Unreal
Spencer Ackerman offered a gentle critique of his friend George Packer’s essay on Iraq in the premiere issue of the new World Affairs journal. I’d go a bit further — I think this very much represents the worst of Packer’s writing on Iraq rather than the best. It opens with some striking on-the-ground reporting from Iraq, then shifts to a discussion of how un-visceral these events are to most Americans, who are far more distanced from the conflict than we were from Vietnam and earlier wars. Eventually, though, it shifts into a kind of lame plea for open-mindedness:
So the lines were drawn from the start. To the pro-war side, criticism was animated by partisanship and defeatism, if not treason. This view, amplified on cable news, talk radio, and right-wing blogs, was tacitly encouraged by the White House. It kept a disastrous defense secretary in office long after it was obvious that he was losing the war, ensured that no senior officer was held accountable for military setbacks, and contributed to the repetition of disastrous errors by the war’s political architects. Meanwhile, the fact that the best and brightest Iraqis were being slaughtered by a ruthless insurgency never aroused much interest or sympathy among the war’s opponents. The kind of people who would ordinarily inspire solidarity campaigns among Western progressives—trade unionists, journalists, human rights advocates, women’s rights activists, independent politicians, doctors, professors—were being systematically exterminated. But since the war shouldn’t have been fought in the first place, what began badly must also end badly.
Note that even in Packer’s somewhat tendentious accounting, there’s no actual parallelism here. War supporters, invested in the idea that they were right when they were, in fact, wrong blinded themselves to actual developments on the ground in Iraq. War opponents were, by contrast, what? It’s hard to say. Not blinded by denial that terrible things were happening in Iraq. But, I guess, not affected by these terrible happenings in the way Packer thinks would have been appropriate? Insufficiently surprised that a war they’d always regarded as ill-advised turned out to be ill-advised? It’s not clear.
As we go deeper, this continues to be the pattern. Packer sees a very schematic United States of America. One where “Pro-war journalists and bloggers deride the piece as fraudulent and anti-military” even before evidence is in on the Scott Beauchamp case. Similarly, when “two center-left think tank analysts return from a trip to Iraq and declare in an op-ed that the surge has produced military successes” the response is that “by the next morning, anti-war journalists and bloggers are in full cry, deriding the piece as credulous, dishonest, and self-serving.” This did happen, but it’s curious that Packer doesn’t name the think tank analysts. Well, their names are “Kenneth Pollack” and “Michael O’Hanlon.” And whatever else one might say about Pollack and O’Hanlon, it’s certainly not the case that left of center people have been blindly ignoring their views throughout the course of the Iraq debate. Quite the reverse — Pollack’s The Threatening Storm was hugely influential and O’Hanlon was, for years, one of the most prominent national security analysts in America.
Similarly, given Packer’s dystopian vision of American discourse, it’s hard to understand how Packer’s book, The Assassin’s Gate, sold so many copies and attracted such wide praise or how Packer came to have a job with the most prestigious magazine in the country — a magazine which published a lot of basically pro-war material in 2002 and 2003 and went on to vociferously denounce George W. Bush in 2004.
The reality is that the American political debate from 9/11/01 to today has been enormously complex. A once-popular war has become highly unpopular. A great many people, myself included, have not only changed our minds about the war but changed our minds about a larger set of concerns. The market for the sort of serious, thoughtful reporting and analysis Packer has brought us from the region has actually been very large. People from differing political perspectives came together to contribute essays to a new journal called World Affairs. Howard Dean rose and fell then kinda sorta rose again to become DNC Chair. Joe Lieberman lost the Democratic nomination, but secured election as an Independent. The distance between America and Iraq that Packer writes about is real enough, and it’s quite true that the war exists as a kind of abstraction — a faint presence. But the dumb and indifferent public senselessly processing information through fixed partisan blinders just isn’t there — the country wasn’t evenly split on the war in the summer of 2003, and it’s not evenly split today, either; a lot of debate has happened and a lot of people have changed their minds. Indeed, that changing of minds has in many ways been the central fact of American politics in recent years.
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February 13th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
There is also the significant difference that everyone who publicly supported hawkish policies in relation to Iraq were considered “serious” and anyone who dissented from not only Bush Jr’s regime of incompetence, insensitivity, and venality, but who dissented also from the hawkish policies of even those who didn’t like Bush Jr. — all these people had to first ‘prove’ to the hawkish nimrods that they had serious points to make and they had to somehow ‘establish’ that they weren’t ‘hate America’ lefty extremists, who should always be ignored, especially when they are consistently correct.
Any person advocating a hawkish policy gets treated as a serious analyst, and anyone dissenting from such has to be temporarily granted by the perpetually wrong the right to any public seriousness.
February 13th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Yes, in fact Hillary changed her mind, which seems to make her a villain in the minds of most liberal bloggers. Indeed, the questions were complex, which makes Obama’s simplification of them distasteful to me. You can’t just say “I was right” and expect it to matter as much as he thinks it does.
February 13th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
You can’t just say “I was right” and expect it to matter as much as he thinks it does.
I would say that it’s a general fact that one of the best ways to assess someone’s judgment is to see whether they get important matters right.
February 13th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
“Yes, in fact Hillary changed her mind, which seems to make her a villain in the minds of most liberal bloggers. Indeed, the questions were complex, which makes Obama’s simplification of them distasteful to me. You can’t just say “I was right” and expect it to matter as much as he thinks it does.
Posted by Madhat | February 13, 2008 5:47 PM”
She only kinda sorta changed her mind in the “I would have fought the war in a smarter way” sense. After all, she is surrounding herself with people who supported the Iraq Liberation Act, which was meant to funnel money to Chalabi to overthrow Hussein. You can look up a video on Youtube of Obama voicing doubts in late 2002 that we could actually somehow use the US military to hold the Sunnis, the Shi’ites and the Kurds together into a single state. Meanwhile, on issues like Kyle-Lieberman, banning cluster bombs, etc. Clinton consistently breaks toward the more hawkish mainstream position. Maybe it is out of principle or a fear of looking weak, but either way it isn’t good for American foreign policy.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Hilary Clinton did not bother to read the full NIE on Iraq before deciding whether to vote on the AUMF. The issues may have been complex, but the issues didn’t matter to Clinton. That’s pretty much all you need to know about her judgment.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
For the love of god, this is a good post that isn’t about Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama and there’s no reason to turn it into a discussion of them.
It’s especially impressive because when I got to the part Matt quotes about the war’s opponents not caring about the best and the brightest in Iraq dying, I just wrote “Fuck You, Packer” on my print-out of it and didn’t give it much more thought.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
- Robert H. Jackson, chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg.
All the evil and chaos Packer mentions flows from the invasion, and all the complexities Packer mentions about the situation in Iraq do not negate the ultimate truth that this war was launched on false pretenses. Trying to decry the ‘poisonous’ debate over Iraq is a diversion from the truth that none of this would have happened if we had not invaded Iraq; whatever tragedies and injustices would have happened in Iraq had we not invaded are distractions – it’s what we’ve done and allowed to happen in Iraq since March 2003 that matter.
Let it be said that the DFH’s were right about Vietnam, and are right about Iraq. It’s those who chose to actively distort and forget the lessons of Vietnam (the Republicans), and those non-conservatives who felt they had to be ‘tough’ in foreign policy to be ’serious’, upon whom moral and intellectual blame for the Iraqi catastrophe falls.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Packer’s purpose isn’t to criticise but to exonerate. Lest any American suspect that their country’s committed a vast war-crime Packer’s here to insist that the whole thing was magnificent “folly”, good intentions become epic “tragedy”. True “A falsely justified and poorly waged war hardly deserves the excuse of good intentions.” And yet, what is wisdom? “‘I can never blame the Americans alone,’ an Iraqi refugee named Firas told me in early 2007. “It’s the Iraqis who destroyed their country, with the help of the Americans, under the American eye.” To gain this wisdom, Firas had to lose almost everything. What would it take for Americans to understand what Firas already does? A recognition that Iraq was everyone’s loss, whichever side you were on.”
You see, America is suffering as well. And so let us weep but never accuse. There are no villians here.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
a lot of debate has happened and a lot of people have changed their minds. Indeed, that changing of minds has in many ways been the central fact of American politics in recent years.
one wouldn’t know it either from the stance of the Republican Party, which even though they lost their majority in Congress, still gets to dictate the debate and terms of the war – and one wouldn’t really know it from the general tone of the MSM or the Sunday talk shows which still prominently feature the Republicans and unquestioningly trumpet Petreous and the “success” of the Surge while wholly buying into the idea that everyone who is against us or causing mayhem in Iraq is linked to Al Qaeda.
I think Packer raises some exceptionally good points – the tone of the debate was dictated quite harshly by the War Hawks, the fate of the civilian class in Iraq *has* disappeared off the national radar – if it ever was there (out of sight out of mind) – for better or worse, people are nowhere engaged in this as they were in Vietnam. Limiting the fighting to a mercenary class and tightly controlling the media and visual aspects of the warfare has left the American people extremely disengaged compared to the 1960s. In 1968 we were barely able to talk about anything else. Now, except for when the circular firing squad has Sen Clinton in their sights, when does Iraq ever really beoome the topic of conversation?
February 13th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
That’s horseshit of the highest order.
Of course, when Marla Ruzicka was killed–
–Wingnut, Inc. determined that she was just a closet Muslim terrorist-sympathising bitch who had it coming. (Justin Raimondo collected the various slanders from the usual suspects.)
Packer’s just offering up an American version of Decentism.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Excellent analysis Matt. Kudos!
February 13th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Packer’s Iraq writing is extremely Packer-centric. That, at any rate, was my main problem with his recent New Yorker piece (or maybe not so recent? I lose track of the time), in which he tried very hard to make it seem like everyone in the US was looking at Iraq the wrong way, except for him. It’s normal for a person to believe that s/he is right, of course. But Packer, for me, is particularly frustrating in this regard. Frustrating because he’s smart and passionate (i.e., not hackish and jaded) and he has clearly experience Iraq in a way most of us haven’t. But . . . he can’t seem to parse anything that lies outside of his own observations and convictions. And, what’s more, he doesn’t seem to realize this.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
The purpose of Packer’s article becomes especially clear when we read Kaplan’s Letter from the Editor, wherein he lays out the mag’s ideological perspective:
“The journal will not wear its heart on its sleeve; it’s probably somewhere in the space between board members Kagan and Kazin, which, as it happens, is also the distance between two sides of the same creed. American Exceptionalism, whether summoned to argue for America as exemplar or missionary state, sets the terms of this country’s foreign policy debate—as even those most insistent that America is not exceptional concede.”
Which just restates the axiom that Alan Wolfe quoting Chomsky, makes plain elsewhere in the issue, “namely, that the United States has the right to extend its power and control without limit, insofar as it is feasible.”
And of course such a right might come into question should it be widely understood that the exceptional nation has committed a grave war-crime of fantastic proportions. And so Packer is called in to muddle things, sharpen the aspect of tragedy (it makes such edifying theatre), disburse blame and obscure and deny the essential character of the invasion–namely, that it was an invasion, unprovoked, uniquely iniquitous, “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
February 13th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Agreed, this post is not about the candidates — it is about how we are asked to indulge these tendentious master narratives by people like Packer, who, having won some merit and accolades for work in one difficult arena, then proceed to pontificate well beyond their mastery of the situation, based on little solid evidence, if any, using plain old vanilla political rhetoric of the most facile kind. “… Defeatism if not treason” in sturdy opposition to the war? Utter horse!@#$.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
the only thing that has made the policy debate “complex’ is that the Serious People were all utterly wrong in every respect. What’s “complex” is how you dealt with it, whether you ignored the evidence and carried on (Bill Kristol) or you admitted difficulties and carried on (O’ Hanlon) or you shuffled your feet and said “well I was wrong. BUT I had really, really good reasons and all you anti-war hippies did not. So I am STILL Serious.”
February 13th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
nice post, MY
February 13th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
“The kind of people who would ordinarily inspire solidarity campaigns among Western progressives . . . women’s rights activists . . .”
Of course (to single out one scolding), feminists (and others) have been yelling about not just this, but the rapidly and dangerously degrading status of Iraqi women in general – but of course, that doesn’t count.
And honestly, what the fuck were we supposed to do?
February 13th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
and certainly, open mindedness is not something you would consider…
February 13th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
“and certainly, open mindedness is not something you would consider…”
Cogent. But openmindedness with respect to what? Is every moral judgement illegitimate? Here robertl, let me show an Islamic honor killing. But I pray you, keep an open mind!
February 13th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
By the way, I’d like to know: to exactly whom would lefty solidarity campaigns about civilians being savaged by insurgents in Iraq appeal to?
Surely there must be a degree of actual rationality in such campaigns. Surely no one would be stupid enough to think that the actual insurgents cared or in fact would not take Western opposition as something to be viewed as bad!
Why is it campaigns of solidarity exert some pressure on right wing paramilitaries in Colombia but not on the left wing guerrillas?
Precisely because the right wing paramilitaries were linked to the government, which could be pressured and which is to a degree vulnerable to international human rights pressures…
…where as the leftist guerrillas sincerely don’t care about their human rights image and they will kill leftist solidarity or human rights activists with no fear of any real consequences whatsoever.
We have a continuing belittlement of all rationalists from hawkish fantasists as though we realists were somehow unrealistic.
Why doesn’t Mr. Big Rational Pants outline exactly HOW this awesome fantasized solidarity campaign would have worked out to stop insurgents from murdering their victims?
February 13th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
This is all too familiar to me, since I heard the same line from Packer’s mother at Stanford back during the Vietnam War. Packer-centric, fill in the blank (I think of Diana Trilling-centric), is a good paraphrase of a lot of the liberal anti-anti-War sentiment of the late 60’s.
At least he picked a better mother than Bill Kristol.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
He’s a second-rate mind, and he can’t get the blood off his hands. The combination leads to a lot of preening and whingeing.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
> You can’t just say “I was right” and expect
> it to matter as much as he thinks it does.
>
> Posted by Madhat
Yeah, being utterly wrong about launching an unprovoked war which has killed at least 200,000 human beings, made refugees of at least 1,000,000 more, and utterly shattered a society just isn’t all that big a deal.
Cranky
Oh wait – I’m sorry. Senator Clinton was not wrong about launching the war – she was just wrong in misjudging Bush and Cheney. That’s not so bad now is it.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
“Packer’s Iraq writing is extremely Packer-centric. That, at any rate, was my main problem with his recent New Yorker piece (or maybe not so recent? I lose track of the time), in which he tried very hard to make it seem like everyone in the US was looking at Iraq the wrong way, except for him. It’s normal for a person to believe that s/he is right, of course. But Packer, for me, is particularly frustrating in this regard. Frustrating because he’s smart and passionate (i.e., not hackish and jaded) and he has clearly experience Iraq in a way most of us haven’t. But . . . he can’t seem to parse anything that lies outside of his own observations and convictions. And, what’s more, he doesn’t seem to realize this.
Posted by mary | February 13, 2008 6:39 PM”
Very true. He’s smart, but not smart enough. If he was just a total idiot he would be easy to ignore. If he was smarter, he would know how to exercise better judgment. Unfortunately, he fits right in the middle where he is smart enough to have some insight but dumb enough to make stupid false dichotomies and can be infuriating.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching one high profile journalist gently critique another.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
War opponents were, by contrast, what? It’s hard to say.
Shorter Parker: Negligent. You punked out. A few reporters get their heads chopped off and everybody ran for the hills. Progressive journalists have a duty to take risks and expose the rest of the world to all sides of the conflict. The lack of information coming from Iraq prevents the development of the type of liberal solidarity campaigns from which to base practical opposition. Thus without a cause beyond retreat, war opponents have been totally ineffectual at ending this ridiculous war while the murderous plight of the upper middle class Iraqis (those most able to provide stability in any society) goes underreported.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
The lack of information coming from Iraq prevents the development of the type of liberal solidarity campaigns from which to base practical opposition.
And anyone collecting that information is usually deemed ‘in league with the terrorists’ by the war cheerleading troupes. Thus, Iraqi stringers who are able to go beyond the security walls of bureaux are presumed ‘terror-symps’ for being able to get stories; Iraqi professionals are, for the large part, presumed to be ‘ex-Baathists’ — we see this now in Neil Munro’s smears — and so on.
Like I said, Packer’s false equivalence is just a species of Decentism. Still, I’m sure it makes him feel better.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Holy Shit!!! George Packer: shut the fuck up! NOW, asshole.
Morons like you got 1,000,000 human beings killed in Iraq, put a permanent stain on America’s character, cost us trillions of dollars, and tens of thousands of American lives lost or ruined, and have contributed to the transformation of the American political system into one wihch is not based on the rule of law.
That’s more than enough damage for several lifetimes.
The George Packers of the world need to get a moment of clarity, realize that they are unqualified to lead due to proven bad judgment, and stay the hell out of public affairs before they get any more people killed.
YOU GOT A MILLION PEOPLE KILLED, ASSHOLE
February 13th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
The extremists of Islam were the ones who got people killed in Iraq. In case you haven’t noticed they’re getting people killed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and dozens of other countries too. Yet you have the nerve to blame the Americans?
Iraq isn’t a war in isolation. Some people are simply unwilling to connect the dots.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
The lack of information coming from Iraq prevents the development of the type of liberal solidarity campaigns from which to base practical opposition.
Another lesson learned in Vietnam.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Pseud is right. This is all about Packer feeling better about having cheered on a bloody, disastrous war by painting a cartoon vision of freakish extremes with lone heroic men like him occupying the noble centrist middle. The Fool is also right; it would be nice if the people who cheerleaded this mess ever, ever took a moment to think about what their influence on the Right People in high places has wrought – the deaths and injuries of hundreds of thousands if not more than a million people. But Packer’s construction of laughable evil straw men on the extremes clearly shows that he has never really paused to let that realization sink and the, you know, STFU for a while.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Dear Shithead:
When you support a war of aggression based on a hoax, you assume responsiblity for the outcome.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
If it were a hoax, you’d be right, Fool.
Scott, the Iraqis have fought and died for their freedom. Reminds me there was a country just over 200 hundred years ago that did the same. Unfortunately the Iraqis were so oppressed they were unable to do so completely on their own without help.
anyway we owed the Shia for the deaths we were responsible for when we encouraged them to rise up against Saddam. They did and were slaughtered.
If all you can think about is the horrible loss of life, the dreadfulness of the war which affects all of us, then so be it. But there is a bright future for the Iraqis now that they never could have dreamed of before. It won’t come tomorrow, or the day after, but in a generation or two it will become obvious.
If I didn’t have trust in the Iraqi people themselves to follow through I’d be just as against this war as you.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
“The Fool” is NO fool…
February 13th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
When you support a war of aggression based on a hoax, you assume responsiblity for the outcome.
True, but we are not absolved of all responsibility simply because we did not agree with them. Don’t we have a duty to oppose them? Hate to go Godwin, but I blame all Germans for the Nazis.
I fault Obama for his reluctance to be a leader in the Senate.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
“The extremists of Islam were the ones who got people killed in Iraq. In case you haven’t noticed they’re getting people killed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and dozens of other countries too. Yet you have the nerve to blame the Americans?
See also Moral Determinism. (thanks, pseudonymous – now that’s a helpful website!)
February 14th, 2008 at 2:05 am
Madhat, mary, and SanerHead make the most important points here. Well-meaning naifs who don’t know anything about the history of this conflict that they haven’t read on antiwar.com continue to embarrass themselves.
Our situation in Iraq hasn’t been black and white since at least 1988, no matter how much the sanctimonious self-congratulators imagine it to be. We got into a war there in direct response to genocidal, totalitarian Iraq’s invasion, rape, and annexation of a UN member state and US ally, Kuwait. Since that time we have been running more-or-less continuous combat operations over under around and through Iraq in an attempt to arrange a reasonable resolution. This solution was NOT to be found in sanctions that killed perhaps a million innocent Iraqis while tightening the regime’s grip on power and enriching its collaborators, and it wasn’t going to be reached by making the consequences for violating multiple Chapter VII Security Council Resolutions yet more Resolutions. At the point which we had an army perched on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula with summer coming on, something absolutely EVERYONE agreed to, we were in no position to make the definition of “final opportunity” into “one more chance ad infinitum”.
Iraq and the rest of the world is far better off without Saddam Hussein sitting on the fulcrum of the world economy using the receipts from the huge deal signed with Total/Fina/Elf in 2002 to fuel a nuclear arms race with Iran and Saudi Arabia (at least), and competing with Teheran and Al Qaeda for the role of Our Biggest Headache. Matt and everyone else who considers his removal to have been an obvious mistake are not morally different from those who were apologists for Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture or Hitler’s “rebuilding” of Germany.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:21 am
“There are no villians here.”
Bullshit.
There are plenty of them, and they have names, and we all know those names.
And many of them may not be working at the Defense Department or the State Department today, but they’re still out there pushing the war – and future wars – and they’re still filling the op-ed and editorial pages of the NYT, WaPo and the broadcast media and the blogs.
And one of them is still Vice President – and thus very dangerous, with his connections to Israel – until the end of the year.
So “no villains here” is bullshit.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Well-meaning naifs who don’t know anything about the history of this conflict that they haven’t read on antiwar.com continue to embarrass themselves.
I propose a military intervention to remove the large stick up Jesus’s rear.
It may end up with him being bombed into pulp, but he’ll be far better off without that tree-trunk of a stick, which causes him to spout the kind of wingnut shite that became tedious some years ago.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:48 am
“Meanwhile, the fact that the best and brightest Iraqis were being slaughtered by a ruthless insurgency never aroused much interest or sympathy among the war’s opponents. The kind of people who would ordinarily inspire solidarity campaigns among Western progressives—trade unionists, journalists, human rights advocates, women’s rights activists, independent politicians, doctors, professors—were being systematically exterminated.”
Is Packer really this thick-headed, or intellectually dishonest? War opponents opposed the war precisely because terrible things would happen to an enormous number of innocent people (among many other reasons). Packer and his friends, in advocating the war, ignored these concerns.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Jerkoff Powell pops up again. No matter how many times he gets his ass scraped off the tarmac by the simple realization that none of his revisionist assertions is backed up by anything but air, he just keeps plugging.
Either he’s independently wealthy or he’s being paid by somebody to post this drivel.
Nothing he has said has even a remote connection with reality.
Saddam Hussein was completely irrelevant after 1991. Nothing he did would have made a penny’s worth of difference in the region. After his pummeling in 1991 – which, remember, was a result of the US basically telling him, “Go ahead, invade Kuwait, we don’t care” – his military was lame, he was no threat to Iran, no threat to Saudi Arabia (not least of which because the US would kick his ass again) or Kuwait.
The sanctions were a waste of time and killed the wrong people, but the US just had to keep doing them, despite the obvious insanity of driving to start an Iraqi revolution by starving its people to death.
Then along came the neocons and Dick Cheney, who decided that the oil was more important than anything, so we’ll start a war and take over the country, easy as pie.
Oh, wait, we need an excuse. Would can we use? Oh, wait, we heard Osama’s gonna hit us. We’ll let that happen, get our “Pearl Harbor” we talked about in the PNAC documents, then we’ll invade Iraq. Let’s start getting ready now – in 2000.
Sure enough, in 2001, six months after Fox broadcast a TV show with a US government cabal threatening to fly a plane into the World Trade Center – guess what! A bunch of “terrorists” – shadowed by the Mossad for months – actually do it! Despite warnings by a dozen intelligence agencies from Pakistan to Germany…
So now they say, “Well, we know Saddam has nuclear weapons!” – despite a couple years previously, Colin Powell saying Saddam had nothing and was beat down. Suddenly it’s an “imminent threat”. We can’t wait until there’s a “mushroom cloud”!
So we throw 100,000 troops into Iraq, kick Saddam out. We guard the Oil Ministry like it was Fort Knox, while we let the rest of the country be looted – including all the ammo dumps Saddam had scattered around. Then we fired the Iraqi Army so they could go use those guns we left unguarded.
Then we fired the entire Iraqi government because they were Baathists, so nobody was left to run the place except a bunch of Bush’s cronies.
Then the 300,000 or so ex-members of Saddam’s crowd decided to take up arms against us – along with thousands of other Iraqis who got tired of the Marines and US Army types mowing down their relatives at checkpoints and running over their cars with tanks, while looking for Saddam (who we couldn’t find for months.)
So we decided to bomb them into submission, killing an estimated 300,000 Iraqis over the next four years or so. This got us a big pat on the back by the Iraqis, with seventy to eighty percent deciding we needed to go.
We decided to force out idea of democracy on them, so we decided to hold rigged elections – except the Grand Ayatollah Sistani nixed that. So we did it his way. Naturally the larger Shia population got the majority, with the aid of the Kurds, who were sucking up to the US in order to try to get an autonomous region loaded with oil under their control.
So the insurgency spiraled out of control, while our morons in uniform went around searching Iraqi women’s bedrooms, hooding their husbands, and torturing them at Abu Ghraib.
The economy went to shit, first because we bombed it out of existence, secondly because it was looted by the corrupt ministers we put in power, third because the money to rebuild it was looted by US contractors who all seemed to have connections with Dick Cheney or George Bush.
Then as icing on the cake, we threw another fifty thousand or whatever “contractors” in there to murder the Iraqis, as though our own troops weren’t being paid enough to do a good job of that.
Then, when it was clear the war was lost, we got some nitwit who decided the way to “win” was to pay the enemy $300 a month not to shoot at us, but to shoot at one of the other factions we allowed to rise to power. Then this nitwit organized the insurgencies into one big group – almost the size of our military at this point – so we could “control” it.
Right.
So here we are in 2008 – with 100,000 “former insurgents” throwing their weight around, a bunch more insurgents still in operation, “Al Qaeda in Iraq” still in operation (not to mention the REAL Al Qaeda very much in operation over in Pakistan). another 10-100,000 Shia militia members itching to take another crack at us whenever their leader decides it’s to his advantage (and he’s a nationalist who WILL eventually decide that), and an overstretched military that can’t remain in Iraq much longer without breaking.
All this “success” cost us at least one trillion dollars, one million Iraqis dead, four million Iraqis displaced, 4,000 dead US troops, probably five or ten times that many injured, half the rest with PTSD, a totally destroyed Iraqi economy with unemployment at fifty percent or so, less Iraqi oil than before the war, most of the Iraqi professional and technical personnel driven from Iraq…I can’t even remember how many other problems there are.
And all this, Robert Powell justifies by saying Saddam had to go because he was a “bad guy” who was going to magically acquire WMDs without anybody noticing.
Never mind that he had bext to no military, no WMDs, and would never have WMDs because there would have been a monitoring program put in after the inspectors cleared him of having any which would have prevented him from ever getting any under pain of military action.
Robert Powell is a complete, total, fucking, moronic troll.
February 14th, 2008 at 3:42 am
As long as I have the disapproval of The Amazing Hack, I know I’m on the right track.
Anyone who wants facts about Iraq, the history, the nature of the threat, etc. can get lots of them without having to read the frothings of gasbags hogging the computer at the halfway house. I’d recommend the Duelfer and Hutton reports for starters, along with the source documents such as UN, Congressional, and Parliamentary Resolutions going back to the start of the war in 1991.
I had the opportunity to monitor some of the Security Council sessions before the second invasion. All the proceedings were opened by the Chair with the title, “The matter of Iraq and Kuwait”. This war was started, without our approval, in 1991 by Iraq. Since then we’ve been trying, if clumsily, to reach a reasonable resolution. People pushing fairy tales suggesting that the whole thing was ginned up by a clique of deviants in the White House against Innocent Parties in Iraq are the same sorts of people who praised Stalin for “modernizing” Russia, and argued that Hitler was only seeking justice for the crimes of Versailles.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:09 am
No, simply gaining the disapproval of RSH does not make Robert Powell right, not by one bit, no matter how many times he gives his stirring speech on how noble and beautiful the boys were before they headed into the Somme, nor how many times he tries to beg, beg, beg people to agree that giving a thought to the likely actual consequences of destroying the nation-state of Iraq is really just like praising Stalin.
He keeps trying, though, and Powell is right up there with the Hitchens type in proclaiming how incredibly bold and noble they are for cheerleading an invasion and occupation in which any negative consequences are always someone else’s fault.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:22 am
“The matter of Iraq and Kuwait”? So what?
All that means is that the UN resolutions left over from the earlier Gulf War were the fig leaf on which the Bush/Cheney Administration based its public casus belli.
There’s nothing of importance hidden in underreported source documents. In 2002, Iraq was contained – by us, by the presence of an Iranian counterweight in the region, and by its own reduced power. We didn’t know for sure it didn’t have WMDs, but the ‘WMDs’ it was seriously thought to have were bio or chem weapons, which aren’t any more ‘mass’ destruction weapons than plain old TNT is.
That’s all you need to know.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Much as I cherish “the disapproval of RSH”, it’s not by itself what makes me right. It’s the historical facts that do that.
Giving a thought to the destruction of nation states like Iraq and Kuwait by a monstrous totalitarianism is exactly what this was about from the beginning. Liberal internationalists who learned the lesson of the League of Nations advocated intervention in cases like that and Bosnia, among others, because it’s a matter of vital interest to civilization that behavior like genocide, launching wars of aggression, the proliferation and use of wmd’s, and state support for terrorism be confronted. Pretending that this totalitarianism was really just misunderstood, or had no serious long-term evil intent, or that we should have let bygones be bygones credibility for international norms notwithstanding, is what’s really just like praising Saddam’s hero and role-model, Stalin. THAT is all you need to know.
The negative consequences of the liberation of Iraq are real, and they’re our fault. By replacing the plans and judgement of the professionals (”ten years of work” according to Tony Zinni), with ideology and political cronies, the Bush Administration seriously set back the cause of Liberal Internationalism. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, or that if we only run away and attempt to hide from our responsibilities in Iraq everything will be fine. It won’t, and we need to take the job more seriously than simple-minded partisan sloganeering will allow.
February 14th, 2008 at 7:32 am
To quote myself, I said, ‘Morons like you got 1,000,000 human beings killed in Iraq, put a permanent stain on America’s character, cost us trillions of dollars, and tens of thousands of American lives lost or ruined, and have contributed to the transformation of the American political system into one wihch is not based on the rule of law.”
I suggest all of you revisionist neocon cult members read those words very carefully and consider the gravity of those charges. I’m not a godfearing man, but if I were and I had supported this war, I’d be afraid. Very afraid.
Lets’ review the charges 1 by 1 since I know you’ll skip over them and/or pretend they aren’t true:
1) You got a million people killed. You can quibble about the number but I don’t think your good buddy Jesus makes a strong distinction between half a million and a million so you better repent today. Also Jesus doesn’t believe in the bullshit doctrine of double effect, so he’s holding your asses accountable for the foreseeable death and destruction you caused.
2)You cost us TRILLIONS of dollars. That’s a lot of money. Let me put it in terms you can understand. Do you realize how many tax cuts you could have handed out to your rich friends for that kind of money?
3) Tens of thousands of American lives lost or ruined. That’s more than al-Qaeda. And you’re still sending them over out of vanity to cover up the fact that the policy you supported is an utter failure on every dimension.
4) You have stained the American character, degraded the American political system, and eliminated the rule of law. Most of you don’t give a shit about these charges but some of us believe in the idea of America and actually care about what the Founding Fathers said. All you little fucks care about is scoring debating points in the service of your extremist political movement and looking tough among your meathead friends.
You all richly deserve a boot in the ass and a cold jail cell. And, of course, daily waterboarding sessions.
February 14th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Who has had a more harmful impact on America — al Qaeda or the neocons? The answer is clearly: the neocons.
They got more Americans killed. They lied to us more. They harmed our international reputation more. And they did something al Qaeda could never have done. They stained our character and degraded our political system.
You neocon losers will be judged very harshly by history. Don’t kid yourselves like George Bush into thinking you will be vindicated. Quite the opposite, the control you currently have over the propaganda mechanisms that have clouded so many minds of the American rank and file will not have that effect on future historians. You will go do wn in history as the evil pukes you really are.
February 14th, 2008 at 7:58 am
And let me calrify the scope of these charges. They apply not only to the neocon cultists but also their fellow travellers among the liberal “hawks”. You chickenshits fell for all the obvious bullshit and enabled the scumbags who pushed the policy that had all the harmful effects listed above.
Why did you do it? Oh, I’m not sure exactly. Some combination of cowardice and careerism probably provides the bulk of the explanation.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Hence, real arguments from the beginning by the super-noble war cheerleaders turned upon such ridiculous and continuously silly analogies and metaphors, and avoided any real-world predictable discussions of consequences in which their cherished versions could be disputed, as always befits the noble Trotsky type who vows that the True Revolution is his and his alone to outline. Because it’s always easier to imagine one nobly defying the array of Stalinist forces against oneself.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Giving a thought to the destruction of nation states like Iraq and Kuwait by a monstrous totalitarianism is exactly what this was about from the beginning.
It’s a shame you didn’t give a thought to the destruction of the ‘nation state’ of Iraq, let alone hundreds of thousands of its people, by an even more monstrous anarchy.
If people like me (professional number cruncher, amateur newspaper reader) were able to foresee the possibility of Iraq’s unleashed religious and ethnic divisions resulting in a descent into a war of all against all, how come the Great and the Wise, to steal from Tolkien, failed to prepare for it?
February 14th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Liberal internationalists who learned the lesson of the League of Nations advocated intervention in cases like that and Bosnia, among others, because it’s a matter of vital interest to civilization that behavior like genocide, launching wars of aggression, the proliferation and use of wmd’s, and state support for terrorism be confronted.
The no-fly zones sufficed in preventing Saddam’s practicing genocide on the Kurds. Saddam was guilty of two wars of aggression, and he either had (Iran) or thought he had (Kuwait) America’s imprimatur for both. He attempted zero wars of aggression in the absence of a belief that we condoned them. He had no nukes, and bio/chem weapons really aren’t ‘mass destruction’ weapons in any sense that conventional weapons aren’t. And Saddam’s ’support for terrorism’ consisted of a few alms for widows of suicide bombers.
But thanks for playing.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Just for the record, many of us on the left did speak out about the effects of the post-invasion Iraqi anarchy on ordinary Iraqis. But nobody wanted to listen to us, and it wasn’t like the architects of the war were interested in listening to and responding to constructive criticism from anyone, let alone from DFH’s.
As Atrios has said a few zillion times, the choice has never been between Bush’s war, withdrawal, or some pundit’s pony plan of how to run the war in a better fashion. It’s been clear from early on that the only alternative to Bush’s war would be to force a withdrawal.
February 14th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Let’s assume for a brief moment that we could have done the occupation right.
The fact is, Bush & Co. did not plan for it, beyond the most minimal extent. (If I recall, Packer goes into great detail about this in The Assassins’ Gate.) While our troops were driving towards Baghdad, State, Defense, and Cheney’s office were fighting battles over who would be in charge. State had a plan, but they were shouldered aside by Rumsfeld and Cheney, who had no plan. Jay Garner was given titular (but no real) authority. Then there was Bremer, the CPA, and Heritage interns playing at running a country.
None of this was forced on this Administration by its critics. But even if we assume that the occupation of Iraq could have been done ‘right,’ the Bush Administration deserves the full blame of failing to prepare in any meaningful way for what to do with Iraq once they had it.
For that alone, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell, Rice, Feith, and all the rest of them deserve their day in court at The Hague.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Denouncing “both sides” is like a drug. It is very difficult to that particular kick from elsewhere.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:43 am
“the best and brightest…”
Say what you will, Packer packs a load of it into a few words.
The essay works backward from the conclusion of a dysfunctional political debate. Such square-pegging is a common condition among the commentariat, if not its defining quality, supported by loads of framing (the anti-war side’s “failure” to take up the cause of the best and brightest, the anti-war’s failure to see the world as it is, etc.). In the end, to paraphrase Wolfgang Pauli, it isn’t right, it isn’t even wrong.
And yes, as noted above, the insurgency was predicted (and entirely predictable) before the war, and batted down with the sweets and flowers talk. The bogus frame placed on it by hawks, however was (and is) the smug, condescending, what-have-you pleasure that the anti-war side took in their pessimism. Or the Bush hatred. Or whatever.
February 14th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Robert Powell’s remarks deserve a more thoughtful response than they’re getting, so I thought I’d chime in, even though I disagree with him too in the main.
‘We got into a war there in direct response to genocidal, totalitarian Iraq’s invasion, rape, and annexation of a UN member state and US ally, Kuwait.’
Well you left off the murkier aspect of Kuwait’s slant drilling, but that notwithstanding I would agree with the normative clarity of that situation broadly defined. Legally, it was an act of aggression which satisfied art 51, and had explicit Chapter VII authorisation. So, no issue there.
“This solution was NOT to be found in sanctions that killed perhaps a million innocent Iraqis while tightening the regime’s grip on power and enriching its collaborators”
But such a contention isn’t being denied. You attempt to rhetorically wield this point to upbraid all opposition to the war as naive, but do not develop an adequate argument for why that untenable situation justified support for the actual reckless misadventure undertaken. The mistake that seems repeated frequently in your remarks, is to conflate what might be a defendable nascent doctrine of humanitarian intervention justified within the system, with the actual action taken by the Coalition – which was clearly an ideological fiat decision buttressed by ever-shifting post-hoc moral and legal reasoning. Nobody need accept that binary dichotomy. For example, I could potentially support an intervention in Iraq or elsewhere, on the basis of humanitarian catastrophe, by credible actors, acting in good faith, as expansion of nascent universal principle. But I think you must know, trying to rehabilitate the undeniably exceptionalist character of the Coalition’s war, is a fool’s errand. It was never anything like that, and indeed, it took dedicated advocacy by some of the cooler heads in the State Department and the OLC to even begin a bona fide process of legal justification. There is also an empirical problem with the contemporaneousness of the cause, when you actually have to go beyond the general tyranny of the regime, towards actual widespread killing and destruction, which is what would be required under any plausible doctrine. As regards that, you could make out the no fly zone and radar denial bombing at an earlier time, but not eliminating the Iraq regime completely in 2003. Otherwise you have massive issues with proportionality.
‘and it wasn’t going to be reached by making the consequences for violating multiple Chapter VII Security Council Resolutions yet more Resolutions.’
This bit is disingenuous I’m afraid. Your words imply that Iraq was in material violation of an on-foot Chapter VII resolution which already grounded a legitimate right of action, and that a further resolution could add nothing. But this is far from compelling description of the factual and legal matrices in question. A more accurate characterisation of the situation in 2003, was that Iraq was subject to an ongoing regime of disarmament and verification, and that a further Chapter VII resolution would indeed be required to legitimate action. The vast majority of publicists and authorities in UN Charter interpretation agree that that the “all means necessary” authority of the previous Chapter VII resolution, upon which you are undoubtedly relying, must be construed strictly in the context of ejecting Iraq from Kuwait, disarmament, and keeping international peace and security. In that sense, the geostrategic impotence of the Iraqi army, the lack of aggression, and the missing hundreds of tons of agents, aluminium tubes, mobile labs, uranium and active nuclear programme, are all relevant to the lack of a threat basis for the application of that authority. It is also to be recalled that the US has no general authority anyway to delegate upon itself the determination and actionability of SC resolution breaches, and indeed, that the resolutions explicitly require the Council be appraised of the matter. These are significant gaps in your retelling, which cannot be glossed over with glib attempts to reduce the war down to a singular humanitarian moral imperative.
‘At the point which we had an army perched on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula with summer coming on, something absolutely EVERYONE agreed to, we were in no position to make the definition of “final opportunity” into “one more chance ad infinitum”.’
This is pretty much irrelevant. The apparent logic here is that because a military presence played a role in forcing international attention on the matter, and conveying the seriousness of the putative compliance demands on the regime, any action taken thereafter is somehow legitimate and right.
I think the emptiness of the argument speaks for itself, but I will say that after just speaking of UN Security Council compliance, I think you are being a bit slippery about the real issue – which was the truncating of the inspection process prematurely, and the way the compliance demand evidentiary burden had almost nothing to do with the reality of the war’s initiation.
In this regard, the historical record is very clear. Bush, Blair and Anzar were not interested in any empirical evidence, and they could not convince the international community of their threat thesis. This is amply demonstrated by the fact that they could not even muster a simple majority in the Council when they did a vote count on Spanish-UK draft resolution for explicit authorisation. Instead, they pretended they didn’t need any other authority, and delegated themselves judge, jury and executioner of Iraqi compliance, without anything more than pretext that they were actually evaluating the Iraqi dossier, or listening to what the inspectors themselves were saying when they pleaded for time to do their job.
‘Iraq and the rest of the world is far better off without Saddam Hussein sitting on the fulcrum of the world economy using the receipts from the huge deal signed with Total/Fina/Elf in 2002 to fuel a nuclear arms race with Iran and Saudi Arabia (at least), and competing with Teheran and Al Qaeda for the role of Our Biggest Headache. Matt and everyone else who considers his removal to have been an obvious mistake are not morally different from those who were apologists for Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture or Hitler’s “rebuilding” of Germany. ‘
Even fairly utopian formulation of what a genuine legal basis for humanitarian intervention might look like, such as the Responsibility to Protect, developed by Gareth Evans, includes a net-benefit requirement. But you apparently exempt yourself from this, and the war you are supporting looks nothing like such a credible universal norm. Furthermore, your simplification of moral imperatives at play, and all this carry on about appeasement, really detracts from what started out with what sounded like good faith argument.
I will say one thing. Both the Soviets and Nazi Germany were more than tyrannies, they were belligerent states engaged in extra-territorial conquest. But if we are to have a structured right to replace and not merely contain internal tyrannies, you have not offered a good reason that Iraq is such a blueprint. Certainly thoughtful people on both sides of the humanitarian intervention camp, can readily dismiss your attempt at a Manichean test of moral credibility here.
February 14th, 2008 at 11:34 am
That depends on how many times you’ve been here and how many times you’ve already responded to the same exact points from this nobly suffering martyr for democracy and all things good against all of us cowardly Stalinists.
February 14th, 2008 at 11:59 am
‘That depends on how many times you’ve been here and how many times you’ve already responded to the same exact points from this nobly suffering martyr for democracy and all things good against all of us cowardly Stalinists.’
Fair enough. I acknowledge I haven’t read the comments here enough to know the history. I tend to react to things I read in such situation on their surface merits, and legitimate questions were raised by Robert. As you may have noticed, I have a background in international law, and do not tire of setting the record straight as regards Iraq. So whether I’m wasting my time, or not, actually convincing him isn’t so much the point as is me giving a precise answers to real questions.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
‘That depends on how many times you’ve been here and how many times you’ve already responded to the same exact points from this nobly suffering martyr for democracy and all things good against all of us cowardly Stalinists.’
Fair enough. I acknowledge I haven’t read the comments here enough to know the history. I tend to react to things I read in such situations on their surface merits, and legitimate questions were raised by Robert. As you may have noticed, I have a background in international law, and do not tire of setting the record straight as regards Iraq. So whether I’m wasting my time or not actually convincing him isn’t so much the point, as me being happy to give precise answers to real questions. Given how soluble the Iraq war is to definitive answer, I don’t like hanging questions left unattested if I can help it.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Never minding my tired cynicism, I appreciate the well-written int’l law review summary, W Fettes.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Thanks to William Fettes for the courtesy of a substantive reply. In deference to long-suffering debaters like El Cid, I’ll try to keep my response brief.
On the sanctions: I am not attempting to “upbraid all opposition to the war as naive” here, simply to point out that over the years numerous things short of regime change had been tried, and the sanctions were not only the worst of them but the one most often cited by Saddam supporters as “working”. For them it worked. Also, I think it’s a good idea to keep post-liberation casualty figures in some appropriate perspective. I do take exception to your use of “war” with “opposition” in this context. The war started in 1991. We’re talking about the regime change/invasion policy in an on-going war here.
You’re right about “the exceptionalist character of the war”, because proper justification really concerned the cease-fire violations far more than any kind of emergency pre-emption or nascent human rights intervention doctrine. In my view, if we can’t enforce Chapter VII Resolutions in a case like Iraq, we are into League of Nations II territory and there is surely no hope for a functional policy of humanitarian intervention without the sort of “war of aggression” handle that was available here.
I am not “implying that Iraq was in material violation of an on-foot Chapter VII Resolution which already grounded a legitimate right of action”. I’m stating it as a flat-out fact. As Lord Goldsmith’s official finding for Parliament made clear, there is a direct and unbroken line between the cease-fire and subsequent supporting resolutions and the initial authorization, which was not just to eject Iraq from Kuwait, but to “restore the area to peace and stability”. This clearly was not done while the Ba’athist regime engaged in massacres, as it did in the Marshes and other places right along, and had comprehensively violated the specific terms of the Resolutions including the ceasefire. This, rather than arguments that Iraq was an imminent danger to launch wmd attacks, is the point. It was Iraq’s clear and explicit obligation to disarm in a transparent and pro-active way, not ours to prove the negative. Hans Blix’s final report made clear that it had failed to do so. We were never supposed to be playing hide-and-seek in a police state the size of France, and once the verdict was in, and Chirac had stated flatly that France would under no circumstances authorize the enforcement of the standing Resolutions, there was no point in further voting.
I accept that you may find the situation of our troops in early 2003 “irrelevant”, but as one who has lived in such deployments I can assure you it was a matter of grave concern to those responsible for the lives under their command. No army is more vulnerable than when it is deployed and waiting to attack. Some Marines had already been killed by terrorists in Kuwait, and as far as we knew it was entirely plausible to consider the possibility of an attack with bio- or chemical agents that could have killed more GI’s in four hours than we’ve lost now in four years. Examination of captured documents and post-war interviews show that Iraqi generals, and perhaps even Saddam Hussein, thought they had such a capability, so it’s not as silly as it may seem in hindsight that we considered the possibility. The choice presented then was a stark one between surrender to Iraq, and invade. I think we did what needed to be done, if poorly.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Hey Powell, put down that crack pipe, bro. You ain’t fooling anybody. You boys had the fog machine running full speed in about 2002-2004 but you done run out of dry ice. You’ve been exposed. The hoax has been revealed.
People like you are obviously desperate to spin at 55,000 RPM doing something — ANYTHING — to try to save face. But give it up, jackass. You’ve been caught. Your story fell apart. Your alibis are no good.
The only attitude that is appropriate for you and your kind now is contrition. Simple, straight forward, Christian contrition. You boys lost your moral compass and you lied and lied and exaggerated and initmidated. And then you unleashed the dogs of war and killed and killed and created a shocking moral disaster.
Time to still your tongues and pray that the Almighty has mercy on your black souls.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
> I tend to react to things I read in such
> situation on their surface merits, and
> legitimate questions were raised by Robert.
Legitimate questions eh? OK, here are two legitimate questions: where are Saddam’s mobile bioweapons labs and nuclear weapons?
Ah, NOW we learn that bioweapons and nuclear weapons were not the reason for the invasion if Iraq: there were some other reasons involving international stability, discomfort of troops (one suspects that the 4,000 dead American troops aren’t very comfortable right now), and legitimacy of the United Nations (John Bolton signed off on that yet?). But ** those weren’t the reasons used to justify the unprovoked invasion to the American people **. So at a very very minimum the people who sold the war to the American people /knowingly lied in doing so/. Explain please exactly why I as a US Citizen should listen to anything they say ever again? How exactly do I know they won’t be lying the next time?
Cranky
February 14th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
The choice presented then was a stark one between surrender to Iraq, and invade.
The choice presented then was a stark one between surrender to Iraq, and invade.
The choice presented then was a stark one between surrender to Iraq, and invade.
The choice presented then was a stark one between surrender to Iraq, and invade.
The choice presented then was a stark one between surrender to Iraq, and invade.
The choice presented then was a stark one between surrender to Iraq, and invade.
The choice presented then was a stark one between surrender to Iraq, and invade.
February 14th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Thanks Mark – I missed that one. “Surrender to Iraq”? Gaia help us.
Cranky
February 14th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
“Hans Blix’s final report made clear that it (Iraq) had failed to do so (disarm).”
Hans Blix never made a final report. His penultimate report said that the Iraqs were finally giving him the access he wanted, but that there was still no sign of banned WMD. He quite literally begged for the time to complete the inspections mandated by Resolution 1441, and convinced the majority of the UN Security Council that they had no need to consider any further Resolutions authorising the use of force.
“We were never supposed to be playing hide-and-seek in a police state the size of France, and once the verdict was in,”
No one was playing hide-and-seek. The Iraqis had said they had no WMD of the kind the Inspectors were looking for, that matched up with what the Inspectors were finding on the ground, even when they were following US intelligence reports identifying locations they were certain housed illegal weapons production or storage. The verdict reached by everyone other than the US and UK on the Security Council was that the Inspectors should be allowed to continue with their work, as they were mandated to do under 1441.
“Chirac had stated flatly that France would under no circumstances authorize the enforcement of the standing Resolutions, there was no point in further voting.”
Chirac said no such thing, as you should well know. You appear to be alluding to the statement by the French foreign-minister that the US and the UK should stop trying to blackmail and browbeat a simple majority of the UN Security Council members into violating the terms of 1441 by voting on a 2nd Resolution authorising the use of force and just wait for the Inspectors to finish the job that the US and UK had been so forcefully demanding they be allowed to do, up until it looked like the Inspectors were going to prove their outlandish (and, it turned out, totally false) claims about Iraq’s potential threat wrong, thus averting the need for an invasion.
The French said they veto any such attempt, but that if the Inspectors were allowed to complete their mission, and they found any evidence that Iraq was in violation of 1441, they’d vote to mandate the use of force.
But you knew all that, and lied about it anyway, because getting ragged by a genuine academic scared the beejebus out of you and you dusted off the same old discredited and laughable Talking Points you always do.
February 14th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Not to mention that Powell keeps relying on Lord Goldsmith’s report to Blair, DESPITE the fact that it is now known that Goldsmith originally was against the war and only acceded to preparing his final report based on influence from Blair, that the previous Law Lord resigned due to Iraq, and that every other international body of international law experts declared the invasion illegal.
Powell is a troll, nothing more. Despite being repeatedly crushed into the pavement by facts cited here by myself and MANY others, he repeatedly issues the exact same cut-and-paste revisionist bullshit, and denouncing everyone who disagrees as being “ignorant about history.”
It’s hard to find a more classic example of a right wing troll (except maybe SLC and Mixner – Chris Ford is just a nut.)
February 14th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I’m waiting for Fettes, who at least knows something he didn’t read on a pro-terrorist website. Saddam apologists just cite the same lame bullshit.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
> Saddam apologists just cite the same lame
> bullshit.
Please cite the exact number and location of mobile bioweapons labs located by Coalition forces in Iraq. Be precise. Colin Powell stated in no uncertain terms that those labs did exist as a justification for the invasion. Where were they?
Cranky
February 15th, 2008 at 3:40 am
I guess Mr. Fettes had to go back to the library. One of the problems with this blog is that no one seems able to follow a discussion once more recent posts push it over to the Weekly Archives, so while I wait in hope for an intelligent argument, I’ll field some of the other ones.
–It’s absurd to suggest that Powell’s display of the obviously shaky nature of intelligence gathered in a hostile police state was “a justification for invasion”. That justification was provided by Iraq’s comprehensive violation of multiple Chapter VII Resolutions, including the ceasefire agreement.
One of the mistakes unwitting dupes of the Iraqi regime always make is turning the wmd question on its head. It was NOT the responsibility of the international community to prove that Iraq had complied with its obligations. It WAS the clearly stated responsibility of Iraq to “disarm in a transparent and pro-active way”. While Blix made it plain that he would like to turn inspections in Iraq into a long career, presumably with GI’s camped out through the summer and exposed to grave risk, his final report was very specific in terms of the extent to which Iraq continued to obstruct the inspections. It was his duty to report if Iraq was cooperating. He was unequivocal that they were not.
–The idea that the opinions of people like Koffi Annan and outright Saddam collaborators like Jacques Chirac have more legal authority than than Congress, Parliament, and the other legal authorities in rule-of-law democracies like the US, Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Holland, etc, etc, is hardly worth commenting on. Even more ridiculous is the persistent nonsense that Goldsmith’s actual legal finding for Parliament is somehow less valid than a purloined memo described by its author as a grab-bag of speculation on “all possible objections”.
At the end of the day, this is far too serious a matter to be left to tender mercies of people like Dan Rather and Wolf Blitzer, who seem to be writing the script for the zealots here. I hold the Bush Administration largely responsible for confusing the issue with all manner of justifications, some valid and some not, when the simple fact is that Iraq dragged us into a war in 1991, then systematically frustrated all efforts by the international community to resolve it without more violence. Bush is also responsible for making a hash of the operation, and by doing so setting back the cause of liberal internationalism substantially. We need a consistent way of responding to aggressive, genocidal tyrannies, but this episode has left us further away from that goal than ever. Nevertheless, attempting to re-write history into some sort of partisan Punch and Judy show is not very helpful either.
February 15th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Shorter Robert Powell: “I got nuthin’. But I am Serious(tm) and Right(tm) so you must be a Saddam lover”.
Cranky
February 15th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
‘The fact that you remain unconvinced by flimsy evidence later proven to be wrong which was accepted by other people whom I prefer to you just goes to show what a tyrant’s dupe you truly are.’
February 16th, 2008 at 4:24 am
Cranky and El Cid:
“I can’t find a single substantive argument to refute your points, and can’t demonstrate that any of the facts you cite are incorrect. All I’ve really got is an ideological bias that reinforces my self-esteem, so the best I can do is make wise cracks.”
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