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/Archive 1

Culpability polemics throughout the article

The recent edits to the lede inserted more "culpability" material. It made me realize how permeated the article is with it. Persistently, if the article points out where the sanctions did harm, a comment is inserted that says how bad Saddam was and that he is to blame. Thinking about it, I don't think it is appropriate at all. I think it's playing to a vilification of Saddam Hussein to excuse anything negative that happened, but this article is supposed to inform about the sanctions. There's an whole Saddam Hussein article to inform Wikipedia readers what sort of person he was. Beyond the scattered, repeated instances of blaming we even have an an entire extensive "culpability" section. I don't think this stuff is germane to the article, and perhaps it is time to clean the house of it. Any comments? DanielM (talk) 02:33, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The regional disparity is a such a big part of the story that it belongs in the lead. (But I've removed anything "blame" from the lead for now.) And since it is such a big part of the story, researchers are bound to try to draw some conclusions from it. (Readers may read on from the lead to see what conclusions different researchers have drawn.) This belongs on the page too. BTW Daniel, weren't you the one who renamed that section "culpability"? I think I'd earlier named it something like "regional effects". That being said, I don't know what could be more germane than culpability for such a tragedy. DougHill (talk) 03:48, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the blame game with which the article is riddled is based more on political polemic than scholarship. The Spagat article recently linked as a reference is a case in point. It's way more polemic than scholarship. It makes heavy use of speculation and surmise and repeatedly makes psychological plays to readers' suspicions. If I entitled the section "Culpability," it's because that's what it was. It didn't become that because I gave it the title. As I said above I am concerned about the effect of these persistent tones and undertones and believe they are undermining the accuracy and usefulness of this article in informing Wikipedia readers about the sanctions. I hope that others comment in this discussion. Maybe it is time for an Rfc WP:rfc. DanielM (talk) 11:00, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • So then we agree that "culpability" is a legitimate concern of the page?
  • The article has long has a polemic against the sanctions, when in fact the sanctions did not exist apart from the regime's response to them. This was only started to be clarified in the article.
  • Michael Spagat is a scholar with impressive academic credentials who published an important article. The page must change in response to it, just as it must change again when criticism to his article is published.
  • The regional disparity is a big brute fact. It it the "who" and "where" that belongs in the lead. I'm OK with keeping the interpretations of this fact later in the article. DougHill (talk) 16:44, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To answer briefly, we know who is culpable for the sanctions: the U.N. Security Council. The culpability for harm wrought by the sanctions is a secondary issue that should be covered secondarily and to the extent non-fringe viewpoints are found. To say that the sanctions did harm to Iraqis, what you above appear to characterize as "polemic against the sanctions," is not polemic but consensus. Finally and briefly, the article has structural problems and needs overhaul, and we could use the input of more editors as to how to go about this. DanielM (talk) 12:27, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Even that culpability is not so clear cut: we must consider the U.N. Security Council's alternatives before blaming them.[1]
  • The culpability I was discussing that for that harm that occurred during the sanctions, as discussed in the article's "Culpability" section.
  • Cortright, Rubin, and Spagat (in The Nation, The New Republic, and Significance (journal) respectively) are hardly fringe viewpoints. They are WP:RS that need to be considered in the article. So there is no consensus (that the sanctions, and not the government response to them, were to blame).
  • I am in complete agreement in desiring the input of more editors. DougHill (talk) 21:03, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Culpability is a legal and moral concept, not a factual concept. Under certain types of laws and schemes of morality, everyone is culpable and under others, no-one is culpable. In an encyclopedia, the focus should be on facts. It may usefully be stated once that Saddam was the dictator of Iraq and therefore a major factor in the imposition of sanctions, but it does not otherwise help understanding the impact of sanctions to keep repeating that it was his "fault". Take the case of a child dead of cholera because of restrictions on the import of chlorine. The immediate cause of death was probably dehydration; the cause of that diarrhea; the cause of that, a micro-organism in the drinking water; the cause of that ... ultimately the regression encounters a person who knowingly made the last clear choice, and that person is classically considered more responsible than any other. In the case of the water-purification chemical sanctions (assuming the truckers and desk clerks were "merely following orders") the last clear choice was (on the evidence) with the American officials who interpreted the UN Resolution to bar dual-use materials. They may have felt impelled to do so because Saddam was such a very bad man that "it was worth it" to risk hundreds of thousands of lives, but that is an affirmative defense to the legal or moral culpability; it does not abjure it. Far better for this article to pass over such philosophical issues in favor of plain facts, clearly stated; let readers make their own moral judgments. rewinn (talk) 04:30, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4191/is_20020315/ai_n9999150/

Casualty Estimates In Lede

There is a unit of measure problem in the casualty estimates in the lede. Ranges should use the same unit of measure to make sense: either civilians or children. A range from X civilians to Y children is confusing. Since children are necessarily civilians, the latter is the better UOM even though it may somewhat understate the maximum estimate. When more inclusive figures (adults and children) are available from reliable sources, they may be put in. Please keep in mind this is a highly sensitive subject and let us discuss calmly in good faith. There is no intent to minimize or to exagerrate, only to have the best possible article. rewinn (talk) 05:47, 21 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No POV-Pushing In The Lede, Please

The inclusion of one POV in the lede to explaining away hundreds of thousands of deaths is POV-pushing and not permitted, unless contrasting explanations are also including ... which swiftly converts the lede into the main article. So don't do it. Especially don't do it with a source that is not an expert on the subject, but merely an economist. You might as well cite an auto mechanic. rewinn (talk) 05:16, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Culpability

"under these frameworks, including rights-utilitarianism, moral Kantianism, and consequentialism"

Should that read, "according to utilitarian, Kantian, and consequentialist ethics"? External link isn't working.

Notreallydavid (talk) 03:09, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]



After the sanctions ended what happened to the $11,000,000,000 that Kuwait was owed by Iraq? Did we keep it or the Iraqis? 75.68.248.198 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:32, 1 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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please do not simply disappear relevant text without detailed explanation (in particular, of discussion of chlorination Iraqi water supply during sanctions)

TheTimesAreChanging simply disappeared text discussing Iraqi water treatment vulnerabilities because it did not suit the argument he wished to advance. Additions and edits are not exercises in polemics; this aims to be an encyclopedia, so do not do not simply disappear relevant text without detailed explanation.

Simply passingly calling disappeared passages (without even having the courtesy of identifying them) "unreliable" is lazy scurrilousness, in this case with obviously tendentious aims: to replace what had been presented with a view that suited TheTimesAreChanging.

This is the source cited as unreliable--a statement from David Sole, President of the Sanitary Chemists & Technicians Association-UAW Local. 2334 at the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department, here: https://web.archive.org/web/20081203113830/http://www.iacenter.org/iraqchallenge/water.htm.

We can await with suspense what TheTimesAreChanging (or someone else, if not a sockpuppet) will come up with to discredit this source.

Further, the opposing view (along with further deletion of the fact that the need for chorline, whose importation had been banned by the relevant sanctions) ignored the relevant point. The basic point did not concern money. It concerned materials needed for the sterilization of the water supply. Importation of those materials was banned by sanctions. If you do not have any understanding of the fundamental issues pertaining to an article, please do try to be clever, disappearing text and substantive issues, substituting tendentious sources, etc.

Although the blockquote (and article) by Rubin nowhere addresses the relevant point, the article that TheTimesAreChanging cites will nonetheless be retained after undoing disappeared text. TheTimesAreChanging's attempt to editorialize that the Rubin article selected "eviscerates" a point that that article does not even address just makes him look silly. (The point being the import bans on materials that the sanctions imposed, not $$ spent by Saddam Hussein, mention of which--including "presidential palaces," "smuggling," are just transparent polemics directed by Rubin at Iraq pre-2003, and which aren't relevant to the main point that they they take issue with. Mention of the Intifada is moreover totally unrelated, and makes drive-by removal of relevant text and its replacement with irrelevant bashing of Saddam Hussein look still more idiotic and transparently motivated.)

To anyone who sees this bullet item, please watch this article to ensure that these relevant materials are retained for comprehensiveness and accuracy Alfred Nemours (talk) 06:02, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but your sources—FAIR, GlobalSecurity.org, ThirdWorldTraveler, and, yes, the primary source Sanitary Chemists & Technicians Association—really are completely unreliable, should not be allowed to stay, and if we have to go to WP:RSN that is exactly what you will be told. Also, as you probably know since your actual edit does not make this claim, chlorine was not "banned"; rather, the importation of chemicals that could be used for WMD was tightly controlled, requiring the Iraqi government to explain exactly how they would be used. Moreover, as Rubin states, water quality was extremely good in both Northern and Central Iraq, though it deteriorated in the South, and the Oil-for-Food programme "spent more than $1 billion in water and sanitation projects in Iraq." Can you really not find any better sources than FAIR, GlobalSecurity.org, ThirdWorldTraveler, and the primary source Sanitary Chemists & Technicians Association?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 15:21, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
There you go again.
First, Third World Traveler was not provided as a source, and if you read the quoted material that you impugn, you know this. Third World Traveler is a website that reprinted an article published in the Progressive magazine. Please do not distort or exaggerate to distract from relevant issues at play. Second, before throwing mud at a source for being unreliable (here, "completely unreliable")--particularly in the case of simply disappearing text without explanation--provide some reason for doing so. Anticipating the kind of "reason" you might provide in advance, empty political labels used to stain a source's reputation are not mainly what I have in mind. What I have in mind more relates to the quality of the testimony provided. Third, the irony in this case is your complaint given the source you have added. Invoking the opinion of Michael Rubin to weigh in on the humanitarian impact of sanctions on Iraqi society is like invoking the opinion of Carlos the Jackal (i) on recommendations as to the golden parachutes suggested by Goldman Sachs to one of its client or (ii) on the likelihood of a Sarah Palin run for the Republican party presidential nomination in 2024. Rubin has proved a tireless advocate for regime change in Iraq, worked for the Pentagon during an administration that maintained the sanctions, and his argument does not even address the relevant issues concerned, namely the import restrictions (you take issue with the word banned, but the point is the same) placed on Iraq, but instead distracts by invoking transparently polemical references to "presidential palaces," "smuggling," and the character of Saddam Hussein, and the Palestinian Intifada (?). Moreover, Rubin provides no evidence for his innuendo or for anything else he suggests. Nonetheless, I have retained the Rubin's discussion because I don't simply disappear sources that I don't agree with, and because his arguments (if his empty competitive posturing to throw mud on villains that distract from the issue at hand can be called arguments). If you would like more documentation about assessments of Iraqi public health after several years of sanctions, that would be a very reasonable thing to want for this article, although from your behavior so far I suspect you want to minimize such thing. Say what you'd like about Leslie Stahl, but it's difficult to argue that her question posed to Albright was motivated by partisanship or that she was either an exponent of Pentagon or Saddamist policy. Fourth, how is a President of the Sanitary Chemists & Technicians Association unreliable or incompetent to speak on issues relating to water treatment and sanitation?? (Again, here I'm totally flummoxed. Are you at all serious in suggesting otherwise? You replaced his testimony with that of a Pentagon neocon working for an administration that maintained the hold of sanctions. The second figure is less of a dispassionate observer than the first?)
Please be advised that this seems to be nothing but trolling. Nothing you have said or imported into the article shows the slightest concern for the Iraqi people under the sanctions, which is the topic at issue in the relevant portion of the article. There is no problem if you do not care about this issue, but disappearing text and sources which you replace with discussion from Pentagon ideologues seems to me a waste of all of our energy in developing content for this encyclopedia. Please seek out entries to which you can contribute and make contributions rather than find entries from which to sneakily censor (vandalize) content. Alfred Nemours (talk) 20:03, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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