A note on exemplary political action

The three line refutation of the claim that the war in Iraq, if meant to achieve something by showing an example, was also terrorism by straightforward definition.

1) All politics means to send messages to general publics of one sort or another through example.
2) All terrorism is certainly politics, but all politics is certainly not terrorism.
3) The war in Iraq was meant to demonstrate power. Which is not terroristic, since terrorism intends to seed panic by a chain of gut reactions, not to demonstrate anything through
the rational means of example. The war in Iraq was also meant to secure commercial interests. Which is not terroristic, since terrorism is by definition a deformation of the political landscape by violent means which cannot be expected to predict its own consequences by anybody who doesn't believe in a peculiarly methodical and precise form of politico-historical prophesy. Thus it cannot be a rational attempt to secure any interests, but only to bring down a status quo. The goal of our era's terrorism is to bring down the American world order, which is commonly held to be the cause of the contemporary form of capitalism. This, by the way, I consider the fallacy of presuming the chief proponent of an action to be the cause of its existence and success in the situation he/she/it acts upon. It is at least as sensible, and far more scientific, to hypothesize that the situation elects the leading country, not the leading country the situation.

In other words, the comparison is a simple case of confusion of a sub-class with the class to which it belongs. Now the people making this comparison are not all incapable of seeing that. Instead, they have a stubborn will to take their discernment as far as the observation of parrallels between oneself and others, which is indeed the first step of all good reasoning, and not a centimeter further. This is manifest in their relative level of demosntrated sophistication and the sheer unlikelihood of such numbers of people committing so great an error. No self-selection process is precise enough to facilitate that, and by the same token group error is not individual error writ large, the thought of the group not a mere aggregate.

Why would anyone have such will? I hypothesize that it has something to do with the two forms of universalism; universalism in consideration of one fellow man, or the abolition of in-groups based on any criterion at all and universalism of logical method. The dirty truth is that, beyond the first step of drawing parrallels between what one sees from within and what one sees from without, this universalism of logical method fails miserably. Every science, every branch of knowledge has its method, its own epistemology. The only thing uniting all good thinking is the ability to overcome one's initial subjective bias, whether one calls it self-interest, ignorance, or perspective, to arrive at objectivity that includes a human element derived from one's own experience. Beyond that, to think you must actually think through a situation, not apply a method. But it is individuals who think, not collectivities. Therefore, the public belief represents only that fraction of thought that is mere application of an algorithm, that is impersonal, that is brainless, and that is hence UNIVERSAL. Therefore, towards such simplistic ideas as all the 'us'es really being like all the 'thems' does group-think or mob think tend. The two forms of universalism are united in democratic discourse with no framework. Universalism of interpersonal consideration leads for purely technical reasons to logical universalism, the thought process that always terminates one step into the game and hence tries to make it a giant step.

Deomocracy must deal with the so-called paradox of having a universal voting procedure without a universalist mentality, or perish. It is not actually a paradox of any sort; democratic institutions are statistical decision procedures that relies on no particular psychological condition, as everybody knows. Only the claim that it takes a democratic, that is a universalist, mentality for the democracy to long endure makes the idea of stable democratic regimes with in-groups an impossibility. But where is the proof of this claim? Away with the revivalists and their demand for the real, that is pornographic, version of democracy. It will lead only to the big death of democracy after everybody has had their little deaths watching mentalities appear to mirror the political procedures they are constrained by.

So, then, what do I personally think of the Iraq war? That expression contains two words, Iraq, and war. Of the war, I think that it was exemplary action demonstrating that the United States would not tolerate local dictators speaking for populations, calling themselves the stewards of culture, monopolizing industries against foreign competition to gain the support of the populace, and, yes, standing in the way of our interests securitary and other. That it would not allow the wills of individuals to become obscure and illegible under the cover of archaic group mentality. That it would export individualism, the only true form of humanism, at any cost in lives. Of the choice of battlegrounds? Clearly, the war had to be (a) diplomatically justified by overt roguery, not quiet oppression alone. (b) partially reimbursed by something or other, (c) in Muslim territory, (d) waged against an actual country, (e) waged in a place wealthy enough for the example of democratization, individualism, and capitalism to be good advertisement. This leaves essentially one country, which happened to be Iraq.

It was a war of choice. Which means a distinction has to be made between the cause of the war being waged at all and the cause of the choice of battleground. There is really no doubt that the latter was inspired by commercial interests. But there is considerable doubt that a trillion dollar war effort jeopardizing the United States's diplomatic security in myriad ways could have been thought by anybody at any time to be profitable. It just isn't, and wasn't ever reasonably so considered. Now there are two other claims, which though incompatible, are frequently associated to the overall profit claim. 1) The particular profit claim, in two variants (a) the war was waged for the profits of a few with indifference to the well-being of the many. (b) the war was waged for the profit and economic status of the few, with deliberate intention of lowering the welfare of the many for the stroking of the comparative ego of the few. These claims are inherently more difficult to refute, because nobody really knows at this point, if they ever will, who was who, who stood to profit, and who actually has. But they defy common sense, because nobody knows better than the rich few that the effects of war are unpredictable for the distribution of wealth (claim B) and if anything tend to shake it up rather than fossilize it. And since it is unpredictable, claim A amounts to a variant of the general American welfare explanation.
Then there is the considerably more serious allegation of a bid for political power by a party, from re-elecion to far beyond. Well, yes, that's grim, and difficult to prove or disprove. It is also life. People wage war for the gain of their faction. Always have. Always will. Anybody who tells you whatever side or faction isn't doing it now just plain would never do it hasn't thought through the grim and inescapable nature of power. But, alongside this 'explanation', there is that other fact that no war or other political action, the work of power to maintain power all of them, is without it's official justification; which is written down; which is passed along; which outlives every instance of the power principle, each of them necessarily excessively ephemeral; and which is believed in by future generations, who only have their parents' words, not their always illegible motivations. And consequently, there is nothing deluded about paying attention to stated motivations, to justifications, which are in the end what persists, the stuff that history is made of. It's judgement, if we may so speak, will be very different from that of the global multitude.