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August 13, 2007
Every Man A President
One other notable thing about Packer's taxonomy of war arguments (which, I should have said more clearly, detailed the arguments he saw among liberal hawks) is that nowhere on the list does he mention Iraq's threat to us, or connection to 9/11. These arguments, though central to the case for war, were utterly derided by liberal hawks, who chalked their (obviously mendacious) existence up to basic fear-mongering needed to placate the rubes. No liberals I know of bought the war based on Bush's stated case -- they bought it based on Ken Pollack's or Tom Friedman's cases. But, at the end of the day, it was still George W. Bush's war. The efforts of the liberal hawks to support their own versions of the conflict were sheer exercises in ego, brought on by folks whose usefuness in the moment led them to believe they would wield far more influence than they actually possessed..
August 13, 2007 | Permalink
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I think this post really gets at the aspect of American intellectual culture that makes it more or less impossible for us to turn back from stupid wars once someone in power starts beating the war drums.
As economists are fond of reminding us, people respond to incentives. If you are a think tanker and some President is hyping a war, your choices are basically three:
1) You can oppose the war on practical, moral, or legal grounds.
2) You can support the war enthusiastically and without reservation.
3) You can support the war, but give a list of conditions which, if not met, may cause the war to fail.
You don't have to analyze too deeply to see the problem with the first two choices. If you oppose a war and it turns out to be The Most Awesomest War Ever then you will have to slink back to your hometown get a job pouring Bushmills at your dad's Irish pub.
If you support the war enthusiastically and it turns out to be a big goddamn disaster, then you may have to get a job at the Weekly Standard.
But Option 3 has a Santa Clause - if the war is awesome, you get to cluck at all the wooly-headed freedom haters who tried to stop the good old U.S. of A from kicking its fair share of tyrant ass. If the war sucks, you just say "look, if they had listened to me, everything would have been fine."
The result of these incentives is, anybody who wouldn't mind working for the Weekly Standard just goes ahead and supports the war, and anybody who would rather die than work at the Weekly Standard supports the war, but with a Santa Clause.
APS
Posted by: Ape Man | Aug 13, 2007 5:20:21 PM
I'd add one more to Packer's taxonomy which is more neocon than liberal hawk, but still held some water among the Serious: that Saddam's defiance makes us look like a paper tiger, which has the effect of emboldening others who might want to defy us.*
Of course, carrying out a stupid war that literally weakens our ability to project force is considerably worse for our ability to quell the defiant. But we knew that already; chalk this up to another bad pro-war argument.
*This is the micro, non-overtly crazy version of the Ledeen Doctrine.
Posted by: SDM | Aug 13, 2007 5:43:46 PM
The efforts of the liberal hawks to support their own versions of the conflict were sheer exercises in ego, brought on by folks whose usefuness in the moment led them to believe they would wield far more influence than they actually possessed.
I don't see that. Before the war the liberal hawks had every right to assume it would be fought with some degree of competence. Afghanistan looked great. I don't think it was a matter of thinking the Administration needed to listen to them. The pundits just gave Bush and his team too much credit.
Posted by: Sanpete | Aug 13, 2007 6:11:07 PM
I've said it here before, but I think it's worth repeating: the perceived success in Afghanistan was, I think, one of the most important factors in convincing a lot of people who should have known better to support the invasion of Iraq. I think a lot of "liberal hawks" were, perhaps implicitly, under the sway of a simple syllogism:
1. The invasion of Afghanistan was a great idea, as it eliminated a hostile government and improved the lives of the Afghan people.
2. There is no reason to think that invading Iraq won't have the same result.
3. Therefore, invading Iraq is a great idea.
As it happens, premise #1 may very well be false, and premise #2 certainly was. And the whole thing basically chucks international law out the window. But I think this was a very compelling argument in the minds of many Iraq war advocates.
Posted by: Jason G. | Aug 13, 2007 7:08:39 PM
The liberal hawks had been making and losing these arguments on Iraq for years. They simply never made a compelling case for war based on the facts, not one that the American people or policymakers bought.
At a certain point, a significant number of these hawks decided to throw in with an administration they plainly could tell was lying, that was not preparing to fight this war with sufficient resources, and that was relying upon blind luck to take care of the all-important reconstruction.
They decided, on behalf of all of us, that it was better we do this war wrong than not do it at all. They decided to chime in with their support, knowing full well that, whatever caveats they added, it would give bipartisan cover and help enable this administration to fight the war--which, again, the Administration was giving every indication it was going to do wrong. (And frankly, if they claim they didn't know this, they had no business giving foreign policy advice at all because they obviously understand nothing about politics.)
Sure, they hoped it would all go well. They chose to believe, somewhat insanely, that an Administration that recklessly stir up hysteria and lie us into war, one that was clearly not preparing on a strategic or tactical level to fight this war properly, would at some point do a 180 and competently execute an incredibly difficult task. Because if they didn't indulge in that little fantasy...well, then they couldn't get their war. And this might be their only chance to get the war that they couldn't sell on the merits, but which they devoutly believed in.
Their excuse now, that they could not have anticipated how catastrophic the effects of doing this wrong would be? Well, that's like suggesting that no one could have anticipated the breach of the levees.
Posted by: anonymous | Aug 13, 2007 10:12:32 PM
Before the war the liberal hawks had every right to assume it would be fought with some degree of competence.
Of course they had every right. They had every right to believe in astrology, too.
However, as the presented case unfolded, it became more and more clear that the administration was being duplicitous. Heck, in August of 2002, there was no reason why Iraq was suddenly an immediate emergency that had to be dealt with, compared to July 2002, when it was just one of many lingering issues. The liberal hawks for some reason put aside the fact that an administration stirring up war passions under false pretenses might not be a good basis for a war.
Posted by: Tyro | Aug 14, 2007 1:30:48 AM
Ezra, Do you want to know what really pisses me off? No, I’m sure no one cares.
But it is the fact that when talking about war, bloggers, especially, experience some ridiculous, yet surely prescribed, compulsion in which they are only allowed to refer to people of one or the other opinion as one or another bird name.
Sure, it seems that everyone accepts this. But why do people who, by the definition of hawk, like war, or are predators and need to kill to survive, or just love killing, or whatever this absurd nomenclature suggests, get that cool name, Hawk, like that awesome G.I. Joe, and people who think war is stupid because they are prescient enough to observe that it [war, murder, intentionally-human-caused-death] is automatically resultant of some hubris, in which SOME (no blogger style for me I use caps) people think other human lives are worth cost, and are labeled with a word that categorically describes birds that I can’t help but associate the word “pussy” with and that I can only really think about as the birds released at weddings and that I only hope can digest that unenvironmental rice thrown on the horny fools.
No G.I. Joe. The only truly “cool” positive image of a dove, other than being a faggot, that I can think of is those Greeks in the James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only. They had some dove shit going on, right?
Regardless, I be gettin' the short end of the stick, and faggot like, I want a little more respect. [For morons, there is a real stupid pun on faggot here, consult ur dicktionary...Actually no pun, I'm just dissing my dove stick. I ain't no TR]
Posted by: rk | Aug 14, 2007 2:00:33 AM
But, at the end of the day, it was still George W. Bush's war. The efforts of the liberal hawks to support their own versions of the conflict were sheer exercises in ego, brought on by folks whose usefuness in the moment led them to believe they would wield far more influence than they actually possessed.
Ezra, are you saying that liberal hawks should not have supported the war because Bush's reasons for fighting it were different from their own? Are you saying that people shouldn't support policies they like unless they're espoused by people they like? If so, you are sounding like a partisan nut.
Posted by: soro | Aug 14, 2007 8:07:54 AM
"The efforts of the liberal hawks to support their own versions of the conflict were sheer exercises in ego, "
That's just nonsense. Would you suggest that they oppose a war they genuinely believed should be fought?
The mistake was in assuming that we could impose a peace on Iraq. It was a failure of those like Pollack to accurately assess the Iraqi populous and our own capabilities. Given that he genuinely believed Iraq was a threat, and he genuinely believed we could establish a stable, non-threatening state, he did what was right. He just didn't know what he was talking about. It wasn't a matter of ego. It was incompetence.
Posted by: Njorl | Aug 14, 2007 9:47:20 AM
Njorl, the sheer exercise in ego was the conceit that the war would be fought on their own terms, not the terms that the Bush administration had set. Pundits have this strange habit of believing that they are advisors to the president, not passive agents who can only comment on the situation as it is.
Are you saying that people shouldn't support policies they like unless they're espoused by people they like?
If Bush comes out in favor of universal healthcare and proposes implementing it by having the national system overseen by a team of oil industry CEOs and makes the cornerstone of his proposal to be a new law that makes it a felony for anyone not by an individual health insurance plan, then, yes, it would be reasonable for Ezra, even if he supports the idea of universal health coverage, to oppose the president's initiative.
Posted by: Tyro | Aug 14, 2007 9:54:22 AM
Ezra, are you saying that liberal hawks should not have supported the war because Bush's reasons for fighting it were different from their own? Are you saying that people shouldn't support policies they like unless they're espoused by people they like?
Sentence 1 and Sentence 2 are putting the goalposts in different places.
To answer Sentence 2: A war isn't like a Medicare drug proposal. Even the best planned and executed military invasion is going to have bad, unintended, unpredictable consequences. The competence and flexibility of the people in charge of the invasion is a legitimate consideration.
As for sentence 1, I feel a lesson of the Iraq War is that you can't do the right thing for the wrong reason. At least not in an "optional" war like this one. The decency of our stated motives, and the trustworthiness of the case we make to the world, are vital. We made our case to the UN based on WMDs, and when we didn't find any WMDs we acted as if what we'd said before didn't matter, and that cost us our credibility and good will. We were trying to do a really difficult, intricate thing, trying to thread a needle: remove a government but leave the country largely intact and in a good position to rebuild, and with a fairly small outlay of American resources. We couldn't do it without the cooperation of other actors, and we couldn't get cooperation if we didn't have trust.
What made me jump off the War-in-Iraq train for good (before March '03, and I figured our troops would find some WMD's) was the incoherence of the administration's case for war. Was it about WMDs? A Saddam-Al Qaeda connection? Promoting democracy? Humanitarian concern for the Iraqi people? They were saying whatever would sound good at any given moment, which meant that the real reasons were not ones they were willing to articulate publicly.
Posted by: Dix Hill | Aug 14, 2007 10:02:18 AM
Dix,
You say: What made me jump off the War-in-Iraq train for good (before March '03, and I figured our troops would find some WMD's) was the incoherence of the administration's case for war.
It sounds like you decided against the war on its merits. You were not convinced by anyone's case for the war, so you didn't support it. Fine. That's different than saying that, under the same circumstances, you would have supported an Al-Gore-led invasion of Iraq, but opposed a Bush-led invasion, which is what I fear Ezra implicitly advocated (or at least would have found acceptable).
Posted by: soro | Aug 14, 2007 11:15:15 AM
I don't see that. Before the war the liberal hawks had every right to assume it would be fought with some degree of competence. Afghanistan looked great. I don't think it was a matter of thinking the Administration needed to listen to them. The pundits just gave Bush and his team too much credit.
As ought to be apparent, if liberal hawks "had every right to assume that it (the war) would be fought with some degree of competence.", they can't very well be described as having given "Bush and his team too much credit." There was either sufficient objective evidence to support the assumption of competence or there wasn't. If the evidence was there, then their assumption was justified, however disasterous the outcome. If the evidence wasn't there, then you might have point about giving "too much credit", a faith based judgement made in absence of evidence.
Posted by: WB Reeves | Aug 14, 2007 11:30:31 AM
Ape Man wrote, I think this post really gets at the aspect of American intellectual culture that makes it more or less impossible for us to turn back from stupid wars once someone in power starts beating the war drums.
What in God's name would make you think that's an American (intellectual culture) trait?
AFAICT a reading of history shows it's a human trait. Unfortunately.
Posted by: liberal | Aug 14, 2007 11:35:41 AM
Njorl wrote, That's just nonsense. Would you suggest that they oppose a war they genuinely believed should be fought?
Of course they should have.
You haven't seen this dsquared blog post? Surely going to go down as a classic.
Here, he points out that even if you were in favor of deposing Saddam, there was always the "option to wait":
This is an important point, and one of the few things they teach you at business school which is worth the price of entry; very few decisions in business or elsewhere are "now or never". It is massively more common for a decision to be "now or later". Furthermore, corporate finance theory teaches us that the option to wait is usually really quite valuable. So when we were faced, pre-war, with the following dichotomy:Option A: Have a war which will kill people and have many undesirable geopolitical consequences (the Ken MacLeod point).
Option B: Leave Saddam in powerit was necessary to consider not just the pros and cons of A and B, but also the unstated third option which is almost always present whenever you are considering an expensive and time-consuming project.
Option C: Wait awhile to see if a better tradeoff or more information becomes available.
Posted by: liberal | Aug 14, 2007 11:45:30 AM
At a certain point, a significant number of these hawks decided to throw in with an administration they plainly could tell was lying, that was not preparing to fight this war with sufficient resources, and that was relying upon blind luck to take care of the all-important reconstruction.
That point would have had to be after the invasion. This wasn't so clear in advance.
They decided, on behalf of all of us, that it was better we do this war wrong than not do it at all.
On behalf of all of us? I don't follow this. Are you talking about elected representatives? The pundits decided on behalf of what they thought was right.
The liberal hawks for some reason put aside the fact that an administration stirring up war passions under false pretenses might not be a good basis for a war.
They put it aside because they didn't think it invalidated the better reasons for the war. The Bush Administration claimed to want to fight the war to accomplish the ends the liberal hawks supported, and judging from Afghanistan it appeared they would. Again, there was never any question of some delusion they had that Bush would learn from them how to fight the war (on the whole--there may have been a few exceptions that weren't central).
I should add the the charge of ego applies in a way not raised here by Ezra, that it was very arrogant to think the risks of the invasion were acceptable, that we had a high enough chance of installing a better government and avoiding civil war.
if liberal hawks "had every right to assume that it (the war) would be fought with some degree of competence.", they can't very well be described as having given "Bush and his team too much credit."
You're not allowing for the crucial difference between foresight, which is what the first quote refers to, and hindsight, which is what the second quote is based on.
Posted by: Sanpete | Aug 14, 2007 12:46:18 PM
Unless I'm remembering things incorrectly, there were some liberal hawks pushing an argument based on 9/11 -- I think I read the argument in Slate.
And I don't thing the 9/11-based argument was all that stupid, either. Contrary to Anon's first comment in the other thread on this, I don't recall anyone arguing that "Saddam attacked us on 9/11 and will do it again." Rather, I thought the argument was more complex (and more persuasive):
1. 9/11 demonstrates that there is a group of people -- al-Qaeda -- who not only desire to inflict massive civilian casualties on the US, but also have the means to insert themselves into the US to attack us. And these people want so badly to inflict these casualties that they are willing to die to do so.
2. There is a prominent leader of another country -- Saddam -- who is the enemy of the US and who would love to see mass casualties inflicted upon our people.
3. Saddam has, or could soon have, weapons in his possession that could be used by al-Qaeda to inflict mass casualties on our people.
4. Saddam and al-Qaeda also share an important common feature, being Arab Muslims.
5. In sum, Saddam has the ability and the incentive to provide weapons of mass destructions to al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda has the ability and incentive to use those weapons against us.
6. Therefore, to protect the American people from a serious al-Qaeda attack, we should remove Saddam and ensure that his weapons are not used by al-Qaeda against us.
Maybe I'm just a rube, but this argument doesn't strike me as self-evidently bogus. To me, there were two serious flaws in the argument (based on what we knew before the war). First, in regard to Point 2, I doubt Saddam would have really wanted to attack the US, since doing so would have been signing his own death warrant. Second, this argument gives no consideration to the risks that attacking Iraq poses to the US, including the creation of more terrorists, the incentives such an attack gives other countries to develop nukes, etc.
And, of course, Point 3 turned out to be untrue.
But the benefit of this argument is that under Point 6, we have won the war. We have now ensured that Saddam will not give WMDs to al-Qaeda to use against us.
So let's get the hell home.
Posted by: Steve H. | Aug 14, 2007 2:20:04 PM
It was perfectly clear in advance that the Bush Administration was lying about the reasons to go to war. They were boldfaced lying about ties to 9/11. Their front-page evidence on WMDs was routinely debunked a few days later, somewhere between pages A4-A13. Not only did they fire people who said we needed more troops, but they categorically ruled out a draft and alienated our allies, which meant we would go in with a force strength that was far, far less than successful missions had had in the past. Their cost estimates were profoundly unserious. When people asked about the postwar, they were blown off with one-liners like "we will be greeted as liberators." And finally, when weapons inspectors were finally admitted, the ostensible reason for all our saber rattling, the Administration pulled out the inspectors so we could do some actual saber swinging.
It's ridiculous to say a reasonable foreign policy expert should have thought "they did great in Afghanistan, so why wouldn't Iraq have been great?" First off, in their so-called grand success in Afghanistan, they HADN'T CAPTURED OSAMA BIN LADEN. I for one, thought that made the war rather a failure on its central mission, and thought it was a sign of bad things to come that they were pulling out troops to go fight a second war when we hadn't achieved the central mission of the first!
And frankly, quagmires don't happen overnight. In 2002 Afghanistan, the failure of its central mission aside, it still looked like there was a path to success in terms of creating a stable and functioning self-governing country, which I thought was great, and a real plus mark in the "competence" column. I heard the speech on the Marshall plan, too, and I thought it was fabulous.
But with the job only partly done Bush suddenly stopped talking about Afghanistan or Osama and instead started saying totally false things about Iraq. Worse, he was redirecting our nation's money, troops and attention there. That should have made any foreign policy expert think, flowery speeches aside, "dammit, not only didn't he capture Osama, now he's blowing Afghanistan." In that context, it becomes asinine to assume he'd "accomplish the ends the liberal hawks supported" in Iraq, since he was clearly choosing to pull himself OFF the path to do so in Afghanistan.
This Administration was throwing off dozens of red flags that any foreign policy expert should have seen. In the months before the war, it was clear that this was an Administration whose statements could not be trusted and that they were going to prosecute this war not only falsely but incompetently. As a liberal hawk, you'd have to be a special kind of moron to not realize that this thing you'd desired for a decade was going to happen in totally the wrong way.
And yet they supported it anyway. That's why we should not listen to them now. Because it was their JOB to see where we were going, and they still chose to support this war (while, of course, making clear that if they were in charge, they'd do it differently).
Posted by: anonymous | Aug 14, 2007 2:33:42 PM
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