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August 13, 2007
The Pros and Cons of War
Before America invaded Iraq, George Packer wrote an article for The New York Times Magazine on the liberal hawks that sought to categorize the pro- and anti-war arguments. Given that you often hear war supporters say that the doves opposed this war for the wrong reasons, it's interesting to see what Packer considered the arguments of the two sides:
For War
1. Saddam is cruel and dangerous.
2. Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction and has never stopped trying to develop them.
3. Iraqis are suffering under tyranny and sanctions.
4. Democracy would benefit Iraqis.
5. A democratic Iraq could drain influence from repressive Saudi Arabia.
6. A democratic Iraq could unlock the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate.
7. A democratic Iraq could begin to liberalize the Arab world.
8. Al Qaeda will be at war with us regardless of what we do in Iraq.
Against War
1. Containment has worked for 10 years, and inspections could still work.
2. We shouldn't start wars without immediate provocation and international support.
3. We could inflict terrible casualties, and so could Saddam.
4. A regional war could break out, and anti-Americanism could build to a more dangerous level.
5. Democracy can't be imposed on a country like Iraq.
6. Bush's political aims are unknown, and his record is not reassuring.
7. America's will and capacity for nation building are too limited.
8. War in Iraq will distract from the war on terrorism and swell Al Qaeda's ranks.
So far as I can tell, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 on the pro-war case proved to be entirely wrong. The remaining rationales were that Saddam is a tyrant -- true, but not nearly reason enough to go to war -- and that Iraqis were suffering under sanctions. Our sanctions.
Meanwhile, literally every element of the anti-war case has been proven correct, save for four, which has proven accurate in a low-grade way as Iran has sought to increase its control over its destabilized neighbor.
These were the two cases. They existed -- both of them -- before the conflict. They had, as Packer details, high profile adherents. The anti-war case was internally coherent, rigorous, and in the final analysis, utterly correct. Not accidentally correct, but accurate in its particulars and predictions. No wonder those who got it wrong are so anxious to argue that nobody truly got it right.
August 13, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Packer ignored the (by far the most important) reason given for invading Iraq:
"Iraq attacked us in September 2001, and is currently building nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to attack us again."
This is the reason given repeatedly - hundreds of times - by U.S. leaders during the buildup to war, and it is the one that proved convincing to most people. The "fourth largest army in the world" (remember that one?) was preparing to kill every single American, slowly and painfully, just like it killed all the Americans in the World Trade Center, and only immediate war could save us.
Posted by: Anon | Aug 13, 2007 4:22:07 PM
What's interesting is how closely Packer's list mirrors what has become the character of the contemporary Iraq debate: Outcomes X, Y, and Z in Iraq would be nice, but American military force is not an instrument capable of bringing those outcomes about. Looking at the "Pro" list, you have things that are either basically just declarative statements (1-3), or else things that are reasons why the war, if executed successfully, could be beneficial. The "Con" list, by contrast, isn't a list of rejoinders to those (e.g. "A democratic Iraq could NOT begin to liberalize the Arab world!"), but rather reasons that the war would be highly unlikely to be executed in a way that (a) achieves the ends cited in the "Pro" list (b) without creating other massive problems.
I guess the thing that surprises me most is how even a liberal hawk like Packer could foresee that the mainstream pro-war case was essentially all hope, and the mainstream anti-war case was essentially all just analysis of facts on the ground.
Posted by: Daniel Munz | Aug 13, 2007 4:38:17 PM
Weren’t you in fact in favor of the war during the buildup in 2002? I’m not saying that to make a “ha ha told you so” point, rather I’m curious which justifications you bought at the time, and which arguments on the anti-war side seemed to come up short.
Obviously #4 on the pro-war side is in direct conflict with several of the arguments on the anti-war side. But Packer’s list doesn’t fully capture for me what I was feeling in my opposition to the war and several others I know. I was dubious of claims of WMDs, though my argument was whether or not they have or are developing them, it wouldn’t justify the war. Furthermore I believed (and I know many others did as well) that this was an imperialist invasion hellbent on an agenda of regional hegemony: oil mattered but it was much more about remaking an entire region with our control. I believed that that was morally and ethically wrong but also impossible simply because that type of change comes internally from local roots. The reason I posed the question above to you Ezra is because I found it frustrating at the time that so many political allies seemed to believe that there was in fact a “right way,” when I was (and still am) convinced that the flaw was much more deeply rooted. To this day its clear that many people still believe that there was a “right way” and a “wrong way,” and the issue is that Bush took the wrong path. To be sure he has screwed things up, perhaps worse than they needed to be, but I think it’s naïve to suggest that things could’ve been done right. The one thing we must do is learn a lesson from this war – see the failures of the use of force and rethink the position we hold in the world in a very fundamental way. I hope we leave Iraq at once, but more important, I hope we learn a lesson from this and recognize that there was no “right way” that in fact external powers do not have the ability, legitimacy, nor appropriate moral motivation to achieve even the more nobly stated goals that went into the pro-war argument.
Posted by: Matt | Aug 13, 2007 4:44:12 PM
In the interest of nit-picking, it should be said that pro-war #2 is at least partly correct, by virtue of the gassing of the Kurds that was often cited by pro-war commentators. The pursuit of WMD was never really proved or disproved (though of course actual lack of possession has been thoroughly established).
Also, pro-war #8 (which I don't recall hearing from any pro-war commentator) isn't wrong so much as it is a non sequitur. It was true that al Qaeda would be at war with us no matter what we did in Iraq, but I don't see how that weighed one way or the other in deciding whether or not to invade. I guess you could say they are more "at war" with us because of the invasion, but I think there isn't much to bear that out.
Posted by: Ben | Aug 13, 2007 4:47:59 PM
Matt - I don't think Ezra was trying to say that those were the *only* good reasons why people opposed the war. But they're the least ideologically touchy, whereas any mention of imperialism etc. will get you branded as a dirty hippie. The point (or a point) is that back then, Packer could easily see that the anti-war crowd had fairly mainstream concerns - so any of his ilk who are currently saying we were against the war "for the wrong reasons" (cue caricature of America-hating pacifist hippie) is demonstrably full of shit by their own standards.
Posted by: Hob | Aug 13, 2007 5:01:44 PM
And let's not forget antiwar reasons 9 and 10:
9) After Saddam is deposed, Iraq might easily degenerate into something between a multi-way civil war, and a Hobbesian 'war of all against all.'
10) In any case, Iraq is likely to be weakened, and Iran is likely to be the main beneficiary.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | Aug 13, 2007 5:01:54 PM
Ezra
Using George Bush's incompetence as reasoning for why the pro war arguments were wrong is a strawman of epic proportions. If George Bush built a house for homeless children and the house collapsed killing everyone inside that would not mean that it was wrong to build a house. It just means you should have hired a better contractor. Of course if Americans knew how bad a president W was going to be then he probably would never have been "elected".
Intention and execution are completely different things.
Posted by: Phil | Aug 13, 2007 5:02:22 PM
Interesting to note that now one of the main rationales for staying, so we are told, is that if we leave the first part of #4 under the 'Against' list will occur. The second part has already come true -- our popularity in Turkey, for example, is down to 9% and they are our NATO allies. I'd say Anti-Americanism is at a fairly high level -- perhaps even historically high levels.
So it looks like to me that the "Against" #4 is pretty well validated as well. The wider war -- a war that would not have been sparked without our foolhardy invasion and may only be prevented by extraordinary diplomatic or additional military action -- only awaits our departure. Thus we cannot leave, or so we are told. Only folk like Kucinich serously suggest that we would not have a ongoing presence within or nearby Iraq in an effort to stop this potential regional conflict. I expect that we will have troops in Iraq for the remainder of my lifetime.
Yea us!
Posted by: mb | Aug 13, 2007 5:07:25 PM
Ezra stated, "Iraqis were suffering under sanctions. Our sanctions"
We need to remember that those sanctions were enforced by Bill Clinton's team. These are the same people Hillary takes credit for whenever she invokes her Bill's name.
Posted by: jncam | Aug 13, 2007 5:09:14 PM
Ben - the killing of Kurds with poison gas is relevant to point #1, but it has nothing to do with #2 unless you accept the propaganda line that poison gas is a weapon of mass destruction. It's not. It's a bad, unconventional, illegal weapon, which is only able to cause mass destruction if you have an air force or artillery to drop it all over a village.
Posted by: Hob | Aug 13, 2007 5:11:07 PM
RE: Bush Incompetence
This war, perfectly executed, would have been just as wrong -- perhaps not as catastrophic, but wrong nonetheless. We'd still be stuck there since we would have dethroned the Sunnis and opened the door to Iran through the Shiites.
This was a stupid move regardless of execution.
Posted by: mb | Aug 13, 2007 5:23:36 PM
MB
Saying this war would have been wrong regardless is an opinion without warrant or justification. I'm sorry but I've never found "because I say so" to be a persuasive argument.
Posted by: Phil | Aug 13, 2007 5:26:25 PM
Hey, check out this short, satirical "You Tube" video blasting O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and other right-wing pundits. You'll love it! And, it's by an evangelical pastor!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hh3xwuH-rE
Posted by: LeRoy Bechthold | Aug 13, 2007 5:39:08 PM
"Iraqis were suffering under sanctions. Our sanctions."
This was an enormous factor in my reasoning, coupled with the sheer illogic of Iraq's failure to disarm (in light of the absence of WMD, their failure to more publicly demonstrate disarmament still boggles me)
Posted by: Anthony Damiani | Aug 13, 2007 5:49:54 PM
So far as I can tell, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 on the pro-war case proved to be entirely wrong. ...
Meanwhile, literally every element of the anti-war case has been proven correct, save for four
I was very strongly opposed to the invasion, but I think you've overstated your case. Most of these points might have gone very differently had people of average competence been in charge. At the time it wasn't at all obvious how badly Bush and his team would bungle things, and that item isn't on the list. Imagine, for example, that the Iraqi Army hadn't been disbanded and de-Baathification had been less severe. We might be looking at a very different scenario. The war was still very deeply wrong for several reasons, and the chances of it being successful were always too slim, but I don't think we can say for certain how things would have gone with decent leadership.
Phil, I think the reasons listed against the war are good ones, just in terms of probabilities, or in the case of 2 (which could be better stated), the principles of what makes a war the necessary evil it sometimes is. And added to the list would be a great deal of skepticism about ties to al Qaeda. Even had there been complete certainty about real WMD and that Bush was an excellent chief, the war still would have been wrong prospectively for the reasons given. But then I still have naggingly similar views about the American Revolution. Maybe we would have looked at the results, had Iraq gone better, and said that the war was wrong, but fortunately the effects overall were good. That's possible, if very unlikely.
Posted by: Sanpete | Aug 13, 2007 6:02:49 PM
Number 2 isn't wrong. Saddam gassed his people. chemical weapons are "WMD."
A stupid list, but you are wrong on number 2.
Posted by: Tony | Aug 13, 2007 6:09:00 PM
Against
9. Such a war would violate international law, and would constitute a war crime.
I am surprised at how little consideration was given to what the law seemed to dictate, given that so many of the players involved were lawyers.
Posted by: bob h | Aug 13, 2007 6:41:32 PM
Number 2 isn't wrong. Saddam gassed his people. chemical weapons are "WMD."A stupid list, but you are wrong on number 2.
#2 should have been split up. The use by Saddam Hussein of chemical weapons in the past is unrelated to any evidence of continuing to develop them.
The best available evidence, that of the UN (and IAEA under them) is that there were no efforts being conducted to develop WMD.
Further, above and beyond the grand fraud of claiming Saddam was pursuing yellowcake uranium from Niger based on badly counterfeited documents was consciously a fraud, as Iraq already had thousands of tons of yellowcake uranium, and the limiting factor for their nuclear weapons program was not their possession of low grade uranium but their technological capacity to process it.
(Not to mention questions of how Saddam Hussein proposed sneaking hundreds of tons of yellowcake uranium out of a French-guarded complex in Niger to Iraq.)
Posted by: El Cid | Aug 13, 2007 6:47:03 PM
It`s not the people who got it wrong that bother me. It`s the people who still refuse to admit they got it wrong. Even Hillary has a `If I knew now what I knew then line.`
No, it`s Cheney and Bush and the 28 percenters who say even with hindsight, we would have done it all again, no regrets; those are the truely dangerous people. They still are guiding this war, and the Republican party is looking for someone to continue this policy.
Posted by: Profbacon | Aug 13, 2007 7:02:05 PM
We need to remember that those sanctions were enforced by Bill Clinton's team. These are the same people Hillary takes credit for whenever she invokes her Bill's name.
NCAM,
The sanctions on Iraq were not unilateral US sanctions. They were multilateral sanctions by the UN. Furthermore, the UN used sanction originally as a means to avoid war. If you are opposed to sanctions and opposed to invasion then what would you have suggested?
Posted by: Phil | Aug 13, 2007 7:07:04 PM
Bob h: As I remember, the White House was very good at getting a bunch of well-mannered lawyerly characters into the public eye to say things like "The 1991 war never really ended, and he broke the terms of the cease-fire, so we're not really starting a war". I witnessed one such occasion. People who didn't know anything at all about international law might think that was convincing. Of the people who knew better (like the Bar Association crowd at that event, who didn't really bother engaging with the government guy's half-hearted argument) I think a lot of them just assumed that Bush wouldn't really do it alone, that it'd end up being some kind of UN operation. Anecdotally I know of at least a few people who kept assuming that right up to the beginning of the war.
Posted by: Hob | Aug 13, 2007 7:09:02 PM
Sanpete
I think you're right that some of the reasons against are valid, especially 2. Unfortunately we won't really know for sure who was right or wrong because of the historic poor performance of the president.
However I still don't buy some of these issues/they're over stated. Containment was only a policy to prevent Saddam from extending his power/ability to acquire WMD's. It was not a policy intended to remove him from position of oppression. For those who supported the war from a humanitarian position 1 is a non sequitor.
Second. I mentioned above this way is the most true. But its very overstated. The US did have international support (UK,South Korea,Spain,Japan all come to mind.) A large reason why Russia and France didn't suppport overthrowing Saddam was because some of their major corporations were doing business with Saddam illegally. The French are also generally pacifists nowadays and don't support any type of military action.
Third. The actual "war" in Iraq resulted in few civilian casualties. The war part was easy. Ironically this is the part that the Bush adminstration had the least control over. The majority of lives lost has come during the rebuilding aspect of the war. And as we all agree on has been mired with incompetence.
The fourth reason has definetely been "proven true" however is largely as a result of the failures and incompetence of this adminstration and their inability to bring the peace.
Fifth. I think this argument is general an ethnocentric western argument that "democracy is only for western countries". But I think there is a fundamental question that still needs discussion here. Harvard Professor Amy Chua, has written an excellent book called "World on Fire" where she argues that the problem with typical democracy promotion is that we export raw free market democracy so quickly that it backfires. I think this is a large part of the underlying problem with this adminstrations democracy promotion. They've used Iraq as their testing ground for all their laissez faire free market beliefs. This is the opposite approach to take IMO. There's a reason why most ruling parties that come into office always institute sweeping expansions of the welfare state.
I never heard the 6th reason. But to be fair thats not exactly a verifable claim
Seven- we don't really know. When the estimates came from general suggesting necessary troop levels they were immediately rejected by the president. I think there might be some truth to this.
Eight- This one is true largely because of the failures/incompetence of the reconstruction period. A key aspect to remember is that AQI didn't appear in Iraq until 2004 and even still the AQI threat is debateable
Posted by: Phil | Aug 13, 2007 7:34:37 PM
5. Democracy can't be imposed on a country like Iraq.
This one needed fixing.
Posted by: josephdietrich | Aug 13, 2007 7:56:45 PM
Phil: "The US did have international support (UK,South Korea,Spain,Japan all come to mind.) A large reason why Russia and France didn't suppport overthrowing Saddam was because some of their major corporations were doing business with Saddam illegally. The French are also generally pacifists nowadays and don't support any type of military action."
"Generally pacifists nowadays"? That's ridiculous. Even if you think the 1991 Iraq war was ancient history, France had a non-negligible presence in Afghanistan post-2003, fought in the Ivory Coast from 2002 to 2004, and still has troops in Lebanon and Haiti. The only way that France has become less militaristic in modern times is that they finally ended the draft and went to a volunteer army... in 2001.
As for international support in 2003, I don't know why you think it matters that we got pliable allies like South Korea to go along with this, but you left out half of point 2: "without immediate provocation".
Posted by: Hob | Aug 13, 2007 8:26:53 PM
Phil:
"Third. The actual "war" in Iraq resulted in few civilian casualties. The war part was easy. Ironically this is the part that the Bush adminstration had the least control over. The majority of lives lost has come during the rebuilding aspect of the war. And as we all agree on has been mired with incompetence."
What nonsense. You've bought into the fantasy that the "war" ended with the taking of Baghdad and Saddam. There were essentially only two ways for Iraq to fight our invasion. One was to stand and be slaughtered. The other, and more sensible, was to fall back let us take what we wanted then fight us in an asymmetrical insurgent style conflict -- as they have for lo these 4+ years. Maybe we thought that taking Baghdad was the end of the "war," but they clearly didn't. There were plenty of voices warning about this before the war.
There were "few civilian casualties" in the "war" precisely because they offered no real resistance, so there was little real combat. Consequently, few collateral casualties. Because that wasn't the whole war. We're still in the war. Are there enough civilian casualties now to suit you?
"Because I say so" wasn't actually ever part of my argument. I'm not sure how a fair reading of my comment RE: Incompetence would have given you that impression. However, reading your comments has convinced me that, though weak, "because I say so" is a superior argument to the junk you're putting out there. Apparently you supported this nonsense -- perhaps out of the best of intentions -- but there really is no defense for it now. No matter how hard you thrash about in search of justification. "Because I say so" only really works if you're always right. In this case I am and you, sadly for many dead Americans and Iraqis, are not.
Posted by: mb | Aug 13, 2007 9:42:42 PM
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