Three Monkeys, Three Typewriters, Two Days

Boris, everyone does it. Don't let it bother you. Condensing complex issues into slogans is an ancient tradition :-) It doesn't make the ideas behind the slogan any more or less valuable becuase someone tried to too hard to squeeze it onto a sign or a bumpersticker (or a billboard or a backdrop screen behind a politician making a speech).

Unless you want to attack all of the people and the ideas behind all overly-simplified slogans, like the the "fighting terrorism" slogans that sat on top of seriously complex issues of the FBI subpoenaing your library records or American citizens being detained without due process, or you want to question the misleading and overly-simplified slogans and ideas that got the Colonists mobilized against the British, or any of the majorly consequential "advertising campaigns" of the last few centuries, then it seems wrong to attack other complex problems reduced to simple slogans or the people doing that reduction.

Slogans are useful, especially to win over the support of masses of ignorant people (and there are lots of people, all over the political spectrum, that would rather be spoon-fed slogans than actually think/learn about complex issues) Just think of it as advertising. We know that works. What's wrong with people using it?

Without slogans like "Terrorism forces us to make a choice" (from the US Department of Homeland Security), "Freedom for the Iraqi people", "Anti-war = pro-Saddam", "The smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." (remember when bush, cheney and rice all used that slogan for about a month?) we probably wouldn't have gone to war in the first place and slogans about occupation would me moot.

Most people are ignorant/uninformed on most things. Slogans work well to convey some piece of complex ideas to people who aren't willing to engage in complex thought. You and I are both probably willing to and capable of thinking more seriously about these kinds of things but the slogans aren't expected to be effective at engaging us.

--Asa

/me wonders if Asa's coming up with a new slogan for the Mozilla project...

Asa, I don't particularly the other slogans you mention. But with those, they were clearly being used for a political end. I actually stopped and talked to some of these "No Occupation" people. They actually believe that we should pull out right now and let Iraq just sort itself out....

Calculated political sloganeering I can understand, and I have no problem with the "No Occupation" slogan per se, as long as the people throwing it around have a faint clue of what it means and what the consequences are.

And yes, every single slogan connected with terrorism has the same problem as this one -- people who have no clue what it means repeating it.

"Don't particularly like", I meant.

One last thing. "Most people are ignorant/uninformed on most things" should not be applying to students of an institution of higher learning such as U. Chicago. That's why the core curriculum is there, again.

I would have passed the same slogan on the street without a second thought; it's people who should know better who do dumb things that bother me.

I suppose it depends on whether or not you buy into the whole story of this war having been about "liberating" the Iraqi people or giving them "democracy." I, for one, don't buy it at all. Those poor people are in for a tough time whether under some local tyrant, or the tyrants in Washington and the Pentagon. Better that they sort it out themselves than become a vassal state. Of course, the Pentagon would never willingly withdraw from the area. They need to be thrown out by force.

I don't see how it depends on that at all... again, that was debatable _before_ the war. At this point, we have a clear duty to at least restore basic things like running water and electricity and civil order.

Once that's done, people can protest the occupation without being criminally stupid in my eyes (not that they care, of course).

Boris said: "I don't see how it depends on that at all... again, that was debatable _before_ the war. At this point, we have a clear duty to at least restore basic things like running water and electricity and civil order."

Well, that's framing a bit narrow. It's certainly not necessary that the US perform that restoration (in whole or in part). Maybe that's the right thing to do (or maybe it's not) but there are other organs capable of performing the same set of tasks so calling stupid some people who protest the US as the agent of choice for those tasks doesn't hold a lot of water. The US doesn't seem to mind leaving large hunks of the rebuilding of Afghanistan to others (United Nations-backed and Japanese-financed, it looks like) http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afarmy5may05,1,7637017.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dworld and in light of the pretty obvious differences in long-term financial returns on participation in those two recently conquered countries, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to question the motives of the US or _any_ of the participants or potential participants in post-war Iraqi rebuilding and restructuring efforts.

Your suggestion was that there was something of an ethical or moral responsibility of the US to rebuild Iraq doesn't square well with this countries general ethos or record. I really don't have much of an opinion about who should be doing what. I do, however, believe that lots needs doing and that people should be engaging in more discussion (even if inspired by sloganeering) rather than less.

--Asa

Asa, I happen to think that U.S. behavior in Afganistan (which was basically to abandon things to develop as they will after the removal of the Taliban from power) was an incredible mistake. My greatest concern about the war with Iraq has that we will repeat the same mistake.

Questioning the motives of the U.S. is fine. We should be doing that. Calling for greater U.N. participation in the rebuilding is also fine, and I'm all for it. Calling for the replacement of U.S. troops with troops from other countries who are willing to maintain order is wonderful. I see no one volunteering troops for that.

So yes, by all means suggest better ways to rebuild Iraq. But do not suggest that no rebuilding should happen at all (which is what's happening here).

For me the occupation of a country invaded against any international law and a UN peace keeping force backed by international law make a serious difference. More than this, I like it when occupants are called occupants, everything else is euphemism.