Whatever you may say about their comments section, those guys do good work.
This argument has just boggled me, though. I mean, it's only two years -- doesn't everyone remember the arguments they were having before the war? Doesn't everyone remember Bush in 2000 campaigning on the idea that nation-building isn't a good enough reason for war?
And yet, oddly enough, not everyone is convinced. I think The Poor Man explains it best.
Let me just note that the WMD justification for removing Hussein is not falsified by the lack of WMD stockpiles. Heaven forfend this turn into another Iraq war thread, but I think it's actually the signal point typically missed by opponents of the Iraq war.
Yes, it's falsified by other things, which we need not get into here.
No, but it certainly points up that the original "WMD as cassus belli" arguments were not made in good faith by those in a position to "massage" the intelligence.
Exactly, baa. Now if there had been weapons inspectors in there beforehand, telling us that there were no WMD stockpiles, that would be a different kettle of fish.
Let me just note that the WMD justification for removing Hussein is not falsified by the lack of WMD stockpiles.
No reason to argue this, I just want to check that I know what you're saying: Just because there were no WMDs does not, by itself, prove that there was no legitimate reason to believe there were WMDs.
Is that it? Because, um, yes, of course that's true, as far as it goes.
matt: we will have to agree to disagree. I think its reasonable to oppose the Iraq war, but not reasonable to oppose the iraq war if one believed preventing Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons was very, very important. Chemical weapons no one (should) care about. [and yes, the WMD phrase was employed by the White House precisely to elide this distinction]
Chopper: it was a "slam dunk!" But I agree, generally that there was massaging being done here.
SB: See response to Matt. Re: stockpiles of Sarin gas, true! (but who cares?) Re: intent to resume a WMD -- but partiularly nuclear -- program once the pressure was off, I don't think Blix/El Baradei accounts are meaningful. The US wasn't going to have 150,000 troops on the border forever.
If I remember correctly, the argument baa is thinking of has to do with "If we didn't go to war, sanctions would have broken down soon, and Saddam would have been able to develop WMD." That as I understand is his argument. I don't think this is obviously chumpy (as are "It's all about democracy" and "Everyone thought he had WMDs!"), but I still think it doesn't mean Iraq should've been a higher priority than N. Korea; among other things I think.
Huh, that's not how I read it. I'll wait for baa.
LB: no, I'm saying that "WMD"is a bogus term. No one should care (much) about chemical weapons, but everyone should care about nuclear weapons. And SH was very likely to acquire nuclear weapons in the next 5-10 years if not removed.
the WMD justification for removing Hussein is not falsified by the lack of WMD stockpiles
In an international relations final exam it might not, but in real life, it does, I'm afraid. Under your formulation, we would be justified in removing anybody anywhere because we feel like they might one day possibly threaten us. Russia and China and North Korea would be similarly justified. If a country is going to kill tens of thousands of people halfway around the globe, they really should be pretty goddamned convinced the threat exists somewhere besides Doug Feith's and John Bolton's fevered imagination.
And really, the rush to invade before the inspectors had finished verifying the absence of said WMD stockpiles suggests strongly that the Bush administration was completely aware that their premise was in grave danger of disappearing, which to anybody with the slightest whiff of morality would be cause for pause, not acceleration.
Oh, jeez. I presume that causa is the plural? In which case, I think it's fair to make an argument that a) WMD, in this case, is a singular noun, in that it is a single justification for war. Each potential WMD (nuclear, biological chemical or each indivu=idual wepaon) doesn't need to broken out as it's own vause for war. b) "cassus belli," in English, is a stock import from a classical language that always takes the singular, like "data" always takes the plural.
10 was posted before I saw 9, but still remains relevant. That argument, I think, is a triple-bank shot. Saddam was absolutely nowhere with any sort of nuclear program--the risk that he would develop a nuclear weapon was much more remote than the risk that the war would encourage, say, N. Korea and Iran to move full speed ahead with their nuclear programs, and leave us unable to do anything effective about it.
As well as the risk that anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world would become heightened in a way that would seriously hurt us--or that Iraq would become a meeting place for jihadists, the way Afghanistan used to be. (Yglesias, II.)
baa,
One could argue that SH was not likely to acquire nuclear weapons. One could also argue that, even if he was, there better ways (better than invasion) to prevent that.
One also wishes those arguments had taken place. One really wishes those arguments had taken place. One was willing to be convinced, but we never even had those arguments.
And SH was very likely to acquire nuclear weapons in the next 5-10 years if not removed.
No no no no no. Sorry, baa, what evidence do we have for that? I am in better position to acquire nuclear weapons than Saddam was in 2003. He had nothing.
One day I'd like to learn to type, or at least reread my own comments before posting.
To 9:
Okay, that's more respectable than I thought. I still think that: (A) it's far enough from the WMD argument that was actually made that it does not render the arguments actually made honest, and (B) it's wrong, for priority-setting reasons (Iraq wasn't the most imminent threat of newly developing nuclear weapons, and there was nothing particularly unusual about Iraq versus all sorts of other unsavory places that made Iraq's acquisition of nuclear weapons a problem different in kind from many other countries' acquisition of nuclear weapons). But it's, as Weiner said, not a chump's position.
OK, I should sign off on this thread, since now we're just getting into well-trodden territory.
No, wait, I can still include this link.
The US wasn't going to have 150,000 troops on the border forever.
Indeed! And I wonder how they all wound up there. Could there be any greater evidence, short of a signed confession by George W. Bush, that the invasion was predetermined, and that all of its public justifications were offered in extremely bad faith?
This goes far beyond "massaging" intelligence.
Even Chop's misspelling (sorry, dude) makes a respectable showing.
SH was very likely to acquire nuclear weapons in the next 5-10 years if not removed
This was also my concern at the time, but like Matt W. says, I now think this was a false belief. Baa?
(I think we would all grant--and baa did--that we were presented with less-than-honest public arguments, so that seems like an unfruitful tangent.)
Even Chop's misspelling
Yeah, that's a fair cop. Double-letter formations are continually my downfall.
Oh, jeez. I presume that causa is the plural?
causa, causae, causae, causam, causā
causae, causarum, causis, causas, causis
"cassus belli," in English, is a stock import from a classical language that always takes the singular, like "data" always takes the plural.
As you can see, "cassus" does not mean what you think it means. At any rate, if the word were "cassus", the nominative plural would either be "cassi" or "cassus".
Late hit, w-lfs-n. He fessed up in 25. And you needs to click on the link in 21--he's right with the right spelling. I'm going to go nitpick your grammar in another thread now.
Looking up "casus" in the Perseus Project's online Lewis & Short seems to be interpreted as "please break".
I admit to being wrong. I thought with "cassus belli" Chop was going for "cause of war" (which would be "causa"), but it seems the phrase is other.
It's not a tangent at all. The evidence that the justifications were dishonest (troops massing irrevocably, the weapons inspectors' reports) was available to us before the fact. Even if we were disposed to believe that Saddam was within 5-10 years of a nuclear weapon, shouldn't the evidence of dishonesty have caused us to reconsider this disposition with some skepticism?
I'm not saying "if we had only known then what we know now …". That would be fruitless. What I'm saying is, we did know then, reasonably well, what we know now.
Dammit, it's no fun when w-lfs-n admits error. I feel the way Bush would've felt if Saddam actually had agreed to flee the country, and he hadn't got to have his war.
shouldn't the evidence of dishonesty have caused us to reconsider this disposition with some skepticism?
Yes, sorry, if that was your point, then I don't think it's a tangent.
On the larger issue of nuclear proliferation, I strongly suspect that toothpaste ain't going back into the tube. When we "allowed" Israel to join the nuclear club, her neighbors following along became a matter of when, not if. Just as when India went nuke, Pakistan was going next, come hell or high water.
Unfortunately, this is the world that we and the Soviets jointly created. Welcome to the Terrordome.
ogged — re-reading my previous comments, it appears that my gedankenpoint and my geschriebenpoint weren't in sync until 30. Sorry for the confusion.
See, it all comes back to dsquared. I've linked that thing he wrote explaining that he was right about the war because everything he learned in B-school in a bunch of places, although I'm not sure if I've linked it here -- everyone's probably read it. His basic point, that once you've established that someone is lying to you to convince you of something, you can't use them as a reliable source of information at all, is a very strong one.
Re: 14, I side with Chopper. I think "WMD" should function like "ammo."
LB, yes, SB's comment made me think the same thing. We talked about dsquared's analysis in the comments to this post.
Actually, not so much in that thread. Elsewhere that I can't find, I think. But yes, he nailed it.
1. As I've said previously (enough that this is probably annoying, but what the hell), I'd feel much more comfortable with the prospects of my country and my party if the DNC and the DLC simply adopted the dsquared theses as a foundation for operation over the next three years. It won't happen, though.
2. Baa's admission about chem weapons and the pointlessness of WMD as a category is precisely the sort of thing that make me love him like an Irish brother despite his cold black heart. It's also worth noting that the people who failed most in this regard are the media. AFAIK, only one major paper pursued this point - the WP - and it did so to the tune of one story.
3. It's worth noting at this juncture that ogged supported the war, but only because he's tetchy about it. I've only had 40 oz of coffee so far, so a tetchy ogged makes me happy.
40 oz of coffee
Do you drink it out of a brown paper sack?
My sack is neither brown nor made of paper.
"Not a chump" --yessss!
We're in well trodden terrirtory, I agree, so (no disrespect to the other commentors here), I'll probably make this my last comment.
With respect to the position advanced by Matt (and maybe by ogged), I think it is simply too sanguine about what a zillion dollars in oil money and a high priority can accomplish. The acquisiton of nuclear weapons would have secured Husseins regime against any external threat. He had every reason to seek them. He had external partners who would have helped him. Five-ten years is a long time. Where was the Iranian nuclear program in 1993?
Likewise, to any who argue that a "Nukes first" argument makes North Korea is a higher priority, I kind of agree. But the horse is a bit out of the barn on that one, no? As for disarming North Korea: what options are really available for that. How about more aid they take and then not disarm? Sure, we can try that. Those suggesting that the Iraq invasion made the NoKo situation worse seem to me either to be suggesting that a) there are, in fact, viable military options there, or b) it's possible to make NoKo leadership more paranoid. I don't believe either of those are true.
Hey SCtim, didn't see you there. Celtics are letting me down, man.
Here's a related but much more interesting issue that I almost never see discussed.
I, like many of you (I presume), almost never accept the rationales given for policies that I support by the organizations that politically fight for those policies. For example: I think it's important to defend the legal right to abortion, but I don't think that right has anything to do with the completely fictitious "right over one's body" posited by some of the leading organizations fighting that fight. I'm in favor of universal health care, but not for the reasons typically given by those who fight to broaden coverage. I disagreed with a bunch of folks in a comments thread here at Unfogged about the Schiavo case -- though we all pretty much agreed on how the case should be resolved. And so on.
Against that background, which I presume echoes more or less everyone's, why should we have only two choices on Iraq: (a) oppose the war, or (b) support it for exactly the reasons that the Bush administration cited in its public justifications? I was as skeptical of those reason as anyone. Though I think it's important to acknowledge that the views of those who formulated the policy were multifaceted, and included concerns for the welfare of Iraqis and for democracy, why should it discredit me that my reasons for thinking the invasion justified included considerations that the administration did not cite and gave some considerations that they did cite far more emphasis than they gave them?
As with any political-deliberative nexus, at some point in March of 2003 each of us had to decide whether we supported or opposed the invasion (with whatever ambivalence or qualifications). And as with any such decision, we had to do so for our own reasons. Of course, among the considerations worth weighing were questions about the administration's motives. But when one's supports a policy one doesn't thereby count as supporting any particular set of reasons for that policy. One's reasons are, well, one's reasons. They manifest one's best effort to determine the reasons -- the reasons that there were, not merely the administration's reasons -- for that course of action.
I'm happy to debate the reasons: the reasons that there were for invasion. I'm also more than happy to concede that some of the administration's reasons for the invasion were bad reasons -- even at the time -- and that they did not act on their less bad reasons competently. But the debate still worth having is a debate about the reasons themselves, not a debate about the administration's reasons.
why should it discredit me that my reasons for thinking the invasion justified included considerations that the administration did not cite and gave some considerations that they did cite far more emphasis than they gave them?
This is more a complication than a rebuttal, but when the reasons of the people carrying out the action are different from your reasons, their considerations and priorities are very likely to be different, and so too their responses to unforeseen events. In some instances, this isn't an important factor, but it turns out that in a war, it is.
What ogged said in 46.
Also, like you, I frequently find myself in a position where I agree with the results a political ally wants but not with their reasoning. Usually, though, I can follow and respect that reasoning -- I may not agree with it, but it's neither nonsensical nor repugnant. I'd have a hard time supporting an action taken for what I considered completely illegitimate reasons or through illegitimate methods, even if I thought the ultimate ends were good ones. (E.g., even if I thought someone had been wrongly convicted and should be let out of jail on appeal, I wouldn't be able to help his buddies in organized crime, who mistakenly thought he was guilty, break him out of jail.)
I think people who supported the administration with regard to the war are in something that's closer to the latter position than to the former. What, literally, you were supporting wasn't the removal of Hussein from power, it was the invasion of Iraq by US forces under the control of the Bush administration, and that makes a difference.
The problem with going to war under false pretenses is that ultimately you get exposed and then your support goes away. Maybe some of it remains - people who supported the war for other reasons, but many people actually do expect the pretenses to support the action. Otherwise we are in an oogy boogie shadow world where everything is suspect.
Which to some degree is exactly where we are, and I don't like being here.
Of course, among the considerations worth weighing were questions about the administration's motives.
I thought this sentence in effect replied to the objections in 46 and 47. What one had to deliberate was the justice of the actual Bush administration's intervening in the spring of 2003, not some possible administration intervening at some time or other. Of course. Still, my reasons were not Bush's, so it doesn't directly discredit my -- or anyone else's -- reasons to cite Bush's.
(Though it isn't relevant to my present point, I did spend more than a year publicly flagellating myself for having misjudged the Bush administration's character in a crucial respect. So I'm not at all saying that my judgment in March 2003 was correct. I'm just saying that what shows my judgment incorrect is not simply the badness of the administration's reasons.)
Got you. Certainly, we can agree that the Bush administration's reasoning was neither absolutely determinative of nor irrelevant to the rightness or wrongness of anyone else's support of the war.
By the way, LizardBreath, your main point in 47 is an interesting one. That may indeed be the fundamental divide as the debate continues: it's between those who do and those who do not believe that the administration's reasons were "completely illegitimate" in a sense that puts the administration into a special category of the Unacceptable (with, in your example, organized crime).
My own view is that the administration was and is incredibly wrong (and thus should have been voted out last fall) but not in ways that make them Unacceptable in this special sense. Yet I suspect that many who assume that anyone who supports the administration on some issue must agree with them in every respect fall into this assumption because they view the administration as the political equivalent of organized crime. One can't "support" any of the mafia's policies without endorsing something that should absolutely not be endorsed. And many feel exactly that way about the Bush administration. It is simply Unacceptable in a way that instantly discredits the argument of anyone who tries to justify support for one of its policies.
I don't mean to dismiss that view. I can easily feel its force. But if that's really the divide, then of course it's completely pointless to try to debate reasons for supporting any of the Bush administration's policies. We'd have to have a much more general debate first.