The Unbearable Question of Resistance

Any time we begin with the question "what should we DO about the resistance," some kind of argument about what does and does not constitute legitimate resistance would probably be useful here.

Of course, the pragmatic argument against ANY legitimate resistance is that we're the United States, we have taken their country, and therefore they shouldn't resist. Questions about the legitimacy of the resistance might be found on Jason's list of discussions that won't answer the pragmatic urgency at hand. (Jason is "Catbert" on Net Benefits)

There's a classic, kind of common-sense argument that is commonly asked during questions about resistance: Would YOU use violence, take up arms, to resist a foreign takeover and consolodation of your country? Sure, that question has its problems, but it does cut to the core of the "subjectivity" of resistance.

Another possible argument is that they shouldn't resist because we've made their country better off. Regardless of the soundness of that argument, I'm sure most people could see why, at the very least, this argument has some problems in terms of shared reasonability, and moreover, it's in convincing them they will be better off that the U.S. would finally crush the resistance.

Of course there's the argument that foreigners and foreign-influenced resistance is illegitimate. That seems like the kind of choice the invaded country would make--to welcome others into their fight or not. But it's also legitimate to say that those who have gone to Iraq to fight us are an unsavory bunch of people. For the sake of argument, I'd be willing to concede the point and only concentrate on the moral justification of those who are fighting in the resistance because they want American soldiers and the American infrastructure out of their country.

And not only "are they justified in fighting," which we may perhaps never answer, but the more pragmatic "what tactics are they justified in using IF they are in any way justified in fighting?"

I wrote about this a long time ago, and I'm enough of a self-promoter to at least give up the links: Here and here.

My friend the political scientist Russell Fox replies to those posts here. While he largely takes me to school on some arguments, he also admits that

The ambiguity surrounding the identity of those claiming to fight on behalf of Iraq plays into Bush's "fly-trap" strategy, giving him a certain justificatory cover: as long as terrorism continues in Iraq, then he and those around him anc assert that we're dealing with terrorists, and by definition (well, his definition anyway) you can't "deliberate" with terrorists. Therefore, American troops must be the one's on the side of democracy, because we we're trying to give it to them, only we just haven't been able to get to the point where we can ask them in any legitimate if they like the way we are delivering it or not.