Friday, August 06, 2004
Amnesty Looking Toward a Peace Treaty?
The new government of Iraq has been promoting amnesty ever since it got into office. It wanted the amnesty to be fairly broad, but supposedly at American urging, the new amnesty law excludes anyone who has been involved in killing Americans (or perhaps just killing anyone). There is argument that this makes the amnesty fairly uninteresting to the bulk of those who have been fighting our forces or those of the interim government.
It seems to me that we either have to think of ourselves as engaged in a "war" or not. As some readers will remember, I have thought that speaking of a war against terrorism is foolishness. Terrorism is a concept; we cannot fight concepts. Also, terrorism has always been with us, so in the nature of things, this would be a war we could not win. Such an understanding of war would seem to justify the kind of eternal war footing that was the basis for rule in Huxley's Brave New World. On the other hand, we are, I believe, fighting a kind of war against al-Qaida. We were definitely fighting a war against Iraq. When we attacked we were at war. This meant that the people who opposed us were also at war. They fought us. Now when the first phase of this was over I do not believe anyone with authority surrendered Iraq to us. Clearly those who continued the fight have not seen themselves as having surrendered.
This being the case, it would seem prudent to imagine a day in which the warring parties might come together to discuss a peace. I realize no one on their side could really end it all. But they might be able to speak for certain units. This would mean that we, the interim government, and perhaps other parties should be thinking about the conditions that might be demanded or accepted at such a juncture. With such an understanding of the possibilities, it seems ill advised for the United States to demand that there be no talk of amnesty with anyone who has been involved in killing.
Note: This posting and the three before were really to be posted on August 5, but the Blogger system yesterday stopped working after the first posting.
The new government of Iraq has been promoting amnesty ever since it got into office. It wanted the amnesty to be fairly broad, but supposedly at American urging, the new amnesty law excludes anyone who has been involved in killing Americans (or perhaps just killing anyone). There is argument that this makes the amnesty fairly uninteresting to the bulk of those who have been fighting our forces or those of the interim government.
It seems to me that we either have to think of ourselves as engaged in a "war" or not. As some readers will remember, I have thought that speaking of a war against terrorism is foolishness. Terrorism is a concept; we cannot fight concepts. Also, terrorism has always been with us, so in the nature of things, this would be a war we could not win. Such an understanding of war would seem to justify the kind of eternal war footing that was the basis for rule in Huxley's Brave New World. On the other hand, we are, I believe, fighting a kind of war against al-Qaida. We were definitely fighting a war against Iraq. When we attacked we were at war. This meant that the people who opposed us were also at war. They fought us. Now when the first phase of this was over I do not believe anyone with authority surrendered Iraq to us. Clearly those who continued the fight have not seen themselves as having surrendered.
This being the case, it would seem prudent to imagine a day in which the warring parties might come together to discuss a peace. I realize no one on their side could really end it all. But they might be able to speak for certain units. This would mean that we, the interim government, and perhaps other parties should be thinking about the conditions that might be demanded or accepted at such a juncture. With such an understanding of the possibilities, it seems ill advised for the United States to demand that there be no talk of amnesty with anyone who has been involved in killing.
Note: This posting and the three before were really to be posted on August 5, but the Blogger system yesterday stopped working after the first posting.
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