Japan, Korea? I’m not sure the analogy quite works, and you can chuck the Philippines and Indonesia back at me, but I see at least some support for my stubborn adherence to a law of unintended positive consequences here. But essentially, I share your analysis, and your grave doubts about some of those “stickier philosophical issues”, I just think the end-result will be different.

As an aside, I marched with everyone else in 2003 against the war, because I was against how it happened, how lies were used to manipulate, how international law was trampled on, and so on. That opinion hasn’t changed. In fact, it’s been magnified by the way the war (actually, more the occupation) has been prosecuted. I guess a decent retort to my general position would be to point out that this was inevitable.

However, to borrow that analogy for a while… my problem with the Iraq invasion is that I see it as panning out thus: We jump into the pond, nick the kid’s wallet, and then climb back out without saving him.

I honestly see this as a resource grab which will ultimately leave the Iraqi people worse off (if it’s the long term we’re interested in).

And of course, then there’s the added complication of the approaching collapse of global capitalism… we’re not exporting the dictatorship of capital; we’re merely giving it an extra decade of life-support at the expense of the Iraqi people.

I have a lot of respect for your position on this… that the people making the decisions almost certainly don’t have the interests of the Iraqi people at heart, but that their actions will nonetheless have unintended positive consequences. In truth, the question of which of us is right won’t be known for a few more years yet. But I see precious little historical precedent for Western imperialist resource-grabs being good for the locals.

And that’s without addressing some of the stickier philosophical issues surrounding the projection of force, the murder of civilians, etc.

No, you’re essentially accurate to call me a “humanitarian interventionist” (I’d prefix “liberal”, just for vanity), though of a sceptical kind. I don’t believe that the reasons (cf. your cluster bomb argument, a good one) were primarily or even secondarily altruistic, but I judge that the overall effect may in the long-run be positive. At least, I do today. Tomorrow, who knows? I wrote a few paras. about my “pro-War” credentials here:

http://fairvotewatch.blogspot.com/2005/11/bloody-iraq-for-last-time.html

I guess essentially it’s similar to what I thought about the end of Eastern bloc communism: the kind of dictatorship (of capital) we experience in the West is the kind of dictatorship they, on balance, could use more of.