodthirsty depraved dictator in the past, then that observation, it seems to me, becomes an argument in favor of a war for regime change, not against it. I truly don’t get how this “America is hypocritical, ergo it has no business engaging in military action� argument is supposed to work. Those who bemoan America’s past bad acts often bolster the case for military intervention, all other things being equal.

Finally, I think that arguments about “hypocrisyâ€? in America’s international affairs are problematic for a rather obvious reason: We live in a democracy where we elect a different leader every four years who may or may not retain the foreign policy philosophy of his predecessor. This may be unfortunate at times (surely there is an argument to be made for foreign policy continuity, for the sake of stability and predictability), but there it is. As a result, I don’t think observations about the hypocrisy of the United States — as if American presidents are personally responsible for the sins of their predecessors – are as compelling as they would be if, say, George Bush had been President for the past 50 years.

Aaron B