January 16, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:New predictions
Daniel Davies* asks me what I think about the surge. I think it's extremely unlikely to work, and is an example of what John Quiggin recently plucked out of a Foreign Affairs article on hawkish bias: the tendency to double down when things are going wrong because of loss aversion. If we're serious about this, we should start by figuring out how many troops we need, and then figure out how to get them, rather than starting with how many troops we have and going forward with a policy unlikely to work. It also brings me back to something I said before: as a matter of national security, we might want to explore why our army basically is not up to the task of occupying a small country for more than a few months. If we're planning to keep on being the world's only superpower, that is.
And boy, I sure hope I'm wrong again.
What's the asterisk for?
The funniest thing about Davies' post - and Davies is a pretty funny person in a buffoonish sort of way - is his claim that he got everything right about Iraq. And yet doesn't link to any claim he made prewar.
How about this for a test. Anybody who claims that their predictions about the war were all right should be required to post links to all of their pre-war predictions (no cherry-picking!). Then we can tally them up and see how right they were. Bonus points if you claimed that Saddam would attack Israel in response to our invasion, that our troops would be killed by chemical weapons that Saddam didn't have, or that our invasion would cause an environmental disaster of epic proportions when Saddam blew the oil wells.
Posted by: A.S. on January 16, 2007 3:37 PM"up to the task of occupying a small country for more than a few months"
Not sure occuping countries is the future of an insurgent war. Intellgence and first strike, small force interdictions are what I think are in our countries best tactical interests. Iraq, will be seen as the last great imperial occupation.
Posted by: judson on January 16, 2007 3:47 PMBack in the summer of 2003, the Rand Corporation printed this, which predicted the need for about 500,000 troops to occupy Iraq.
We'd need a somewhat larger number to occupy Afganistan. The population is larger but mainly, because the geography is more demanding.
Posted by: Michigander on January 16, 2007 3:50 PMJane,
Better late than never I guess. Not sure why you felt he need to claim no one predicted the mess though.
Posted by: GT on January 16, 2007 3:52 PMAdapted from Tbogg:
A.S.: I'm going to bet everything on 23 Red.
Sane person: You're going to lose. It could land on 19 Black, 7 Red, or many other numbers.
A.S. (having lost): I guess we both were wrong.
or this:
Sorther A.S.: You were right about the Titanic not actually being unsinkable, but you never said it would specifically be an iceberg that sank it.
Therefore I simply cannot concede that your shipbuilding credibility is in any way superior to mine.
It also brings me back to something I said before: as a matter of national security, we might want to explore why our army basically is not up to the task of occupying a small country for more than a few months.
I thought we were a hyperpower. ;-)
Anyway, is the litmus test of a superpower that it be able to project force across the planet to occupy and maintain that state for a set period of time? Without taking a stand on the war, I don't think the US performed so poorly in the conquering and occupying part. It's the imposition of foreign culture where they are failing.
Person One: I’m going to bet on 23.
Person Two: I’m going to bet on 17.
Person Two: (while the wheel is still spinning) See? I was right! Also, you’re immoral and an idiot.
Heck, this isn't even doubling down. Doubling down might work. A troop increase of >10% is another finger in the cracking dike.
Posted by: Sean on January 16, 2007 4:09 PMPerson One: I'm going to bet on 23
Person Two: Chances are you will lose. You could get 7 or 15 or 25.
(ball lands on 32)
Person One: We were both wrong.
Wait, there's more!
Person One: I'm going to bet on 23
Person Two: Chances are you will lose. You could get 7 or 15 or 25. Plus you are betting your family's money. Stop and think before you act.
(ball lands on 32)
Person One: We were both wrong.
Hat tip to jl. That's the fastest I've ever seen GT's farcical allegories get deflated.
Posted by: anony-mouse on January 16, 2007 4:21 PMNope anony, he got it all wrong.
Hmm... do I detect a trend here?
Your examples make no sense, GT (which pretty much follows if they were "Adapted from Tbogg").
If you are into playing this "I was right, you were wrong, therefore people should always listen to me and not to you" game, then I pointed out that you need to show that you were actually right, not merely that the other person was wrong.
Let's take your first example.
Person One: I'm going to bet on 23.
Person Two: Chances are you will lose. You should bet on 7.
(ball lands on 32)
Person One: We were both wrong.
Person Two: No, I said you would lose, and you did. Therefore people should pay attention to me in the future when I say to bet on 7.
Who was "right?" Who was "wrong?" What I almost never see is an honest analysis of the network of trade-offs that have been, and are, inherent in this situation. Those of us in software architecture have come to realize that an honest analysis of complex systems begins with an analysis of the trade-off network, and not with an analysis of "right" and "wrong" aspects of any situation. Right/wrong lead to political black holes of emotion. Trade-off analysis tend to lead to better understandings of complex systems and a higher chance for claiming success at the end of the project. More troops? Less troops? In this latest round of "surge the troops" we have finally heard a few of the trade-off arguments regarding such a move. There were many opinions in the beginning of the war regarding how many troops we should or should not have had. Unfortunately, none of us were sitting in the President's "hot seat" where we actually had to weigh this trade-off network for ourselves.
If memory serves me correctly, some of the potential positive trade-offs of having fewer troops were that we would look less like "traditional" imperialists, we would have a smaller "kill" footprint, be able to handle contingencies outside of either Afghanistan and Iraq (what do any of us know of whether that deterrent indeed worked for us), and so on. Some of the negative trade-offs were increased ability for Iraq sliding into civil war or being overrun by insurgents, and so on. What is not generally apparent in public discussion is a real, perhaps mathematical, analysis of the positive and negative feedback loops embedded in what is probably an amazingly complex trade-off network. I am amazed that our President has been able to make decisions at all! Were any of you readers alive to remember how Carter was excoriated over his seeming inability to commit to a decision--any decision--to act in any public way during the Hostage Crisis? (The Iranians made good use of his non-behavior in their taunts, chants and posters.) Moreover, in any such complex feedback network of trade-offs, the optimization point may actually be changing from under you in very non-linear ways. In other words, the "best" solution to the problems in front of you may be different today than it was yesterday. The inherent danger, for any President, is that no matter which decision you make, you are likely to lose since you are "shooting at a moving target." Given Carter's engineering background, I always assumed this was his calculus during the Hostage Crisis and his decision was, for some time, not to act and to see if the situation would stabilize so that it could be better managed. (This was not to be the case.)
Posted by: Nicole Tedesco on January 16, 2007 4:27 PMNo AS, that analogy is all wrong. Person Two (those opposed to the war) never said you should bet on anything. They pointed out that betting on 23 (going to war in Iraq) was likely to lead to a loss. You analogy is faulty.
I understand the psychological reasons why it's so hard for those that supported the war to accept they were wrong. Jane has mentioned that.
Posted by: GT on January 16, 2007 4:27 PMGT, the problem is that I don't yet have enough evidence to disprove my current set of working hypotheses. I don't think it's dumb human bias that is keeping me from "seeing the light," it's just that the information available to me is just not enough to overthrow my current worldview. That is not to say that I do not doubt, it is just that, on the whole, I believe the evidence of history and current events keeps me slightly on the side of, "going to war was the right idea." I could be proved wrong, and in fact I want to be. The "doves" just haven't made a strong enough case yet.
Posted by: Nicole Tedesco on January 16, 2007 4:37 PMHmm... do I detect a trend here?
As the saying goes, if it seems like everyone else is wrong or crazy, search out the common denominator.
Posted by: anony-mouse on January 16, 2007 4:44 PMNicole,
At this point I don't think what the doves say matters anymore. I guess it's possible things could turn around but right now the evidence on the ground does not support the pro-war camp (loosely defined).
Posted by: GT on January 16, 2007 4:45 PMThe common denominator? The war supporters consistently wrong about practically everything?
Posted by: GT on January 16, 2007 4:48 PM"Person Two (those opposed to the war) never said you should bet on anything."
Hmmm, as I pointed out, Daniel Davies (in the linked post) stated that he got all the important details about the war right. So it seems to me that Davies DID in fact, say you should bet on something. My comment was that, in such case, he ought to show us exactly what he said we should bet on! Since he claims he was right about every (important) thing, and all.
Posted by: A.S. on January 16, 2007 4:49 PMLess than two months before his third presidential election, a very difficult race against Wendell Wilkie, FDR pushed the Selective Service Act of 1940 through Congress. It was politically risky, but we needed the troops and FDR took his duties seriously. George Bush, alas, is no Franklin Roosevelt. That's why our army is too small to fulfill its commitments and why we're losing both countries to our enemies.
Posted by: Stan on January 16, 2007 4:53 PMIt still goes back to the point that Bush will not properly fund the war because it would require him to give up his tax cut.
In economics there is a concept call revealed preference that at its simplists says to pay attention to what people do, not what they claim.
So this administrations revealed preference is that its tax cut is more important then winning the war.
Just remember, one of the first casulties was Larry Lindsey for making an honest attempt to extimate the cost of the war.
Posted by: spencer on January 16, 2007 5:10 PMIt also brings me back to something I said before: as a matter of national security, we might want to explore why our army basically is not up to the task of occupying a small country for more than a few months.
I found this Grauniad article interesting and on point.
1) Our army is generally up to the task of occupying a small country which is interested in attacking only our army. The Samarra mosque bombing really did bring the country closer to a civil war, which is harder to stop; protecting civilians from irregular forces is considerably tougher. Many of the successful occupations throughout history also employed unacceptable brutality.
2) Our army could have had a very easy time by simply overthrowing Saddam and putting the Shi'ite Arabs and Kurds in charge, and completely ignoring any of their reprisals against Sunni Arabs for Saddam's oppression. Instead, we have spent most of the time calling for fair play and compassion towards the Sunni Arabs. Critical parts of the Sunni Arab leadership decided, however, to engage in a futile war against their country's majority.
We completely underestimated the desire of the Sunni Arab minority to continue ruling, their misunderstanding of their numerical position, and their willingness to launch a pointless insurgency. Once the Sunni Arab minority decided to launch their attacks, they doomed themselves. We thought that they would realize that they had lost the power in the country, but they did not. This has doomed our idealistic dreams of democratic power-sharing between all the groups in the country, at least for now. But it has even more so doomed the Sunnis.
I at least understand Sadr's group. They have the numbers, and they will have a chance to be part of the government and win. The Sunni Arab insurgency's motives are far more interesting.
One very real worry is whether the Saudis and others will begin supporting the Sunni Arabs if the US leaves.
Rather than simply putting the oppressed group into power and leaving, we decided to act idealistically and try to get everyone to get along. Some Shiites were unwilling to forgive their former oppressors, and some Sunni Arabs were willing to give the Shiites every reason to keep hating them.
Posted by: John Thacker on January 16, 2007 5:29 PM'...why our army basically is not up to the task of occupying a small country for more than a few months...'
That's simple. After the implosion of the Soviet Union, the Democrats in control of congress had the power to force GHW Bush to accept a demobilization of the military from 2.4 million men and women in uniform to the point where GW Bush inherited a military of about one million less.
Stan's idea that the problem is the lack of conscription (vis a vis FDR in 1940) is simply not factual.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on January 16, 2007 5:32 PMI certainly thought it probably take less time than this for the Sunni Arabs to realize the point in the Guardian article where "This man who had spent the last three years fighting the Americans was now willing to talk to them, not because he wanted to make peace but because he saw the Americans as the lesser of two evils."
But I saw it as a reasonable possibility. Unlike some people, viewing the future I find the most likely outcome to be certainly much worse than what I hoped for, but still one I favor over the status quo ante.
Posted by: John Thacker on January 16, 2007 5:32 PMThe question of whether it's going to "work" depends on what goal we're talking about.
If the goal is to restore order to Iraq, that will happen in due time anyway. Without us, it will be restored because the Shi'ite Arabs will complete their takeover of Baghdad. If the goal is to help that happen faster, it may.
If the goal is seriously to attempt to force both sides to come to the bargaining table and to accept fair play and avert the slow civil war, then it is most likely too late for that-- and perhaps it was always out of our hands (or not).
Posted by: John Thacker on January 16, 2007 5:37 PMThe problem isn't a lack of conscription. The problem is Bush's unwillingness to pay for what he claims is vital. If he inherited a too-small military he's had 6 years to change that.
At what point do conservatives stop blaming others for the mistakes they make?
Posted by: GT on January 16, 2007 5:40 PM"Person Two (those opposed to the war) never said you should bet on anything."
Wow. Astonishing arrogance and intellectual dishonesty.
In 2003, the strategy of not going to war was risky. To argue that we shouldn't go to war, you're taking the risk that Saddam doesn't have WMD and/or won't use them, that the UN inspection regime will hamper him sufficiently (particularly problematic, given what we've learned about Oil-for-Food in the interim), that the vaunted International Community will hold together to keep him isolated and prevent him from spreading influence throughout the Middle East.
A certain Senator from New York put it very aptly in her floor speech before the Iraq war resolution. Action is risky. But inaction is risky, too. To deny that this is the case is simply wrong.
What's more, I find the triumphalism of the anti-war folks quite bizarre. It's not at all clear to me that the wheel has stopped spinning. To paraphrase a great man, we're not at the end. We're not even at the beginning of the end. We might be at the end of the beginning, but even this isn't clear. And even if they're right, the consequences of defeat are such that being right is not exactly something to be pleased about.
Posted by: Don on January 16, 2007 5:44 PMThere is no reasonable amount of troops that you can send to Iraq. It is too late, and you'd need to send millions of combat troops to try to gain any semblance of "win" for whatever "victory" looks like this week. Peace and democracy? Plan on about ten million troops for 2 years and an occupation of around 1 million troops for the next 20-100+ years.
It is too late to undo the "salvador option" and "volcano brigades" that we set up; and our 80% final solution got the attention of the Saudis who just about said that they'd come into combat on the side of the sunnis if we tried such a thing.
There is no way to win in Iraq. Only to delay the loss until bush is out of office. And that is the only purpose of the "surge" - to come up with political traps for the democrats that enable the hawks to claim that they were stabbed in the back, just like Vietnam.
Posted by: Peter on January 16, 2007 6:03 PMPeter and others,
Please answer this question. Do you understand that your attacks against our nation's policy is EXACTLY what Osama and other terrorists in and out of Iraq want? Do you understand that they understand that the only way we will lose and leave is if enough people like you complain over here? Please let me know your thoughts on this.
Why did we leave Vietnam? Not because we were getting our butts kicked, but because the nation lost its resolve. Why will we leave Iraq? Not because our troops are getting their butts kicked, but because the gradual errosion of resolve thanks to people naysaying everything we do. The reasons for the loss are the same. Pointing out the fact that things are difficult is a lot different than what you guys are doing. You are undermining our own efforts merely because you hate the current party in power.
Posted by: explain on January 16, 2007 6:20 PMWe should have 3x as men under arms. You don't need to raise taxes, just eliminate every dollar of government spending not going to DoD, DoJ, and the weapons side of the DoE. Get rid of the socialism imposed by GT and FDR and bring back true constitutional government.
Trillions for defence, not one cent for welfare.
As to how to deal with the insrugency: deal with the traitors at home, then apply Roman pacification methods and Macedonian territorial aims.
Posted by: hey on January 16, 2007 6:25 PMReally explain so it's sit down and shut up right? Otherwise the terrorists might win? So the president can launch any course of action, no matter how uneffective and to disagree with it is undermining the our efforts? If you can't see how the Iraq war has undermined the GWOT, send me your email address and I will paypal you cash for new glasses.
We left Vietnam because the rhetoric from the administration didn't match the reality on the ground. (Oh that and the South Vietnam government was hopelessly comprimised).
This war was sold on the idea that we would be down to 30,000 troops by Fall 2003. Rumsfield said that as well as various other administration talking heads about the ease of victory. Not properly setting the expectations for the American people are the problem. But now we have the old meme - we were undermined so we lost the war.
Exactly what are your victory conditions in Iraq?
Posted by: Brian Despain on January 16, 2007 6:32 PMI have to ask, what does "winning" in Iraq look like? When people insist that we've "lost" there and/or can never "win", what do they mean?
From where I'm sitting:
1. Saddam dead? Check.
2. Uday & Qusay dead? Check.
3. Baathist government overthrown? Check.
4. No WMDs in Iraq and no possibility it will develop them in the foreseeable future? Check.
5. Muslim jihadists now primarily slaughtering their co-religionists rather than secular/Christian/Jewish westerners? Check.
6. Terror attacks now mainly occurring in the Muslim Middle East and NO further terror attacks in the US? Check.
7. All of the above for less than a third of the KIA's I thought we'd suffer just in the initial fighting for Baghdad? Check.
I honestly don't know how it can't be described as a victory. I have a hard time understanding folks like Jane who figure it's a loss.
Admittedly, I never thought the goal of the war was to transform Iraq into New Hampshire. I suppose if that's what you were aiming for, then yeah, that didn't happen.
Posted by: DRB on January 16, 2007 6:41 PM'The problem is Bush's unwillingness to pay for what he claims is vital. If he inherited a too-small military he's had 6 years to change that.'
Bush can't appropriate money, he has to convince Congress to do that. If he figures he can't convince them to do so, he's stuck with the army he has.
Btw, nice to finally see you depart from Krugman--over conscription.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on January 16, 2007 7:09 PMSo he's been fighting the Republican congress to get them right? No. Hmm strange.
Posted by: Brian Despain on January 16, 2007 7:17 PMJane Galt said:
"... It also brings me back to something I said before: as a matter of national security, we might want to explore why our army basically is not up to the task of occupying a small country for more than a few months. ..."
You are being disingenuous, that is not the mission we gave our army. The mission we gave our army was to transform Iraq into a stable, friendly democracy and the reason our army was not up to the task is that the task was and is totally impossible.
If the mission had been just to occupy Iraq we would not have done lunatic things like letting everybody keep their AK 47's out of fear of offending the NRA.
Posted by: James B. Shearer on January 16, 2007 7:45 PMActually, Bush's main failure in my eyes is his failure to communicate, and his failure to set the goalposts where he could declare a win.
When Amnesty International claimed that five thousand children a month were dying under sanctions due to Saddam Hussein, Bush should have said, "Sixty thousand children - there's a goal post. The United States will save as many of those children as possible." Then if 20K per year died under our occupation, we have saved 40K.
When anti-war people claimed there would be 500K to 1M refugees due to the war, Bush should have said, "One Million refugees - there's a goal post - we will reduce that number as much as possible." What were there, 100K?
And so on.
More importantly, he should have set a long timeline upon the initial entry into the country - "We will occupy for ten years, then leave, no matter what state your country is in. You have our help for that long to put your country how you want it. If you produce a calm, peaceful society before then, and request us to leave, then we will happily comply."
The Iraq occupation is a hangnail for a giant like the United States. We could occupy for thirty years if we had a strategic reason. The important thing for the U.S. is to be able to declare victory and go home. Unfortunately, the important thing for the Democrats and the left is to prevent the U.S. from declaring victory and going home.
So the biggest mistake for Bush was misunderestimating his domestic enemies, and not declaring and prosecuting war upon them with all means necessary. For example, Bush could have recruited twenty or thirty pro-war Democratic candidates from the military to run for Congress on a "Win the War" slate. Just opening the discussion to patriotic Democrats would have helped his case immensely.
Posted by: Twill00 on January 16, 2007 7:48 PMDRB: "I have to ask, what does 'winning' in Iraq look like? When people insist that we've 'lost' there and/or can never 'win', what do they mean?"
It means that the United States cannot establish a stable and friendly government in Iraq. For the foreseeable future, Iraq will be unstable, or hostile to the United States, or both.
Why? Louis Halle:
"... real power is always something far greater than military power alone. A balance of power is not a balance of military power alone: it is, rather, a balance in which military power is one element. Even in its crudest aspect, power represents a subtle and intimate combination of force and consent. No stable government has ever existed, and no empire has ever become established, except with an immensely preponderant measure of consent on the part of those who were its subjects. That consent may be a half-grudging consent; it may be a consent based in part on awe of superior force; it may represent love, or respect, or fear, or a combination of the three. Consent, in any case, is the essential ingredient in stable power--more so than physical force, of which the most efficient and economical use is to increase consent.
"By using physical force in such a way as alienates consent one constantly increases the requirements of physical force to replace the consent that has been alienated. A vicious spiral develops that, continued, ends in the collapse of power."
At this point there is no chance that the US can win consent among Iraqis for its continued presence. As of September 2006, 61% of Iraqis supported attacks on US forces (compared to 47% in January 2006). And the current Iraqi government isn't strong enough to maintain itself without the backing of US forces.
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 16, 2007 8:09 PMDon,
No, it wasn't risky at all. The latest available evidence at the time, inspectors on the ground, indicated there was no evidence of any WMDs.
Patrick,
You mean convince the GOP Congress that US needed a bigger military after 9/11?
DRB,
You honestly don't know how it can't be described as a victory? Maybe the White House could use you. That Pollyannish view is hard to find these days.
Posted by: GT on January 16, 2007 8:12 PM"It also brings me back to something I said before: as a matter of national security, we might want to explore why our army basically is not up to the task of occupying a small country for more than a few months."
This may be the wrong way to look at it. Can ANY country occupy another (in the sense of setting up a peaceful friendly government) these days?
Is it something that just can't be done given the current state of technology and social development? Is asking this question like a person in 1915 asking "What's wrong with our army that it can't even advance against the enemy?"
Or a person in 1942 asking "What's wrong with our army that it can't even stop an enemy cavalry column? They way they did in 1915?"
Maybe it just isn't possible these days?
Posted by: Patrick on January 16, 2007 8:49 PMStan wrote:
It was politically risky, but we needed the troops and FDR took his duties seriously. George Bush, alas, is no Franklin Roosevelt. That's why our army is too small to fulfill its commitments and why we're losing both countries to our enemies.
Spencer added:
It still goes back to the point that Bush will not properly fund the war because it would require him to give up his tax cut.
Bingo to both of you.
Bush tried to fight this war on the cheap and have it easy. It's neither. If, as the President claims, this is "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century," then why aren't we willing to pay for it?
Half-a-million troops in Iraq. And yes, the unthinkable, tax increases. To pay for recruitment bonuses, body armor, armored HumVees. More Bradleys. Rationing of gas and steel, to save them for the war effort.
We probably wouldn't need that, but we should have been prepared for it, were it necessary. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Posted by: Michigander on January 16, 2007 8:51 PMexplain writes:
Why did we leave Vietnam? Not because we were getting our butts kicked, but because the nation lost its resolve.
We were spending about 30 billion dollars a year and losing 10,000 soldiers a year. We had a half-million troop in Vietnam. We dropped more munitions in Vietnam than we did in World War II. With all that, we couldn't hold some territory (Khe Sahn and the A Shau Valley* come to mind).
That, it might be argued, is "getting our butts kicked."
[*] I have tremendous respect and admiration for the Marines at Khe Sanh and the Army troops in the A Shau Valley. This is not intended as a sneer at them. Any sneer is aimed at the commanders of that war and to the commanders-in-chief at the time.
Posted by: Michigander on January 16, 2007 9:10 PMRussil,
Why does the United States need to establish a stable and friendly government in Iraq?
Posted by: DRB on January 17, 2007 12:04 AMPeace in the Middle East is America's number 1 goal. Clinton failed miserably to create peace
in the Midddle East which resulted in the loss of the World Trade Center, 4 airplanes, crews and passengers and a piece of the Pentagon.
Iraq funded terrorist attacks on Israel. It invaded Kuwait. It used poison gas on the Kurds and the Iranians. Together with Syria, Iran and Afganistan, Iraq was the source of terrorist attacks against Israel.
Clinton Foreign policy accepted terrorist attacks against Israel under the category of "arabs will be arabs and after all its only Jews that are being killed". When these arab terrorists attacked New York (considered a Jewish stronghold by the arab street) the Clintonians first blamed the attack on Israel. Indeed there are many liberals who still feel that Middle East Peace can only come over the dead bodies of the Jews in Israel. And these liberals are willing to sacrefice these Jews just to see if this will appease the terrorists.
Of course Jewish liberals reject this notion and continue to support Israel. The Clintonians label these Jewish liberals Neo-Cons because they are inflexible.
Abandoning Iraq will return things to the status quo ante bellum. Once again Iraq oil money will fund terrorism against Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. Having handed terrorists the same sort of victory we handed the Viet Cong and the Khamer Rouge we can expect the same consequences for those people who were stupid enough to help American soldiers in Iraq and Afganistan. We can also expect more attacks on those of our cities with large Jewish populations. Further, now that North Korea has successful tested two suitcase nukes, we can expect better armed terrorists.
Ultimately, once Israel's back is against the wall and the Israelis realize they are alone in the world with no ally they can rely on, we can expect a nuclear exchange with Iran, Syria, and Iraq using those weapons everyone knows do not exist.
Alternatively we can keep the war going in Iraq where we suffer one dead for ever 100 dead whoevers. If we can't kill all the terorists, maybe they will simply get tired of dying and quit.
Posted by: sol vason on January 17, 2007 1:28 AMSol Vason, while I am pro-war and pro-Israel, I felt that your more emotional and, frankly, weakly-stated arguments serve little purpose in convincing anyone of anything. If you accomplish anything it is to drive further away anyone not already on your side.
Posted by: Nicole Tedesco on January 17, 2007 7:57 AMGT - lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. Saddam was spending huge amounts of time and energy to pretend that he still had WMDs, at the same time as denying he had WMDs. Why should we trust one and not the other?
Besides, Saddam had (1)illegal individual WMDs (2)illegal WMD programs, just (3)no illegal WMD *stockpiles*. And he was constantly violating the terms of the ceasefire. We didn't need any WMDs or UN resolutions to restart the war, Sadddam restarted it every day.
Posted by: Twill00 on January 17, 2007 8:54 AMTwil,
We had inspectors in the ground, all over Iraq. They were reporting that there were no WMDs.
Posted by: GT on January 17, 2007 9:07 AMMichigander,
Your assessment of the Vietnam War is unmitigated drivel. You conflate events that occurred at different times during the war to create the illusion of defeat even when, as in Khe San, the tactical objective of the operation was accomplished. In 1972, with US air and naval support but with virtually no US ground forces involved, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam decisively defeated a mass invasion from the north. Two years later, after a tremendous build-up funded by the Soviet Union and the Chinese and without any air, naval or re-supply assistance from the United States, ARVN was overwhelmed by a conventional invasion from the north. We taught them to fight the war our way – a way that succeeded – and then refused to help them with the tools necessary to make it work.
This was followed by the Killing Fields in Cambodia, a million Vietnamese shipped to torture camps and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese “boat people” dead in the South China Sea.
The claim that we “got our butts whipped” in Vietnam is a pernicious lie. Our side lost because we abandoned them and people died by the millions for the moral conceit that led to our desertion.
So why the emotional investment in this fantasy of defeat? I can only hope that it is shame, for it is richly deserved.
jl,
the "we never lost a battle in Vietnam" argument again?
Posted by: GT on January 17, 2007 9:14 AMSupposedly after the war a US colonel met with a Vietnamese colonel and remarked that the US had never lost a battle during the war. To which the Vietnamese colonel replied, "True, but irrelevant".
Posted by: GT on January 17, 2007 10:02 AMI like the strategy of knock it down, see what grows in its place. Don't like it, knock it down again. Repeat.
The military is the ultimate big govement organization. It's all about redistribution. It is incapable of efficiently using it constructively over time. It best when it makes corrections using short-term, one-time fixes. When we get into dedicated managment, we do more to muck things up than anything else. Goverment is best for short, high dollar projects. One-time costs. It is too slow, regulated, and all-around bureaucratic do anything effectively long-term. It's goverment as on-going management that's the problem.
Posted by: aaron on January 17, 2007 10:30 AMGT, you're proving the point. Irrelevant. Because they knew if they made enough noise and enough people lost heart and gave up back home we'd leave. And we did. That's their point.
Or do you think he's saying, "Ya, you always beat us, but we were really persistant attacking you a lot and losing everytime, that's why we won."
Posted by: ha on January 17, 2007 10:33 AMWell, It means that you don't beat an insurgency by purely military means, so talking about battles won is not very relevant. Hence my coment to jl. He seems to think we were not beat becasue we lost no battles.
The fact is we lost no battles yet we were beat.
Posted by: GT on January 17, 2007 10:36 AM'...why our army basically is not up to the task of occupying a small country for more than a few months...'
What guff is this!?
The army is plenty up to it, and at the same time is involved in about 80 other countries at the same time, including Afghanistan.
What is in doubt is if we're up to supporting them.
Clearly, Jane Galt isn't now if she ever was.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp
Posted by: Tom Perkins on January 17, 2007 10:38 AMAaron,
Please cite the specific problems and how it is the military as a big government organization screwed things up and how it would be better if it was not a big government organization.
GT - In another thread here people are claiming over the last 3 years 600,000 people were killed, presumably most not by American troops, but by violence resulting from the agency these Iraqi now have. Free will sucks don't it...
Anyway, now the UN says last year 34k will killed. Does that mean we're winning? We've dropped the level of deaths dramatically.
Bu that's an aside. If we're winning every engagment, maybe the answer is not to withdrawal but to keep engaging? You do understand that ultimately the most effective weapon the terrorists/insurgents have is to make a lot of noise through violence and death that weakens our stomach over here so we leave? That is exactly what they want to do. You realize that right?
3000 dead solidiers in 3 years pretty much sums up the word defeat for the terrorists. I think I've seen reports that we've lost that many from training accidents in one year before...
Posted by: ha on January 17, 2007 10:47 AM...why our army basically is not up to the task of occupying a small country for more than a few months
Our army is up to it. Our nation isn't any more.
In WWII, we lost 400,000 to defeat the Nazis.
We spent trillions to endure a Cold War for nearly 50 years in which we ultimately prevailed.
The world would be unspeakably different if we had lost either of those conflicts. In fact, we would likely not be having this discussion.
Now we have lost 3,000 in Iraq and are running away with our tail tucked between our legs.
I don't know if we can be called a superpower any more.
BTW, excellent post by John Thacker.
Posted by: Kevin P. on January 17, 2007 10:53 AMha,
What you and other war supporters seem not to accept is that Americans are simply unwilling to pay the price you want them to pay. You think 3k dead is, given the circumtsnces, not that high. But a majority of Americans no longer agree with Bush's rationale for the war and no longer support it.
Posted by: GT on January 17, 2007 10:59 AMEven if Iraq were to erupt into a genocidal cival war, would we (as in the US and RoW) really be better off with Saddam in power. Categorically no. Look at a map. Look at the ideology of aggressive regimes and muslim terrorist organizations.
Looking at our options in the past, our worst case (ignoring the proposed possibility we could have suffer many WMD casualties) is still better than the status-quo.
Iraq is not maturing as fast as I would like. Casualty wise, still only about 40% worse than my expected best-case year 1 senario (I expected low-end, 2000 casualties, mid-way about 10000).
An objective assesment is that our efforts in Iraq have stagnated. Whether the "surge" is enough to get us rolling enough is questionable. I was very skeptical last week (it seemed mostly like pollitical appeasement than an actual effort). I smirked when I saw it. However, the description made me more optimistic. The additional troops were supposed to be used to aggressively raid, kill, and capture militants. 10% doesn't sound like much, but you have to consider that very, very few troops are involved in combat activity, slightly more on defense, and slightly more than that on run-of-the-mill security patrols. The rest are all maintenance and construction. The vast majority of efforts are just managing the bureaucracy. 10,000 additional troops, aggressively active on the ground, might actually make a difference.
Posted by: aaron on January 17, 2007 11:01 AMThe above comments confirm my view that Bush's supporters have done him more harm than good. It was clear by autumn 2003 that we needed more troops. Maybe they could have been obtained by voluntary enlistments, maybe by conscription, but we definitely needed more boots on the ground. Bush failed to add them in 2003 because he was afraid of losing the 2004 election, and he failed to add them after the election because he was afraid of losing Congress in 2006. His supporters should have screamed DO SOMETHING!, but they kept quiet out of party loyalty. They should be ashamed of themselves, and it's sad that they can't see this.
Posted by: stan on January 17, 2007 11:37 AMStan,
The the only alternative now is to leave? Even though more troops was appropriate yesterday? It was a now or never kinda of a thing. Never mind the fact that even if he announced it, it would probably take months to get them there.
I and others took the presidents word for it when he said more troops weren't needed. Maybe they would have helped, maybe not. Who can say for certain? But if the people directly involved with all the information make a decision, who am I to second guess based on nothing other than what I see on TV and read from such wonderfully informed (more like presumptive) people like yourself on the internet.
The truth is you nor I do not know, and unless you can let me know you've looked at the data and can analyze the same information the pentagon has, I think you're either full of it or doing wishful thinking at best.
Posted by: stan on January 17, 2007 11:48 AMI was opposed to the war because a) I didn't believe the WMD argument, and b) I thought the result of the war would be the agrandizement of Iran. Nevertheless, once we had gone to war I wanted us to win. This is why I'm so hard on Bush and on his overly loyal supporters. It was clear by the fall of 2003 that more troops were needed, and it was criminal of Bush not to provide them. As a result, I've lost all faith in his competence and honesty. In answer to the previous comment, I would prefer that we work like mad to find a political settlement of the war between the Sunnis and Shias, and if that can't be done, that we try to work out a federal solution with an equitable division of the oil profits. If that's impossible, yes, I think we should leave.
Posted by: stan on January 17, 2007 12:31 PMAt the end of the day, the death toll in Iraq has fallen since 2004. Cities that used to be controlled by insurgents -- Najaf, Fallujah etc -- are no longer. Popular Iraqi support for the insurgency in Iraq remains well below 10%, and has indeed fallen. The economy is expanding, businesses are flourishing, oil income is rising, and the government, while incompetent, has proved stable.
Like someone said, it's not New Hampshire, but all in all it's hardly the picture of defeat that seems to be the media's pet narrative these days. If the US remains committed and continues to adjust as it gains more experience in the country, it will prevail. All the most significant variable suggest this to be the case.
But of course the most significant variable of all -- public opinion at home -- is another matter entirely.
Posted by: CHIP on January 17, 2007 12:41 PMSpencer - It still goes back to the point that Bush will not properly fund the war because it would require him to give up his tax cut.
Red herring. WWII was funded by massive debt.
As far as the surge goes, it's worth noting that all the new troops are committed to Baghdad, moving troop levels there from 13,000 to 33,000. This is significant.
The surge also represents a dramatic change in tactics. Like Stan, I fault the Bush administration for treading water for far too long. I suspect they hoped to hold down U.S. casualties and convinced themselves that they could leave Baghdad up to the Iraqis. Our military generally does not like to take on constabulary missions and the administration has generally gone along with the military (as opposed to, say, the State Department). It's not as if the State Department -- or CIA -- have shown any great competence in regards to Iraq in the last 10 years so I can hardly fault Bush for that.
In terms of who is right or wrong, supporters of the war are clearly wrong in a much more tangible way than those that warned of various disasters. As a hawk, I can say I didn't anticipate the administration's screw-ups in planning for the occuption, the folly of its detainee program, and its hesistancy to carry the attack to the enemy when necessary. I also didn't anticipate its utter failure to place the war in a long-term strategic (and budgetary) context domestically. In retrospect, I would say continuing the sanctions status quo -- hopefully with more muscular enforcement -- would probably have been a better option. One anti-war blogger (I'm afraid I forget who - it might have been one of the Crooked Timber guys) wrote once that he wasn't necessarily against the war, he was just against the war by this administration. Given what we've got, that's a very fair complaint.
But there were far worse alternatives than going to war. We have learned more from the invasion than the lack of WMD stockpiles. Most importantly we have learned that the oil for food program was hopelessly corrupted and that Hussein had plans in place to reconstitute his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted.
It's easy to contrast the situation in 2006 to the situation in January 2002, but that really isn't the correct comparison. The reality is that muscular sanctions would have been very hard to maintain, especially given the corruption of key players at the U.N. So imagine this scenario: sanctions fail, Iraq reconstitutes its WMD programs (including pursuit of nuclear weapons to oppose a nuclear Iran), and increases support to terrorist groups. It's as likely as anything posited by either war supporters or opponents five years ago.
Posted by: Henry on January 17, 2007 1:26 PMWhere are you pulling your facts from?
"Popular Iraqi support for the insurgency in Iraq remains well below 10%, and has indeed fallen"
If you mean support for the foreign fighters well yes but clearly the sunni insurgency has got the support of the Sunnis.
I love this very telling quote
"Cities that used to be controlled by insurgents -- Najaf, Fallujah etc -- are no longer"
That's true because they can no longer really be called cities. Their population has been reduced by 2/3rds (mostly people fleeing the fighting and not returning).
The question is what are we still doing in Iraq? Can we declare victory and go home? I mean we can keep providing their government aid and support but why more combat troops? What's the purpose? We will never establish a liberal democracy there (the Constitution has instituted shari law as the base of most laws) so we kind screwed the pooch there.
1) Can we please stop with the Vietnam discussions unless some real comparison is going to be made between that war and this one. That was then. This is now. Historical study of the Vietnam conflict is certainly valuable. Go write a book.
2) Comments along the lines of "a majority of Iraqis support attacks on U.S. troops" are not and have never been valid. In my brilliance I will now clearly illustrate this _without referring to any dataset whatsoever_. A) How many people do you think live in Iraq? OK. B) How many U.S. soldiers do you think there are in Iraq? OK. C) I was going to ask if you thought the Iraqis had easy access to guns and ammo, but you know what, forget it. Are there _rocks_ in Iraq? OK. D) Are there any U.S. soldiers alive in Iraq? OK. So if a majority, heck even a sizeable minority, of Iraqis actually supported killing U.S. soldiers - supported as in they were willing to do something about it - then the answer to D) would be "no". So what this really means is that some poll or the equivalent indicated that a majority of Iraqis support attacks on U.S. soldiers. Look, polls are a notoriously bad way to gather information. For example, ask 10 people if they want ten million dollars. Go ahead, ask.
3) "We need more troops" is a meaningless statement, okay? We always need more troops. How could we possibly not need more troops? When is it ever an advantage to have fewer troops? On all sides of every battle ever, everybody wanted more troops. If we had 500 million soldiers in Iraq it wouldn't hurt to have a few more.
Posted by: dirtyrottenvarmint on January 17, 2007 1:29 PMBrian,
Dig into any poll in Iraq and 95% of respondents, give or take a couple ticks, do not support attacks on the police, army or civilians.
A larger number of Sunnis certainly do support the insurgents, but that support is trending away, as the turnout for the national vote can attest, along with recent news of several tribes in Anbar turning on the insurgents.
As for Najaf losing 2/3 of its population, here's wikipedia:
"Najaf (Arabic: النجف; BGN: An Najaf) is a city in Iraq about 160 km south of Baghdad. Its estimated population in 2003 was 585,600 people, though this has increased significantly since 2003 due to immigration from abroad."
As for Fallujah, its population is estimated to have fallen to about 200,000 from 350,000, hardly by 2/3. And that's because the battle there resulted in the destruction of some 60% of its buildings and infrastructure -- infrastructure that's now being rebuilt.
When a bombing occurs in Iraq today, I don't view it as America's fault, but as a problem that America is trying to solve. But walk away from Iraq, and every bombing will be America's fault. And that's the way the world and history will see it.
Posted by: chip on January 17, 2007 2:03 PMThere are arguments for fewer troops. For one, making people take on reponsibilities of their own instead of neglecting them until someone else does 'em for them.
Posted by: aaron on January 17, 2007 2:08 PMChip at the end of the day we can't MAKE the Iraqis play nice with each other. They have to want to make this nation state called Iraq work. The bombings will NEVER be America's fault. As Major General James T. Thurman put it, "Part of our problem is that we want this more than they do."
"as the turnout for the national vote can attest,"
The national election had zero effect on sectarian violence - none whatsoever.
Look at the end of the day this is an Iraqi problem. We can't solve it for them.
I think the asterics is your que to laugh at thought of responding to dsquared and realize that she's just humoring the poor "statistical genious".
Posted by: aaron on January 17, 2007 2:16 PMLooks to me like Megan is gathering material for writing about bias, either for herself or Robin Hanson. Davies and his readers make an excellent case study, along with some of their antagonists.
It's also a good way to gather information and perspective on the subject through the few insightful comments.
Posted by: aaron on January 17, 2007 3:07 PMThat last paragraph was regarding the subject of the surge and the state of affairs in Iraq.
Thinking about going back to school Megan (writing about bias)? If so, I'm thinking about it too, but I'm also interested in Iraq and am thinking about going. I'd really like to find a way to combine the two.
Posted by: aaron on January 17, 2007 3:12 PMI had forgotten what a goofball delight it is to read GT, who tells both:
1. 'You mean convince the GOP Congress that US needed a bigger military after 9/11?'
and
2. 'What you and other war supporters seem not to accept is that Americans are simply unwilling to pay the price you want them to pay.'
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on January 17, 2007 4:21 PMSo you think that the GOP Congress in 2001 is the same thing as the American public in 2007?
No wonder you get everything wrong.
Here it goes again. If Bush wanted a bigger military after 9/11 he should have asked for it. He never did.
In 2007 there is no longer support to continue the war in Iraq.
Not so difficult, is it?
Posted by: GT on January 17, 2007 4:56 PMI wish I had a link to support this, but maybe someone can point me to it.
I remember reading (somewhere) that US forces were designed and planned assuming coalition wars, where the US would by and large take the lead on taking territory and destroying enemy forces, with allies taking the lead on holding territory behind us, securing supply lines, and maintaining civilian order. In my vague memory, the Italians in particular had something like half their army trained as military police -- their role in a coalition (NATO) war. (Hence the severe shortage of US MPs, leading to Abu Ghraib, etc.) I may be out of date (or wrong) on this concept -- does anyone know?
Anyway, if I am right, then the key error was not rounding up a sufficient coalition to fight the war properly. I turned from hawk to question mark the week I heard that France had sent a carrier group to the Gulf in anticipation of a war, followed up within days by Rumsfeld's "we don't need old Europe" comment. To me, this indicated that we weren't serious about getting allies to play their (quite necessary) roles. To me, taking the risk of going in alone, without sufficient forces to do it all ourselves, was a high risk maneuver -- we must have known exactly what and where the WMDs were.
So I think having the conversation as hawks vs. doves is too simplistic. Any one of us could be a hawk or a dove depending on the information provided. I think the questions should be around risk assessment and strategy. I.e., were we wrong in our risk assessment, and if so why? And then, when should we have realized that our strategy would not succeed relative to the risk assessment?
We were wrong on the risk assessment (that Saddam had WMD, willing to use them or sell them, etc) -- but there was an arguable case that many bought into. I don't know what the arguable case was for the strategy -- explicitly dissing the allies, no compromises, "light" forces, etc.
PJB
Posted by: PJB on January 17, 2007 5:34 PMDRB: "Why does the United States need to establish a stable and friendly government in Iraq?"
I posted a longish response, but it seems to be waiting for Jane's approval. The short version:
The US has burned up enormous resources on this war: money, military casualties, diplomatic capital. If Iraq ends up with a stable but hostile government ("Saddamism without Saddam"), the US would have been better off to simply leave Saddam Hussein in place, with UNMOVIC to keep him from acquiring WMD.
If Iraq ends up with no stable government, that's even worse, from the point of view of fighting al-Qaeda. Iraq's a much better base for al-Qaeda than Afghanistan, being at the heart of the Arab world.
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 17, 2007 6:21 PMI believe that the surge has a chance, but not because of the extra troops - rather, it's the change of engagement rules that's critical. I'd have just done a more radical change of rules without patrolling Baghdad.
Having watched Iraqi blogs carefully for some years, I believe the current crisis is rooted in our deliberate refusal to stop militias like al'Sadr's who were engaging in violence, killing, and increasingly ethnic cleansing.
More here.
" (those opposed to the war) never said you should bet on anything"
What a great description of the anti-war position. Never bet on anything or anyone. Don't bet on the Iraqis - let them die. Don't bet on democracy. Don't try to help oppressed people. Don't offer solutions or plans, just attack anyone who tries to do anything. Doing the right thing isn't always easy and fool-proof, so it's better to never bet on anything.
Posted by: Ann on January 18, 2007 7:49 AMBonus points if you claimed that Saddam would attack Israel in response to our invasion, that our troops would be killed by chemical weapons that Saddam didn't have, or that our invasion would cause an environmental disaster of epic proportions when Saddam blew the oil wells.
A.S. is still sneering, but look at that middle falsified prediction. It's based on the belief that Saddam had/was accumulating stockpiles of WMDs, one of the main arguments that garnered American support for the war ('9/11 . . . Iraq . . .9/11 . . . Iraq' was the other one). Given this belief (or granting it for the purpose of argument), this is an entirely reasonable concern. Add to it the fact that Administration officials were going on about cakewalks and such at the same time, and things start looking very strange.
Apropos the mention of Davies, I'm going to link to a classic post of his, The D-Squared Digest One Minute MBA - Avoiding Projects Pursued By Morons 101, where he lays out just the sort of decisionmaking details that Jane was talking about for:
Literally people have been asking me: "How is it that you were so amazingly prescient about Iraq? . . ." . . . Anyway, the secret to every analysis I've ever done of contemporary politics has been, more or less, my expensive business school education . . . Here's a few of the ones I learned which I considered relevant to judging the advisability of the Second Iraq War.Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance. . . .
Fibbers' forecasts are worthless. . . .
The Vital Importance of Audit. . . ."
(see post, of course, for details).
And even if he was actually quite wrong on Iraq, and didn't use anything like this to figure it out (not, I think, the case), he demonstrates how it could have been used, quite commonsensibly, do to so. This is where Jane's recent remarks run off the rails, so to speak. The exact predictions aren't actually that important (even though quite a few people were remarkably close), what we're talking about - given the limited knowledge available to most of us, and the extreme difficulty of exactly predicting the right outcome in such a situation - are heuristics. Rules of thumb.
Here, look at it this way. Imagine there are two little girls, Jane and another one - let's call her Sophia - walking along the street when the notice a car trailing them. The car stops, and the guy inside calls out, "Hey, little girls, do you want some candy? I have candy for you."
"No," Sophia replies, "we don't want candy." Now, they don't want candy, but also the situation is rather creepy, especially if they have any sense, whether from first-hand experience , learned from elders/society, or just the basic common kind.
"What do mean, we don't want candy?" Jane asks her friend, but at this point the man in the car calls out, "Well, actually, I have a lost puppy. Will you two help me find it? You can even have candy as a reward! And your mothers are sick, and they need you!"
"OK, this is even more creepy," Sophia says, but Jane exclaims "Oh no! I have to see my Mom! And get candy!" and starts heading towards the car. "No!" Sophia cries, "Watch out! He probably wants to kill us! Can't you tell that something's wrong? He's lying!" "Kill us?" Jane replies "Don't be silly! I'm sure we can trust him! Why are you always such a scaredycat? You're so stupid! Now come on! Mom! Candy!" and drags Sophia with her towards the car.
And indeed, the man doesn't kill them, although we will avert our eyes and pass over what does happen. But afterwards, Jane tells Sophia, "Ok, you were right, but there's no need to gloat or be rude," (Sophia's upset, you see, and saying some harsh things to Jane)," anyway, your prediction was completely wrong - you were probably just lucky, bitch."
This episode of Commonsense Theatre brought to you by the letters G and W, and the number 3000.
On the other hand, the current post does sound quite sensible. Incidentally, one of my more specific concerns was that if I was wrong and this war actually was really important, in a drain-the-swamp remake-the-Middle-East Clash-of-Civilizations sorta way, then promising WMDs and cakewalks and flowers and (in effect) mostly home-by-Christmas was a really bad way to prepare for the long haul, and a good way to set up for an American public clamoring for withdrawal not far down a very predictable road.
GWB never said the troops would be (mostly) home by Christmas. That phrase was used by Clinton referring to Bosnia--and we're still there!
Posted by: Rex on January 18, 2007 8:43 AMThere seems to be a running misconception about the inspectors and the WMD's. Perhaps the inspectors should have been called "verifiers" instead, and then the misconception wouldn't have begun and lasted so long.
The inspectors were not in Iraq to seek out and find any WMD's. That was not their job, nor did they try to do that. Their job was to verify that the WMD's that Iraq was known to have had were indeed destroyed as Saddam said they were. In many cases, the paperwork and witnesses were adequate for the inspectors to verify that the WMD's had indeed been destroyed. In a lot of cases, however, there were no witnesses, no paperwork, and many of the locations where the WMD's were known to have been showed no signs of a continuing presence of WMD's.
Meanwhile, intelligence sources indicated that Saddam himself, along with many others, thought that they did indeed have WMD's, and they were congratulating themselves on successfully deceiving the inspectors.
So the US and its allies, along with some of the upper level Iraqis, thought that Iraq still had WMD's.
Are we clear on that yet?
Posted by: Rex on January 18, 2007 8:52 AMNo Rex, you actually need to get your facts straight. You are describing some of the methods that are used in the inspection process. The fact is that inspectors found and physically destroyed more weapons than in the first Gulf War alone.
"While Iraq claims, with little evidence, that it destroyed all biological weapons unilaterally in 1991, it is certain that UNSCOM destroyed large biological weapons production facilities in 1996. The large nuclear infrastructure was destroyed and the fissionable material was removed from Iraq by the IAEA. "
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/27/sprj.irq.transcript.blix/
The fact is that the inspections were working, and would be continuing, if not for the overwhelming desire to invade this country irregardless of what was actually found.
Why did we leave Vietnam? Not because we were getting our butts kicked, but because the nation lost its resolve.
Huge problem- the lessons of Vietnam wasn't that we needed to "support the troops," which apparently consists of putting yellow magnets on our cars, but that there is no way to occupy a country while engaged in asymetrical warfare. Even if we couldn't learn this from the Brits or the French, Vietnam should have taught us this lesson.
Posted by: Zoroastrian on January 18, 2007 9:47 AMSo the US and its allies, along with some of the upper level Iraqis, thought that Iraq still had WMD's.
No, actually, we aren't clear on this. Making chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons is a serious industrial process, requiring materials and factories. We had no evidence of the existence of anything that would have been necessary to make 'WMD's'. Given the regime restricting imports of relevant materials, and the existence of satellites with high enough resolution to read the license plates on a truck anywhere in Iraq, that's pretty good evidence that there was no such production going on.
A line that gets thrown around in this context a lot is "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." And depending on the context, that's bullshit. The absence of evidence of an elephant in your bathroom is awfully strong evidence that elephants are, in fact, absent from your bathroom.
Posted by: LizardBreath on January 18, 2007 9:49 AMDidn't find many mass graves in Kosovo but that was somehow worth it.
Look, review the UN records...in 1995 Kamel defects adn we first learn that Saddam had WEAPONIZED ANTHRAX PRODUCTION that he "forgot" about in his 4 or 5 "full and final declarations" previous to that.
Posted by: Aaron on January 18, 2007 9:57 AMAs long as you're relying on Kamel, shouldn't you note that he also told us it was destroyed in 1991?
Posted by: LizardBreath on January 18, 2007 10:10 AMDan S.
You’ve hit on something I think is very important. The opponents and supporters of the war have very different frames through which they view Iraq. Opponents believe that it was all about WMD’s and that the failure to find any stockpiles invalidates the entire effort. Supporters (of whom I am one) never thought it was about WMD’s except as a one of a list of reasons presented to enlist international support. To us, (and to the administration, who have been saying this consistently since 9/11) it really is a “drain-the-swamp remake-the-Middle-East Clash-of-Civilizations” sort of thing.
That’s why opponents find the connection between Iraq and 9/11 ridiculous, while supporters believe that dismissing it makes as much sense as letting Hitler off the hook because he didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor. That’s why opponents believe the continued risking of American troops looks like a cynical refusal to admit an almost criminally negligent failure in decision-making, while to supporters it looks like, in any historical context, a very small casualty count for what should be a critical victory against implacable enemies. That’s why opponents see things like the “warrantless wiretap” program as a major infringement and George Bush as a threat to liberty, while supporters believe that this is making a fetish of an expansive view of personal liberty which looks preposterous next to the danger of the destruction of western civilization.
It’s like the American Civil War, circa 1864, which Democrats viewed as a war to reunite the country, which benefit was no longer worth the cost, while Republicans increasingly viewed it as a war to end slavery, an institution they believed abhorrent and ultimately corrosive to the nation. It’s similar in many ways to the abortion “debate”. Proponents view it as a question of personal liberty, but opponents really, REALLY believe that we’re talking about babies, against whose interests claims of a “right to choose” seem preposterous.
So we’re not dealing with “wing-nuts”, “moon-bats”, morons or idiots on either side (with some exceptions who shall remain nameless). We just don’t agree on the frame, which is the one thing we’re not talking about!
A.S. is still sneering
No, no, no. Sneering isn't the right word. I'm laughing at what a buffoon Davies is. And you helpfully link to a post of Davies' that allows me to laugh at him even more: "Literally people have been asking me: 'How is it that you were so amazingly prescient about Iraq?'".
That really is just too funny. I can't think of a better example of Davies' amazing pomposness! I fear that if anyone sticks a pin in Davies, he'd just pop.
As to your comparison of war-supporters with child rapists, well, I'm don't think that deserves a response.
Posted by: A.S. on January 18, 2007 10:18 AMLizardbreath, How dare you expect honesty from a war supporter!
Posted by: Horace K. Mann on January 18, 2007 10:26 AMjl
Good analysis. However the war was sold, even in the US, as a case of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Why anyone thought a few cases of nerve gas shells was a threat to US national security, I'll never really understand.
There were also very significant efforts to link Saddam Hussein to 9-11, via that meeting in Prague (which may never have taken place). Cheney mentioned it a number of times.
Restoring Democracy to the Middle East was never the case made to the majority of the American people, nor the one most Americans believed. It became the raison d'etre ex post-- after the invasion had succeeded and no WMDs were found.
As to 'draining the swamp', I think the neocons (a small minority of american conservatives at the best of times, and largely coming from Democratic roots rather than GOP ones) really did think the US could knock over Iraq, and then Syria and Iran, without great effort.
But how realistic was that? No one who knew anything about the history and politics of the region thought that was at all realistic. The US government's own people warned of the complexity of the task.
James Fallows in particular wrote a prescient article in the Atlantic 'The 51st State' about how Iraq would be a US charge for a long time to come.
I'll go with Patrick Cockburn's book The Occupation
http://www.amazon.com/Occupation-War-Resistance-Iraq/dp/1844671003
Cockburn is The Independent's Middle Eastern correspondent and unusually for journos from the west, speaks Arabic and has lived in the area (don't confuse him with Robert Fisk, who is much more polemical).
The point Cockburn makes is that both your Administration (and ours in the UK) thought that it would be easy, like Afghanistan. He doesn't grind a left-wing axe, he just says, in effect, 'don't overcomplicate this. They thought it would be easy'. They were on the crest of a wave, and they began to believe their own propaganda. Having been driven out of Iraq once, the Brits in particular ought to have known better.
After hubris comes nemesis. And so it has proven in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Posted by: Valuethinker on January 18, 2007 10:27 AMhttp://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200211/fallows
The Atlantic Monthly | November 2002
The Fifty-first State?
Going to war with Iraq would mean shouldering all the responsibilities of an occupying power the moment victory was achieved. These would include running the economy, keeping domestic peace, and protecting Iraq's borders—and doing it all for years, or perhaps decades. Are we ready for this long-term relationship?
by James Fallows
Posted by: Valuethinker on January 18, 2007 10:29 AMZoroastrian,
You do a nice job of demonstrating why Vietnam is not irrelevant to the discussion of Iraq. Much of what Americans have come to believe about foreign relations, warfare and our proper place in the world comes from interpretations made of our involvement in Vietnam. Unfortunately, as Roger Fisher once pointed out, the only lesson anyone learned from Vietnam is that they were right all along.
You also do a pretty good job of demonstrating how misconceptions regarding Vietnam can land you to a pretty bad place. In Vietnam the asymmetric part of the war was largely over after the Viet Cong was destroyed in the Tet Offensive in 1968. We WON the asymmetrical part of the conflict. The end came years later when very conventional armored and infantry divisions supported by heavy artillery poured into South Vietnam.
Examples of nations surviving in the face of asymmetrical threats are legion – Malaysia, Indonesia, Ulster, the Philippines, the Basque region of Spain, Israel, etc., etc., etc.
So the notion that Vietnam proves that we’re doomed in Iraq is standing the truth on its head.
PJB
As far as I know, there was no formal agreement between allies about specialised roles, *however* there is specialisation within NATO eg the British Special Forces etc.
Any actual specialisation is worked out campaign by campaign eg in Bosnia.
US Forces were and are not configured for long term 'police action'. You may recall GWB and Dick Cheney in 2000, 'the United States does not do nation-building'.
Indeed some of the early missteps, eg by the 4th Infantry Division, appeared to come from a 'war fighting' posture, which clashed with the chaotic country they had suddenly inherited.
I think Thomas Ricks' book (Fiasco) has an interview with the head of all the MPs in the theatre, who wonders now whether he should have resigned when he realised how few his resources would be post invasion. But, then, it was never credible that the US would have '100,000 Arab speaking MPs'.
I would note from the Italian performance in southern Iraq (see Rory Stewart's book about running a province for the Foreign Office under CPA auspices) that the Italian forces would not have been credible in this role. They actively avoided any conflict with the local warlords and militias eg during the first Sadr uprising-- they would not come to the rescue of Stewart's besieged party.
I don't think the French were ever on for the Iraq War. They told the British and the Americans from the very beginning that they were being idiots: it would alienate our Arab friends, and land us with a huge mess.
The only way that there could have been a genuine coalition against Iraq, was in the fashion of Afghanistan ie that Saddam Hussein launched a genuine threat outside his borders by attacking another country *oir* conversely he was overthrown internally and the country was in danger of slipping into chaos.
Posted by: Valuethinker on January 18, 2007 10:49 AM"No, actually, we aren't clear on this. Making chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons is a serious industrial process, requiring materials and factories. We had no evidence of the existence of anything that would have been necessary to make 'WMD's'. Given the regime restricting imports of relevant materials, and the existence of satellites with high enough resolution to read the license plates on a truck anywhere in Iraq, that's pretty good evidence that there was no such production going on."
I didn't say that there was production going on; I said that the inspectors were trying to confirm that the KNOWN IRAQI WMD's (known because they were admitted to by Saddam in connection with GW I) were destroyed. As Zoroastrian noted, the inspectors "found" and oversaw the destruction of many WMD's--but they found them because they were where the Iraqis or their records said they were. There were no independent fishing expeditions trying to find WMD's. That's not what the inspectors did or were supposed to do.
Posted by: Rex on January 18, 2007 10:49 AMjl's analysis of war supporters and opponents looks spot on to me.
Valuethinker, the danger in nerve gas shells is that they contain nerve gas! And given Saddam's support of terrorist efforts in many places, the perceived likelihood that the nerve gas would end up eventually in the U.S. and used against a civilian target or targets is too great to ignore. Even assuming that the probability of that happening was rather small (which I don't believe), multiplying the probability times the risk gives you a rather large number.
As I recall, GWB's reasons for going to war didn't begin to focus on WMD's until much later in the whole process. People like me were sold as soon as the global war on terror was declared. (People like me are former military with a healthy appreciation for geopolitics and have watched various terrorists attack our country going back to at least the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in the early 1980's. I also have a personal stake in this--I spent 11 years on active duty and 17 in the Reserves, in the Marines. And yes, my son is also in the Marines and has had one tour in Iraq so far.)
But for a lot of people, the sole reason they agreed to go along with the war was the WMD's. My belief is that now that the WMD threat has been discovered to be relatively non-existent, the WMD's-are-the-sole-reason-for-supporting-the-war folks feel betrayed because they ignored their normal anti-war principles, and are lashing out bitterly at GWB. I am not lashing out bitterly because I am not normally anti-war; I just believe that our national security should be at stake before we risk my life or my son's life. Bosnia and Kosovo both fail that test. Liberating Kuwait was essential, as was the invasion into Iraq. If we didn't do it then, we would have had to do it sometime within the next 30 years after some suitably horrible terrorist crime was committed which was directly linkable to Iraq.
Posted by: Rex on January 18, 2007 11:06 AM"We just don’t agree on the frame, which is the one thing we’re not talking about!"
Well, some of us do agree on the frame. We don't agree that it is the US' job to remake the world in its image, and that a project of swooping through the world to smash potential threats through unilateral military intervention is sheer folly doomed not only to failure, but will actually make things worse. We're "draining the swamp" by turning the hose on it and stomping around for a while.
And that we had to go through some bogus WMD exercise to justify the "true" project really plays into the islamists hands. They project on to us an imperial project in their holy lands and we respond by... undertaking an imperial project in their holy lands. Brilliant!
As Americans we have this arrogance, this hubris, that because we are so militarily and economically powerful, we can undertake any international project we want while flipping the bird at the international community. Yes, multilateralism is hard and frustrating and slow and doesn't get that immediate gratification that simply smashing things does, but it is a worthwhile, and as we are painfully being shown here, a necessary endeavour. Those that speak scornfully of such things point to the lack of immediate results of such efforts, but I think that stems as much from the difficulty of a project whose aim is achieving peace and stability as much as the "ineffectivess" of multlateral interventions. And I think we can agree that simply invading and hoping for the best is naive and simplistic and doesn't work.
Maybe, maybe, one lesson out of all this is to have some regard for the views of others that have been down similar roads before, and to acknowledge that others have an interest in this problem (failed states, thugocracies, fanaticalism) as well, and that perhaps a broader approach to solutions is needed. And that it will be difficult -- not in a military sense, but in an "engaging in a process and having patience" sense. But we are not patient people.
Posted by: g-man on January 18, 2007 11:30 AMg-man:
Let's accept arguendo that Iraq has not been a good outcome. So what's the right way to deal with Iran's nuclear program? Has multilateralism and negotiation provided a good outcome there? Has that been handled multilaterally enough? Have we been patient enough? What's your impression of the downsides to that approach?
The problem is that all the outcomes suck, it's a question of deciding which one sucks least. Or, perhaps more pointedly, who it's going to suck for most. FWIW, in general I'm OK with a decision that minimizes the amount it sucks for me, my family and my fellow citizens.
This criteria (minimax optimization) is a standard game theory method for making decisions in the face of uncertainty.
Posted by: SG on January 18, 2007 1:22 PMHistorian Eric Bergerud comments further on minimax optimization:
"Kissinger admired the great diplomats of the 19th Century: Metternich, Bismarck, etc. Bismarck in particular never thought that events could be predicted with precision. When a policy was pursued, a range of outcomes could be expected. The trick was to develop policy where the minimum outcome (today we might call it a worst case scenario) was acceptable. If a triumph ensued, great. If it was something in between, don't die of surprise."
Of course, Bismarck also dismissed preventive war as "suicide for fear of death."
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 18, 2007 1:47 PMg-man,
I believe that we are involved in a global war against Islamic totalitarianism the objective of which is the wholesale destruction of western civilization. I believe that this war has been going on with varying degrees of intensity since the Middle Ages and has reached a stage which is intense and may be decisive. I also believe that the outcome is seriously in doubt and that our options are few and nowhere very good. This is the perspective from which I view the Iraq war.
So from my perspective your comments APPEAR TO BE naïve, off-point and supercilious. When a people who believe that they have been instructed by God to slaughter infidels are on the march, it seems silly to worry about whether I’m being sufficiently humble.
Of course, you think your comments are entirely germane because you think we’re dealing with a different problem than I do. I get that. If I shared your frame I’d probably agree with you on the details. But I don’t. Why don’t we address that issue instead of accusing each other of various crimes against logic, the truth and mankind?
Bush didn’t lie or distort. He isn’t a war monger, a religious fanatic or a psychopath acting out a macabre fantasy. He is not the corrupt puppet of some invisible cabal of arms dealers or industrialists. And he is not incompetent. He disagrees with your view of the problem we face, and so do I. So convince me I’m wrong.
jl: So convince me I’m wrong.
You need to look at capabilities as well as intentions. Al-Qaeda may intend to destroy the West, but it doesn't have the capability to do so.
If you look at the power of the Islamic world as a whole, relative to the West, it's fragmented and weak. It has multiple centers of power, which are often in conflict with one another (think of Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia).
Al-Qaeda is a real threat. But the way to defeat is by isolating it and marginalizing it within the Islamic world (it has plenty of adversaries within the Islamic world), not by trying to make the Middle East into a US sphere of influence. That's far beyond the capabilities of the US. The US is not omnipotent.
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 18, 2007 4:54 PMWell, I DON'T believe that we are involved in a global war against Islamic totalitarianism the objective of which is the wholesale destruction of western civilization. I DON'T believe that this is a continuation of a war that has been going on with varying degrees of intensity since the Middle Ages.
So from my perspective your comments APPEAR TO BE paranoid, delusional and informed with a simplistic world view of us v. them. Muslims are not a people who believe that they have been instructed by God to slaughter infidels and they are not all on the march. It seems silly to worry about whether I’m being sufficiently humble about my country launching into an effort to subjugate or exterminate an entire race of people.
And your claim that Bush didn't lie or distort, isn't a war monger, and (most shockingly) that he's competent, well, gee whiz [throws hands in air]. We'll have to agree to disagree on that one.
Posted by: g-man on January 18, 2007 5:45 PMSome of you lot need to grow up: it was completely unnecessary to have an exhaustive set of specific predictions about how the war would develop in order to oppose it. A number of things could have gone wrong, and if one believed--like I did--that the aggregate risk was not worth the effort, one was right in predicting that the hawks would be proven wrong.
To demand from sensible war-in-Iraq-skeptics proof of bold and correct predictions about how the war would unfold is rather silly. One doesn't decide to embark in uttely risky adventures only when one has a precise idea about what *will* happen. It is enough to know what the risk is very large.
Posted by: pedro on January 18, 2007 7:09 PMg-man: And your claim that Bush didn't lie or distort--
The most obvious and damaging example is Bush's statement, "We do not torture." The Washington Post notes: His comments followed efforts by Vice President Cheney to lobby lawmakers to exempt the CIA from an amendment that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The exemption would cover the secret prisons.
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 18, 2007 8:16 PMThe Poor Man describes the BTKWB limit as resembling a fundamental constant of political science: BTKWB (the President’s approval ratings the morning after he pre-empted Monday Night Football in order to Bind, Torture, and Kill Wilford Brimley for his own sexual gratification) has generally been taken to be somewhere in the 32-36% range, depending on the theoretical models used, and depending on if he uses up the MNF timespot completely, or just pops in during halftime. I mean, it sounds like a sick joke, but really, how far off is this from what's actually been happening?
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 18, 2007 8:16 PM"As to your comparison of war-supporters with child rapists, well, I'm don't think that deserves a response.
I certainly didn't intend to make such a comparison! If my analogy gave anybody that impression, I very much apologize. The little girl named "Jane" was (for some reason) supposed to stand for war supporters, while "Sophia" (Gr., "wisdom" - "Columba" didn't quite work) was supposed to stand for Iraq war opponents. The child rapist is supposed to represent the Administration, and its main domestic political allies.
Which, in retrospect, was rather unfair and inflammatory. I apologize.
To child rapists.
jl: "The opponents and supporters of the war have very different frames through which they view Iraq.
This is an excellent point, and I entirely agree (my view of the supporters' frame is summed up pretty well by g-man).
"Supporters (of whom I am one) never thought it was about WMD’s except as a one of a list of reasons presented to enlist international support. "
1) Hang on a sec! Countless supporters appeared to think it was about WMDs, at the least as a major and genuine reason. (Rex especially seems to imagine that most of these folks were normally-anti-war folks who are upset at having betrayed their principles; some, yes, but I suspect that the majority were average Americans - war-for-a-good-reason folks, for varied values of "good reason"). In my possibly faulty recollection, the by far loudest and clearest public messages were that Al Qaida and Saddam, Iraq and 9/11 were all in close proximity, at least in terms of Administration rhetoric, and that we couldn't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud. Indeed, when I first found out that the neocons were pushing some insane geopolitical Grand Plan, my thoughts actually started dwelling, quite unwillingly, on the possible effectiveness of self-immolation. Obviously didn't; not going for protest cred, but attempting to give a sense of my reaction.
2) This didn't give you an uneasy feeling, that the Administration was lying/wildly overstating not just to our allies, but to our own people? That was another meta-concern of mine during the rush to war: my judgment isn't especially good, and I considered it entirely possible that I was mistaken, but clearly the proper thing would be for the American public as a whole to be presented with the best and fullest information as possible to decide with, instead of lies or at best half-truths? Doesn't it seem a little undemocratic otherwise, a little like treating the public like a collection of focus groups, children to be led, or fools to be persuaded, rather than We the People?
stan: I and others took the presidents word for it when he said more troops weren't needed. Maybe they would have helped, maybe not. Who can say for certain? But if the people directly involved with all the information make a decision, who am I to second guess based on nothing other than what I see on TV and read from such wonderfully informed (more like presumptive) people like yourself on the internet.
Who are you to "second-guess," based on what you can learn? A citizen, perhaps?
Took the president's word for it, jeez . . . don't they teach history in the schools nowadays?
As a pretty good actor fellow once said, trust, but verify.
"In my possibly faulty recollection, the by far loudest and clearest public messages were that Al Qaida and Saddam, Iraq and 9/11 were all in close proximity, at least in terms of Administration rhetoric, and that we couldn't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud."
I paid close attention to what the President said from the declaration of the war on terror to the (at last!) invasion of Iraq, and I never heard anything like that. We truly have different perceptions of what words mean when we listen--that's what makes constructive communication so difficult.
When two people are from totally different sets of life experiences, constructive communication is unlikely, though possible. Just look at the following pairs: men and women, blacks and whites, hispanics and blacks, liberals and conservatives, urbanites and ruralites, skiiers and snowboarders (ha!), Northerners and Southerners, etc. I'm not saying that communication is impossible, but that it has to start from some common ground, because even when you use the exact same words, they don't mean the same thing to the parties involved.
Posted by: Rex on January 19, 2007 12:23 PMDan S., Russil Wvong, pedro, g-man, et al:
Iraq is sunk costs. I'll ask again: What is the right way to deal with Iran?
I'll put a marker down. I would find it acceptable if Iran was in the exact same state as Iraq. That is:
* The current Iranian government is removed from power and is no longer able to sow turmoil around the region
* US troops have been able to make sure that no weapons programs are operational.
* Iranian oil is being sold on the open market without proceeds funding weapons progams or terrorist activities.
* US troops are actively engaging jihadis on their own turf.
* Iranians are killing each other to try to control Iran.
Not an optimal outcome, but far, far better than an Iran in possession of nuclear weaponry. And if it turned out that Iran has been grossly overstating their nuclear capabilities, well, better safe than sorry.
SG: Iraq is sunk costs. I'll ask again: What is the right way to deal with Iran?
Attempt a grand bargain, as outlined by Flynt Leverett: an American military guarantee to Iran in exchange for limits on Iran's nuclear program, an end to Iran's support for terrorist groups, and cooperation in Iraq.
If that fails and Iran goes nuclear, fall back to containment and deterrence, as with Communist China when it went nuclear in 1964. It's not easy to use nuclear weapons, because you're running a huge risk of being annihilated in retaliation.
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 19, 2007 2:41 PMSG: I'll put a marker down. I would find it acceptable if Iran was in the exact same state as Iraq.
Iran is much larger than Iraq, both geographically and by population (70 million vs. 27 million). And the US military is already overstretched. Invading Iran is not an option.
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 19, 2007 2:46 PM
Hehe, you'd make a good theoretical economist:
"Assume a dildo..."
Posted by: aaron on January 19, 2007 2:49 PMWhy assume we need to occupy the country after an invasion?
Posted by: aaron on January 19, 2007 2:53 PMaaron: Why assume we need to occupy the country after an invasion?
I'm not assuming that. I'm saying that the US doesn't have the military capability to invade Iran and overthrow the Iranian government, as SG appeared to be proposing ("the Iranian government [would be] removed from power").
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 19, 2007 3:11 PMI oppose military action against Iran, though it is clear to me that Iran poses a greater danger to the U.S. than Iraq did. The reasons are similar to the ones I had in opposing the war in Iraq: a general distrust for the ability of *this* administration to conduct itself wisely in foreign affairs, particularly regarding the Middle East; a strong conviction that inflaming anti-American sentiment in the region is a high cost to pay for ensuring regime change in a nation that already holds democratic elections (this wasn't the case in Iraq, granted); a cosmopolitanist perspective according to which the value of the life of an innocent Iranian or Iraqi civilian is just as valuable as that of an innocent American person; a deeply moral reluctance to engage in enthusiastic lobbying for unleashing death and destruction among others unless humanitarian reasons enter the picture; and I could go on.
Posted by: pedro on January 19, 2007 3:21 PMpedro: so what policy would you propose instead?
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 19, 2007 3:41 PMRussil,
The danger to us (as opposed to, say, Israel) in Iran having nukes is that they could well end up in the hands of terrorists. If a nuke is set off in New York, who exactly would we nuke in retaliation? Retaliation doesn't work in this case, which is why we're concerned about this.
Pedro,
While the deaths of innocent Iranians or Iraqis are indeed regrettable, they are not on a par with the deaths of innocent Americans--to Americans. I put my life on the line in the Marines to protect my fellow citizens, not the citizens of other countries. Sorry, but that's the way it is. I am very very glad that our president feels the same way, which he should, because he is constitutionally mandated to do so.
Posted by: Rex on January 19, 2007 4:07 PMOh, and militarily, our Air force and Navy are not tasked out the same way the Army and Marines are. Sure, they're involved in Iraq, but not nearly to the same degree. That means they are free to take on Iran. After several months of bombing and naval blockade, a large ground force could move in from Iraq, since a lot of the problems in Iraq come from Iran. I'll even bet that Iraq would love to send troops to Iran to fight alongside us, but that would create future problems that just aren't worth it.
Posted by: Rex on January 19, 2007 4:11 PMRex: Fair enough. You have the right to value the lives of individual people on the basis of nationality (or race, religion, and similar categories, for that matter). I have the right to regard your exercise of that right as morally abominable and quite irrational.
By the way, I don't know where exactly in the Constitution is the President required to value the lives of individual American citizens more than the lives of foreign others, but I suspect that this is not the case. Roughly speaking, the President has a special responsibility towards American citizens because he/she works for them, but this does not logically mandate him/her to deem American citizens superior (in value) to other citizens. If I'm wrong, I'd like to know where specifically does the Constitution mandate Presidential bigotry.
Russil: I don't have a specific set of prescriptions as to how to engage diplomatically with Iran, but I do believe that diplomacy (and smart diplomacy at that) is an option far more promising than military force--especially in the current geo-political context. The fact that Iran is a democratic regime in which elections take place periodically is by and large an indicator that a policy of deflating tensions is better than one that enhances them. The US has to get better press in the Middle East, and the only way to get better press is to tap into the local knowledge of people in the Middle East who have legitimate (and deeply illegitimate) complaints about the US, and to act in good faith to build good understanding between the US and some key moderate sectors within the public of the region.
I also think the US should momentarily suspend its obsessive paranoia re: Iran, and obsessively work to get back its ability to deploy soft power in the world at large.
One thing is clear to me: in the long run, in a world in which it is increasingly more likely for small groups of individuals to get access to weapons of mass destruction, it is extremely unwise to incessantly increase the degree to which the United States is singled out as a global bully, and so go-it-alone policies are quite risky.
Posted by: pedro on January 19, 2007 4:53 PMJust to add a couple of things: Valuing a *country* more than another is certainly not the same as valuing the lives of individual citizens of that country more than the lives of individual citizens of the other country. And offering to risk one's life in order to protect some does not commit one to deeming the beneficiaries of one's protective impulses to be more valuable human beings than those one has not made such a commitment to protect.
Posted by: pedro on January 19, 2007 5:26 PMRex: The danger to us (as opposed to, say, Israel) in Iran having nukes is that they could well end up in the hands of terrorists.
This would be a hugely dangerous gamble on the part of Iran: the chance of the nukes being traced back to Iran would be high, resulting in annihilation.
After several months of bombing and naval blockade, a large ground force could move in from Iraq, since a lot of the problems in Iraq come from Iran. I'll even bet that Iraq would love to send troops to Iran to fight alongside us--
60% of the population of Iraq is Shiite. The government of Iraq is dominated by Shiites. There's close connections between Iran and Iraqi Shiites. If the US attacks Iran, it's going to have both the Sunnis and the Shiites against it in Iraq.
At this point Iran is holding very strong cards. Given Iran's geography, a US ground force would have to push a long, long way to be able to overthrow the Iranian government. Iran can choke off oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz (see the map I linked earlier). And Iran is a player in Afghanistan as well.
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 19, 2007 6:09 PMpedro: I don't have a specific set of prescriptions as to how to engage diplomatically with Iran, but I do believe that diplomacy (and smart diplomacy at that) is an option far more promising than military force--especially in the current geo-political context.
Fair enough.
to act in good faith to build good understanding between the US and some key moderate sectors--
Diplomacy isn't really about understanding, it's a matter of negotiation. So the question is what the US wants from Iran--meaning the Iranian government, not really Iranian public opinion--and what it has to offer.
Leverett is suggesting that what the US can offer Iran is a promise not to attack it. Since the chances of such an attack succeeding would be dismal, it wouldn't be a huge sacrifice on the part of the US.
Posted by: Russil Wvong on January 19, 2007 6:19 PMRussil Wvong:
If you really believe the chances of an attack succeeding are dismal, then doesn't that in turn imply that containment and deterrence are not viable options? Didn't you previously say that containment and deterrence is your fallback position?
Seriously, how can you say the US can't defeat Iran? I will agree that the US couldn't occupy Iran, but destroying Iran's military, industrial and command and control capabilitites are easily within US reach.
The will to do so, well, not so much. And that's why there's no reason to have any belief that negotiations will succeed. Lets hope that the Iranians don't do what they've been publically saying they will do
, because that will make everyone look back fondly on the current situation in Iraq...BTW, who was it who said "hope is not a plan"?
Posted by: SG on Janu