[BRIEF NOTE] Let's try peace first

[rfmcdonald]

Writing for Tech Central Station ("Give Civil War a Chance"), James H. Joyner Jr argues that if Iraq descends into civil war the United States should not try to prevent that conflict, but that it should instead withdraw. He quotes blogger Stephen Green as arguing that "the Thirty Years War, the English Civil War, and the American war between the states of where internecine conflict settled major disputes and paved the way for a much brighter future for all concerned." Joyner defended himself at Outside the Beltway, arguing that for reasons of strategy the United States should regretfully decline.

Even if you did grant that it would be a good idea to have maniacs kill each other in huge numbers--a point that I don't grant for reasons of a priori morality--the problem is that they also kill other, uninvolved people in rather large numbers. In central Europe and the British Isles, double-digit percentages of the population perished, as did double-digit percentage of the South's male population. Standing by and allowing mass murder to happen doesn't strike me. As Metternich said of Napoleon's judicial murder of the duc d'Enghien, such would be "worse than a crime, it is a mistake." Creating an explosive situation and then withdrawing just in time to avoid getting caught up with the victims would be a rather bad thing to do indeed.

Then agan, it doesn't seem as if many of the hopeful policymakers care about such things. Look for yourself at springheel_jack's screen capture of a Fox News debate on whether there would be an upside to civil war. Arendt's conclusions on the banality of evil resound in our time, all the more strongly if you accept her detractors' claim that she underestimated Eichmann's genocidal anti-Semitism and over-estimated the autonomy of the destroyed Jewish community.