So a very kind and patient conservative wrote me on why THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE got so mad at me for merely summarizing the “neocon” position:
Well, they’re more excited about Hagel personally than I am. Still, it’s a symbolic victory for realist elements. Incidentally, nothing drives my colleagues crazier than being called isolationists, as you do in that remark. They really aren’t.
So obviously, if that’s the issue, I don’t want to drive anyone crazy. So in the post below, replace “isolationist” with “realist.” That not to say their realism is the same as the Thomistic realism you can find at the foundation of my book POSTMODERNISM RIGHTLY UNDERSTOOD.
When I was in graduate school, I mainly took IR courses. The disappointing part of IR as a discipline is its feeble attempt at theory.
If I remember correctly (and how likely is that?), the big contrast was between REALISM and IDEALISM. It was the contrast between a foreign policy based on defending one’s interests and one that projects one’s ideals. Hans Morgenthau, who was quite an able thinker, was studied as the realist guy. And Woodrow Wilson was the idealist guy. I wasn’t a fan of either–preferring the wisdom of Raymond Aron as the appropriate middle position.
It always seemed to me that Reagan too found that middle position–projecting both a prudent concern for interests (and so avoiding major military interventions and dealing with “authoritarian” regimes that were friendly to us) and unapologetic idealism–calling the “evil empire” out for what it really was and having confidence that the truth represented (note the Voegelinian use of represented) by our country would eventually set people free from the “lie” (see Solzhenitsyn and Havel) that was communist ideology.
That American idealism is actually true is viewed by some “traditionalist” or theoretically Eurocentric conservatives as gnostic pretentiousness that magically exempts us from the consequences of sin or not so different from communism. It does in fact–as it case of Wilsonian progressivism at its worst–occasionally become close to that. And did some neocons (see Bush’s over-the-top Second Inaugural) lose their marbles for a while in talking about the impending victory of American “natural right” everywhere? Well, sure. (I refer you to Dan Mahoney and Pierre Manent for measured criticisms of this excess. I also remind you that I’m on record in not being “theoretically” a neocon or a Strasusian or whatever.) But on the relationship between America and truth, I refer you to Chesterton on being “a home for the homeless”–a truth about who we are equal persons under God.
It’s worth adding that some Straussians (such as West Coaster Charles Kesler) have been big critics of neocon Wilsonianism in foreign policy. They have the merit of developing a more coherent theory of Wilson as evildoing progressive idealist. But they’re not as “realist,” I think, as the TAC writers. Those West-Coasters go much further than I would in praising my country by calling it “the best regime.” Kesler, for one, did encourage Romney to distance himself–in the name of prudence–from Bush’s idealistic screw-ups. I sure wish he had.
January 11th, 2013 | 11:30 am
1. I wish Realism had a different name. It’s not “realistic”–it’s just a particular set of foreign policy positions.
2. As someone who came of age late in the Cold War, I find those policy positions sickening and amoral. I mean, a certain TAC blogger thinks the US position should be to tell Syrians to pound sand because the Russians want Assad to stay in power. Actually, that’s beyond amorality into outright immorality.
3. Oh well, the legacy of Bush (who was not even close to a neocon, btw) has folks mistakenly equating idealistic talk with overt military action, which has produced a massive backlash which I fully understand. Paired with the discrediting of the GOP as a legit economic voice re:budgets, this is going to produce absolutely catastrophic effects before too long.
January 11th, 2013 | 11:48 am
Brian, Three good points. Bush’s SECOND INAUGURAL, though, did embody a certain kind of neocon “national greatness,” “natural right” optimism that scared me at the time. Point three, of course, makes me cry.
January 11th, 2013 | 1:32 pm
For quick tastes of Aron, go to my posing him against a U2 song here: http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/postmodernconservative/2011/05/30/carls-rock-songbook-5-u2-new-years-day/
I am broad agreement with Brian here, but disagree with point 3. A fair account and critique of the real-not-mythical foreign policy neo-cons and the real W is just what so many on the right seem incapable of articulating. (Daniel Mahoney’s essay that Lawler refers to is an exception.) That incapacity marks, IMO, a certain secret mental capitulation to the euro/leftist smear campaigns launched very early on against both. Intelligent conservatism has got to keep denying that poisonous “Conventional Wisdom,” has got to keep questioning its acceptance. It’s broad acceptance is a political fact, a present fact about common opinion. It being such a fact provides little to no insight about the essential IR questions here.
January 11th, 2013 | 2:05 pm
Brian- Was it just the legacy of Bush that “has folks mistakenly equating idealistic talk with overt military action,” or was that tendency already there? It certainly seems that people were scared by Reagan’s “idealism,” if not only because of his policy of military build-up. Perhaps the difference is that Reagan didn’t allow us to be drawn into large-scale, drawn out conflicts where it would be difficult to ever finally say “we’ve won.”
January 11th, 2013 | 2:37 pm
[...] So a very kind and patient conservative wrote me on why THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE got so mad at me for merely summarizing the “neocon” position: Well, they’re more excited about Hagel Source: Postmodern Conservative [...]
January 11th, 2013 | 3:43 pm
“Oh well, the legacy of Bush (who was not even close to a neocon, btw) has folks mistakenly equating idealistic talk with overt military action, which has produced a massive backlash which I fully understand.”
This is a nice distillation of the conventional wisdom regarding the “catastrophic effects” of the Bush administration. I do wonder however when we will have the courage once again to reconsider exactly what Bush did that was wrong.
I realize this is imprudent now since the anti-Bush metanarrative is so culturally overwhelming, but lets be honest, as Feith states explictly in his inside account on the Bush adminstrations overarching strategy, the goal was NOT TO REMAKE THE WORLD, but to simply prevent an event like 9/11 from happening again.
http://www.amazon.com/War-Decision-Inside-Pentagon-Terrorism/dp/B003GAN3WS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357934041&sr=8-1&keywords=Feith
Bush’s so-called “Wilsonianism” is better described as a “Tactical Realism” inasmuch as his adminstration understood that ignoring the chaos that was playing itself out in the Middle East under some misguided premise that it would never touch our shores was now empirically disproven thanks to 9/11. And his premise that even those in the Middle East yearn for the freedom’s we experience is also true with the subsequently realized caveat that to realize that effort requires a degree of blood and treasure that was by no means trivial.
For anyone tempted to simply ridicule such ambition, I can suggest two things:
1. Just see how the geopolitical consequences of the alternative of “Leading from Behind” is playing itself out in the Middle East now and ask yourself how long it will be before the mess that is playing itself out there will once again reach our shores. And if it does, who should take the blame for that? Bush or his skoffing critics?
2. Read Petreus’ manual on counter insurgency:
http://www.amazon.com/Marine-Corps-Counterinsurgency-Field-Manual/dp/0226841510/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357936872&sr=1-1&keywords=Counter-insurgency+Petreus
which to summarize describes any such effort to introduce civilization in these insurgent hotbeds like (persently) Libya and Syria, as necessarily requiring the active defense of the civilized majority from their radical intimidators (the insurgents) which requires a degree of political and military engagement that is costly, but no more so than the price of doing nothing – something I suspect we will soon learn the hardway.
All of this is mute, because while the Bush administration was actively fighting the War on Terror overseas, his domestic enemies were fighting The War on The War on Terror in the culture and the media. They won decisively and now the country will pay the price unless, somehow, some of us who know better dare question the conventional wisdom.
But what are the odds of that?
January 11th, 2013 | 4:33 pm
Peter, how can you talk about Hagel without some witty Hegel reference?
January 11th, 2013 | 5:39 pm
Aron’s articles on Algerian independence are just amazing. They take seriously the anti-independence argument that Algeria is an integral part of France and think through the problems of genuinely integrating the people of Algeria into the economic and political life of France on the basis of equality and lay out the costs. I’m sorry I’ve misplaced my copy of the Dawn of Universal History.
January 11th, 2013 | 7:32 pm
A hearty amen to Pseudo’s spirit!
I differ in not wanting the US to assume that toppling mess-creating Middle-Eastern tyrants is always in our interest.
But sometimes, it is.
Relatedly, it now looks as if we might someday have at least some sympathy for any advisors to the Bush administration who were pushing for a more threatening stance toward Assad’s tyranny in 2003 after we had toppled Saddam. Some interesting contrafactual history speculations will occur whenever the relevant files get opened to the public, I suspect.
I also differ with Pseudo on this part: “…as necessarily requiring the active defense of the civilized majority from their radical intimidators (the insurgents) which requires a degree of political and military engagement that is costly…”
To some degree we have to admit that with Iraq that was not just more costly than anticipated or prepared for, but was impossible. To admit that is to admit that Iraq was not nearly as ready for democracy, or yearning for liberty, as certain neo-cons (and a few liberals, too) said it was. I.e, it is to admit that “cost” (to the U.S.) is not the relevant measure of what was needed, and that “democracy establishment” was not the proper measurement for success.
And absolutely right about the Feith book…although part of what it reveals is that Bush should have been more of a hard-ass in a) FIRING various State Dept and CIA officials who actively undermined his policies, starting with deputy Sec of State Richard Armitage (and yeah, daring Colin Powell to push further), and b) in early-on aggressively defending his (and Congress’s, don’t forget!) policy against its libel-ers in Europe and the American far left. Bush and Rice were too accommodating to DC elites, and too sanguine about the long-term public judgment.
January 11th, 2013 | 8:16 pm
Carl,
I most emphatically agree with you on point b). Though I realize that is easier said than done in any effective sense. To some degree the common pattern in partisan politics over the last eight years is how effective the center left has been in libeling their counterparts regardless of which side is in power. And commensurately how inept the right seems to be in counteracting that libel. There is more to this than a lack of will. But Bush’s administration could at least have shown as much fight on the domestic front as it showed on the foreign front.
However, your following point I would like to contest:
“To some degree we have to admit that with Iraq that was not just more costly than anticipated or prepared for, but was impossible.”
If by “impossible” you mean there simply wasn’t enough political will to finish the job in Iraq, then that proved true enough. But was such an effort any more onerous than similar efforts America was willing to do in post WWII Europe or South Korea? If not, then what was different? I have a list I could provide, but a number of its items have more to do with a lack of national will than inadaquacy on the part of the Bush administration. Though, again, there are plenty of criticisms on the latter front as well.
But if by “impossible” you mean there was no way for Iraq to migrate to a stable constitutional system, the fact is we were already on the way there. But that process abruptly ended in earnest when two things happened:
1. The US demonstrated that it wasn’t willing to deal with the Iranian problem.
2. Bush acquiesced and named an exit date.
Both of the above completely undermined the basis of the newly established order that the Surge was, up to that point, succeeding to build on: specifically, convincing the Iraqis that the US was in the fight for the long haul and was willing to stay until regime change was completed in earnest, just as we did in Germany, Japan and South Korea.
We weren’t and the rest is history. The fact is, if as a nation we are not willing to take on the burden of being a global agent on behalf of democracy, then there are plenty of other hegemon’s in the world that will happily fill the power void. And if folks are okay with that, then no one should be surprised if and when the geopolitical landscape starts look like a late 19th century mishmash of competing anti-democratic coalitions armed with nukes and a taste for apocalyptic ideological religion/nationalism/material dialectics.
January 11th, 2013 | 9:05 pm
I am in broad agreement with Dr. Lawler + Carl Scott, but I think the problem is one of IP, not IR. (I lack the fully developed human capital of IR, and make up for it by a better understanding of Human Capital.)
So Brian’s questions/statements.
1) faux-Trademark.
2) Mis-understanding of Copyright+ the first amendment, which starts off disposed to strawmen and ends up with even more strawmen restatement followed by moral claim on topic subject to trade secret, Opsec/clearance.
3) “legacy of Bush”=servicemark+subject of copyright + “not even close to a neocon”= authenticity claim on fauxtrademark +”overt military action”= trade secret, Opsec/clearance, “massive backlash”= copyright to describe election of Obama(twice) “Paired with the discrediting of the GOP as a legit economic voice re:budgets.”=Claim on GOP trademark vis a vis arbitrary copyright inspired budget/deficit hawk “legit”+”self”-inflicted by faux-trademark conservative.
4) The worst part of it is the claim that “this is going to produce absolutely catastrophic effects before too long.” I might read Cory as saying that Bush already caused the absolutely catastrophic effect. “Perhaps the difference is that Reagan didn’t allow us to be drawn into large-scale, drawn out conflicts (where it would be difficult to ever finally say “we’ve won.)” (The part in parenthesis refers to an IP component, a national trademark/Bush Servicemark question.)
5) I would claim that once you take out the IP components you can sit back and see that Bush already produced his material effects. (I can’t actually do this, I can simply conceive it) The word choice of “catastrophic” seems to be quite trending. But is Lawler crying in #3 because Bush will have a bad servicemark?
6) “It’s broad acceptance is a political fact, a present fact about common opinion.” Maybe, I am not even sure it is a political fact, Trademark is easier to conceptually think about than it is to measure. It is basically goodwill accounting. Maybe track the book sales +Amazon rank of Books both bashing + praising Bush. (I think the value of such copyright, and thus the significance of Bush trademark in either a “deficit” or “surplus” position will decline overtime.)
“It being such a fact provides little to no insight about the essential IR questions here.”
False(?) in part because measuring it as a fact, or the capacity to authenticate it as a fact, might indeed provide some insight (not that I know what IR is). This is extremely difficult and we don’t know the “income distribution” so to speak of the political fact. In addition the essential IR questions, whatever IR is, might indeed be shrowded by the classified nature of military/State Department/Pentagon activities. That is the “income distribution” question might address the relevance of this “intel” to various market players in at least two different markets: (1) voting preferences, (2) policy making.
“A fair account and critique of the real-not-mythical foreign policy neo-cons and the real W is just what so many on the right seem incapable of articulating.” Because it doesn’t exist except as copyright or freedom of speech(political). The classified IP nature of national security is in fact a political/legal fact. A more tangible and verifiable fact than “Trademark/servicemark” of either the GOP or Bush, or even the U.S.
To the extent that we can measure the goodwill generated by idealism, do goodwill accounting of this Trademark, which might either be called Wilsonianism or American Exceptionalism, then we can join up “Idealism” with what you call “Realism”. Defending ones interests and projecting ones ideals are no different than what Coca-Cola does in trying to gain market share by projecting its ideals, and defending those ideals by sueing for trademark infringement under either the Lanham Act or Berne (internationally). This makes the wisdom of Coca-Cola the appropriate middle position. Not that U.S. foreign policy is out to advance the interests of multi-national corporations, but it sort of is, in part because U.S. foreign policy also has an impact upon which markets are open to U.S. goods and the goodwill that foreign consumers feel towards U.S. goods. I actually think U.S. foreign policy is all about kicking the can on having the make a choice between “realism” and “idealism”, and which is maximized really depends upon which career track within the state department is under discussion.
While this is still copyright and not gospel(albeit that music certainly gets protection) I don’t consider myself to be jokeing when I say U.S. foreign policy is like the Coke Zero commercials. Why have “Realism” or “Idealism”? Why not “Realism”+”Idealism”!
I think this is a defenseable account of U.S. foreign policy both under Bush and Obama.
January 12th, 2013 | 8:20 am
I agree that the comments here are admirably spirited and unfashionable. You can make jokes about Hagel=Hegel. But here’s the one I have to fight hard to avoid: Hagel vs. Bagel. Based on what we know now, we have to say that the invasion of Iraq was based on bad intelligence about the strength of SH’s regime, his connection with the terrorists who attacked us, and the weapons of mass destruction. It was done with good intentions, I agree. But I have to add, as you all admit, it was done badly and Bush was pretty clueless for way too long about “changing course” against incompetents. The devastation to the “Republican brand” wasn’t due mainly to “enemy” (incl European, establishment, and MSM) propaganda but real revulsion against real failure–resulting in both Iranian empowerment and a degradation of our military. That revulsion, as you guys say, is much more important for ruining the Republican brand and undermining American global leadership than anything else I can think of of. If you could roll the camera back–with accurate intelligence and realistic assessment of risk, you wouldn’t invade Iraq. I was at a LF conference in very late 2002 listening to a prominent American neocon some of you guys know explain to a prominent Jewish French semi-conservative that you might know that the invasion of Iraq would be good for Israel. Well, it wasn’t. Having said all this, I applaud those of you taking a rebel’s stand against the amoral indifference of “realism.”
January 12th, 2013 | 10:26 am
The problem I have with your stance, Peter, is that it seems to say, “acting on dumb bad intelligence, too easily accepted by (kinda dumb) neo-cons and hawkish conservatives, ruined the Republican brand foreign-policy-wise.” But that totally ignores decision situation Bush (and Congress) was actually in. That bad intelligence about Saddam’s WMDs was accepted by virtually everyone, and most of the prominent sceptics about it had highly questionable agendas.
In retrospect, all we can say is that a President Peter Lawler in 2002 might have said, “well, a) war is inherently unpredictable, b) we don’t know for certain he has serious WMDs, and c) even a 9/11-scarred America will be susceptible to euro/leftist propaganda campaigns if anything goes wrong, which will endanger the Republican brand, and so, no, we won’t invade until we know more.” And yes, that would have been better, but even such a president would have had to deal with Saddam’s support of terrorism, his oil-money deals, and would have had to keep launching various pin-prick strikes, no-fly zones, aid-to-the-Kurds, and perhaps more. And eventually, in order to have any credibility in demanding that Iran not develop nukes, he would have had to come forth with convincing evidence that Saddam did not in fact have WMDs, in the face of his claiming to.
As for the impossible situation of a President Carl Scott in 2002 armed with the knowledge we have today, well I concede your point that he would not have invaded Iraq. A concession to impossibility.
But even that guy would have pursued a decapitation policy for Iraq. In less fancy words, that means he would have unleashed a no-end-date special-ops campaign to dead-or-alive get Saddam, and a diplomatic offensive to pressure the remaining Baath government to make significant concessions. And, no, the American left, Der Spiegel/Le Monde, and our MSM would not have been cool with that.
January 12th, 2013 | 12:13 pm
Carl, It’s not so clear how we disagree. I’m with you on the motivation of those who were opposed to the invasion. The French were, as Manent sort-of says, accidentally right–which means they get no credit for thought or intention for being right. And of course SH would have to continue to have been dealt with etc. But still, we have to admit that too much was handled badly in terms of the conduct of the war too, and the confidence shown in 2002/03 about easy everything would be seems dripping in a shortage of prudence. I remember (hope he doesn’t read this) Paul Rahe bragging about the imminent big victory and regional transformation with the same confidence that he recently predicted the Romney landslide. The problem isn’t just a lack of resolve or enemy propaganda. And now of course–the result is that it’ll be much tougher to deal with Iran, which was always the bigger problem. Under Hagel, we might not deal with Iran at all. The post-Iraq syndrome is as bad as the post-Vietnam syndrome for our military, which was, you have to admit, overextended and otherwise abused and is now rather demoralized. One ray of hope–an independent Kurdistan seems very possible now (and they’re the guys who love us and liberty etc. etc.) I’m actually not inclined to blame Bush much at all; he gave it all he had and acted on the basis of what could have reasonably been considered the best available advice. I understand why he was slow to face up to how badly the occupation was going.
Even though this isn’t my area of expertise and we may still be too close to the actual events to speak with any real authority about what happened, I’m glad that pomoncon provides this safe space to speculate with nothing but the truth the mind.
January 12th, 2013 | 1:41 pm
So this would be a good time to recommend to Peter, Carl et al the film Zero-Dark-Thirty, for, among many other good reasons, it paints a pretty good picture of how the criteria for whether intelligence is ‘actionable’ or not, is hardly black and white.
To wit, on a number of occasions late in the film, when the Obama administration was sitting on the intelligence regarding Osama’s residence a number of senior intelligence officers remarked on compared to the intelligence on WMD’s in Iraq, the intelligence suggesting Osama was holed up in a house in Obadabad was in fact feeble. As one intelligence officer remarked “at least with WMD’s you had pictures”.
The movie also did a good job portraying the senior intelligence guys as largely spooked by the WMD foul up to such an extent that when Panetta asked his staff for an up or down vote on whether they thought Osama was in Obadobad based on the intelligence, everyone in the room, except the Maya character, began debating whether the odds were 60%, a ‘soft 60%’, etc. clearly hedging their bets in light of the previous WMD snafu during the Bush administration.
In this scene, when Maya (Jessica Chastain) is asked by Pannetta, she says decisively “100%! Okay, okay 95% because I know how much certainty terrifies you guys.”Later, after the meeting Pannetta describes everyone in the room as “cowed”.
The point I am making is that based on the experts assessments of the intelligence’s merits there were better odds of WMD’s being in Iraq than Osama being in Obadobad. But as fate had it, the weaker intelligence was right, and the stronger intelligence was wrong. And guess what? That’s the nature of intelligence!!!
Most of the criticism I see directed at Bush now, like that posed by Peter, is classic arm chair quarterbacking. It was bad intelligence? Well worse intelligence proved to be correct in other circumstances. He took too long to change direction in Iraq? What precedent is there of a President taking less time? Indeed, how typical is it that national leaders in similar circumstances are even willing to entertain the possibility that their strategies are in need of changing. We should have kept Hussein in the box that he was already in? Guess what, there was no box! Hussein was getting everything he needed via the food for oil program and had the balls to shoot at US planes even while the UN measures were in the process of imploding. And lets not forget, while Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 they were implicated in the previous attack on the Two Towers in 92. Should we have waited for Hussein to assist in the next 9/11? That’s what we did with Osama during the Clinton administration and he didn’t dissapoint us did he?
In my opinion all of this is classic scape goating. The other side won the media war against Bush, successfully Hooverizing him, and now the conservative side tacitly concedes their point for fear of becoming infected with the Neocon epithet themselves.
In the mean time Bush’s ghost peers over every subsequent foreign policy debate making it impossible to speak realistically about our state of risk in the world. Either we as conservatives get a pair, or we may as well close shop on having any influence on behalf of a prudent muscular national security policy.
January 12th, 2013 | 2:08 pm
Prof Lawler,
Granting that the Iraq war was a huge mistake – what implications does that have for what to do now? I can see implications for what to do about Afghanistan – namely, get the hell out – but I don’t see that our Iraq experience tells us anything about what to do about Iran’s nuclear program, the Israel/Palestinian situation, or the inaptly named “Arab Spring.” The appointment of Hagel – a crude Israel-basher, sort of Walt/Mearsheimer without a PhD, and a politician who has no significant accomplishment to his name, other than ingratiating himself with a particular junior senator from Illinois who shares his enmity for Israel – indicates that the administration is going in the wrong direction on all of these issues. Hagel supporters are quite hypocritical to say that the occupant of the presidential office is entitled to pick whoever he wants for his cabinet; it was not too long ago that the Democrats refused to confirm John Bolton as UN ambassador (a far less consequential office).
January 12th, 2013 | 2:12 pm
To the foregoing, I would add that, while cuts to Defense are needed and inevitable, Hagel is the wrong man to direct them.
January 12th, 2013 | 9:39 pm
Peter is absolutely right that the Bush administration did not primarily face a media problem. They faced a failure problem from Summer 2003 to the end of 2006. You had a situation where, by the Summer of 2006, al-Qaeda had established bases in many Sunni areas, Iran-backed militias had taken control of the street in lots of places and were targeting American troops, the Iraqi government outside the Kurdish areas was virtually helpless, much of the Iraqi security services were either ineffective or compromised by the enemy, and the US had committed neither the resources nor committed to the strategy for dealing with the various elements of the insurgency and establishing public order while taking over eight hundred dead a year for over three straight years on top of thousands and thousands wounded. No conceivable media strategy could have changed or obscured all that. John McCain and Norman Schwarzkopf had noted the need to increase the American troop presence to maintain public order (which implied a counterinsurgency strategy) as early as late 2004 so it wasn’t like the problem was invisible.
That doesn’t mean that dumping Rumsfeld and switching to counterinsurgency in early 2005 would have yielded the same successes it did in 2007. We can’t know. Maybe the Sunnis weren’t ready to really deal until they had more experience with the jihadists and were face-to-face with the destruction of the Sunni enclaves in the Baghdad area. One lesson to draw is that societies are really complicated and the ability of the US to intervene decisively will often come at great cost in human resources, human lives, and time and that the end result might still be ambiguous and fragile. Maybe it might end up being easier and the outcome happier than all that, but it is very unwise to build plans on such assumptions. I think a Republican who can say all that would, along with being right, get a lot of public sympathy
Bush deserves enormous credit for the adopting the Petraeus strategy and the combination of that strategy and the Sunni Awakening really did isolate and weaken al-Qaeda, restore a measure of public order and allow Iraqi politics to evolve in a more consensual direction (at least as compared to what was happening from 2004-2006.) That is actually a lot though it is up to the Iraqis as to how much of those gains last.
January 12th, 2013 | 11:04 pm
Lots of good points. Wars are always judged by armchair quarterbacks. Wars are always judged by their effects. When the effects are bad, people seek scapegoats. So sure Bush was scapegoated, to an extent. But that still means it’s a failure problem, not a media problem. It would have happened to Lincoln had Lee won at Antietam or had Johnston manned up and kept Sherman away from Atlanta. Even with the victory in the CW, Lincoln had to acknowledge that nobody could have guessed how bloody and horrible it would be. And much of the progressive movement (and its evildoing) was based on the premise that the CW founded in high principle just wasn’t worth it. The tough question of whether that war of successful liberation was worth it doesn’t grab Americans anymore only because there’s nobody left who actually felt its effects.
So it’s easy to see why Bush’s performance evaluation plunged the more he seemed clueless about the war. And even with the surge and all that it’s not so convincing to say it was all worth it.
We shouldn’t let that failure distort what we do know when it comes to Israel, Iraq etc. But it will to some extent, and we just have to hope not to a fatal extent. The example from the movie on being spooked by uncertain intelligence on Saddam is good. In any case, “Iraq” will haunt us for a while.
January 13th, 2013 | 12:02 am
Pete, according to some observers, the surge worked to the extent it did because we paid off the Sunni tribes that turned against Al Qaeda and other foreign jihadi elements. Perhaps the surge was the best option Bush had in 2006, but its extremely qualified success cannot retroactively justify the decision to invade.
January 13th, 2013 | 8:15 am
djf–Your last sentence was McCain’s actual position in 2008. I heard him say that let’s not talk about whether we should have invaded, but whether the surge was the right thing to do at the time. Well, it was. All honor to Bush for having done it. But that ambiguous success that may or may not endure can’t justify the decision to invade, which is still judged not by Bush’s intentions or by the reasonableness of the decision in view of what seemed to be the facts before his eyes but by the war’s effects (in terms of blood and treasure and American morale domestically and within the military and American influence in the region and the world). And then of course there’s the effect on the Iraqis.
January 13th, 2013 | 11:43 am
Prof Lawler,
I would say that great minds work the same way, but – alas – neither McCain nor myself fall in that category. ;-)
Bush’s biggest failure in deciding to invade (besides underestimating the difficulty and cost of achieving an acceptable result) was, IMHO, in failing to perceive how fragile and unstable the domestic consensus in favor of the war was, and how devastating the effect of the collapse of that consensus would be to the country’s ability to prudently advance its interests and principles abroad. And how the collapse of the pro-war consensus would be exploited by the Democrats to achieve their domestic ambitions.
January 13th, 2013 | 12:27 pm
djf,
Well, you say a lot in a few words. I’ve actually written an expanded version of this post for LAW AND LIBERTY and I would like to revise quickly by quoting or paraphrasing your points. So if you would compromise yourself by giving me your REAL NAME–either here or email plawler@berry.edu–and permission to “sample” with attribution (or, if you prefer, without), I’d appreciate it.
January 13th, 2013 | 3:02 pm
DJF,
“according to some observers, the surge worked to the extent it did because we paid off the Sunni tribes that turned against Al Qaeda and other foreign jihadi elements.”
From what I’ve read, the Petraeus strategy also included use of American troops in counterinsurgency operations to prevent the Sunnis who were changing sides from being slaughtered by the initially better prepared al-Qaeda forces. The Petraeus strategy was also dependent on the Sunnis being willing to be paid off. I think it was in a Bing West book where I read about a Sunni tribal leader telling American troops that if Iraq’s Sunnis came to America, they would take over. I suspect that attitude was a lot less prevalent in January 2007 as the Sunnis faced defeat in civil war. I’d like to think that a counterinsurgency strategy would have yielded similar results if it had been adopted several years earlier, but I can’t say I’m very sure of that.
January 13th, 2013 | 4:38 pm
Peter, the invasion of Iraq ended Saddam’s funding the suicide bombing campaign that was going on Israel between 99-04! People forget the plague of suicide-bombings that was hitting Israel hard and killing much more Israelis than are being killed by Hamas rockets today. There is an interesting correlation between the invasion of Iraq (which ending the 30k$ being sent to the family of suicide bombers by Saddam) and the radical decline of suicide bombing in Israel.
January 13th, 2013 | 8:30 pm
Mr. Bates,
The suicide bombing stopped because Israel massively cracked down on the terrorists in the West Bank, employed rigorous screening at border checkpoints (for which it was taken to task by such worthies as Condoleeza Rice), and built a security fence (the kind we are told will not work on the US/Mexico border). Whatever funding Saddam Hussein was providing to the terrorist operations could readily be replaced, and probably was not needed in the first place (Saddam provided it for his own PR purposes).
I infer that you are probably a supporter of Israel. Please be aware that attempting to justify the Iraq war as something the US did for Israel’s sake is the last thing Israel needs.
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