Middle East movement and the actual nature of debate
These are some Monday morning ruminations. Several things seem apparent:
- We are moving closer towards a situation where weapons inspectors in Iraq may actually be effective in performing their duties.
- The US is moving away from military rhetoric
- Countries around Iraq make statements in support of Iraq abiding by UN resolutions, including inspections. I am thinking specifically of Iran here, which made a statement that it will not shoot on US planes if they were to attack Iraq.
Now, this is all talk, and clearly, we'll need to see where talk will lead us. But I think it could be productive to speculate how we got to the current rhetoric, and what it means. If there are any State Department people reading this, I would be particularly interested in their comments on the following statement: In political negotiations, one has to be keenly aware of the hard currency in possession of each negotiating party. In the particular case of the Middle East, the hard currency is military strength, and the willingness to use it. While many within and without the States have been resenting our martial posturing, I think that a correlation could be made between the softening of Iraq’s position and the loud saber rattling coming out of the US. Our willingness to use strength appears to have forced the people on the other side of the table to look for truly viable alternatives to violence. Had we been the ones looking for viable alternatives to begin with, I do not think that Iraq would have taken us seriously.
In that sense, Bush’s policy appears to be working. Let’s see where all of this takes us. The debate that has been raging around whether to go or not to go to war in Iraq directed my attention to the nature of debate itself. It strikes me that in many of the central debates going on around the nation (war in Iraq, Abortion, etc.); the debating parties do not appear to be debating about the same thing, or at least not quite. In the case of Iraq, I do not think that anyone (except maybe some odd fringe group) relishes the though of going out there and killing Iraqis and getting our soldiers killed. The hope is also that no one is for exposing the US to a WMD or terrorist attack. At the same time, I hear and see a lot of “No to War” signs and slogans, and when I talk to these people, the issue of not fighting is viewed as a primary. On the other side of the divide, the hawks view fighting as a given, often sliding into the sheer evilness of the regime we want to attack. Among the debating public, I seldom hear the question raised as to what should be done to protect American lives in the States, which I think IS the primary question, the answer to which should determine our actions, military or otherwise.
The Abortion debate, which has been going on for much longer, has the two sides talking about quite different things. Note that the slogans do not refer to the same issues. We have “Pro Choice” and “Pro Life.” Clearly these slogans have been agonized over by marketing and PR specialists. I don’t think that the people who are Pro Life are Anti Choice, and I don’t think that the people who are Pro Choice are Anti Life. But both parties would have to assume those less than appealing verbal mantles in order to actually debate. To have serious debate, the Pro Choice folks would have to admit that there is no Life as such in this discussion – when we are talking about an abortion we are talking about aborting a potential, not an actual life. On the other hand, the Pro Life people would have to admit that in the case of abortion no choice is present – by performing an abortion we are willfully terminating an actual life. I am all for effective marketing, but in these wide ranging debates it appears that the focus is to draw attention, money and supporters, not win the actual debate. Now, there must be a conspiracy theorist somewhere out there who can make a case for the self-perpetuating nature of the high profile groups (as in the abortion debate). These are vast organizations with lobbying groups, fundraisers, et cetera, et cetera. People are flying around the country, political and religious groups are involved, and money is raised, in short, the works. There are many people who are being paid a great deal of money to do all this work. Someone may care to prove that it is in the interests of those people to perpetuate the debate. After all, such debates serve as great differentiators for political candidates; they enrich political party platforms, and provide great headlines. The world would be so much the duller without them.
As for myself, I call for honesty in slogans. For instance, “Affirmative Action” in Hebrew reads “Corrective Discrimination.” Regardless what anyone’s stand on this issue is, I think the Hebrew term is much more honest and truthful. Rather than tell what this particular policy wishes to achieve, it describes it has what it is.
10:35:39 AM 
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