News Two world maps: The mission and the popular vote.

[Hurkyl]

You don't have to be pushing a "why can't we all just get along" unicorns-rainbows-and-puppies agenda to say it's craven, stupid, and selfish to dismantle or chip away at more than a century's worth of restraint and hard-won agreement in the way that nations should treat each other.

You're right, you don't. But so what? People do, and I reject it when they do.



Incidentally, a biased one-sided condemnation like yours suffers from one of the same major flaws as the unicorns-rainbows-and-puppies agenda -- it's biased and one-sided.

(Incidentally, the "bias" is that you consider only the drawbacks and not the benefits. The "one-sidedness" is that you don't evaluate any of the alternatives)

Knowing all the drawbacks of one choice of action doesn't tell anyone anything useful.
Knowing all of the benefits and the drawbacks of one choice of action doesn't tell anyone anything useful.
It's only when you know the benefits and drawbacks of several choices of action (including the choice of inaction) that you know something useful.

And it's this point that lies at the core of by beef with criticisms of the war in Iraq -- it's rare to see someone criticising the war actually make an attempt to evaluate what benefits it had... and it's almost entirely unheard of to see them fairly evaluate the other courses of action! But the criticism has no weight unless it has both of those aspects to it.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

And it's this point that lies at the core of by beef with criticisms of the war in Iraq -- it's rare to see someone criticising the war actually make an attempt to evaluate what benefits it had... and it's almost entirely unheard of to see them fairly evaluate the other courses of action! But the criticism has no weight unless it has both of those aspects to it.

Other courses of action... that would accomplish the elimination of Iraqi WMDs that did not exist in the first place? I'm actually quite curious as to what you would consider an alternative course of action. The alternative I'm talking about is of course not starting a preemptive war against a country that had no intention of and had made no preparations for military action against the United States.

As far as allocation of military resources, the obvious alternative that would have happened would have been finishing the job in Afghanistan.

It appears to me that you're taking a circumspect and veiled approach to saying "But we had to do something!" as though there was some actual problem that invading Iraq attempted to solve or some other vital and urgent danger that was being dealt with by that course of action.

But there wasn't. At all. It was an empty exercise that at best addressed the welfare of a few egos at the cost of the things I listed above and five thousand American lives plus somewhere between fifty thousand and five hundred thousand Iraqi lives, depending on whose estimate you use. (And a material number of Coalition troops as well, of course.)

As far as evaluating any theoretical benefits from the Iraq War, I'd be willing to entertain that at a point of maybe fifteen or twenty years after we pull out of there, whenever that is. At the moment any benefits are of the "we were welcomed as liberators!" entirely ephemeral sort, about as real as unicorns.

If Iraq is a prosperous and stable democracy two decades after we leave instead of a war-torn factionalized haven for terrorists (like what Afghanistan is right now, for example), I would concede some benefit to the war... though that would still mean we've given carte blanche to any country for a preemptive war as long as they promise and double-pinky-swear that they're trying super-duper hard to build prosperous and stable democracies too (Remember George Bush swearing "I am not a nation builder" during the 2k race? Yeah.) and maybe fake a little intelligence information like we or Nazi Germany did. That's quite a big price which will very likely cost more lives and misery than the Iraq War could have ever saved or benefited.

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[Hurkyl]

It appears to me that you're taking a circumspect and veiled approach to saying "But we had to do something!"

No, I'm not -- I consider that an equally fallacious argument.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

No, I'm not -- I consider that an equally fallacious argument.

So... you don't believe that we had to do something, you just think it's fallacious for me to point out that we didn't have to do anything?

Simply because I don't tally up ephemeral and potentially temporary benefits of invading Iraq does not make any of my criticisms of starting the war fallacies. You might call it an "incomplete criticism" or something but a fallacy is flawed reasoning. You haven't attempted to point out any flaws in reasoning, all you've tried to do is categorically dismiss what I'm saying by labeling it as "one-sided". (And when I asked what the alternatives are, what the other side is, you've declined to respond.)

It occurs to me that perhaps you are extrapolating my criticism of the initial invasion into some viewpoint on how the situation should be resolved. Making such an extrapolation, when I haven't said anything about how the situation should be resolved, would be fallacious.

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[Hurkyl]

So... you don't believe that we had to do something, you just think it's fallacious for me to point out that we didn't have to do anything?

Those are unrelated. An argument consisting essentially of nothing but "we had to do something!" is equally bad as an argument consisting essentially of nothing but "Why can't we all just get along?"

I haven't evaluated your argument beyond observing that it isn't of the latter form; to do so would be irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make.

 

[mheslep]

...As far as I'm concerned Bush engaging in preemptive warfare was an act that tore up and threw away part of what several of my ancestors fought for, and one died for, in WWI and WWII. The last act of preemptive warfare before the Iraq War by a major Western power was Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland.
...

Curious historical treatment: England (wasn't attacked) declared war on Germany in both I and II; US (wasn't attacked) involvement in Korean war; US(wasn't attacked) involvement in Vietnam war, and so on.

 

[mheslep]

...had no intention of and had made no preparations for military action against the United States...

US and British aircraft, while enforcing the No Fly Zone, were attacked almost daily for years by Iraq prior to the 2003 war.

 

[mheslep]

The New American century was a neo conservative think tank which laid the base for the Bush
politics of the last eight years.

The global verdict is in the second link: http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com/results

Here's another world poll, showing a sizeable, sometimes a majority chunk of the population in polled countries believe either Israel or the US were behind 911. Is this also a verdict?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:911worldopinionpoll_Sep2008.png

 

[Office_Shredder]

Curious historical treatment: England (wasn't attacked) declared war on Germany in both I and II; US (wasn't attacked) involvement in Korean war; US(wasn't attacked) involvement in Vietnam war, and so on.

Pre-emptive =/= not attacked first.

 

[russ_watters]

Do you not also consider the removal of Saddam Hussein a benefit?

 

[CaptainQuasar]

I haven't evaluated your argument beyond observing that it isn't of the latter form; to do so would be irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make.

Ah, I apologize, I misunderstood. I thought at the point when you said "And it's this point that lies at the core of by beef with criticisms of the war in Iraq..." you had begun talking about criticisms of the war in Iraq in general.

Do you not also consider the removal of Saddam Hussein a benefit?

Well, first of all, whether that's a benefit or not by itself has nothing to do with whether or not it's a justification for ending the international tradition of intolerance of preemptive war. And that definitely is not a justification for a preemptive war. Now if, say, Syria wants to regain firmer control of Lebanon perhaps they will invade and say "Oh, there was a really super-duper bad government in power, you betcha, our respect for human dignity demanded a regime change. It's just like getting rid of Saddam Hussein."

As far as, in general, evaluating it as a benefit of the war - not until it's proven to have been a real and enduring benefit. If, come ten or fifteen years after we withdraw from Iraq there's another dictator in power there who we sell arms and anthrax and other things to when it serves our purposes, obviously it will have cost both the U.S. and Iraq and their citizens far more than it was worth.

And in any case it's obvious that getting rid of dictators is not in general a major goal of American foreign policy in general nor Bush's foreign policy specifically; much of the time we sell them arms and prop up their regimes as we did with Saddam before that became inconvenient. No one thinks that the removal of Saddam was something done out of love for the Iraqi people.

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[Mentz114]

Do you not also consider the removal of Saddam Hussein a benefit?

Benefits can come with costs - was it worth 3000 american lives, 250trillion dollars, a million refugees and chaos in the middle east ?

 

[mheslep]

Pre-emptive =/= not attacked first.

ok replace all of the above with 'was not in danger of imminent attack'. Even England still might have made that case (foolishly) in '39.

 

[Art]

Do you not also consider the removal of Saddam Hussein a benefit?

How did the removal of Saddam benefit the citizens of the USA?

 

[mheslep]

Benefits can come with costs - was it worth 3000 American lives, 250trillion dollars, a million refugees and chaos in the middle east ?

4000 US lives / 30000 US wounded, $150B/year, > two million refugees, now returning slowly.

A scenario for the case where S. Hussein had been left to run Iraq:
-Saddam continues to fund Hamas Jihadists.
-Iraq goes on as planned to chair the U.N. Disarmament Conference in 2003.
-Syrian troops remain in Lebanon
-Saddam, per his statement in the FBI/Piro interview, reconstitutes his WMD program.
-Iraq degenerates into a Congo or a Rwanda (except with a huge oil wealth), inviting invasions by Saudi Arabia to protect Sunni interests or Iran to protect Shia.
-Libya does not abandon its nuclear weapons efforts; consequently A.Q. Khan remains undiscovered and continues his nuclear proliferation network.

 

[Mentz114]

A scenario for the case where S. Hussein had been left to run Iraq:
-Saddam continues to fund Hamas Jihadists.
-Iraq goes on as planned to chair the U.N. Disarmament Conference in 2003.
-Syrian troops remain in Lebanon
-Saddam, per his statement in the FBI/Piro interview, reconstitutes his WMD program.
-Iraq degenerates into a Congo or a Rwanda (except with a huge oil wealth), inviting invasions by Saudi Arabia to protect Sunni interests or Iran to protect Shia.
-Libya does not abandon its nuclear weapons efforts; consequently A.Q. Khan remains undiscovered and continues his nuclear proliferation network.

Utter speculation. There never was a viable WMD program. You might as well add another clause -

- Pigs fly.

 

[mheslep]

Utter speculation.

I think well grounded speculation, which is required for us to get anywhere as Hurkyl pointed out so well above:

And it's this point that lies at the core of by beef with criticisms of the war in Iraq -- it's rare to see someone criticising the war actually make an attempt to evaluate what benefits it had... and it's almost entirely unheard of to see them fairly evaluate the other courses of action! But the criticism has no weight unless it has both of those aspects to it.

There never was a viable WMD program. You might as well add another clause

- Pigs fly.

Perhaps you meant to qualify that to 'after the first gulf war'. Otherwise, you have no idea what you are talking about.

...They translated the nuclear reports on site into English from the Arabic and read them to us over the satellite telephones. My secretary stayed up all night transcribing these reports from Baghdad. What they said, very clearly, was there was a massive nuclear weapons development program that was probably nine to 18 months away from having its first nuclear weapons detonation and that CIA had totally missed it; we had bombed everything we could bomb in Iraq, but missed an enormous nuclear weapons development facility. Didn't know it was there; never dropped one bomb on it.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/interviews/clarke.html

 

[CaptainQuasar]

4000 US lives / 30000 US wounded, $150B/year, > two million refugees, now returning slowly.

A scenario for the case where S. Hussein had been left to run Iraq:
-Saddam continues to fund Hamas Jihadists.
-Iraq goes on as planned to chair the U.N. Disarmament Conference in 2003.
-Syrian troops remain in Lebanon
-Saddam, per his statement in the FBI/Piro interview, reconstitutes his WMD program.
-Iraq degenerates into a Congo or a Rwanda (except with a huge oil wealth), inviting invasions by Saudi Arabia to protect Sunni interests or Iran to protect Shia.
-Libya does not abandon its nuclear weapons efforts; consequently A.Q. Khan remains undiscovered and continues his nuclear proliferation network.

But it's not like any of those things are now impossible. Iraq has been a Congo or Rwanda for more of the time post-invasion than not - remember when they were finding groups of dozens of decapitated bodies at a time in Baghdad? - and there isn't exactly a guarantee that it won't degenerate to that in the future. Under Saddam there was a don't ask, don't tell policy supported by Iraqi law for gays; now gays in Iraq are regularly subject to violence and persecution. Iraq is not the "stable and peaceful country" that McCain declared it to be a couple of months ago.

And for another example, Iran has extended its influence in Iraq far beyond what it ever was able to do before. And if they or Saudi Arabia ever decide to invade, they can now justify it based on the U.S.'s preemptive war precedent - another nice little "Russia protecting Ossetians" type scenario. We've actually already seen some degree of this with Turkish incursions into Northern Iraq against the Kurds - there's no way we could say with a straight face that we can invade Iraq but the Turks can't.

Like I said above - until any of these things you list are proven to be enduring well beyond the U.S. occupation of Iraq, counting them as benefits of or justifications for the Iraq War is counting chickens before they've hatched.

And even then, they really are not worth the price of setting the preemptive war precedent plus the humongous cost in blood and treasure borne across the U.S., the Coalition, Iraq, and Iraq's neighbors who aided by sheltering the refugees. They aren't even worth the cost to the present and future citizens of the U.S. alone - not financially nor in the lives of our dead military and the wrecked bodies and souls of military casualties.

Nor in the reduced security for Americans now or in the future. No matter what happens from now on out - not even if McCain had won the election, escalated troop levels, and remained there in force for a hundred years - no terrorist group would regard the terrorist activities and efforts in Iraq during the period of occupation as some sort of failure. Now that all of those techniques are well-polished and proven successful on a world stage terrorists all over are probably eager to accomplish the same sorts of things again. No matter how you slice it this was a setback in the War on Terror, something that vindicates and emboldens terrorism.

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[CaptainQuasar]

And wait just a second, mheslep - that Richard Clarke thing you quoted says that after the Gulf War there was a nuclear program discovered by the U.N weapons inspectors that the CIA hadn't found and that hadn't been bombed during the Gulf War, a program which at that point was nine to 18 months from an initial test. That test didn't happen - so what you cite there demonstrates that the U.N. inspection program worked, which is one of the major reasons why the Iraq War was completely unjustified and the Bush administration had to fabricate intelligence to get anyone to go along with it.

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[ThomasT]

Interesting thread. For what it's worth, the arguments made by CaptainQuasar and others against the US invasion of Iraq make the most sense to me so far -- just my two cents.

I have a couple of questions that seem pertinent to this thread.

1) Has anyone lived in Iraq during the period between the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion? Or, has anyone talked to Iraqis who were there during that time -- to gather evidence regarding what it was like for an average (politically uninvolved) citizen living under Sadam's regime?

I've talked to a few, and they unanimously report that they lived pretty much like an average citizen here in the US. Then, following the US invasion, their lives were pretty much ruined (injuries to themselves or family members, loss of family and/or friends, loss of jobs, loss of homes, etc.).

2) The US preemptively invaded a sovereign nation, and justified it in pretty much the same way that the Japanese justified preemptively invading the US via the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

It seems that a majority of US and worldwide poll respondents view the US invasion of Iraq as a violation of international law and as being accomplished partly through lies and propaganda orchestrated by the Bush administration.

If this is so, why hasn't some sort of formal investigation of this been started -- either by the US Congress or by some international group?

 

[Mentz114]

CaptainQuasar:

which is one of the major reasons why the Iraq War was completely unjustified and the Bush administration had to fabricate intelligence to get anyone to go along with it.

ThomasT:

It seems that a majority of US and worldwide poll respondents view the US invasion of Iraq as a violation of international law and as being accomplished partly through lies and propaganda orchestrated by the Bush administration.

Yes, this is a fair summary. And maybe 50% of the American people would agree given the voting figures on tuesday.

If this is so, why hasn't some sort of formal investigation of this been started -- either by the US Congress or by some international group?

It probably won't happen in the US in a hurry, if at all. Not because people ( the Dems ?) don't want to do it, but because it would be too divisive at this time.

The best we can hope for is an end to an insane foreign policy driven by religious bigotry, and a return to Realpolitik.

But this is all discussed in the 'Iraq War' thread, so not strictly appropriate in this thread.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

To tie it all back to the original theme of the thread, these are the reasons that the election of Obama over his more hawkish opponent being favored by people around the world is not a simple matter of those foreigners being selfish. Avoiding things like precedents for preemptive war and unjust wars like the Iraq invasion are in the interest of everybody in the global community of nations, including Americans.

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[CaptainQuasar]

One other point on an item from mheslep's list:

-Saddam continues to fund Hamas Jihadists.

That would be the democratically-elected government of Palestine, BTW. Saddam funding them does not look any different to me from the U.S. funding and supplying weapons and military training to governments and groups all over the world who are often very nasty characters - including all the funding and weapons that probably ended up being given directly to members of Sunni death squads in Iraq! (That link goes to a posting from a liberal blog but note the direct quote from General Mixon at the bottom.)

I'm not saying that Saddam was a nice guy because of that, just that when it's something we do ourselves it obviously does not constitute some urgent justification to initiate a preemptive war.

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[mheslep]

And wait just a second, mheslep - that Richard Clarke thing you quoted says that after the Gulf War there was a nuclear program discovered by the U.N weapons inspectors that the CIA hadn't found and that hadn't been bombed during the Gulf War, a program which at that point was nine to 18 months from an initial test. That test didn't happen - so what you cite there demonstrates that the U.N. inspection program worked, which is one of the major reasons why the Iraq War was completely unjustified and the Bush administration had to fabricate intelligence to get anyone to go along with it.

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You seem to be responding to some other argument and spiralling off on a tangent. Clearly, I grabbed the readily available Clarke cloak to refute the nonsense about 'there never was a viable WMD program' in Iraq.

 

[mheslep]

That would be the democratically-elected government of Palestine, BTW.

No, there was no such government in 2003. Even so, the Hamas jihadists suicide bombers were funded by Saddam, the government or lack there of in Palestine is irrelevant.

 

[Mentz114]

mheslep:

Clearly, I grabbed the readily available Clarke cloak to refute the nonsense about 'there never was a viable WMD program' in Iraq.

If there ever was a WMD program, and it failed, then it was not viable. So there never was a viable WMD program. This has been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere so I rest my case.

 

[mheslep]

mheslep:

If there ever was a WMD program, and it failed, then it was not viable. So there never was a viable WMD program. This has been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere so I rest my case.

More misinformation. Go do some research and post the sources. The Iraq WMD program was stopped by the first gulf war, it did not fail.

 

[Mentz114]

mheslep:

The Iraq WMD program was stopped by the first gulf war, it did not fail.

That being the case, the oft repeated claims of the Bush administration on WMD are disinformation. I will grant that prior to 'desert storm' Iraq did have primitive ICBM's and probably ambitions to equip them with more deadly payloads.

 

[mheslep]

[...I will grant that prior to 'desert storm' Iraq did have primitive ICBM's and probably ambitions to equip them with more deadly payloads.

Iraq never had an InterContinental Ballistic Missile, primitive or otherwise, which is defined as a 5500km range.

 

[mheslep]

But it's not like any of those things are now impossible. Iraq has been a Congo or Rwanda for more of the time post-invasion than not - remember when they were finding groups of dozens of decapitated bodies at a time in Baghdad?

Dozens? I said Rwanda, not Chicago, Il.

Iraq is not the "stable and peaceful country" that McCain declared it to be a couple of months ago.

Misinformation.

And for another example, Iran has extended its influence in Iraq far beyond what it ever was able to do before.

Yes, there are obviously many terrible consequences to the war. Again, as Hurkyl pointed out, these points are not useful unless they're are weighed against the consequences of leaving S. Hussein in place.

And if they or Saudi Arabia ever decide to invade, they can now justify it based on the U.S.'s preemptive war precedent - another nice little "Russia protecting Ossetians" type scenario. We've actually already seen some degree of this with Turkish incursions into Northern Iraq against the Kurds - there's no way we could say with a straight face that we can invade Iraq but the Turks can't.

As I mentioned above, Iraq is hardly the first precedent for either a pre-emptive or preventative attack. Only Imperial Japan qualifies otherwise for the US in the last 100 years. I reject comparisons of Iraq under Hussein with the Turks/Kurds or Russia/Georgia unless and until the Turks/Russia show where the Kurds/Georgia: 1) invaded or annexed two countries, 2) committed genocide on their own inhabitants, 3) started a WMD program, 4) have dozens of UN resolutions and sanctions against them.

...Nor in the reduced security for Americans now or in the future. No matter what happens from now on out - not even if McCain had won the election, escalated troop levels, and remained there in force for a hundred years - no terrorist group would regard the terrorist activities and efforts in Iraq during the period of occupation as some sort of failure. Now that all of those techniques are well-polished and proven successful on a world stage terrorists all over are probably eager to accomplish the same sorts of things again.

Could you show how the wannabe terrorists would not see their efforts as a failure, how their techniques were 'proven successful' given that AQI was utterly destroyed as a coherent force? Rather, it must be seen now that if an independent actor in early post Saddam Iraq wanted a path to some self-empowerment, the only possible way to do it was to get involved in the democratic process, that joining AQI will gain you nothing in the end, instead it will surely get you dead.

I do not condone the US/Western path to the Iraq war. I do reject fallacious parallels to it and pretense that there would have been zero consequences for doing nothing except to continue the NFZ and the corrupt Oil for Food program.