Reply #5: I don't think the arguments are reducable to the maxim

[gottaB]

Here's my take.

On the Draft. Let's go back to Charlie Rangel's proposal (link to his initial announcement). Rangel talks about shared sacrifice, and while that hides a lot of his partisan motivation, I think it's essentially on point. He's arguing against the notion that the war in Iraq will be a cakewalk. He knows it's going to cost. He knows it's going to hurt people. But the true costs of war were not really part of the debate in Washington leading up to the invasion. Not enough anyway. It was and largely still is a classist politics, in which one class of people bear the burdens for the decisions made by another, dominant class.

The point is not that Charlie Rangel wanted kids to die. The point is that if people in Washington, along with their dearest and most loyal supporters, knew that they would have to pay the true costs of war, they would not make reckless decisions. The "backlash" he was aiming at was not a matter of "the worse the better," but rather a call for fairness and honesty, a reconsideration of the case for war.

Now, in August, there are people talking about a draft, and hoping for a backlash. I'd like to believe that most people don't really want to see carnage and destruction and all the attendant ills of soldiering in an imperialist war visited upon the young people of this nation. Because there is still time to change things. The UN can brought in. Our allies. We can eat some humble pie and try to make the best of this. So again, the point is not "the worse the better," but rather a call for fairness and honesty, and a reconsideration of how to proceed in Iraq.

Because--and I think there's not much disagreement among informed citizens on this point--because if there isn't a drastic change in White House policy pronto, the deaths will continues to mount, the soldiers will suffer, the Iraqi people will suffer, peaceful government will not be established in Iraq, and our regional interests will be further compromised. We will bear the costs of these bad decisions. We are bearing those costs now, although you'd scarecely know it from watching the cable tv. And of course it is the lower classes who are paying the most. It's just an outrage.

As for Mr. Nader, and the green vote in 2000, I think you have to realize the depth of disappointment and disaffection among progressives. At times it seemed like they had absolutely *no* voice in Washington. For example, on the Kyoto protocol, it was Clinton's guy Frank Loy who took a pie in the face at the Hague--and not without cause. The treaty was being rendered useless in negotiations that involved protecting U.S. polluters and all the usual shenanigans.

So where is that issue today? Bush, of course, abandoned the negotiations and did indeed take an extreme position. It seems like every Dem vieing for the nomination wants to use Kyoto as a weapon against Bush. Now they're talking about global warming like they mean it. Now they're making commitments.

In the meantime, the situation with the global climate change grows worse. There are more instabilities, evidence of destruction. And people are waking up. There's every possibility that a stronger, more meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emisions might emerge out of the next election. It's by no means a certainty. The calculations involve making lots of assumptions, but there is an argument there that the resulting agreement will do more to curb emisions in say the next ten years than a weakened Kyoto would have.

So, again, it's not quite "the worse the better," it's about getting honest about our situation, and being fair in accepting responsibility for reckless acts. I don't believe Greens want to see the environment destroyed. They want the powerful in Washington to be responsive to the real interests of the people. The "backlash" agrument is in this light kind of a shorthand for "realigning one's polical affiliation to be more representative of the broad base of citizen interest," or some such.


Interesting question. Thanks.