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[fart]

all you got from that was "THE NAZIS MUST BE STOPPED!!!" ? oh god, whatever, i don't want to write anymore. let's talk about ninjas, guys

OH WAIT!!!

 

[Dark Kinght Bunny]

Hm.....

We can still compare Bush to Hitler, right?

you could, but I really don't see Bush as being a genocidial genus and Hilter being a drunk cowboy.

 

[Kuramu]

all you got from that was "THE NAZIS MUST BE STOPPED!!!" ?

to: fart
from: Kuramu

never paraphrase again.

thanks.

 

[fart]

what, you don't like the nazi ninja? he just wants to be loved

 

[Guileless]

I did not compare Iraq to WW2, Kuramu summed things up accurately. And even if I had, Willco, your post offers no rationale for why a such a comparison is not justified other than "it's not 1942." If you can post something convincing as to why it's not relevant, I will concede the point. Otherwise this thread is useless.

 

[Willco]

I did not compare Iraq to WW2, Kuramu summed things up accurately. And even if I had, Willco, your post offers no rationale for why a such a comparison is not justified other than "it's not 1942." If you can post something convincing as to why it's not relevant, I will concede the point. Otherwise this thread is useless.

Because stupid people use World War II to justify their reasoning. I'm not just talking about Iraq. If you're smart enough, you might actually be able to carry a debate without using World War II as a crutch.

 

[Kuramu]

Because stupid people use World War II to justify their reasoning. I'm not just talking about Iraq. If you're smart enough, you might actually be able to carry a debate without using World War II as a crutch.

If you're smart enough, you can carry on a debate without using the word "also" but i don't see the point.

I like to use pizza in analogies because everyone knows what pizza is, and most people like it, so it's a useful placeholder for a desired thing that gives instant gratification. WWII is useful because everyone has at least a general knowledge of it, it has examples of the world interacting on a global scale seldom seen otherwise, and it has noteworthy individuals whose actions had great comsequences.

 

[Matt]

I agree with the topic. The world left Hitler unchecked for far longer than Saddam, which allowed him to build a bigger army, radicalize the population to a greater extent, invade more countries, and inflict more casualties when people finally realized that Hitler wasn't a benevolent, peace-loving teddy bear and went after him.

Saddam Hussein’s time in power: 1979-2003
Total: 24 years

Adolf Hitler’s time in power: 1933-1945
Total: 12 years

What were you saying?

And the idea that violence is never justified is a ridiculous one. What do you think the world’s justice systems are based on?

 

[Che]

Should have let Germany liberate France.

LOL!!!

 

[Guileless]

Because stupid people use World War II to justify their reasoning. I'm not just talking about Iraq. If you're smart enough, you might actually be able to carry a debate without using World War II as a crutch.

Well, I'm one of the stupid people who believe in the value of historical analogy. Since you're smart enough, please enlighten me as to why it's wrong generally, and with WW2-Iraq specifically. Otherwise, this thread is useless. And again, I did not even do what you are objecting to.

Take your time, I'm about to leave work and enjoy a Heineken or two. The Germans may have gone a little overboard in the late 30s, but they do make a damn fine beer. No rush.

 

[sc0la]

why it's wrong... with WW2-Iraq specifically

Let's discuss scope.

The Iraqi army is not the Wermacht. In fact the Iraqi army is a shell of what it was during Gulf War I, it had no legitiment airpower (estimated at less than 10% capacity versus GWI). Which is why general combat was over soooo quickly. Saddams Army was not capable of carrying out any sort of serious military campaign that would involve invasion and prolonged occupation. Hitler made a significantly more convincing case for pre-emption based on burgeoning military threats.

Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions. Iraqi population is estimated at approx 24million, Saddam would have had to murder one fifth to one fourt of the entire Iraqi populatio to rival just the number of Jews Hitler was resbonsible for murdering. Just the Jews, this does not include death counts of other civillian populations or the unthinkable scope of military casualties on both sides. The oft cited event of Saddam gassing the Kurds (disregarding any debate about the events surrounding this) pegs the death count at 5,000 innocents, a difference of a factor of 1000 from again, only jewish deaths in WWII. That isn't to say one of these catastrophies was wrong and the other wasn't because that is clearly ridiculous.

Saddam was in power for 24 years, Hitler for 12.
In his time Saddam invaded one country, Iran.
Hitler invaded over a dozen.
Lets look at some maps of these incursions.

Additionally, while I don't have the books at hand to look up specific technologies, I would argue that Hitler had weapons rivaling and surpassing Saddam fully 60 years prior. Hitler was much closer to having a working atomic weapon than Saddam. He actually possesed a sufficient stockpile of chemical weapons to gas millions. He carpet bombed London, something Saddam could accomplish only in his wildest wet dreams.

Saddam was not standing ready to take over the entire world like Hitler was. Though they were both insane fuckface dictators, you won't find any argument against that.

That is not to say that there are not valid comparisons between this and other conflicts, there obviously are. But they should at least try and be specific, cogent observations rather than these blanket statement shitfests like Iraq = Nazi Germany; or Iraq War = Vietnam. It is not stupid to look for examples that history gives us, in fact it is often wise. Learning from history is admirable; using history to draw sketchy analogies to support pre-established conclusions about current events is disingenuous at best. Analogy is not justification in and of itself.

At least we can agree that the Germans make a good beer.

 

[Guileless]

OK scola, I appreciate an honest effort to make the point. You have a good argument about the scale of the threat. However, you did omit the fact that Saddam invaded and raped Kuwait in addition to Iran. And the Iran-Iraq war led to the death of an estimated 1 million people, which should not be lightly dismissed. And while he didn't invade Saudi Arabia or Israel, he did attack those countries as well.

But the point is not to compare how many countries each dictator invaded. I have never posited a direct analogy between Iraq and Germany, but rather German/Japanese fascism and the Islamic fascism generally, whether it is ostensibly religious (Wahhabism, Iranian fundamentalism) or secular (Baath party, Nasser). This is the general point I was trying to make to fart. His statements are noble and make good late-night conversation in a freshman dorm when the cable is out, but they aren't applicable to the real world.

In both cases, you have people who are driven by an ideology that is diametrically opposed to our way of life and will not coexist with it. It is never good to fight, but if you have to fight then fight on your terms. American critics took issue with rolling back the rape of Kuwait in 1991, imposing sanctions so it wouldn't happen again, and then finally finishing the job when Saddam failed to live up to the treaty ending the war. All while simultaneously chastising the US for supporting other dictatorships and ignoring how a fascist fed off his people's oil wealth like a parasite.

Is it possible to build a new society in Iraq as was done in Germany and Japan? I'm very pessimistic at this point, but I believe it was worth a try. But as bleak as things look now, surely some of you will concede that Iraqis have a better chance to live decent lives now than they would have under Saddam and whichever of his sons killed the other and consolidated power when Saddam finally died.

 

[Blackace]

Saddam Hussein’s time in power: 1979-2003
Total: 24 years

Adolf Hitler’s time in power: 1933-1945
Total: 12 years

What were you saying?

And the idea that violence is never justified is a ridiculous one. What do you think the world’s justice systems are based on?

Owned

 

[sc0la]

OK scola, I appreciate an honest effort to make the point. You have a good argument about the scale of the threat. However, you did omit the fact that Saddam invaded and raped Kuwait in addition to Iran. And the Iran-Iraq war led to the death of an estimated 1 million people, which should not be lightly dismissed. And while he didn't invade Saudi Arabia or Israel, he did attack those countries as well.

You are correct. For some reason I was merging the Iran-Iraq war and the incursion into Kuwait that led to the first Gulf war into one instance. I have no idea why I did that because the dates simply where not lining up in my mind and I couldn't figure out why A million deaths is certainly not trivial by any reasoning, and 5,000 is no "drop in the bucket" wither. These things should never be "dismissed"

But the point is not to compare how many countries each dictator invaded. I have never posited a direct analogy between Iraq and Germany, but rather German/Japanese fascism and the Islamic fascism generally, whether it is ostensibly religious (Wahhabism, Iranian fundamentalism) or secular (Baath party, Nasser). This is the general point I was trying to make to fart. His statements are noble and make good late-night conversation in a freshman dorm when the cable is out, but they aren't applicable to the real world.

In both cases, you have people who are driven by an ideology that is diametrically opposed to our way of life and will not coexist with it. It is never good to fight, but if you have to fight then fight on your terms. American critics took issue with rolling back the rape of Kuwait in 1991, imposing sanctions so it wouldn't happen again, and then finally finishing the job when Saddam failed to live up to the treaty ending the war. All while simultaneously chastising the US for supporting other dictatorships and ignoring how a fascist fed off his people's oil wealth like a parasite.

Sorry that my post carried a sort of subtle implication that you had said any of the things I mentioned (afaik you have not), as that was not my intention. I simply was stating reasons why WWII or Nazi Germany might not be convincing analougs of Iraq and the current war. I see some of these reasonings being bandied about by others and decided to start there. The things you have mentioned above are reasonable, thought out opinions, and have every right to used. Again The problem I end up having is with people who like to reduce their arguments to a thick syrup in spite of their ingredients (now I am talking about cooking WTF). I support the use of measured parallels.

Is it possible to build a new society in Iraq as was done in Germany and Japan? I'm very pessimistic at this point, but I believe it was worth a try. But as bleak as things look now, surely some of you will concede that Iraqis have a better chance to live decent lives now than they would have under Saddam and whichever of his sons killed the other and consolidated power when Saddam finally died.

I disagree with your pessimism, though I think any new society will be markedly different than that of Germany's or Japan's simply because the context is different, and it will not occur on the same timescale (and certainly not on our timescale). And while I wouldn't call it conceding, I do fully agree that the Iraqi have a far better chance at somekind of just future without Saddam. Saddam did have to go. But I don't think it was for why we went, when we did, and how we did it. I still wholey disagree with our approach to the situation even while agreeing that Saddam would have to go. But that is a whole other thread.

Thanks for keeping our discussion sane. And sorry about the shortness (and the Iran Kuwait error) from the first post, as I was pressed fot time.

 

[iapetus]

It was back in 1990 that I set out on a project in memetic engineering. The Nazi-comparison meme, I'd decided, had gotten out of hand - in countless Usenet newsgroups, in many conferences on the Well, and on every BBS that I frequented, the labeling of posters or their ideas as "similar to the Nazis" or "Hitler-like" was a recurrent and often predictable event. It was the kind of thing that made you wonder how debates had ever occurred without having that handy rhetorical hammer.

Not everyone saw the comparison to Nazis as a "meme" - most people on the Net, as elsewhere, had never heard of "memes" or "memetics." But now that we're living in an increasingly information-aware culture, it's time for that to change. And it's time for net.dwellers to make a conscious effort to control the kinds of memes they create or circulate.

A "meme," of course, is an idea that functions in a mind the same way a gene or virus functions in the body. And an infectious idea (call it a "viral meme") may leap from mind to mind, much as viruses leap from body to body.

When a meme catches on, it may crystallize whole schools of thought. Take the "black hole" meme, for instance. As physicist Brandon Carter has commented in Stephen Hawkings's A Brief History of Time: A Reader's Companion: "Things changed dramatically when John Wheeler invented the term [black hole]...Everybody adopted it, and from then on, people around the world, in Moscow, in America, in England, and elsewhere, could know they were speaking about the same thing." Once the "black hole" meme became commonplace, it became a handy source of metaphors for everything from illiteracy to the deficit.

By 1990, I had noticed, something similar had happened to the Nazi-comparison meme. Sure, there are obvious topics in which the comparison recurs. In discussions about guns and the Second Amendment, for example, gun-control advocates are periodically reminded that Hitler banned personal weapons. And birth-control debates are frequently marked by pro-lifers' insistence that abortionists are engaging in mass murder, worse than that of Nazi death camps. And in any newsgroup in which censorship is discussed, someone inevitably raises the specter of Nazi book-burning.

But the Nazi-comparison meme popped up elsewhere as well - in general discussions of law in misc.legal, for example, or in the EFF conference on the Well. Stone libertarians were ready to label any government regulation as incipient Nazism. And, invariably, the comparisons trivialized the horror of the Holocaust and the social pathology of the Nazis. It was a trivialization I found both illogical (Michael Dukakis as a Nazi? Please!) and offensive (the millions of concentration-camp victims did not die to give some net.blowhard a handy trope).

So, I set out to conduct an experiment - to build a counter-meme designed to make discussion participants see how they are acting as vectors to a particularly silly and offensive meme...and perhaps to curtail the glib Nazi comparisons.

I developed Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

I seeded Godwin's Law in any newsgroup or topic where I saw a gratuitous Nazi reference. Soon, to my surprise, other people were citing it - the counter-meme was reproducing on its own! And it mutated like a meme, generating corollaries like the following:

* Gordon's Restatement of Newman's Corollary to Godwin's Law: Libertarianism (pro, con, and internal faction fights) is the primordial net.news discussion topic. Any time the debate shifts somewhere else, it must eventually return to this fuel source.
* Morgan's Corollary to Godwin's Law: As soon as such a comparison occurs, someone will start a Nazi-discussion thread on alt.censorship.
* Sircar's Corollary: If the Usenet discussion touches on homosexuality or Heinlein, Nazis or Hitler are mentioned within three days.
* Van der Leun's Corollary: As global connectivity improves, the probability of actual Nazis being on the Net approaches one.
* Miller's Paradox: As a network evolves, the number of Nazi comparisons not forestalled by citation to Godwin's Law converges to zero.

In time, discussions in the seeded newsgroups and discussions seemed to show a lower incidence of the Nazi-comparison meme. And the counter-meme mutated into even more useful forms. (As Cuckoo's Egg author Cliff Stoll once said to me: "Godwin's Law? Isn't that the law that states that once a discussion reaches a comparison to Nazis or Hitler, its usefulness is over?") By my (admittedly low) standards, the experiment was a success.

But its success had given me much to reflect on. If it's possible to generate effective counter-memes, is there any moral imperative to do so? When we see a bad or false meme go by, should we take pains to chase it with a counter-meme? Do we have an obligation to improve our informational environment? Our social environment?

But this power to do good may also be a power to do ill. Anyone on the Net has the power to affect stock prices. (Or worse: a fraudulent re-creation of the Tylenol-poisoning scare could cause a national or international panic.) And viral memes are capable of doing lasting damage.

While the world of the Net is filled with diverse critical thinkers who are ready to challenge self-indulgent or self-aggrandizing memes, we can't rely on net.culture's diversity and inertia to answer every bad meme. The Nazi-comparison meme has a peculiar resilience, in part because of its sheer inflammatory power ("You're calling me a Nazi? You're the Nazi in this discussion!") The best way to fight such memes is to craft counter-memes designed to put them in perspective. The time may have come for us to commit ourselves to memetic engineering - crafting good memes to drive out the bad ones.

Otherwise, plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.

 

[CrunchyB]

Take your time, I'm about to leave work and enjoy a Heineken or two. The Germans may have gone a little overboard in the late 30s, but they do make a damn fine beer. No rush.

For the love of all that is good in this world, Heineken is Dutch!

And it's not even the best Dutch beer.

 

[Kuramu]

WWII as an analogy is just a tool. Sure, you can bash in people's skulls with a hammer, but you can also build houses with it.

 

[Felidae_Khrall]

More like WWII references are good for internet geeks to show off their inane history trivia. why is it that geeks love wwii so much?

What, you never played Wolfenstein 3D?


ACH MEIN LEBIer!