January 16, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Winning isn't everything
Julian Sanchez writes a reasonable response to my previous post on hawks and doves, at which point his commenters do their very best to demonstrate why hawks have such a hard time admitting they were wrong, even beyond the normal human instinct to deny that one ever can be mistaken.
Shorter commenters:
1. I am a lying [expletive deleted] 2. I am a total moron who deserves nothing less than utter ridicule 3. It is not enough that people should not listen to me; I should voluntarily take myself out of the national discourse.
I'm not sure they got the point of my post or the spirit in which it was offered, so let me try again: Iraq is not a game. And it is not a high school debate tournament. The object of this discussion is not to find a winner, or see who scored the most points. Thousands and thousands of people have died. This is a little more serious than that.
I freely admit that the hawks were just as bad in promoting a juvenile tone to the debate before the war. But at least a few of us have learned how ridiculous we were being, something I am afraid I have not found on the dovish side.
So if all you are interested in is the psychic joy of hearing the words "You were right, I was wrong", you've got it. I was wrong. You can take that back to your bedroom, put it on the bookshelf, and fondle the trophy whenever you feel like it. Now please go away, because for me, this is not really about which of us has the bigger intellectual genitalia.
Human beings are really terrible decisionmakers. We cannot completely overcome our biases and our poor instincts. But at least we should try. (Robin Hanson's brilliant new blog is a great place to start.) Having admitted to myself, and everyone else, that the Iraq war was clearly in hindsight a bad idea, I am trying to go back and look at the decision and see how I could make it better in the future. The object is not to prove that I am a better and smarter person than those around me; the point now is to minimise the number of future bad decisions that make a lot of people die.
Judging from the behaviour of most of the doves in public discourse, that is not the most important thing. The most important thing for them seems to be exacting revenge on the hawks and declaring that the doves are now forever their moral and intellectual superiors, even though their nasty public invective ensures that the next time around, the hawks will be exactly as unwilling to listen to them as they were last time. Julian's commenters are certainly doing their best to put me in this camp.
But since I really do believe that better future decisions are more important than my umbrage at petty interpersonal exchanges, I am fighting to supress that urge. Among other strategies for analysing my decisionmaking, I look to the ways in which the dovish decisionmaking process worked better than mine, so that I can emulate those ways. And to me, I'm sorry if this hurts your tender little feelings, but as far as I can tell, it wasn't that much better. What many, or even most, of the doves had was an instinctive antipathy to American military action that is so closely bundled with a zillion other ideological predispositions, some of which to me seem practically self-evidently wrong, that I can't find a decisionmaking process to even analyse; the grounds for opposing the war shifted even as the opposition didn't. Let me make it thoroughly clear: the same shitty decisionmaking was evident on the side of the hawks. But trading one set of questionable propositions for another is not an improvement in decisionmaking; it's playing some sort of metaphysical Monty Hall game. And playing it badly.
Posted by Jane Galt at January 16, 2007 10:57 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksFor my part, I'm only willing to admit that I was wrong about the nation-building part.
As much as it makes me shudder to admit it, I think John Derbyshire is right: we should have whacked Saddam and his top henchmen and left a note in his palace: whomever occupies this next should remember what happened to the previous owner. (also, forward the note to Tehran and Damascus)
Before the war, I thought that path required an immoral lack of concern for the carnage that the civil war would cause, and snuffed out the hope of a decent and economically successful Arab nation. But as they seem determined to have their civil war anyway, it seems likely (although not entirely certain) that I was wrong.
But I emphatically will NOT apologize for the desire to whack Saddam. It was and is the right choice, both because he's a bad guy and because whacking him scares the right people.
I - no lefty - opposed the war as a matter of judgement, not of dogma. The proponents of the war didn't advance any plausible policy reason to believe that the war defended vital American (or British) interests, didn't suggest any sensible strategic purpose consistent with the culture and history of Iraq, and made no intelligent tactical proposals of what was to be done once Saddam's army was crushed. It was a really lousy idea at every level. And still they talk of "finishing the job": what job, for heaven's sake? What is it that they wanted to do that was within their power to accomplish?
I don't recall thinking at the time that "nation building" in Iraq was going to be an easy task. I don't recall thinking that "transforming the Middle East" was going to be anything short of an extremely difficult thing to do. I do recall thinking that we needed to do this however, whatever the cost. My comments to the original '20/20 bias' post pretty much explain my position then, and now. I feel my original thinking remains intact, even with the "mistakes" now revealed, since my view on How The World Works does not seem to correlate with popular opinion enough to be swayed much by it. Of course, I continually ask myself whether I am right or wrong. Of course, I try to be on guard against dumb human bias. However I have yet to be purged of my past judgments. Would anyone care to help me out? (See also, http://nicoletedesco.livejournal.com/27277.html for a copy of my original response.)
As for you, Jane, I am glad to see you being as honestly reflective as you have been. Keep up the good work. I love your blog!
The invasion of Iraq is one of the greatest strategic blunders this country ever committed.
It seems even a clear-thinking hawk such as Jane cannot bear to admit the error of her thinking without taking a swipe at the doves at the same time. Seems she may be thinking of this as a 'game' or 'debate tournament' after all.
It is also clear from the commenters that very few of her fellow hawks share her good sense to admit error. Sorry team, you screwed up and the result is the utterly intractible mess we are in now (as well as 3,000 dead US troops).
I'm not a knee-jerk dove, in fact I supported Desert Storm and Enduring Freedom, however the Iraq invasion was premature, taking place after inspectors had been allowed back in and and before Afghanistan had been stabilized. There was no rationale for invading if Iraq was not an imminent threat, as it was as clear then as it is now that the end result of our invasion would be a civil war, whether we left in 2004, today, or in 2010.
Today, we are sending another 21,500 troops to Iraq to attempt to delay the inevitible civil war to protect the vanity of the administration and fellow hawks. A year from now, we'll be having the same discussions/debates, except there will be an additional 1,000 US casualties. Our president is sacrificing the lives of US troops to save himself the embarrassment of admitting to have committed a mistake. How shameful.
Jane, you specifically refuse to examine the "ideological predispositions" of both sides. But, real life is not an exercise in constructing a tricky mathematical proof that may turn out to have a subtle but objective flaw. That is, real life is not primarily about mechanical reasoning. Humans use coarse principles to guide them because real-world information is always uncertain, and the principles you choose to start with are a primary determinant in where you end up. Much of our progress as a civilization has come from a migration from more repressive principles to more enlightened ones.
The outcome of the war to date is an object lesson in why violent pre-emptive unilateralism is probably not such a hot idea. That's what needs thinking about, but you've already refused to do so. Pre-emptively!
It's easy to pretend, as you appear to be doing, that your entire framework of belief is perfectly sound, but that there was some technical error, a minor glitch, in how it was applied. But for this glitch, perhaps, everything would have come out roses. Looking for such a glitch is hopelessly myopic.
It is much more difficult to admit that perhaps some of the principles you embraced were not so wise.
Rob,
I agree with your comments. But....Had we walked away as soon as Saddam was captured, the left would have been screaming about how irresponsible we were for leaving Iraq in chaos.
A problem I have with the left's current position that you can't nation build in the Middle East, that Arabs are too culturally different from us, that they aren't willing to fight for their own freedom, is the barely hidden racism involved. You know, what do you expect? They're Arabs.
Oh, and it also sounds exactly like what was wrong with the South Vietnamese.
No, Mark; the Iraq war has given me new information about how badly things can go wrong. But that's only information I can carry forward; it could not have been part of my decision domain at the time.
the left would have been screaming about how irresponsible we were for leaving Iraq in chaos.
True. So? My target audience is the leadership of other rogue states, and the left can lump it as far as I'm concerned.
I don't like what you call "hidden racism" either, but it does appear to be proving correct, so far as I can tell. Culture does matter a great deal
Jane, could you expand on your comment to me? It starts "No, Mark" but am unable to relate what comes afterwards to what I wrote.
A dovish decision-making process?
Hmm. A sensible dove would've considered the flimsy evidence presented by Colin Powell at the UN, which was actually powerful evidence that Saddam did not have WMD. Same goes for the "aluminum tubes" which a little attention revealed were not actually designed to be used for centrifuges.
So intuitively a plethora of very weak evidence makes one think that the strong evidence just doesn't exist.
Some of the sensible doves may have been silenced from pointing out the weakness in the case for war just by the fact that Saddam's regime was so very, very despicable and he certainly deserved an early grave.
I think it was also very hard to predict Sunni-Shia civil war, if only because Sunnis and Shias have gotten along fine in Iraq. The problem is that a civil war was *startable* and somebody was interested in starting it. (I'd say starting a civil war is a lot easier than keeping somebody from starting it.)
One thing that was easy to predict was the Administration's incompetence in execution. I was afraid that Afghanistan operation would be bungled, and when it wasn't obviously bungled, the Administration's incompetence faded from my focus.
so that's the point of view of my dovish half.
What sort of arguments would Colin Powell have made against this war? Perhaps that an Administration that derided Clinton's nation-building in the campaign would not do well in nation-building itself? Who knows. Wish he'd made a stand. He seems to have got it right ("you break it, you bought it") and then shut up about it completely.
I'm not sure which "doves" you were talking to.
But a *lot* of people said things like "nationbuilding is hard, and it's especially hard and maybe impossible in Iraq, for a variety of reasons such as...." Those people were right. Don't they get some credit?
I agree with mark wholeheartedly. The mistake was the premise. Not whether there were WMD or not, and how great the evidence was, or what have you.
The "dove" camp you suggest merely had an ideological bias (and, reading between the lines some milktoast lack of spine for the tougher jobs in life) against war, not any sort of "real" reason for objecting to the invasion. The ideological reason though does relate to the premise, as Mark puts it, that unilateral preemptive violence is not such a hot idea and is unlikely to produce the results you want.
You confirm that the hawks were extremely shrill in pushing their arguments in the beginning, start this discussion by mysteriously discounting the "doves" opinions from the get-go because they didn't get it -exactly- right (hey we called the winner AND beat the beat the spread -- I think that's enough to collect on the bet and at least earn some credibility, no? Still no?), and now take a swipe against "doves" for not being gentlemanly about it all? I think maybe one lesson that it is important to dialogue with those that have opposing views without discrediting them without listening to their arguments (because they are "ideological" or weren't "exactly right", or what have you).
Or is this going to be discounted as not being gentlemanly enough?
For my part, I recognize the following principles of my own that were incorrect:
1) Republican leaders have been called warmongers for a long time, but since Democrats had started most of this century's wars, I felt that this was an unfair characterization. I was wrong. Clearly, based on the evidence, Republicans will cherry-pick evidence that justifies going to war. They can't be trusted to put forth a factual case on war-related issues.
2) I believed Republican leaders respected the prowess and professionalism of our soldiers more than Democrat leaders, and would be more willing to listen to them. But it is clear that Bush ignored many of his generals' opinions.
3) I still believe that a autocratic regime with weapons of mass destruction and relationships to known terrorist groups are dangerous enough that unilateral pre-emptive violence can be justified; and, more importantly, can be the best of a very unpleasant set of choices.
4) I still believe, that, as an organization, the UN is more focused on containing the USA than it is on containing terrorists or "rogue states".
5) For some reason, I believed that Republican leaders were more ethical than Democratic leaders. That was damn stupid on my part.
6) As I mentioned in a previous post, I believed that people would welcome and value freedom, but it is clear that they only value what they earn.
In addition, here's what I believe about many of the doves:
a) If a Democrat is elected President, and advocates war unilaterally and pre-emptively against a rogue state, they will support that war, because they have faith in the honesty and integrity of their leaders.
Lastly, I believe that the dove's track record of appeasement and toothless sanctions is quite bad, and seems to do nothing to deter our enemies.
Where does that leave us? As unappetizing as it sounds, I think assassination is the only choice left to us that both minimizes the body count and maximizes the impact on the rogue state leaders.
Jane,
I think we are dealing with an unbridgable gap here. But one last try, in terms of your response to Mark. You say that the "new information" that you got from the Iraq war "could not have been part of my decision domain at the time." But many of us, based upon past history and an understanding of human nature and how governments work (the last part of which, at least, you seem to understand the limits of in other contexts), realized going in "how badly things can go wrong" when you go to war, especially with the grandiose goals and inept leadership that we had. We didn't NEED the "new information" provided after the fact by the Iraq war. Again, as Julian pointed out, the things that surprised you so much regarding the course of the war so DIDN'T surprise us AT ALL.
And as for the insulting tone of a lot of the comments, it's really a little hard to put it diplomatically - the fact is, you and the other war supporters simply ignored a huge amount of information that was already out there. It's almost like, five or ten years from now when the fiasco in Venezualian socialism comes crashing down in failure, if a disillusioned supported of Chavez said something along the lines of " the failure of socialism in Venezuala has given me new information about how badly things can go wrong. But that's only information I can carry forward; it could not have been part of my decision domain at the time.." Um, if he had stopped to look at the history of the Soviet Union et. al. and give a thought to human nature, he probably could have figured that out without waiting Chavez to fail. Of course that doesn't stop many people from supporting Chavez, but I doubt that's intellectual company that you really want to keep.
In a sense you're making our point for us - it REALLY WAS that obvious to the rest of us. Based not on emotion, but based upon knowledge of history, knowledge of the nature of the Bush adminstration, and a fair evaluation of the facts on the ground. No offense, but it should have been that obvious to you.
Jane, As far as lessons in reasoning go, how about this. I realise that you and dsquared have some disagreements, but beneath the bluster, the stuff he says here strikes me as reasonable.
For my part, the thing that being wrong about Iraq most reminded me, was that the most vocal opponents of your position are unlikely to be the best opponents of your position. Find the best ones, listen to their arguments, and try your damnedest not to become attached to a conclusion just because you think many of the people arguing against it are idiots.
Hilarious.
Yet again we get pot-kettle-black arguments.
"We didn't NEED the "new information" provided after the fact by the Iraq war. Again, as Julian pointed out, the things that surprised you so much regarding the course of the war so DIDN'T surprise us AT ALL."
In hindsight, we should have removed Saddam the first time around, and over a half million Iraqi's might still be alive. We didn't NEED the "new information" to prove that leaving this psychopath and his sons in power was an irresponsible thing to do in light of the changing background of Islamic terrorism.
Not a single dove ever gave a responsible, reasonable, WORKABLE AND SANE alternative to removing Saddam from power.
What about the invasion being "unilateral" and "preemptive" makes the situation worse today than it was in 2003? If Iraq had attacked another country first, would the Sunnis agree that their country was wrong and peacefully welcome their new American overlords? Would they care if, say, France had sent troops? Does anyone who didn't participate even have the capability to send troops overseas in combat? Or would passing the global test just have made you feel better?
P.S. "This has not convinced me of the brilliance of the doves, because precisely none of the ones that I argued with predicted that things would go wrong in the way they did."
I wonder whether this is actually a symptom of the general fragility of success in situations like this. It seems to me that there are any number of possible things that could have gone wrong with Iraq and lead to failure, and that there are comparatively fewer ways for things to have gone right. If this is true, then it's a little irrelevant whether anyone predicted the precise way in which things would go wrong. The point is that they didn't need to. (And also perhaps that they shouldn't bear the burden of justifying peace as much as hawks should bear the burden of justifying war.)
And also perhaps that they shouldn't bear the burden of justifying peace as much as hawks should bear the burden of justifying war
That sounds reasonable except that "peace" in this context (unstable sanctions with active cheating by UN bureaucrats, the French, and the Russians, continuing US presence in Saudi Arabia, Saddam proving US a paper tiger) had many, many ways of going wrong as well.
I'm not sure which option has worse long-term odds, but the dichotomy of "peace" and "war" is a tad simplistic.
What many, or even most, of the doves had was an instinctive antipathy to American military action
That's a clear sign, right there, that you're still bullshitting yourself.
Your basic point seems to be, "I was wrong, but I'd like to preserve my inflated self-regard and go on insulting and misrepresenting people who disagreed with me while complaining about how uncivil they are for rejecting that behaviour." I can't imagine why Julian's commenters had no patience for you.
"would passing the global test just have made you feel better?"
Yes, yes it would make me feel better (and how wolly-headedly liberal to have feelings). First, that so many of our allies decided to take a pass on this go-round in Iraq certainly says something about the smell test around the rationale for going to war. Second, the optics become less about the US trying to establish -- whatever it is we're trying to establish -- than about the global community seeking an end to tyranny, or whatever. The Bush regime did try to play this card with the "Coalition of the Willing" farce, but, really, if you can't even convince Canada to tag along with a few canoes and cases of chipped beef, well, you haven't made much of a case, have you.
And, OK, I'll throw this out as a credible and sane option to removing Saddam. Not removing him (gasps of shock and horror). Monster that he was, well, he achieved something we with all our hardware haven't -- domestic stability. The risk of removing him is that the ends won't justify the means -- the result may be more carnage, death and geopolitical risk than if he remained in power. Which is maybe what we're seeing right now. Not to mention that we get hamstrung to deal with other opponents (Iran, N. Korea) who see that we've over extended and cannot effectively respond.
"And, OK, I'll throw this out as a credible and sane option to removing Saddam. Not removing him (gasps of shock and horror). Monster that he was, well, he achieved something we with all our hardware haven't -- domestic stability."
And the trains ran on time too dontchyaknow!
And people wonder why no one takes the left seriously when it comes to security issues.
Saddam was a threat to the US and the world. That France and Germany decided that they would "take a pass" this time doesn't negate that fact. Here are some undisputable aspects about the reality behind the threat that was Saddams regime.
www.husseinandterror.com
Happy reading.
yes Megan,you were wrong. Don't make it worse by pretending others weren't right.
For my part, I'm only willing to admit that I was wrong about the nation-building part.
As much as it makes me shudder to admit it, I think John Derbyshire is right: we should have whacked Saddam and his top henchmen and left a note in his palace: whomever occupies this next should remember what happened to the previous owner. (also, forward the note to Tehran and Damascus) - Rob Lyman
I've seen Derb make comments to this effect in his NRO column, and it certainly seems like an attractive alternative to the "nation building" quagmire we're in right now: engaged in an endless game of "insurgent whack-a-mole", while the cost in both lives and dollars climbs higher and higher.
Aside from installing a military dictatorship, how do you build a nation where the only allegiances seem to be tribal, ethnic, and religious? I doubt these warring factions care about their nation as a whole, beyond the fact that parts of it are rich in oil.
Maybe the best approach to stabilizing the place post-invasion should have been something like this:
1) Privatize the oil industry, and give every man, woman, and child in Iraq an equal share of stock. Install an audit/oversight board (international in composition), to ensure nobody is siphoning off revenue.
2) Divide Iraq into regions that are largely self-governed and autonomous, according to ethnic majority: Kurd, Sunni, Shia. (I believe Harold Ford recommended something along these lines?)
3) Maintain a permanent US Army barracks and Air Force base in some relatively unpopulated part of the country, as a deterrant against the invasion of any region by another, or by foreign forces. No large occupying force, no patrolling city streets.
I'm certainly no expert in foreign policy or military affairs, but that seems like a more sensible and realistic approach to me.
"And people wonder why no one takes the left seriously when it comes to security issues."
Yeah, the right's doing a bang-up job, having created this black hole in the middle east.
But enough shrillness...
I believe that, should I have had a crystal ball and been able to see today's news, I would have still supported the Iraqi war. It was, and still is, a difficult thing to do but in my opinion necessary. What I don't like is the righteous indignation surrounding either side of the issue, because I believe that is an emotion which masks logic.
I do, in general, agree with the premise that hawks have a higher burden of proof when marching into war on behalf of an entire people (e.g., the people of the United States). For this reason, I blame no one in this country for the run-up to 9/11. For this reason, I do not blame Clinton for his weak responses to the growing threat. However, once the 9/11 threshold was crossed, in my opinion, all bets were off and the burden of "proving peace" became a bit higher, almost on par with the burden of "proving war." For instance, what is the rationale for stating that the problems have been solved and there is no more need for transformative events such as the Iraqi war?
Jane,
For me, one of the big lessons of the war has been that both sides have been wrong about different aspects of the war, and they've both been wrong at different times. Ideology has hamstrung everyone I know here in DC, perhaps because the pace of events has sometimes given us time for no other reaction than the jerking knee.
Immediately after 9/11, I had a long argument with a dovish friend who agreed that we had to do something - but he had no idea what it was (for my part, I was all for a full-on invasion of Afghanistan by everything we could throw at it, which didn't happen, either): he repeatedly told me how Afghanistan was "the graveyard of armies." This, or something close to it, was an essential component of the positions I can remember my dovish friends taking on Afghanistan. Publicly, of course, they never came out against it, but that may simply have been nerves or the realization that they had nothing better to offer, and it usually manifested itself in conversation as a Diane Rehm-like "concern" about progress. It was wishy-washy, but it allowed them to avoid the sort of convinced statements of failure that they would all start making as soon as the slightest evidence of failure began to manifest itself in Iraq. They had their worldview; they were simply waiting for events to conform to it.
I know I thought that Afghanistan would be the tougher of the two countries to fix, and I suspect I had a lot of company in this belief.
Yes, yes it would make me feel better (and how wolly-headedly liberal to have feelings). First, that so many of our allies decided to take a pass on this go-round in Iraq certainly says something about the smell test around the rationale for going to war.
Not really, it just says that their interests don't align with ours.
Anyone, those who they were right because unilateral, preemptive violence is bad are exactly proving Jane's original point.
it just says that their interests don't align with ours.
Or their domestic politics. Which, carried to a logical extreme, makes our military action contingent on convincing the citizens of other countries--many of whom have disliked the US since, oh, 1776 or thereabouts--that we're right.
How foolish of me to believe that Americans should decide what the American military does!
Iraq is not a game... THIS IS SERIOUS!
Oh! You're playing the serious game now!
"I, Jane Galt McArdle, who name myself after a fiction character that never existed even in a book, well I am serious, AND EVERYONE ELSE THAT SAYS I AN A TWIT is not serious. You're not serious! Not listening!"
"Oh, and those of you that say I am wrong? You're NOT SERIOUS. NOT LISTENING!"
"Oh, and those of you that disagree with me? YOU'RE NOT SERIOUS. NOT LISTENING!"
It's a boring game Jane. Best not to play.
There were many of us, not doves, who just thought what does invading Iraq have to do with preventing another 9/11 or even exacting revenge? When the admin made Sadam the flimsy bad guy I thought, ok..then just shoot him..but don't invade the damn country. I don't think this was mostly hawk vs dove but hawk vs hawk with another way. That being intelligence, police work and surgical strikes in the short run and cultural export in the long run.
I supported the invasion, while fully acknowledging that where we are today would be a unsurprising, perhaps even likely result. Why? Because no one put forth to me (and still have not) a scenario by which continuing with the pre-invasion paradigm, that of paying tribute to Islamic despots in the Persian Gulf for several more decades, in order to extract oil, in a world in which the technology of mass destruction becomes more ubiquitous with each passing year, would not be more catastrophic. Instead, I was told nonsense which ignored the fungibility of oil in the global economy, or engaged in fantasies of Tom Friedman's Lexus running on Nebraska corncobs by the year 2015. Ironically, many of these folks, some who call themselves realists, derided the magical thinking which went on in the Bush Administration.
The West, however one defines it, has been in conflict with the Islamic world for 1400 years. We tend to not think of it that way, becase "our side" has been more powerful for more than 200 years, especially so for roughly the past 100, and extraordinarily so for at least the past 60. The technology which made that the case, however, is on the precipice of being available for use, if not completely mastered, by any political entity with access to resources and a high degree of motivation.
In such an environment, it simply is untenable for this conflict to continue for several more decades, absent truly titanic bloodshed by historical standards, while we interact with the Islamic world primarily via the payment of tribute to Islamic despots in return for oil extraction. It is not a manageable situation, as the way in which the sanctions regime against Saddam was crumbling demonstrated. Heck, inspections could not be even be guaranteed absent a couple of divisions parked on Iraq's borders, which simply was not sustainable for any considerable length of time.
The population of the industrialized and rapidly industrializing world will either interact with the population of the oil rich Islamic world with both groups giving consent to the nature of the relationship, and they will begin to do so fairly soon, by historical standards, or there will be bloodshed on a scale similar to, perhaps even exceeding, that which was seen in the middle of the last century. There have been a lot of poor historical analogies put forth in the past five years, but perhaps the best, while still imperfect, is that with slavery in the United States in the runup to the Civil War. There were many who argued then that the institution of slavery in the U.S. was a manageable paradigm, well into the future, without a tremendous amount of blood being spilled. Those people were wrong, and the people who argue, either explicitly, or implicitly (by their failure to put forth an alternative), that the dominant paradigm of interaction with the oil rich Islamic world is manageable, are wrong also.
To those who insist that inspections and sanctions couldn't be sustained: what of the fact that we now know that, militarily, they worked exactly as intended? Saddam was successfully interdicted from acquiring or holding WMDs. To put it politely, this undermines the argument that interdiction was impossible.
Megan,
I object to your formulation here:
Having admitted to myself, and everyone else, that the Iraq war was clearly in hindsight a bad ideaCan't you put it in a way that doesn't imply there's a universal concensus on these points? Agree with them or not, there are a number of folks who have made some very cogents arguments in favor of the proposition that it was the least-bad option.
Mark:
1) You're forgetting that the inspectors didn't even get to inspect until we had an invasion force standing by in Kuwait, etc. We couldn't keep the troops there forever. Based on past history, as soon as we sent the troops home Saddam would have either kicked the inspectors out entirely, or started the old game of "you can inspect anything except that, and that, and that again.
2) Whether the inspection regime was successful depends on how many WMD projects were shipped off to Syria or buried in the desert while the UN inspectors delayed the invasion by six months.
Let's assume Saddam reverted exactly to previous behavior. We now know that the result would have been... successful interdiction.
Looking back, the only pro-war argument I am sympathetic to is the humanitarian argument that the people of Iraq would be better off in the long run if we skillfully deposed Saddam than they would be under continued sanctions. Given that we were even more successful than we thought at keeping Saddam in a box, I don't understand those who still think he posed any kind of military threat to the US.
Will Allen: Good grief, what a tissue of "clash of civilizations" fantasy.
- Why does an Islamic country need oil wealth to build a bomb? (see: Pakistan.)
- What has this "war with Islam" looked like in the last 200 years? Are you referring to the Ottoman Empire? Why is any conflict with an Islamic country a "conflict with Islam" and not say a "conflict with Turkey"?
- What existential threat does Islam pose to the West?
- Was Saddam a jihadist intent on destroying the West? He seems to have attacked a neighboring Arab country and a neighboring Persian country.
It's kind of funny how readily Western intellectuals (or people who sound kind of intellectual anyhow) buy into the jihadi apocalyptic nonsense bin Laden and his ilk try to push.
What the heck is the reasoning here?
1) Conflict between Islamic and Western countries is inevitable. (Why? Because they hate us buying their oil? Because some nut in a cave in Pakistan says so?)
2) Islamic countries will use oil wealth to make nuclear bombs. (So that they can go on a nuclear-armed crusade to convert Europe to Islam?)
3) Therefore Something Must Be Done.
"The population of the industrialized and rapidly industrializing world will either interact with the population of the oil rich Islamic world with both groups giving consent to the nature of the relationship, and they will begin to do so fairly soon, by historical standards, or there will be bloodshed on a scale similar to, perhaps even exceeding, that which was seen in the middle of the last century."
So. Some Arab countries are culturally isolated from the West, wealthy, and somewhat backward and medieval in culture (from our point of view). Therefore there will be an epic bloodbath?
I don't know, I think there must be something terribly sexy about dreaming of a clash of civilizations for some people. I don't get that so much.
Oddly enough this sounds like the point of view that an Israeli would have:
Conflict is inevitable.
Oil-rich despots lead their people to hate us.
A nuclear-armed (or just armed) Arab enemy is an existential threat.
There's some validity in thinking this way from the Israeli point of view, I will certainly allow, but it just doesn't hold on a global scale.
"I don't know, I think there must be something terribly sexy about dreaming of a clash of civilizations for some people. I don't get that so much."
There is nothing terribly sexy about the two smoking holes in lower manhattan. Or the hole in the pentagon. Or Pennsylvania. Or Daniel Pearl. Or the USS Cole. Or the US Marine barracks in Lebanon. etc.etc.etc.
There is nothing sexy about a group of radicals who worship death and are commited to your destruction in ways that few normal people truly even contemplate.
I can't for the life of me understand how one can possibly make such blindingly ignorant comments. This fight has been going on for years. It's finally reached American shores in ways we would never have imagined.
www.husseinandterror.com
(shaking head)......
"There is nothing terribly sexy about the two smoking holes in lower manhattan."
Which has to do what with Iraq again? Muslims and Muslim nations are not monolithic. Hussein had nothing to do with jihadists like Al Qaida. And vice versa. It's the secular regimes like Hussein's that the jihadists are truly at war with. They are trying (successfuly) to draw us into attacking Muslim countries to show secular regimes and secular Muslims that Americans are engaged in a crusade. Easier to unite and coalesce power, push people towards conservative ideologies if there's the perception of an external threat. Sorta the flipside of the American neocon "war of civilizations" argument. Not true, but politically useful now that the Soviets are gone.
TheWesson, actually I give quite a bit of weight to your arguments. Mark, you also make a good case. However, TheWesson's arguments have not quite swayed me from my neocon pedestal yet. The problem, as I see it, is the fear of future problems. The acts of 9/11, and the realities of the decreasing barriers to entry for nuclear, bio, computer and (eventually) nanoweapons, lead me to believe a new age is dawning where any "angry young man" can one day get a nuke, take over the resources of a small- to medium-sized country, and bully the rest of the world (if not destroy it--consider the eschatological musings of the current Iranian president). To survive that coming world, all governments, all non-state organizations, and nay even individuals must enter into increased "transparency" agreements with everyone else. Saddam, nor his sons, were ever going to be a part of this, leaving the intersection of uncertainty and potential destruction in a much less-than-optimal state. North Korea is not a part of such a transparency plan, either. Iran may never be. Not only does this leave potential sources of danger for the rest of the world but--Jeez--for them as well. These boneheads need transparency in the future as much as the rest of us do, in order to encourage a state of information flow that could allow them to hang on to power (avoid the emergence of the angry young men with nukes). If they fall, who takes their place? The angry young man with the nuke?
We have a lot of work to do, not just us but the rest of the world, and Iraq was just the beginning. Besides issues of information transparency, there are also issues of military deterrence which must remain credible--even to the angry young man with the nuke.
That's precisely my point, which is that a small minority of fanatic nutcases have persuaded you that there is a "clash of civilizations".
That's half their battle won, if the West can be brought to believe that. Now if they can convince the Arab world likewise ... then their vision of apocalyptic jihad may lurch into being.
Way to do bin Laden's work for him :)
I do have to agree to two things:
That transparency and global exchange are the wave of the future.
That Middle Eastern countries will have come into the modern world somehow or another, sometime.
I applaud this vision but there are certain barriers of mistrust to overcome. Apocalyptic fears aren't our friend in these circumstances.
BTW, I am open to the idea that removing Saddam Hussein may not have the long-run palliative effect that I desire. It could very well be that, in the end, what keeps millions of more people alive (if not our species) is market dynamics, education and cultural exchange. In dealing with the emergence of networks of Jim Jones-like Islamic cults, potentially with nuke-/bio-/computer-/nano-weapons, I am currently however betting on the historical trend that violence is the only way to truly deal with these folks. (Another alternative is to move off this planet, isolate these folks once and for all, and completely, leaving them no one else to blame but themselves, and no God On Earth, and let them kill each other off in mutual disgust.)
"Hussein had nothing to do with jihadists like Al Qaida. And vice versa."
Unequivocally untrue, and for the sake of this discussion and this current conflict, incredibly ignorant.
Read this link again, since you ignored it last time.
www.husseinandterror.com
Yes. He. DID.
"That's precisely my point, which is that a small minority of fanatic nutcases have persuaded you that there is a "clash of civilizations".
Out of a population worldwide of about a billion and a half muslims, what would you consider a "small minority"? A hundred thousand? A Million?
G-Man: "Not to mention that we get hamstrung to deal with other opponents (Iran, N. Korea) who see that we've over extended and cannot effectively respond."
G-man, you presuppose that Iran, N. Korea would not effectively pursue the same strategy after witnessing an impotent approach to dealing with Iraq.
Mark: "To those who insist that inspections and sanctions couldn't be sustained: what of the fact that we now know that, militarily, they worked exactly as intended? Saddam was successfully interdicted from acquiring or holding WMDs. To put it politely, this undermines the argument that interdiction was impossible."
you've got to be kidding, right? otherwise you fail to even grasp the basic principal of this discussion...you are the problem.
TheWesson, the point is that I don't think Apocalyptic fears are unjustified given the kind of people we are up against (consider Iranian eschatology). I don't mean to imply that we will all be nuked tomorrow, but I do mean to imply that a foundation has to be put into place today in order to avoid much greater bloodshed in the future. In the Islamic tyranny of Afghanistan, transparency could not exist. In the Nassaresque Arab exceptionalism of Saddam's Hell Hole, transparency did not exist either. My fear is that, with newer weapons that these "information black holes" could become ever bigger, quicker, and become harder and harder to break. For each place one of these "black holes" exist, there is a increased possibility that an Angry Young Man with a Nuke Wish could come into being under the radar of even their tyrannical host. The problem is that, in despotic regimes, these guys take over completely--and quickly--without the "killer T cells" (David Brin's concept) of a transparent society to knock them down (the way, for example, we knocked down David Duke).
We have been playing this dice roll game with despotic regimes for long enough, and I don't think we have the luxury of playing that game any longer. (This has been a luxury--the luxury of the fact that we did not have to deal with these problems first hand.) This is what I mean that Iraq may have been the first war in a greater, and perhaps ongoing, "Transparency War."
Read this link again, since you ignored it last time.
Wow, the same old bait-and-switch of conflating Palestinian organizations with al-Qaeda. I'm betting you really don't understand why that fails to impress anyone, do you? You honestly think they're all interchangeable, right?
And I see we've got some "the weapons are in Syria!" conspiracy theorists to boot, which I guess is going to be a diehard meme for the next fifty years or so.
McArdle's obsession with not having to "bow" to people who were right when she was wrong is risible, and her complaints about "tone" more than a bit rich, but I'll give her this much: she at least is making a start (however hesitant and grudging) at grappling with reality. It's too bad so many of her commenters can't say the same.
you've got to be kidding, right? otherwise you fail to even grasp the basic principal of this discussion...you are the problem.
Huh? Sanctions were working even better than we had hoped, and that could have been confirmed before the war if the inspectors had been allowed to complete their work. A great many people clamored for verification of the WMD charges before invasion, but they were ignored by an administration that had already made up its mind.
We're discussing how much credit these people, who have been proven entirely correct by later events, should be given. I say, more than Jane has grudgingly allowed thus far.
Which part of this misses the point?
"Wow, the same old bait-and-switch of conflating Palestinian organizations with al-Qaeda. "
They weren't just Palestinian organizations. You didn't read the link.
And I'm not here to impress you or anyone else. I just find it unconscionable that you feel the need to defend Saddams terrorist connections.
I don't care whether they are interchangable or not.
After 9/11, any Islamic terrorist group that makes it a practice to chant "death to america" on a regular basis gets taken seriously. I don't care where they are from.
"Yes. He. DID."
Well. That's. Not. What. The. CIA believed or told the administration, and I doubt the decision to go to war was premised on Mr. Murdock's website. (On the other hand, with this administration, maybe it was.) It seems there is a cottage industry in retrospectively trying to construct a link from Hussein to 9/11. And maybe Hussein's poolboy's cousin once shared a cab with the brother of Bin Laden's tennis instructor. But really, you can't say it was a credible premise for war, because the intelligence administration did not believe there was a link between Hussein and attacks on the US at the time the decision was made to go to war.
They weren't just Palestinian organizations. You didn't read the link.
Have you read it? The link is all about Saddam's documented (and frankly, not very impressive) support for "martyrs of the Palestinian uprising." All of the incidents cited there are connected to same. None of those organizations were al-Qaeda; therefore, trying to cite that website in response to people who say Saddam had no connection to al-Qaeda is completely ineffective. You should probably stop doing it.
And I'm not here to impress you or anyone else.
Presumably you want to be taken seriously when you talk about terrorism. If you don't understand and profess not to care about the distinct aims and natures of the various groups involved, that isn't going to happen.
I just find it unconscionable that you feel the need to defend Saddams terrorist connections.
Yes, why don't you invent some nefarious views for me now that your argument (such as it was) has failed to hold water? That's another classic.
Ever wonder why the "left blogosphere" laughs at people like McArdle and Trevino when they attempt to complain about how mean and nasty and incivil our side is?
I don't believe that Saddam had anything to do DIRECTLY with 9/11. But to say that he had nothing to do with Islamic terrorists that had before and pledged to again attack America and its interests is simply wrong, as the facts presented clearly demonstrate.
Did you see the chart titled "Terrorism Organizations given Funds, Shelter, and/or Training by Saddam Hussein"?
The facts are from the "US State Department, Office of the Coordinator of Counterterrorism".
This is from the October 2002 Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq which passed with a majority in the US Congress-
"Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;
Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;
Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;
Still think that the US intelligence didn't believe Saddam had any international terrorist connections?
If you do, then I'm done. I don't see the point in debating someone who hasn't debunked a single claim I put forth in this comment thread.
But to say that he had nothing to do with Islamic terrorists that had before and pledged to again attack America and its interests is simply wrong, as the facts presented clearly demonstrate.
And to say that that was a casus belli and that the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive war against any state "habouring terrorists" is simply wrong, as reality clearly demonstrates. In no small part because the terrorists are flourishing far more after Saddam was deposed.
"is simply wrong" s/b "is workable is simply wrong"
So Doc,
You think that Ansar Al-Islam are a Palestinian organization? Mujahideen-e-Khalq?
I continue to show you facts that prove you are wrong, and you just ignore them. Have fun debating yourself.
Wesson, when you begin with the premise that only a nation state can ever utilize a nuclear weapon, you have already revealed such an antiquated view of the world that any policy you favor will likely be for the wrong reason, even if you get lucky and pick the right one. The Cold War, and it's paradigm of rational nation-states engaged in classical deterrence, is slipping into the dustbin of history. The pertinent question is not what a hostile Islamic political entity with access to resources (and oil wealth is not a prerequisite, but merely the most likely source) will do to us, but rather what an enraged U.S. population will do to the population of the Persian Gulf, or any other population from which the resources came to launch a massively deadly albeit nonexistential attack.
There weren't any existential threats looming in Europe in August 1914, but that didn't stop a titanic slaughter from occurring. Paying tribute to Persian Gulf despots for the next several decades, in return for oil, will nearly inevitably inflame a very long-standing conflict which was not just a result of ambitions and worldviews particular to the Ottoman Empire (do you suppose that those who attacked lower Manhattan, like the man Saddam gave refuge to following the first strike, were Ottomans?) and it will happen within a context of ubiquitous technology of mass destruction. Technology never, ever, remains bottled up forever from highly motivated people with access to resources.
The people of the Persian Gulf will either get the opportunity to choose a mutually beneficial, peaceful relationship with the rest of the world, and make that choice, or they will suffer horrors. This has always been the fate of a weak people atop of extraordinarily valuable natural resources who are in a state of hostility with far more powerful peoples.
By the way, could we stop the tiresome canard that the inspection regime was workable in the long term, or even the medium term? Hussein was only cooperative when he had two divisions parked on his borders, which simply was not sustainable. The choices available, in any time frame of more than several months, was to either topple the regime, or, given how members on the UNSC no longer supported the sanctions regime, and were covertly acting to subvert it, to allow Hussein what can be reasonably be described as fairly free reign to pursue weapons development.
You think that Ansar Al-Islam are a Palestinian organization?
My mistake. The website also recycles the outlandish theory that Hussein was supporting al-Qaida through the Kurdish terrorists of Ansar al-Islam. Hussein supporting a Kurdish militia. Your linking to it was a much worse decision than I originally thought.
Mujahideen-e-Khalq?
They're not mentioned at that link that I can see, which I guess is a point in its favour, since the MeK are a pro-Iranian terrorist group.
But hey, what's it to you, right? They're all Mooo-slims.
the MeK are a pro-Iranian terrorist group.
"Anti-Islamist" not "pro-Iranian." Cripes.
The point is they're not cited at that website because the MeK are not an anti-American terrorist group.
You don't get it Doc.
I said it earlier, I don't care whether or not it's Alqaeda Al-Ansar or Abu Nidal himself.
Fact: Saddam Hussein supported international Islamic terrorist organizations that had in the past and pledged to in the future attack America and its interests.
That's why this FACT is included in the October 2002 Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.
And you obviously know ZERO about Ansar Al-Islam. They were the Taliban of Kurdistan, and were constantly fighting against other Kurds in northern Iraq with Iranian support. Saddam knew about them, and never lifted a finger against them.
I suppose you think this is outlandish. I guess that would explain why none of the points you have made so far have stood up.
Why don't you look them up a bit first?
Here, I'll get you started- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Islam
Fact: Saddam Hussein supported international Islamic terrorist organizations that had in the past and pledged to in the future attack America and its interests.
Hate to break it to you, but this only passes for "Fact" in the incredible shrinking World of Bush. Out in the real world, Hussein provided nominal support to a few regional terrorist organizations (mostly Palestinian, but one should also included the MeK) with limited aims and means. The attempt to link al-Qaeda to Hussein through Zarqawi was thoroughly debunked long ago.
They were the Taliban of Kurdistan, and were constantly fighting against other Kurds in northern Iraq with Iranian support.
Yes, why wouldn't Saddam Hussein want to support an Islamist Kurdish militia who was fighting for Iran? That makes total sense.
And yes, the Mek is listed, go look again.
Where? I've searched the page for both Mujahideen e-Khalq and MeK -- nothing.
Will asks:
could we stop the tiresome canard that the inspection regime was workable in the long term, or even the medium term
Please describe how this can be reconciled with the fact that we now know that the inspection regime was working even better than we had hoped at the time, and had successfully prevented Saddam from retaining or acquiring WMDs.
Jane Galt:
"... What many, or even most, of the doves had was an instinctive antipathy to American military action that is so closely bundled with a zillion other ideological predispositions, some of which to me seem practically self-evidently wrong, that I can't find a decisionmaking process to even analyse; the grounds for opposing the war shifted even as the opposition didn't ... "
First, although you refuse to acknowledge it, much of the opposition to the war was from "realist" types who are not doves in general but who did not see how this war would promote the national interest.
Second you are equating the dovish viewpoint with complete pacifism. Obviously if you are not a complete pacifist and you are trying to decide which wars to support and which wars to oppose the fact that complete pacifists were correct about a particular unwise war is not particularly helpful.
However a more reasonable dovish viewpoint is that wars are very destructive and therefore that one should be willing to bear substantial costs to avoid them. Furthermore war proponents (like proponents of any other large government program) invariably overstate the benefits and the likelihood of achieving them while understating the costs and the risks. I think you should consider the possibility that you didn't realistically evaluate the costs and benefits of this war you advocated.
Because, Mark, at the time the sanctions had not fully collapsed yet, and the inspectors only had access once we parked a couple of divisions on Iaq's border. We couldn't keep the divisions there beyond several months, and the fact that Russia and France had begun to actively subvert the sanctions was going to be a cumulative effect. Is it really your position that sanctions were sustainable over the long term, in the face of UNSC members who actively worked to subvert them?
The Realism school of thought would be a lot more useful if it was more realistic. Frankly, I haven't found the Realists to be much more pragmatic than the "We'll be greeted as liberators" school.
So Doc, what part of the joint resolution did you miss that said specifically "al-qaeda"? Because the one that I posted, and the one that congress voted for, stated "Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;" because you are peddling the canard that al-qaeda is the only Islamic terrorist threat to the west, and frankly, that's pretty naive. I'm glad that there are real counterterrorist organizations who aren't this naive.
But hell, I'll even match up what I know about al-qaeda and Saddam-
"The attempt to link al-Qaeda to Hussein through Zarqawi was thoroughly debunked long ago."
No it wasn't. I suggest this list of former Iraqi officials and captured al-Qaeda affiliates who have revealed examples of cooperation between Saddam’s Iraq and Osama’s terrorist assets.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23264
And you obviously didn't read anything about Ansar Al-islam. They were doing Saddams work against the Kurds for him. They weren't a "pro-western" Kurdish group. Try reading something about them before sounding so smug.
The reference to the MeK is listed in the chart titled "Terrorism Organizations given Funds, Shelter, and/or Training by Saddam Hussein".
because you are peddling the canard that al-qaeda is the only Islamic terrorist threat to the west
Go back and find the part where I claimed al-Qaeda is "the only Islamic terrorist threat." What I said was that Saddam was not tied to any of the significant international terror threats, only to specific regional groups and in a nominal way. I said this because it accords with the discernible facts.
That is, with the discernible facts outside the pages of lunatic publications like FrontPage:
I suggest this list of former Iraqi officials and captured al-Qaeda affiliates who have revealed examples of cooperation between Saddam’s Iraq and Osama’s terrorist assets.
A laundry list of the kind of exiles and defectors whose testimony on everything else turned out to be worthless bullshit? That's their evidence of a Saddam-Osama connection? Even for FrontPage, that's pitiful.
And you obviously didn't read anything about Ansar Al-islam. They were doing Saddams work against the Kurds for him. They weren't a "pro-western" Kurdish group.
An Iranian-funded Kurdish Islamist group "doing Saddam's work for him," right. I don't suppose it might have occurred to you that they might be doing Iran's work against the Kurds? Given that Iran also has a substantial Kurdish minority and fears Kurdish secessionism?
No, why would it occur to you? You're getting your information from right-wing rags and Wikipedia. If you'd like to seem informed about Ansar al-Islam, maybe you should broaden your reading.
On the whole, I find it hard to take your professed concern about terrorists seriously. You don't seem interested in building an informed opinion of them and seem determined to conveniently ignore that the Iraq War worsened the terrorism threat -- a threat which is hardly on par with the Cold War but which I do take seriously, enough so that I don't buy into the obscurantism of the "clash of civilizations" narrative that's popular in the anti-jihadosphere (or whatever the hell it's calling itself these days).
Have a lovely evening.
Is it really your position that sanctions were sustainable over the long term, in the face of UNSC members who actively worked to subvert them?
I don't see why overthrowing the government of Iraq and rebuilding the country should strike you as an easier or more likely-to-succeed option than sustaining what has proven to have been, militarily, an entirely successful inspection regime.
REFUTING CONVENTIONALIST NONSENSE!
Second commenter, dearieme, write:
"The proponents of the war didn't advance any plausible policy reason to believe that the war defended vital American (or British) interests, didn't suggest any sensible strategic purpose consistent with the culture and history of Iraq, and made no intelligent tactical proposals of what was to be done once Saddam's army was crushed. It was a really lousy idea at every level."
First, it was since October 1998, officao US policy to overthrow Saddam and install a democracy. Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, and president Bill Clinton signed it. With 9/11, Bush merely acted on prior US policy - he didn't invent it.
Second, as the Dean of American politics, Michael Barone, wrote on his blog December 29th 2006, it was said that when 9/11 happened, only the neo-cons had a national security policy answer to the attack. As 2007 dawns, they are the only ones who still do.
I agree. Because of globalization and increasing availability of high-technology, and Muslim propensity for Jihadism and martyrdom, we face a nativist reactionary movement. The best historical anaolgy is the late-19th century indian wars, particularly with the Souix uprising in August 1862 as a comparable domestic disaster, proportionately greater than 9/11. But then it was fear of repeating rifles and dynamite; today it's dirty nukes, nukes, and soon-to-be widely available designer bioterror weapons. Murder for marytrdom.
Naval Postgraduate Institute in Monterey's Anna Simons "making enemies: an anthropology of islamist terror, part i" (American Interest, Summer 2006) expands on this thesis in more detail. With a population bomb now going off in the Muslim world doubling its size, with growing unemployment, literacy, and new mass wealth, and lots of idle young men to plot the defeat of modernity, this is the bomb Bush's Freedom Forward strategy is designed to defuse. It's the only realistic one that can.
It's designed to busy giddy Muslim minds with (peaceful) democratic quarrels, to update Shakespeare. (See bloggers drsanity and shrinkwrapped for more vital detail.)
The other basic alternative is to embrace denial, the root of psychosis, and believe that policing - which means picking up the pieces after mass murdering crime has already been committed - will "work." In short, revert to Clinton's pre-9/11 strategy.
It won't work. You may not be intersted in terrorism, but Jihadists are interested in terrorizing you!
"The object is not to prove that I am a better and smarter person than those around me; the point now is to minimise the number of future bad decisions that make a lot of people die. Judging from the behaviour of most of the doves in public discourse, that is not the most important thing. The most important thing for them seems to be exacting revenge on the hawks and declaring that the doves are now forever their moral and intellectual superiors."
Examples, please.
Anything?
Anything?
Anything other than remarks specifically in response to the insultingly provocative "you-got-lucky-and-you're-all-unthinking-unserious-knee-jerk-pacifist-and-you-were-right-for-all-the-wrong-reasons-which-means-I-was-still-righter-than-you" meme the right is desperately trying to smear us with these days. Oh, and be honest about it and find one from an actual public policy leader and not some far-out radical nutjob with a national following of nearly dozens, and not something that a frustrated near-anonymous citizen with a day job wrote on his blog the other day. I mean someone with actual influence on the national discussion, because that's what we're talking about, I hope: the national discussion.
So I repeat: Examples please. I'm serious about this - I'll grant that there may be such people, although I've not actually aware of any. (But then, the sampling technique of "people I know" so favored by Jane isn't exactly foolproof.)
And if there are such people, I'd like to know so that I can use it when evaluating the overall mindset of their future statements. Kind of like how I used the previous statements and actions of the Bush administration when evaluating their mendacious case for the invasion of Iraq. Kind of like how I use the previous statements and actions of the pro-war crowd when evaluating how much weight I should give their current opinions. Because that's what this really is all about, isn't it? Saving face, and preserving influence?
Anything?
crickets chirping
"Saddam was not tied to any of the significant international terror threats, only to specific regional groups and in a nominal way."
How very reassuring that sounds. I'm glad you're that comfortable. The problems we've found is that these "regional groups" all seem to play for the same team, and they keep ending up attacking the west in various places other than the region they came from. We are not as assured as you are. Thank god.
"A laundry list of the kind of exiles and defectors whose testimony on everything else turned out to be worthless bullshit?"
Why? Because you say so? All of them are bullshit? What are you, psychic all the sudden?
You never seem to refute anything I write, just move the goalposts a little.
"I don't suppose it might have occurred to you that they might be doing Iran's work against the Kurds?"
Jesus man. They were terrorists. They were found in various spots all over Europe after they scurried from Iraq planning attacks. The 101st Airborne found their camps. Why is this so hard for you to understand?
Saddam + Various Islamic Terrorist Group + $$$= Attack on the west.
This is rocket science.
Right wing rags like Wikipedia? Wow.
"On the whole, I find it hard to take your professed concern about terrorists seriously."
Congratulations. I could care less how you take my concerns. You certainly don't seem to take it seriously.
"You don't seem interested in building an informed opinion of them and seem determined to conveniently ignore that the Iraq War worsened the terrorism threat "
Yes, things were going just swimmingly prior to that. Mustn't upset this delicate balance of "regional" terrorists in Iraq who all wanted us dead. After all, we had Saddam making sure none of them would attack the US.
You realize that's what you sound like?
"but which I do take seriously, enough so that I don't buy into the obscurantism of the "clash of civilizations" narrative that's popular in the anti-jihadosphere (or whatever the hell it's calling itself these days)."
So what do you call it then? Disaffected Youths?
How do you describe the current war against Islamic terrorists?
This should be hilarious.
Really, if you are seriously questioning how you got it wrong, how have you managed to post twice on this topic without even mentioning that there were inspections in process at the time the decision was made to go to war, and that the results of those inspections did not verify the premise of the war, which was, of course, WMD. Rumsfeld claimed we knew where the weapons were, and yet with approximately 400 inspections over a period of 4 months, Al Baradei was concluding that there was no evidence of a nuclear program. Why was it sensible to remove the inspectors and go to war at precisely the time that Iraq was offering the evidence that they had disarmed themselves?
There was also, before the war began, substantial dispute over the administration contention that Iraq was somehow linked to or likely to support Al Quaida, the other justification. In addition, the claims made about yellowcake and aluminum tubes became questionable. On almost every justification for the war, there was reason to doubt the veracity of those claims, and continue the inspection process, and nothing to lose by doing so. In combination with isolated reports of dissent from people in the intelligence and diplomatic communities, the sales job reeked of mendacity. One did not need to be prescient to have a basis for opposing this war.
Why did most of the world risk our enmity and decline to join us after Powell's unpersuasive presentation to the U.N.? Someone likened our invasion of Iraq to Roosevelt having attacked Argentina in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
I've seen numerous commenters allude to the fact that most of those who opposed the war in Iraq supported the war in Afghanistan, which destroys your argument that their opposition was no more than reflexive pacifism or isolationism. If you are seriously wondering what you missed in concluding the war was worthwhile, how have you posted your discredited theory a second time without addressing that rebuttal?
Finally, the war is no less right or wrong because of the outcome- which is actually yet to be determined. If you're guaging it on that basis, don't throw in the towel yet, you may still get to be smarter than the rest of us. My opposition to the war wouldn't be diminished if the casualties had been low, the fighting brief, and the populace had strewn flowers, bought Bibles, and started quoting Thomas Jefferson. My opposition was and remains that there was no adequate justification for having launched the invasion. War is bloody, wasteful and inhumane, and should truly be a last resort. If the fighting had been necessary on our soil, in our cities, and the lives lost those of our husbands, wives, children and parents, I guarantee it would only have been launched as a last resort- because there would have been almost universal opposition, and diplomacy would've been elevated to the status of religion.
You said you're not a pacifist, but you've expressed remorse for your small contribution to the deaths of many- maybe hundreds of thousands of people- that you knew would die when the war began. There are shades of pacifism, and the commonest is opposition to war except as a last resort. Even pacifists fight when there is no option. Pacifism is generally the right instinct. I wonder if you aren't being disingenuous in disparaging the basis for the opposition. There was a boatload of reason to oppose this war. I can't understand how anyone could've supported it.
1. I am a lying [expletive deleted] 2. I am a total moron who deserves nothing less than utter ridicule
I take issue with this. Many of the comments on Julian's site offered sharp rebukes, but there was no profanity and no name-calling. By internet standards, it was relatively civil, certainly no sharper in tone than this post or the one that follows it.
I look to the ways in which the dovish decisionmaking process worked better than mine, so that I can emulate those ways.
If you truly wanted to understand our decision-making processes, I think the first step would be to stop calling us "doves", "pacifists", or "isolationists". Then you might (finally) get somewhere in the neighborhood of the reasons why we opposed this war.
ERBlack, well stated. Thank you!
I don't haunt forums like this often, only when I am looking to clarify my own thinking. Your statements of the anti-war side are amongst the most cogent, and useful. You remind me however, that I didn't support the war for the reasons you stated.
I remember thinking before the war that the WMD argument was weak, very weak, and the wrong argument actually. What I personally did respond to was the enemy propaganda which blamed us for the deaths in Iraq caused by sanctions. We continued levying sanctions (or were trying to) because we knew Saddam would restart his weapons program once sanctions were lifted. Yes, sanctions were effective at keeping Saddam from having weapons at the time, but really--was it humane to continue the sanctions regime indefinitely? I felt not. Should we have "rushed" to that war? I felt so since France, Russia and China were actively involved in trying to break those sanctions and time was not on our side. Besides, 9/11 happened and I felt it was time to "change the equation" in the Middle East. No matter how I looked at it, the status quo was unacceptable and it was time to once and for all finish what we started from the first Iraqi War (remember, we were still technically at war with Iraq).
The only alternative I saw to the War would have been an extremely intrusive post-sanctions inspections regime which would have effectively invaded Iraq and perhaps even take over a few key aspects of the government in order to ensure transparency. I also felt this would have eventually lead to war with Saddam anyway, since I felt he would have had no truck with that sort of activity. No matter how I looked at the situation, it was either war with Iraq at the time of our choosing, or a war later. Perhaps a war later would have been better from an emotional support point of view since it would have been as a reaction to an honest, international inspections system. However, this war I felt would have been less humane since it probably would have occurred a few years after sanctions had been lifted, which would have given Saddam a few years to strengthen his eventual response (which was weak, as we saw, due to sanctions).
ERBlack, I see the current war an a much more intense future war avoided. Not only that, but the status quo of the time has been broken, finally giving us a "vote" (however tenuous) in Middle East matters which (as we have seen) directly effect us. In this respect, I see the current situation as highly successful. I have a suspicion that I wasn't the only person thinking along these lines. You may not understand why the war could have been supported because, I think, you weren't even engaged in the same argument.
Jane: "Shorter commenters:1. I am a lying [expletive deleted] 2. I am a total moron who deserves nothing less than utter ridicule 3. It is not enough that people should not listen to me; I should voluntarily take myself out of the national discourse."
Like mixed meter, I don't think #1 and # 2 are anything but amusing exaggerations (a single commenter does endorse #3). But Jane, you do seem a bit surprised that your "insultingly provocative "you-got-lucky-and-you're-all-unthinking-unserious-knee-jerk-pacifist-and-you-were-right-for-all-the-wrong-reasons-which-means-I-was-still-righter-than-you" remarks (as SV so aptly describes it) does seem to cause angry replies. I'm going to assume you're pulling a Marcel (the Top Chef contestant who genuinely doesn't seem to get that the other contestants' dislike and irritation towards him aren't just the result of some inexplicable issues they have, but (mostly) a reaction to his behavior), so let me, also, try to explain both decisionmaking processes and reaction.
Imagine we're in a slightly alternate universe. There, the Administration painstakingly sought to determine whether Iraq was a serious threat in the post 9/11 world. Even though many of the officials involved had a long-standing commitment to containment, they did the best they could to avoid groupthink, cherry-picking, and other such predictable problems. They consulted the best experts available, regardless of ideology or agreeableness, and analysts who seemed to be simply telling what they wanted to hear (without a clear basis) were told to go back and look at the evidence again. Questioning and disagreement were accepted as a vital part of the decisionmaking process, and opposing voices were incorporated, rather than mocked, ignored or threatened. Careful attention was paid to the reliability of sources. The evidence was presented to the public in a serious, consistent, and fair manner, stressing the grave importance of the decision while not glossing over degrees of uncertainty. A sincere effort was made not to unjustly play upon Americans' fears, or conflate apparently different threats. The administration even fought against great pressure to keep inspectors in Iraq and let them complete their work, even though the results were not as hoped for. In the end, the need for war seemed undeniable, and they went to the American public and made that case, never shirking from talk of sacrifice and difficult struggle and costs, avoiding unrealistically rosy scenarios. They also worked hard to create a genuine broad-based international coalition, convincing many countries - not just our closest allies and whoever could be cajoled/bribed - of the vital importance of what was to be done.
And there, in that world, it was a very strong case, even though the CIA was dubious. Atta-Iraq contacts in Prague, yellowcake, tubes - let me stress, in that world pretty much *all* the evidence was clearly supported. (We also had an alliance with an Iraq resistance leader - a fellow who had escaped just ahead of Saddam's goons, with not just a longstanding reputation for honesty and reliability, but substantial support in-country and recent (well-verified) first-hand knowledge of the situation on the ground. In fact, we had quite a lot of reliable, well-vetted sources making the case for us.)
The reaction? Rage. Everything presented was shouted down, in a violent clamor that ranged from angrily dismissive to crudely obscene. Calls of 'war-monger!', accusations of trying to undermine the country, or even being Iranian agents, poured out from everywhere, from letter columns to CNN. In the mainstream media, coverage of war opponents and opposition vastly outpaced coverage of supporters; at least one conservative show was dropped because the network didn't want to be associated with a rightwing, war-supportin' point of view, and sometimes it seemed the only pro-war voice presented to Americans was Dennis Miller. What people saw were a constant focus on straw-hawks, easily dismissible fringe elements - the all-war-all-the-time crowd, the 'let's kill an ay-rab!' folks, while the serious case for war was ignored. Indeed, peace-fever seemed to grip the entire country. When our longstanding (if annoying) ally France offered its support, the country erupted into Francophobish outrage - wine is poured down drains, on Capitol Hill French fries are renamed Fonda Fries, etc. When Toby Keith voices support and pride in President Bush, mobs pile up copies of his cds and steamroller them (carefully recycling the pieces.
Etc. I could go on, but hopefully you get the point. Spring '03 comes and goes with no invasion. The situation grow worse and worse until it seeps into the mainstream media, but all reporting critical of the anti-war point of view is smeared as right-wing media bias, lies meant to entangle us in a destructive war . . .
And then Baghdad sends a little package to Tel Aviv. It's not a very good nuke at all, but it's good enough. We help fight back the subsequent invasion, but at a final cost of 3,000 American soldiers dead (and countless seriously wounded), not to mention perhaps hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens killed.
And then some doves start chiming in about how, oh, I guess I was wrong, and I'm trying to work it out and figure out where to go from here, but really, just because you were right, there's nothing to be learned from that, because you didn't predict exactly what would happen if we didn't invade. I mean really, you were right by accident, don't you always want war. Maybe some folks had some kind of gut intuition, but that doesn't help. Really, you guys are just happy events happened to prove you right!
Someone likened our invasion of Iraq to Roosevelt having attacked Argentina in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Which stands in sharp contrast to what Roosevelt actually did, which was attack North Africa.
"Having admitted to myself, and everyone else, that the Iraq war was clearly in hindsight a bad idea,"
Actually I'm still not willing to admit this. I'll certainly agree that things in Iraq are much worse than I hoped. Many many civilians are dead and that is a horrible thing. But how many civilians died at the hands of Hussein when he was in power? Not to mention the two wars he started. The bodies number in the hundreds of thousands, possibly the millions.
From a heartless counting of the bodies perspective it seems obvious to me that Iraq now (as horrible as it is) is still better than Iraq in the 80's when Hussein was uncontained.
As for the 90's when he was contained Iraq was still horrible. Who else remembers all the arguments about the sanctions being such an evil thing and hundreds of thousands of babies dying because of lack of medical care and nutrition? Even if we account for some of the obvious exaggerations it was still in the over a hundred thousand.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28346.html
The current body count? ~60k
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
Iraq under sanctions > Iraq under Saddam
Iraq with sectarian violence > Iraq under Saddam
Iraq under sanctions vs. Iraq with sectarian violence? It’s looking like a wash to me right now. I don't see one option as clearly better than the other. They are both bad.
It could go either way, and history has yet to judge.
Mark, apparently you intend to ignore the fact that the inspection regime was only workable with two American divisions parked on Iraq's border, which was not sustainable, unelss you wanted to invade other Persian Gulf States instead. In other words, while you deride the magical thinking within the Bush Administration, you cling ever so tightly to the magical thinking which comforts you. That pretty much sums up the debate for the past several years. Thank you.
TMan: Yes, things were going just swimmingly prior to that. Mustn't upset this delicate balance of "regional" terrorists in Iraq who all wanted us dead.
IOW, you can't come up with a plausible rationale for why Ansar al-Islam could have been working for Saddam, so you need to invent more fictional views for me to distract from your own evident gullibility.
Of course you do.
If you are serious about learning from other viewpoints, the best agruments against the war in Iraq were presented by paleocons, not leftists. Jerry Pournelle's statements on his blog (over considerable time, I don't recall any one specific entry) are probably the best, if not particularly concise, collection of arguments against the war. Unfortunately, he has now (actually a couple months ago, I haven't read him much lately for other reasons) swapped to the "We can't leave now without inviting attack" position, which I consider foolish.
Yep, Rob (Lyman), that silly, misplaced attack on North Africa.
Why on earth would FDR invade a country run by the Nazi collaborationists who also ran a good chunk of France? Why would he start a campaign in a region where the Nazis and their Italian allies had been battling back and forth against the British Commonwealth forces for some time? Why would he think of attacking said Nazis (including powderpuffs like Irwin Rommel) at a point where their supply lines were the longest, i.e. most exposed and vulnerable? Why would he consider blooding his inexperienced army in a place where it had more than a passing chance at success? Why would he even concern himself with minor strategic issues like control of the Suez Canal?
I guess - in the context of this post - the message you're trying to convey is that even FDR, even in prosecuting The Good War, succumbed to those damnable dovish (read liberal) tendencies, preventing him from fighting the real war.
Or did I miss something?
Cheers,
Nicole Tedesco,
I beg to differ regarding ERBlack's comment. Given that he said this
the premise of the war, which was, of course, WMD. [emphasis added]why would you take anything that he says without a large barrel of salt?
Also note that he naively asks:
Why did most of the world risk our enmity and decline to join us after Powell's unpersuasive presentation to the U.N.?I can't answer for every single country, but in the case of France and Russia (some of the most important, and Security Council members to boot) we do know some reasons that we didn't know in 2002, and they don't reflect on France and Russia very well.
And finally:
Someone likened our invasion of Iraq to Roosevelt having attacked Argentina in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.Hah, what a laugh! ERBlack, you've convinced me! Oh, wait, I seem to remember our first real military move was against Morocco. Hmmm, nevermind.
Nicole, perhaps you're giving too much weight to ERBlack's presentation and language (which is certainly coherent and skillful enough) and too little to logical lapses and historically uninformed content as cited here.
Jane,
I am confused. Are you saying you were wrong about strategy, or tactics? Here you seem to be saying you think taking out Saddam was a bad idea. Do you honestly mean that?
For those who haven't been 'around' since Day 1 as you have (I was a few blocks south of Grand Central at the time), here is a strategic outline, by a definite hawk, of "the cause of the war, the reason that the United States became involved in it, the fundamental goals the US has to achieve to win it, and the strategies the US is following..."
http://denbeste.nu/essays/strategic_overview.shtml
I don't think _any_ of our 20/20 hindsight changes this. Does it?
Are you saying you were wrong to support the strategy? Or do you merely think that the tactics you once supported have been proven faulty? If the latter, then this is nothing new. Wars _never_ go as planned. After all, if everything had worked out perfectly, we wouldn't be killing each other. Would we?
"IOW, you can't come up with a plausible rationale for why Ansar al-Islam could have been working for Saddam, so you need to invent more fictional views for me to distract from your own evident gullibility."
Nicely avoiding the rest of my points as you continue to push the goal posts further down the road.
I don't care who Ansar al-Islam was "working for". If you asked them they woudl probably say they are "working for Allah". They were an Islamic terrorist group who by their own admission were working to plan attacks on the west, much like al-qaeda in Afghanistan. Saddam was specifically required by MULTIPLE UNSC resolutions to not be allowed to harbor terrorist groups in Iraq. Whether or not he was in charge of AAI isn't the issue. The Taliban wasn't "in charge" of al-qaeda in Afghanistan, but ehy were harboring them.
The logic I've attempted to impress upon you doesn't seem to get through.
Let's try this again, then I'm done.
Saddam + Various Islamic Terrorist Group HARBORED IN IRAQ + $$$= Attack on the west.
That was why the Authorization to use force in Iraq stated "Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;"
Which he was. You haven't disputed anything of relevance. You honestly believe that those "regional" terrorist groups that Saddam was allowing to operate freely in Iraq were of no threat to the west?
You can't be serious.
Rofe,
Either you missed something (big time) or I'm missing something.
My point was not that FDR was wrong. My point was that sound strategy does not dictate that responses to attacks be directed solely at the origin of those attacks. Nazis didn't hit Pearl Harbor; that doesn mean you shouldn't hit them. Saddam did not hit Manhatten; doesn't mean he shouldn't be hit.
In addition, I was making an oblique point about the historically clueless use of WWII, which is rampant on both sides.
Someone likened our invasion of Iraq to Roosevelt having attacked Argentina in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Hah, what a laugh! ERBlack, you've convinced me! Oh, wait, I seem to remember our first real military move was against Morocco. Hmmm, nevermind.
I hestitate to feed a troll, but I have too much respect for history and the memory of my grandfather to let this stand.
Doolittle Raid on Tokyo: April 18, 1942
Battle of the Coral Sea: May 1942
Battle of Midway: June 1942
...
The invasion of Morrocco: November, 1942
The invasion of Morrocco was NOT in response to the attack by Japan. It was in response to the declaration of war by Germany, with whom the occupiers of Morrocco (Vichy France) were allied.
And - the ONLY thing this has to do with the discussion at hand is as an illustration of how, in defending the decision to go to war, it was somehow permissible to ignore history, omit actual facts, compare apples to a-bombs and take cheap shots at minor quibbles as though finding fault with an analogy somehow made an entire position invalid.
Correction: Second paragraph above, in the 1:31 post, should also be italicized and was also part of the quote.
What I find most upsetting about this post, is that is completely disregards the treatment of those of us opposed to the war from the outset. Not so-called "doves" like the elected Democrats, but real anti-war types who believe that mass, impersonal slaughter is not the way to solve our problems.
I remember being called a traitor, a terrorist, and in league with Saddam and Osama. How can you wonder about the vitriol on the left when for the past five years, many of us were regarded as enemies of the nation?
During anti-war protests, I have been threatened with death. I have had guns pointed at me and not by cops. People I have marched with have been beaten within an inch of their lives. The insane harrassment from the right is why I no longer participate in American politics; I live in Canada now.
Please, don't export your "democracy" here.
TMan: Nicely avoiding the rest of my points
Yeah, like your touching faith in defector testimony from FrontPage? Sorry, but one of the things the WMD debacle meant is that waving a list of defectors at someone is only going to convince them of your intellectual incompetence. At this point, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate why it should be taken seriously.
as you continue to push the goal posts further down the road.
I love it when people slide from one specious claim to another and then, when they can't back any of their claims up, complain about how the other guy is "moving the goalposts." McArdle used to like this trick, too. It's another one of the classics.
The logic I've attempted to impress upon you doesn't seem to get through.
Because what impresses you as "logic" is completely specious. You live in a bubble in which all "terrorists" provide you with equivalent excuses to demand that everyone around you piss their britches in fear. The real world stubbornly doesn't work that way. (The MeK who Saddam "harboured," for instance -- some of those "terrorists" who are supposed to be an inevitable threat to the West -- are still based Iraq with American approval. Why? It's not because they're anti-American terrorists.)
Ansar al-Islam were "harboured" in a part of Iraq that was not under Saddam's control and hadn't been since 1991. Having utterly failed to support your original case that they were "doing Saddam's work," you've now switched to claiming that he was "harbouring" them -- but even if you could make that a plausible excuse for war (and you can't), your case for his "harbouring" them is trivially-disprovable nonsense.
So, since I guess this means you're "done," let me leave you with a bit of advice: maybe all those evil terror-symp liberals who think your opinions about terrorism are laughable and simplistic actually know something you don't. Maybe you should actually be trying to learn insead of assuming you already know, because the Party told you. If a glimmer of that thought is beginning to dawn on the proprietor of this blog (as it seems it may be), I'm sure there's hope for you.
Doc,
"At this point, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate why it should be taken seriously."
I did. I showed you lists of people, places and events that confirmed that there were indeed Islamic terrorists supported by Saddam in Iraq. Then you proceeded to make excuses for some of them by saying they were only "regional" terrorists, which is probably the most ridiculous thing you said in this entire discussion.
You haven't debunked or refuted a single claim I've made. Ansar al-Islam was doing Saddams work in Kurdistan. They were attacking the Kurdish anti-Saddam forces. Why would he want that to stop? When the 101st showed up in northern Iraq they scurried away and left mountains of evidence confirming the fears of many- that they had every intention of training for and planning for attacks against the west. I showed you the evidence, you ignore it. I'm getting a little tired of your condescending attitude towards me as though I haven't studied enough about Islamic terrorism. You don't know me from a hole in the ground, so keep your judgements to yourself.
"You live in a bubble in which all "terrorists" provide you with equivalent excuses to demand that everyone around you piss their britches in fear."
No, I don't. And I don't appreciate your continued insults either. I don't fear the ETA seperatists the same way I fear al-qaeda for instance. I, along with anyone else in the west, am very concerned about Islamic terrorists who have already killed people in my country very recently. And where in gods name do you come up with the statement that there are Islamic terrorists operating in Iraq with US approval?
And I'M the illogical one?
I made the case, gave supporting evidence, you claim they were "regional" terrorists. That's moving the goal posts.
Now I have a bit of advice for you- when you debate someone over specific points make sure you are prepared to support your arguments with something other than a smug elitist attitude, and continual ad hominem attacks.
And when a liberal comes up with a plan for defeating Islamic terrorists that doesn't involve me getting on my knees and praising Allah, let me know. Because right now, all you're doing is standing in the way of those who DO have a plan to defeat them, and are actively doing so.
You haven't debunked or refuted a single claim I've made.
"I'll prove it by repeating my claims, as if it makes them true! Yeah, and I'll call you 'smug' and 'elitist' too! Take that!"
I love the fact that you continue straight-facedly arguing that an Iranian catspaw operating in northern Iraq would have had Saddam's blessing. Don't really know much about the history between Iran and Iraq, do you?
I'm getting a little tired of your condescending attitude towards me as though I haven't studied enough about Islamic terrorism.
This is another classic: condescend to your opponent, noisily claim they haven't read anything, refuse to engage their arguments honestly (for example, try to portray reference to "regional" terrorists as "making excuses for terrorists")... and then sniffily complain about how their refusal to take FrontPage and a kooky tissue of multiply-refuted arguments about "Saddam and terror" seriously is "condescending" and "insulting" to you.
Well, I have a feeling that the real world is going to be "condescending" and "insulting" to you a great deal more over the next two years. Get used to it.
I don't fear the ETA seperatists the same way I fear al-qaeda for instance.
After all, they're not raghe - ummm, Muslims.
Yeah, you keep on fighting the good fight.
Oh, by the way: And where in gods name do you come up with the statement that there are Islamic terrorists operating in Iraq with US approval?
The MeK aren't "Islamic" terrorists per se. I thought you were claiming earlier to know something about them.
As for their relationship to Iran and the US, assuming your request for more information is sincere, you can find it here.
"I love the fact that you continue straight-facedly arguing that an Iranian catspaw operating in northern Iraq would have had Saddam's blessing."
Do you know who they were attacking? Obviously not. Did you notice they were attacking the same people Saddam had tried to erase from Iraq? Obviously not. I forgot- they were "regional" terrorists.
Well, I have a feeling that the real world is going to be "condescending" and "insulting" to you a great deal more over the next two years. Get used to it.
More jerks like you you mean? Yeah, I've dealt with people such as yourself before. Your type usually scurries in to the corner when things get rough, I'm not worried.
After all, they're not raghe - ummm, Muslims.
And again with the ad hominems. A true sign of a person who lost the argument a while ago.
It's been a pleasure watching you squirm. I've already received emails about this thread from people laughing at you.
I, unlike you, am not anonymous. Feel free to visit my site and debate to your hearts content. I think we've monopolized these comments enough.
Do you know who they were attacking? Obviously not.
So, anyone who attacked the PKK was an ally of Saddam? By that "logic," Turkey was allied with Saddam. It's precisely that kind of thing that's led me to mock you.
I think we've monopolized these comments enough.
First correct thing you've said.
I'm getting a headache. I don't even want to add my serious thoughts because of the tone set by so many of the commenters. Can we return to economics, high school self-image issues, recipes, book reviews, etc?