The reed in the wind blows further and further. I confess: the idea that the rebels winning at this stage represents some sort of a mea culpa-inducing event-- when the person making that claim himself voiced many arguments that have nothing whatsoever to do with who wins-- is simply bizarre to me. (Perhaps Andrew could tell the sub-Saharan Africans currently being disappeared by the Libyan rebels that the only question that matters is who wins and who loses. That ought to comfort them.)
So let me ask you all this question. I've read some Oakeshott, and I've read some Burke, but obviously I'm no expert. Can someone, pretty please, articulate any argument-- any argument at all-- that Oakeshottean or Burkean conservatism could ever support the Libyan war? I am truly straining to imagine any space whatsoever for such support. Perhaps the more informed among you could explain it to me.
Of course, I think neither conservative icon could support the kind of thinking that is so endlessly fungible as Sullivan has displayed these last few months, either. But what power have Michael Oakeshott or Edmund Burke against the cult of Obama?
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I think an Oakenshottean/Burkean might support it, from the U.S. perspective, as a sop to the British/French alliance that went through existing institutions that has an acceptable cost. That said, even in the event of victory, this is probably too big of risk for a temperamental conservative given our continuing inability to extricate ourselves from Afghanistan.
I can't imagine supporting it from a French/British perspective.
Andrew has completely internalized the ethos of political and even moral discussion in this country. Not is it right or is it moral, but will it "work?" Intervention on this view can't be judged by whether it's justified but by whether it's that horrible word, "effective." Might makes right.
"A more mischievous idea cannot exist," he lamented, "than that any degree of wickedness, violence and oppression may prevail in a country that the most abominable, murderous and exterminatory rebellions may rage in it, or the most atrocious and bloody tyranny may domineer, and that no neighbouring power can take cognisance of either or afford succour to the miserable sufferers."
The "he" in this quote is Edmund Burke and if you had read a little more deeply into his Reflections on the French Revolution you would, I think, have realised that he was asking for an all out attack on what he saw as a hideous and bloody tyranny.
And Burke said it as a fully paid-up member of an imperial order accustomed to making the rest of the world its business.
Anonymous: indeed he did, but the point I was making was that a Burkean justification for the Libyan intervention was not far to seek.
When I hear "succour," there are many things that come to mind. Bombing is not one of them.
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