My arguments against the war were (in order of strength):
1. It was not necessary for US security
2. It was no way to bring peace to the ME.
3. I had no confidence in Bush to accomplish this nearly impossible task, the task of bringing peace to the Middle East via military action.
we can't be sure that what would have happened had the war not been started wouldn't have been worse than even the bungled war we got, because the conditions for the bad things happening now--like the sectarian violence--were in place before the invasion.
This, however, is the ultimate missing-the-point argument. Of course Iraq was going to descend into chaos and bloodshed when Saddam exited the scene. The real question is whether we would find it somehow rewarding to be the ones held responsible for that chaos and bloodshed (not just by Iraqis, but by pretty much the entire planet) and be standing in the middle of it when it erupted.
I hate to sound completely cynical (actually, I relish sounding completely cynical, but whatever), but the important point is not that the war is going badly—the age of the "splendid little war" is over—but that it's going badly for us. No matter what the preconditions, I guarantee that had we not invaded, the war wouldn't be going badly for us.
But Tyler seems to be writing, as he frequently does, from the standpoint of a cosmopolitan ethicist. So that's no argument at all for him, though it should be one for government officers of the United States, who presumably give up the ability to be cosmopolitans by taking an oath of office.
Cowen's response to that, in the last paragraph of his post, is this:
There is of course the separate question of what is good for the U.S. and for other countries besides Iraq. If you think Iraq will go badly no matter what, those considerations may well be decisive. But it sounds selfish and defeatist to cite those arguments alone, so we are again left with anti-war cases which do not make complete sense.
Yeah, w/d's is well put. We have to keep separate Cowen's argument from arguments available to the administration's defenders. (I'm not sure that's really possible in a meaningful sense, but....)
What apo and Tripp said, and I'd like to add that if we're not directly threatened, we'd better have a morally unimpeachable reason for going to war by choice. Halting a genocidal campaign might be the only reason I can think of, in fact (since the inevitable carnage caused by U.S. military intervention would be less severe than the carnage caused by the genocidal army). Otherwise, the bombing campaigns and unavoidable civilian casualties are just plain immoral.
Plus, they're our soldiers. It is wrong to send them to their deaths unless they are defending our country or greater humanity.
That might be the most poorly written comment I've ever posted, although I'm sure one of you wankers could prove me wrong on that.
it sounds selfish and defeatist to cite those arguments alone, so we are again left with anti-war cases which do not make complete sense.
That's supposed to be a refutation? That it "sounds selfish and defeatist"? Weak.
One man's defeatism is another man's realism. You won't try to run through that brick wall? Why you gotta be all defeatist and shit? And selfish? Excuse me?
They don't make complete sense only if you assume that the divinely assigned mission of the United States is to make things better for citizens of other countries. Does France's and Germany's opposition to invading Iraq look selfish or prudent right now?
The other point Cowen misses is the one from the old story about the thief who's going to be executed. As he's being dragged off to the gallows, he sees the king and yells "Your Majesty, wait, don't hang me! If you give me a chance, I can teach your favorite horse to sing hymns!" The king lets him live, locked in the stables with the horse, and says that if the horse isn't singing at the end of a year, the thief will be hanged.
As he's being locked in the stable, a guard asks him "What are you doing? You know you're just going to get killed at the end of the year when you've failed."
"I've got a year. In a year, anything could happen. The king could be overthrown, the horse could die, I could die of natural causes... and who knows, the horse could learn to sing."
From where we sit now, it looks as if the chaos after Saddam died or was overthrown might have been just as bad as the current situation. While this is possible, at least it wasn't going to happen now -- the innocent people we killed during the war would have had longer to live, a real benefit from their point of view. We had the option of putting off the disaster, rather than accelerating it. And between now and when the chaos would have come without our actions, something might have happened that would have made a good outcome possible. What that might be, I don't know, but you can't rule out the possibility.
Always, if you have the option of putting off disaster without making the situation necessarily worse by doing so, it's the right thing to do.
I second (or third) Apo down the line. Cowen's a good guy, and generally fair, but the part you've excerpted is no argument at all.
something might have happened that would have made a good outcome possible
Perhaprs an administration (Democratic or Republican) that cares about detailed policy planning rather, or along with, broad rhetorical strokes.
Agree with LB as well. Actually, I hew (roughly) to the dsquared line about "Not This War Now." The absolutely worst time to have decisions made is during that period when the decisions will be made by morons. Pretending that the personnel you have in place doesn't affect decisions is moronic.
And I agree with apo and Joe as well.
Err, maybe someday I'll learn not to respond out of fury to the first four sentences of a post, and instead read the whole thing and the comments. Sorry about that. More or less what everyone said.
Including the part where Joe calls you a wanker? Also, I agree that what ogged is quoting in 4 is weak, but doesn't my 3 address the point that 4 is supposedly needed to address?
By the way, if you think Cowen's arguments are sailing way the hell wide of any identifiable target, check out the other post that has linked to it (besides Ogged), wherein missing the point is replaced with eating fish sticks and calling it target practice.
The real problem with this argument is he tries to take D-squared's message: What you know/think will happen after the fact should not change how you act (paraphrased). So we shouldn't say, "This war is a bad idea because look at the turmoil it has thrown Iraq into" because any war would throw Iraq into turmoil. That is completely different from saying "This war is bad because it is unjustified and bad for the US."
Look, if Iraq had decended into a civil war of its own will, instead of being placed in one by the US, things in Iraq might be just as bad for the Iraqis, but they wouldn't be as bad for US soldiers. Is that selfish? You're damn right it is. But civil war has never stopped the US from (not) acting (Sudan, etc.), so why should it now? National security? Maybe.
But then, couldn't we say that Rwandans or Sudanis twenty years down the line won't say "The Americans stood by idly as we were massacred by our own countrymen, it is time for them to pay?"
In short, giving the justification that things might possibly be just as bad in the future if we don't act now is weak. I might get cancer, so I should start chemotherapy right now, right?
TD- I don't think Cowen's right, but you're not giving him enough credit. He's looking at all of the arguments saying, look how fucked up Iraq is, that demonstrates that we shouldn't have gone to Iraq. And he's saying, but you need to compare how fucked up Iraq is including the U.S. lives lost and damge to U.S. reputation, with how fucked up it would have been with some alternative U.S. action which you think is what we should have done (continued sanctions, stopped sanctions, what have you), and that the relevant time horizon is an important issue.
I guess, but to make that argument Cowen has to have some basis for claiming that under some alternative U.S. action, the situation in Iraq would have been worse, rather than just no better, for the Iraqis. I don't see him making that claim, and I don't know what he could base it on if he did.
Well, if we'd just nuked 'em, that would have been worse, I suppose. Cowen seems to be conveniently omitting the fact that in 2003, before the civil war broke out, we waged a whole 'nother war on Iraq. Now one might be able to make the case that war went pretty well for the US, all things considered, but you couldn't plausibly make a case that it was better for the Iraqis than, you know, not having bombs dropped on them.
LB is one of the few non-wankers around here. I think we all know that.
Er... Thanks! Did I say something clever?
No, you just don't wank like most of us, and you were erroneously grouped into that category above, if only by implication.
I didn't RTFA. But I think my point is still valid. You can't discuss the marginal cost to the US or the world for two policies ex post facto. For instance, we can only hypothesize what the cost would be for continued sanctions against Iraq. But we know for a fact what the cost is now, and we can't go back now and say "Oh but this is justified based on the cost that it would accrue if we looked at it now and acted differently!" It's an odd variation on Heisenberg's uncertainty principal, only on a global scale with lives being waged.
But to make that argument, you can't just say that conditions X, Y, and Z existed and therefore we were bound to get T. You have to also show why ameliorative options A, B, and C could not have worked.
Good post, Ogged. And the bit I've quoted here is the best move in it. It's an unsatisfying position, but it's the least unsatisfying position available.
Of course, no genuinely ameliorative A, B, or C would have been attempted by the Bush administration, whatever we did. So opposing the war because the US might have done better was completely futile, or at best very long term. (And would a Kerry administration have ridden to the rescue? I doubt it.) It's hard to compare options all of which are as bad as these, so it's impossible to be confident that this least unsatisfying position is very much less unsatisfying than any of the others.
If one is a liberal, I'll add, one can take no solace from Apostropher's 'at least we wouldn't be in the middle of it.' We were already in the middle of it, and other things equal we had an obligation to get ourselves more into that middle. The only good liberal argument for not doing so was that we'd only make things worse. And probably we have, though no one should be very confident about it.
We were already in the middle of it, and other things equal we had an obligation to get ourselves more into that middle.
I'll assume you're referring to the no-fly zones, Ted, and ask what then obligates us to invade and occupy the country. Containment was our policy toward the Soviet Union for several decades, and it didn't entail any obligation to invade Mother Russia.
See my 9, apo's 20 -- I think there's a fair argument that March-May 2003, in terms of death toll and property destruction, was a bad period of time for Iraq that would not have taken place if we hadn't invaded. The civil war might have happened eventually anyway (although later, which is a real benefit), but the 'Shock and Awe' campaign would probably not have.
we'd only make things worse. And probably we have, though no one should be very confident about it.
Aside from the plight of the Kurds (which has yet to play out to an end, obviously), what is better in Iraq now than it was during the no-fly-zone period? Certainly not security, women's rights, electricity, clean drinking water, oil production, religious fundamentalism, terrorism, employment, life expectancy, infant mortality, Iranian influence, or much of anything else I can think of off the top of my head.
So much of the pro-war argument seems to boil down to an emotional response borne of frustration -- "Well, we couldn't just sit around and do nothing!" That, however, is precisely what adults must do, most of the time -- accept the fact that there may be awful circumstances which we have no control over.* I know it makes us feel good to attack something, to take action for action's sake, to "send a message" or whatever else one wants to call it, but clearly this is juvenile. Afghanistan was, I think, rather open-and-shut, with a clear collusion between Al Qaeda and the Afghan government. But the Iraq invasion has always felt so arbitrary to me, especially when Saddam's misdeeds are compared to those of equally horrible despots that we couldn't care a fig for.
*Not to mention the fact that we were not just doing nothing (see Apo's containment comment).
I'd like to mention that I don't think we should have gone there in the first place, but now that we are we can't just up and leave. That's like taking a dump in a neighbors toilet, clogging it to make sure the shit stinks, and then leaving without cleaning it up. It's not right.
tweedledopey -- I'm sorry, but what you're saying is objectively unjustifiable. Of course there's a point when leaving would be the best thing (or at least the least bad thing), both for us and for the people of Iraq. The million dollar question is, how do you identify that point?
I'd say if it were clear that we were making life worse for the citizenry than Saddam did, that would be one unambiguous sign. Also, if the people themselves overwhelmingly want us to leave, that would be another unambiguous sign. The administration is making it very difficult for the Iraqi people to voice those views, though.
LB: I didn't say we had a obligation to invade. I said we had an obligation to put ourselves more in the middle of it, by which I meant take more responsibility for a situation that, in light of the crucial support that we gave Saddam in the 1980s (without which he would probably have had to sue for peace with Iran, which may well have undermined him at home), was already hugely our responsibilty. So we're back to Ogged's question: what might have actually helped?
Apostropher: All I'm saying is that you shouldn't be very confident. I'm not saying you're wrong. After all, I agree with you: we've made things worse.
And I'm obviously talking about how things are likely to unfold over the longish term, not about how they are right this minute. There's no reason to use the latter as a criterion of anything.
Joe: Are you addressing my comment? Is that really how it reads, as a spasm of mindless 'emotion'?
Ted H. -- no, not specifically, though I get very suspicious of any pro-war argument that appears to be rooted in some kind of responsibility we have to the world or the people of Iraq or our forefathers or whomever. Yours seemed to be of that variety, and it rubs me the wrong way. It feels so White Man's Burden-y.
I'm being very weasely, I know, with the "seems" and "appears" and "feels". This is a difficult subject to argue about among intelligent people, and I think diplomacy is the most prudent course.
Put another way, I'll bet if we asked the people of Iraq if, because of our policies in the 80s and early 90s, we owed them a Shock and Awe campaign, they'd have likely said, no thanks, keep the change.
I'll bet if we asked the people of Iraq if, because of our policies in the 80s and early 90s, we owed them a Shock and Awe campaign, they'd have likely said, no thanks, keep the change
If that's a response to Ted, that's not fair, since he hasn't said that Shock and Awe was the proper way to discharge our responsiblity. No one here has defended what actually happened. The question (one of the questions) is how things could have been handled differently.
Joe: The point of mine to which you're objecting was where I said that Apostropher had not made a liberal argument. Nor have you. Liberalism in this context just is the view that, as you derisively put it, "we have an obligation to the world."
Of course nothing immediately follows about how to act on that obligation.
Okay, I was going for the hyperbolic flourish, I'll admit.
But this "responsibility" stuff is very dangerous, in my view. Unless the circumstances are truly extraordinary, we have a responsibility to stay the hell out of other people's affairs, since we'll just as likely screw things up for the worse once we get there. We're not, nor can we be, everyone's savior. This may sound cynical, but I think history has proven me right on this. We lead best by example. We have a tough enough time trying to live up to our own ideals; how dare we try and force them on others?
I know Ted H. isn't talking about our ideals, but he seems to be implying that we owe/owed the people of Iraq something for our past sins, when (as The Editors once wisely said) we've already shat the bed -- the best thing to do at that point is to stop shitting.
I continue to find this very odd. Joe's "We have a tough enough time trying to live up to our own ideals; how dare we try and force them on others?" seems to strike many people -- it presumably strikes him -- as the core of a principled liberalism. But how could it be that?
I guess it could be a liberal position if one were deeply skeptical about whether the US, the UK, and so on really are liberal societies. But no historical liberalism has taken that form.
Ted, feel free to classify it however you want; I couldn't care less.
It seems to me that liberalism is concerned with preserving human life first and foremost, but YLMV.
I think the key word there is 'force'. It has historically been shown to be somewhere between excruciatingly difficult and impossible to impose liberal democracy by force -- the only counter-examples of which I am aware are post-WWII Germany and Japan, and they had to be completely devastated before they could be rebuilt as democracies.
It is fully consistent with liberalism both to believe that the US should be involved in and supportive of liberal democracy in other nations and movements toward such democracy where it does not exist, and to think that forcing our ideals on other nations is overwhelmingly likely to be bloodily counterproductive.
If by 'better' you mean 'rephrased into pompous lawyer-speak'. Sadly, law school didn't do that to me -- I've always written like that.
I thought the key bit was "How dare we?"
I agree that a consequentialist argument like LB's #40 is perfectly compatible with liberalism.
But "How dare we?" suggests a different argument.
Joe,
You have been making the points I would make very well. Thanks.
I think it odd that Ted H. claims liberals must feel an obligation to the world.
Ted H., are you a liberal? It seems like you are trying to play word games to force some kind of concession out of me.
In my liberal world view I may in general feel that "we are all in this together" but in no way does that obligate me to take any particular action. I'm smart enough to know that I must pick and choose my battles based on my resources and my assesment of what is actually possible.
Ted H., you appear to be denying the existence of liberal nationalism and asserting that liberals must take a cosmopolitan viewpoint. I try to be a cosmopolitan ethically, but why would that be the only version of liberalism?
Ted -- I think you misread the "how dare we". If I understand Joe correctly, it's not 'how dare we try to spread liberal democracy', it's more like 'how dare we have the hubris to think that we're entitled to bomb, invade, and occupy another country based on the unsupported speculation that doing so may help us to spread liberal democracy in the long term.'
Speculating here, can't speak for Joe, but I don't think his 'how dare we' would apply to policies attempting to peacefully spread liberalism.
WD: I don't deny that there have been liberalisms that were also nationalisms, but isn't liberalism in considerable (conceptual) tension with nationalism? These movements seem ultimately to rest on an inconsistency.
Tripp, he's not playing word games, he's a philosophy professor. And a long-time semi-regular here who's not just fucking with you.
Also, no one here is making anything that one could regard as a 'nationalistic' argument. (If you universalize nationalism you lose it. It's not nationalism that leads one to think that we shouldn't invade other countries.)
re 32: Joe, what I was saying is that right now, I don't see those signs, whether it is because the administration is blocking the views from coming out is out of my control. Further, if you say the majority of people want us out, I'd say we should probably leave too.
But as for objectively unjustifiable? Hokey, I say. Power vaccuums suck like a Dyson. If we have a national power set in place that can at least rule the country as well as we can right now, I'd be all for getting out. But it doesn't appear that way. So the shit still stinks, and we're still holding the plunger.
Anyways, here's the point where you can do a cost-benefit analysis before acting: if we stay in there, what are the potential harms to Iraq, America, and the world? If we leave, what are the harms? Are we setting ourselves up to get fucked by suicide bombers by staying there? Possibly. But who's to say that they won't fuck us if we leave? Are things bad for the Iraqis there now? Sure. But ask the Haitians whether they liked it when the French left. Chances are, you'd get a no response. So would the Iraqis be better off if we left right now?
All that being said, I'd love to get a multinational, multicultural force into Iraq to stabilize the country.
I agree that we have no place messing in the affairs of other states, but we've already done that, so we can't pretend that we didn't, send a Hallmark "We're sorry, We're Thinking of You" card, and leave. I wish that we could, but there doesn't appear to be any infrastructure in place.
But explain to me how all of this is objectively unjustifiable?
LB's take is correct, though the "how dare we" also speaks to our arrogance, paternalism and hypocrisy in using violence to spread our values (if that is indeed our aim).
Force is a funny thing. Try to force a kid to do something, and he'll resist, even if he knows it's the right thing to do. Lest we forget The Once and Future King, force doesn't do much of anything except kill loads of people and breed resentment. Right for Right!
Boy, I'm overextending myself like a mofo today. tweedle, what I meant was, using "we can't leave now, we made the mess, we have to clean it" as a justification for staying indefinitely is wrongheaded. It looks like that's not what you were saying. I apologize.
Let me try a different hypothetical tack:
The international response, at least among NATO countries and many of their allies, to the failure to respond (before Kosovo) to genocides, civil wars, massacres, and other atrocities that took place in the 1990s indicates that, in the case of a civil war in Iraq, the conditions existed for the creation of a more broadly-based, international, "coalition of the willing" to intervene than the one currently in Iraq.
Well one nationalistic belief would be "I value harm to my co-nationals at a higher level than harm to other humans who aren't co-nationals." You might want to say that that particular bit of nationalism is inconsistent with liberalism, and leading liberal nationalists (Yael Tamir, Will Kymlicka, man I'm glad I'm subtly pointing discussion into an area I took a class on), might agree, but it does seem to me that certain arguments here are premised on that belief.
Joe,
What I meant was if you stole into a neighbor's house while they were out of town, so they couldn't clean it up themselves. If they were there and said, "Yeah the toilet's broken" or "We'll get that for you because you are can't do it right," I'd be all for running out of the house. Sorry for the confusion.
TD re:30 and 32. It seems to me that the crucial question is, is our presence destabilizing the country now? Is Iraq better off with us there or would they be better off--chaotic, unstable, but better off--without us?
I can't answer that question, but I'm leaning toward advocating withdrawal with reparations. Hell, we seem to have stolen their oil-for-food money to pay for security. We should pay that back too.
To make a moderately irrelevant comment, I get all edgy in conversations incorporating the word 'liberal'. It has several very different meanings, and several of them (including, I suspect, the one Ted H. was using) I don't have a rigorous handle on.
Ted -- I was taking 'liberalism' in your comments to refer to societies with substantial protection for civil rights, free speech, etc. Were we talking about roughly the same thing?
Bgirl...
Are we destabilizing the country? Year, that's what being at war does. At the same time, we've dismantled all the infrastructure so that if we left, there'd be nothing to take our place. Better off though if we left? Remember, we're doing the training of their police force in country. So if we leave, there's less of any presence there. It may be that we've created a hell hole that we can't get out of.
Honestly, I don't have enough knowledge about the state of things in country to make any real statement about this. People who have been there, or are in the know, might. But for the rest of us, we're all talking about a hypothetical with no baseline agreement of how the situation is at the moment. It's like making an argument about tomatos being fruit when none of us know precisely what a fruit is and what a vegetable is.
LB: I'm using 'liberalism' in an extremely thin sense here, as the egalitarian view that each person's welfare and/or rights count the same as everyone else's. So, other things equal, an American liberal will care as much about the welfare or rights of an Iraqi or a Nigerian as she cares about the welfare or rights of her fellow Americans. (I'm putting it disjunctively in terms of welfare or rights to allow for a range of different normative positions.)
Of course, things are never actually equal. And considerations concerning what one is actually able to accomplish reasonably lead one to care more about one's fellow citizens.
The core idea is simply that a liberal won't treat "but he's my fellow citizen!" or "but she's from another culture!" as a basic consideration for or against a course of action.
Glad I asked -- while that's a position I can agree with, it's not all that close to what I was thinking you meant by 'liberal'. 'Liberal' really needs to be defined in each conversation -- there are too many conflicting possibilities, all in current use.
The core idea is simply that a liberal won't treat "but he's my fellow citizen!" or "but she's from another culture!" as a basic consideration for or against a course of action.
Somewhere in the calculation about whether to go to war or not should be the recognition that most Americans simply don't feel that way. We really just don't care that much. (See Rwanda, Darfur, etc.) The ability to recognize that is the core competence, one would hope, of a politician. And it should have effected the strength of any argument to go to war.
Yes. While I said I could agree with the position Ted defined as liberalism, I think it's an ideal, and as such it's a position that very few people in the US (whether 'liberals,' in the political-spectrum sense where it means something like moderate Democrat, or not) actually hold. There's nothing particularly hypocritical about being a liberal in the political-spectrum sense and still being enough of a nationalist that you consider the welfare of Americans at least somewhat more valuable than the welfare of non-Americans.
Maybe Iraq was doomed to descend into chaos. But at least the blood would not have been on *our* hands if we'd simply stayed out of that whole mess. At least 1800 U.S. soldiers would not be dead and 15,000 U.S. soldiers missing arm(s) or leg(s). At least $184,000,000,000 that could have been used to make life better for America and Americans would not have disappeared into the desert sands or Halliburton's back pocket.
In the end, it comes down to a simple equation: are the American people better off for having U.S. soldiers in Iraq? And the answer is, of course, *NO*.
And that's the only equation that matters.
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Tweedledopey,
My concern is that we may be totally incapable of restoring that infrastructure. It's possible that the Iraqis could do a better job on their own.
What is our goal anyway? What do we need to accomplishe before we can leave? That's just not clear to me.
I didn't say we had a obligation to invade. I said we had an obligation to put ourselves more in the middle of it
Well, Ted, we'd waged one major air war, levied a dozen years of sanctions, while enforcing no-fly zones in the north and the south of Iraq while bombing military targets, demanded extensive UN weapons inspections, reparations for Kuwait, and an international embargo of trade aside from the Oil for Food progam. What specifically is the middle ground you could propose between that and invasion? Small pox blankets?
by which I meant take more responsibility for a situation that, in light of the crucial support that we gave Saddam in the 1980s
And again, given the previous twelve to thirteen years, take more responsibility by doing what exactly?
not about how they are right this minute. There's no reason to use the latter as a criterion of anything.
No, there's a very good reason to use that as a criterion: it's all we have to go by. And what our experience has shown is that 140K troops aren't anywhere near enough to stabilize the country, we don't have any more troops to spare nor the national will to institute a draft, and we've no idea how to get the Iraqi army and police into a functioning security force. 200-400 gangsters kept tens of thousands of British troops in Northern Ireland for decades - and they spoke the language, knew the neighborhood, and had natural allies among the population. We're decades away from reducing the Iraqi insurgency to something anything close to that small.
Liberalism in this context just is the view that, as you derisively put it, "we have an obligation to the world."
That's not really a liberal view so much as an interventionist view. The two aren't quite the same thing.
I'm using 'liberalism' in an extremely thin sense here
Too thin, I believe. You are correct, given that definition, that I wasn't making a liberal argument per se (and I don't feel bound by any rigid definitions of liberalism in deciding the relative wisdom or foolishness of Iraq War II), but then again it was a response to a specific passage in the Cowen post, not the scaffolding upon which I hang my opposition to the war.
bg (65),
it's possible. but i doubt it. i don't doubt, however, that a truly multinational, multicultural force could do a lot better job. fat chance of that happening now though.
I appreciate the further distraction from work I don't want to be doing at the moment, but your reply, Apostropher, has an animus that I don't understand.
I explained that I wanted the US to take more responsibility by thinking harder about a strategy that would actually work -- better diplomacy? shrewder bluffing? these are candidates too -- but you can hear this only as an endorsement of something invasion-like.
Pre-war, let me explain, I agreed with the 'left' argument that the sanctions regime was immoral, given its horrible effects, and that the no-fly zones were not a long-term solution and moreover illegal. That was the context. And my view is and was: that's not the way to take responsibility for the situation.
You've said nothing to indicate that you disagree with that judgment.
In fact, I don't see that there's any actually propositional disagreement between us at all, apart from my observation that your earlier argument was not a liberal one -- by which, just to clarify, I didn't mean to reject it. (I am a liberal myself, but I don't think it's quite fair to reject an argument merely on the grounds that it's illiberal. By the way, liberalism is of course not the same as interventionism. Interventionism is an interpretation of the 'obligation to the world' but not the only interpretation.)
I think the disagreement that you perceive between us has something to do with a sense that my original comment (#25) just sounds suspiciously pro-war. True, I said "Good post!" to Ogged's (anti-war) reply to (pro-war) Cowen. Technically, that puts me on the side of the angels, no? I'm on the record many times here on this blog, as well as elsewhere, dissenting from this war. But still: my tone sounds suspicious, doesn't it?
Is that it? I don't go in for frothy rhetoric, hence I must be a fence-sitter, at best just barely on the anti-war side. So you feel the need to argue me all the way over.
If so, consider an alternative. Ogged's post was good because he made an argument in a way designed to engage the sensibility of someone who disagrees with him. I congratulated him on that blogospheric rarity, and tried to take it a tiny bit further toward engagement. Yes, we thereby run the risk of contracting pro-war cooties. But there really is no other hope of persuading people.
No animus, but sarcasm often sounds sharper in print than if we were on barstools. I apologize if I came across nastily or put words in your mouth. I think the part most opaque to me is this: "We were already in the middle of it, and other things equal we had an obligation to get ourselves more into that middle," with the specific reference being the Reagan administration's dealings with Hussein in the early 80s.
At the time, we were heavily involved with a wide range of despotic regimes, mostly as proxy battles with USSR. Under the middle proposition, we have obligations to do something in just about every corner of the globe. We're in agreement about the sanctions regime and the no-fly zone, but I'd say given our long history of exporting of arms and conflict far and wee, the world would benefit most from America pulling its thumb out of most of those pies rather than searching for a more responsible way to jam it in further.
The urge to find a more responsible thumb-jamming route led an awful lot of people who should have known better to (in many cases, reluctantly) back the invasion. It isn't just a matter of this administration's incompetence; with the exception of the negotiated detente between Israel and Egypt, the United States' record of "taking responsibility" in the Middle East over the last century just doesn't give much cause for optimism, regardless of where on the liberal/conservative spectrum the administration has fallen.
All in all, once the conversation moves beyond trade and immigration, I'm fairly isolationist, as unfashionable as that may be. While that earns me some odd bedfellows (like, say, Pat Buchanan), I'm unconvinced that it's fundamentally at odds with liberalism.
As for your last paragraph, point taken.
Just a brief comment on the "we should have known the execution would be bad" argument. Davies grounds his argument on the suggestion that the Bush administration bungles everything, and so it was predicatable that they would bungle Iraq. Let me ask this question: was the campaign in Afghanistan *bungled*? That seems just a wrong characterization. (If you think Tora Bora provides this evidence, we simply disagree).
The claim that all Bush initiatives are inevitably pursued incompetantly reminds me of nothing so much as the claim that all Clinton initiatives were pursued "fecklessly."
You're right, Afghanistan wasn't bungled, it was much more craven than that. They took troops that could have secured the country and moved them to Iraq. What is the state of things in Afghanistan? Isn't Karzai still "mayor of Kabul," and aren't the warlords still exercising quite a bit of power? Did we catch Osama? Or Mullah Omar, the dreaded one-eyed cleric? Anyway, DD's standards was "fucked up," which has a slightly broader scope than "bungled." (This comment is not as snarky as it appears.)
Yes, I'd agree that Afghanistan was bungled, unless you define the goals of that war very, very narrowly. We did destroy the training camps and drive the Taliban out of the capital city into other parts of the country and Pakistan. But Ogged's comment is valid. By yanking all those troops to Iraq, Bush did indeed bungle Afghanistan.
I concede that my initial 'in the middle' metaphor was potentially misleading. (But I did immediately clarify it to obviate these objections. Though apparently even there I opened myself to misreadings. To me, 'taking responsibility' means acting responsibly, not throwing your weight around.)
In response the baa, let me say that merely that I'm much less sure than Davies that the evidence of the sort of incompetence we've seen in Iraq was scrutable in advance. I myself was just amazed (and of course appalled) by it when it began to emerge, in part because that sort of incompetence was much less salient in the administration's approach to Afghanistan (as of 2003).
I'm not going to defend that subjective report, if people jump all over me. It's merely a report of how things struck me. I'm fully aware that most of you will judge me naive.
The lesson I draw, however, is that one needs lots of positive evidence that the principal agents are serious and know what they're doing before one supports an enterprise like this. One can't simply presume relevant parties competent because they've seemed fairly competent on similar enterprises. On that score, I think I'm very culpable: my apriori presumption should have been that people usually severely screw up such enterprises, even when entirely well intentioned.
(By the way, I don't think I've mentioned here that Don Rumsfeld was my Dad's college roommate. And he was the liberal Republican congressman from my home town around the time I was born (in those days there were many liberal Republicans in addition to the conservative Democrats). It's stupid, perhaps, but even that loose of a personal connection -- wholly unrelated to any relevant matter, but reeking of paternality -- played a part in leading me to presume more competence than I should have.)
When I read your comment, Ted H, that our standards for positive evidence for committment and competance should be high, I found myself noddding along. The more I think about it, however, the more it appears to me that this standard will simply act as a break against aggressive foreign policy. We didn't have this kind of assurance before Bosnia or Kosovo, e.g. And we do not have it about international actors now, when an intervention in Darfur might have positive results. Maybe we can carve out a special meaning of "an enterprise like this" so that nation building enterprises get clearly distinguished from humanitarian disaster prevention exercises, but I doubt this will be of much help in practice. I think what we're left with is another argument that points towards realism and against crusading foreign policy of an ideological stripe (neoconservative, liberal internationalism, egalitarian, or whatever). This isn't meant at all to be dismissive: Realism has a lot going for it.
Apostropher, Ogged: I think we are at something of an impasse based on our interpretation of situation in Afghanistan, and US aims there. I don't see US policy in Afghanistan as a fiasco. Quite the contrary.
baa- Is it your impression that you and oggpostropher agree on descriptive statements about what Afghanistan is currently like and disagree on the normative assessment of those facts, or is this going to come down to a problem of different people trusting different sources for their facts on the ground?
yes, baa, I'm interested to hear your assesment on Afghanistan. I'm expecting incisiveness out of you!
Ted H: Dude! Can you get your dad to blog some Donald stories?
On to substance. I see this as the lynchpin of Cowen's argument:
And I've yet to be convinced that an Iraqi civil war -- without the U.S. involved -- would turn out so much better for the Iraqis.
That is, he holds out hope that our intervention will in the end by a net positive for the Iraqis, ergo, anti-war arguments are insuffecient.
Maybe I'm not reading that right (it's late) but to me that just seems looney. It seems to be a particularly naive liberal argument, using the understanding of liberal which Ted gives in 60. What Cowen seems to be ignoring is a simple cost-benefit analysis. Like here:
Second, the correct cost of the war -- at least to the Iraqis -- would be this difference in outcomes, not the current absolute level of badness.
I think this period of emotional and mental stress, and period, for many Iraqis, of deprevation of property, happiness, safety, life, and loved ones should be factored into the cost. The thing is, this sort of badness seems to be much more intense than under Saddam's rule. (That's my impression anyway, I'm not an expert.)
It seems that, to use a silly analogy, Cowen is arguing that I should by that vase becaues as long as it makes my living room look better the $6000 price tag is worth it.
In a way, I feel I'm almost being charitable to Cowen. As he notes:
The pro-war right seems keen to argue that much of the insurgency is foreign fighters. This in reality weakens their case, as it opens the possibility that the U.S. role drew in these forces.
A possibility, one might note, which is garnering more attention and more plausibility. It seems quite likely that many of the suicide bombers are chiefly responding to US presence. I don't want to make any final judgments here, though - I'm in no position to do so.
All in all, once the conversation moves beyond trade and immigration, I'm fairly isolationist
How far do you take this, Apos? What about Rwanda and Darfur?
I wouldn't insert troops into either of those situations, no.
Baa,
The incompetence that I at least was talking about is the incompetence characteristic of neoconservatism, which I believe is already a form of realism. As I see it, neoconservatism is a conservative realism -- where the conservatism tends to mask the realism, giving the latter a moralistic air. But what's the source of neoconservatism's moralism (its democracy promotion, etc.)? Not liberal ideology as such, but the fact that the US is a liberal society. Hence this is realism: neoconservatives are in the business of promoting the US national interest regardless of moral constraint -- apart of course from the respects in which the US national interest expresses moral constraints, which fortunately it does. But the moral dimension is derived from the strategic dimension and has no other basis. Neoconservatism is realism.
As I see it, neoconservatism bears to Wilsonian liberalism the same abstract relation that Straussian conservatism bears to social-contract liberalism. Proponents of the former in each case rightly insist that it is not incompatible with the latter -- but only for historical reasons, not from principle. ('Democracy-promotion is in the US national interest' plays the same role as 'The US founding instituted a social constract.' Both serve to make these conservatives look like liberals, though they are not liberals.)
So there are at least two possible reactions to neoconservatism. Realists may reject the conservatism in favor of a more principled amoralism. And liberals may reject the realism altogether. I favor the latter, but I understand the attractions of the former. I do wish that Democrats understood, however, that the former is not the only option. But that requires understanding how neoconservatism is not really liberal interventionism, and I'm afraid no Democratic politician has the nerve to try to explain that distinction to the party's base.
So of course the 'standard of demonstrated commitment and competence' should be very high when it comes to military interventions. But a liberal has some as yet unexploited resources for explaining how the experience of the Iraq War does not rule them out.
I did immediately clarify it to obviate these objections
Yes, but by then I was already flying on auto-pilot. My bad. This is why I mostly quit blogging about politics back around the beginning of the year.
And liberals may reject the realism altogether.
I don't rightly understand what this entails.
ogged (48)
Tripp, he's not playing word games, he's a philosophy professor.
Well . . . nope, not going to do it.
It is hard to see titles and commendations over the internet.
Okay, I think I now understand what Ted H. means when he says "liberal." By that definition Jesus Christ is a liberal but I can't think of anyone else who really qualifies.
I do agree with baa that at the time of the invasion it was not fair to say "Bush screws up everything he tries." Since then I think his sole success has been getting re-elected so it is getting fairer to say he screws everything up.
Tripp, don't forget about his command of the bullhorn.
Ted H: I fear discussions of "neoconservatism" and "liberalism" generally aren't definite enough to provide me with guidance. You suggest neoconservatism is actually realism. I don't know exactly how to engage with that statement. Is this speech advocating realism? If so, it's not Patrick Buchanan's realism, I think. There are, of course, intellectuals identified as neoconservative who hew to a realist line. Charles Krauthammer is one such, and has taken pains to distinguish "democratic globalism" the position he associates with Bush and Blair, with his own view, which he labels as democratic realism.
Apostropher: How did you feel about Kosovo?
To everyone on Afghanistan, I'm no expert but the following seem to me to be true:
a. The Taliban is gone
b. Al Queda is on the run, and cannot use Afghanistan as a safe haven. US terrorist huneters have almost complete freedom of operation there
c. Civil order is no worse than in Taliban times, and overall humanitarian situation is improved
d. Central control over the country from Kabul is incomplete, likely many areas are under de facto control of local power-brokers
a and b seem indisputable to me. c is debatable, but is I think supported by sources other than partisan pro-Bush ones. d is unfortunate, but ultimately I do not think the effectiveness and reach of Afghanistan's central government is a essential determinant of the success of US policy.
The huneter biscuit in the airtight sanitary package made the cracker barrel obsolete.
Apostropher: How did you feel about Kosovo?
I felt it was the Europeans' responsibility, but admit it went pretty well. I consider that outcome more lucky than instructive, but that's just me. What I'd like to see the world move toward is regional security arrangements, rather than the US being everybody's first-line guarantor. Situations like the Sudan and Rwanda are happening constantly (though often on smaller scales), so trying to formulate a doctrine of justified intervention strikes me as diving headfirst down a slippery slope. I'm open to aiding international missions as part of a UN-approved force (which has its flaws, certainly), but extremely leery of doing it as a US project, or even a NATO project.
I'd be more receptive to humanitarian interventions in North America and the Caribbean. I would include Central America in that formulation, except that our history there is so godawfully bloody that I don't trust the American government to be a fair actor in that region, regardless of the party in charge.
a. The Taliban is gone
From the presidential palace, yes, but gone, not so much.
b. Al Queda is on the run, and cannot use Afghanistan as a safe haven.
We definitely disrupted the training camps and denied them an essential state sponsor, yes. AQ still seems to be using the Pakistan border region pretty freely, though. I fear, though, that our perception of the relative stability of Afghanistan has less to do with its actual stability and more to do with the absence of journalists outside Kabul (much like, say, Haiti, which would seem calm if you didn't go actively searching for the news).
c. was never a reason for our intervention there, as we were perfectly willing to deal with them prior to 9/11. It's a plus, no doubt, but it's a post facto side benefit.
d. could have been much less of a problem had we actually focussed on finishing the job there, rather than rushing headlong into another war before mid-term elections. So while it might not be the determining factor of the success of US policy, I don't think it can be excluded from the calculation, either.
I would also question c -- not that I know it to be untrue, but that I don't know it to be true. My impression is that civil order is worse than it was in the Taliban era -- there's more violence, warlord control, etc. Whether this nets out to a worse humanitarian situation is unclear; even though there was more order under the Taliban, it was a pretty nightmarish type of order and chaos may be a step up from that. Nonetheless, I still don't think we can call the overall humanitarian situation an unambiguous success for our intervention.
Thanks for the links, baa. The Krauthammer lecture inadvertently makes my point clearly in this passage:
But here we come up against the limits of realism: You cannot live by power alone. Realism is a valuable antidote to the woolly internationalism of the 1990s. But realism can only take you so far.And he proceeds to describe the view that he ascribes to Bush and Blair, which he calls 'democratic globalism':
Its basic problem lies in its definition of national interest as classically offered by its great theorist, Hans Morgenthau: interest defined as power. Morgenthau postulated that what drives nations, what motivates their foreign policy, is the will to power--to keep it and expand it.
For most Americans, will to power might be a correct description of the world--of what motivates other countries--but it cannot be a prescription for America. It cannot be our purpose. America cannot and will not live by realpolitik alone. Our foreign policy must be driven by something beyond power. Unless conservatives present ideals to challenge the liberal ideal of a domesticated international community, they will lose the debate.
Which is why among American conservatives, another, more idealistic, school has arisen that sees America's national interest as an expression of values.
It is this fourth school that has guided U.S. foreign policy in this decade. This conservative alternative to realism is often lazily and invidiously called neoconservatism, but that is a very odd name for a school whose major proponents in the world today are George W. Bush and Tony Blair....But the real question should then be: how can this American exceptionalism be Blair's position? That's quite a poodle maneuver -- the British PM carves out a reputation as one of the most eloquent spokesmen for a position defined as not British but American!
Beyond power. Beyond interest. Beyond interest defined as power. That is the credo of democratic globalism. Which explains its political appeal: America is a nation uniquely built not on blood, race or consanguinity, but on a proposition--to which its sacred honor has been pledged for two centuries. This American exceptionalism explains why non-Americans find this foreign policy so difficult to credit; why Blair has had more difficulty garnering support for it in his country; and why Europe, in particular, finds this kind of value-driven foreign policy hopelessly and irritatingly moralistic.
No, Blair is a liberal, a 'hard'-Wilsonian liberal, not an American-exceptionalist neoconservative. Despite the similar rhetoric, Blair and Bush have not staked out the same position.
This is clear if you go back to the first bit I quoted above and note how Krauthammer characterizes neoconservatism (i.e. what he calls 'democratic globalism'). It's simply the infusion of American power with American values: realism plus American moralism. That's exactly right, and it's exactly the point I was making.
If you're a really hard-core realist, and you take American hegemony maximally seriously, and you note that American hegemony is not merely material ('power') but ideological ('values'), then you wind up a neoconservative. And realists deliberating from the perspective of modest powers abroad may wish to identify with American hegemony too. But if sincere they wouldn't do so with Blair's rhetoric, which is liberal rhetoric. (There's room here to question Blair's sincerity, of course.)
Otherwise put, neoconservatism is in fact a hardcore realism. The moral element that appears incompatible with realism is not really incompatible, since it is defined as American morality. Neoconservatism is simply realism plus American exceptionalism.
Ted H,
I think there's an error of interpretation and of charity in your reading of Krauthammer.
K says " What it [democratic globalism] can teach realism is that the spread of democracy is not just an end but a means, an indispensable means for securing American interests." You seem to take this point as acknowledgement that DG treats the spread of democracy merely as a means. The danger K sees is that DG is too focused on democracy as and end: According to K, the problem with democratic globalism/neoconservatism is that it will inveigle its proponents in struggles that are irrelevant to the national interest: Kosovo, Rwanda, Darfur. Thats' the error of interpretation: K thinks "neocons" are too idealistic, too prone to Wilsonian errors. Note that the Weekly Standard overwhelmingly supported Clinton's efforts in the Balkans. Krauthammer did not.
So K certainly doesn't view neocons as souped up realists. And I think your argument that they are is uncharitable. Let's imagine person X, believes that "American values" really = "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain rights" and derivatively, "America values" = "liberal economics, rule by consent of the governed, a Millian public debate, and respect for human rights and deceny." Further, person X believes these values are objectively correct -- they are the birthright of all people in all nations. Seems like Mr. X could be one heck of a neocon. Indeed, the factor that determines whether Mr. X turns out to be a crusading democratic globalist or a crusading liberal internationalist will depend not on his commitment to idealism, but rather on very specific empirical suppositions about the efficacy of international institutions, and the role of the nation state. If you think NGOs, and the UN are the correct and legitimate tool to advance these universal values, you end up a liberal internationalist. If you think nation states are, you end up a neocon. Right?
Baa: Since I said that the K lecture "inadvertently" makes my point, I thought it would be clear that I wasn't interpreting him. What I meant was that he nicely lays out some considerations that support my point, not that he agrees with me.
Your second criticism is interesting, though. Yes, your Mr X could wind up a neocon or a liberal internationalist, depending on how he answers those empirical questions. But that's because you've said only that he believes that the values at stake are "objectively correct." Neocons and liberals accept the same values. But my point is that it matters how they individuate those values. Neocons individuate them as -- i.e. commit to them as -- American values. Liberals do not commit to them as American values (though most liberals believe that they are American values).
My claim is that this makes a difference to how these agents act on the values. If Mr X is a neocon, he'll think "Hey, they're our values, dammit, so we'd better be willing to enforce them unilaterally." If he's a liberal, he'll think instead "It's better to enforce these values unilaterally than see them avoidably trampled, but since the values aren't ours in particular but everyone's we should always try our hardest to get everyone on board."
So I think it's possible to be a 'hard' Wilsonian without thereby becoming a neocon. A hard Wilsonian tends for purely empirical reasons to be suspicious of NGOs and the UN: that is, he views them as ineffective. But his liberalism will tend to pull him toward 'soft' liberal internationalism wherever those empirical considerations do not apply, and he'll work to remove those empirical obstacles. Not so the neocon. Neoconservatism is conceptually stable in the context of a useless UN, whereas for a Wilsonian, 'hard' or 'soft,' that is not a conceptually stable.
What I'm saying, then, is that there are at least four generic positions here: soft Wilsonianism (Clinton?) and hard Wilsonianism (Blair?), distinguished by how they answer your empirical questions, and neoconservatism (Bush?) and realism (Krauthammerian or otherwise), distinguished by how 'idealistic' they are in interpreting the US national interest.
Ted,
On your first point: fair enough.
On the second though, I think you are being unjust. It is very, very hard to understand the motivations of political actors. You claim that while Wilsonians and Neocons, will, by your description, advocate very similar policies, neocons are basically prisoners of tribal morality. A neocon superman will pledge his defence to "the American way, and subsidairily, truth and justice."
This depcition, to be frank, seems to me both implausible and unsupported by fact. We do not know what motivates other people, and should take some care not to interpret the motivations of our opponents without charity. You are essentially suggesting that neoconservatives are guilty of a elementary and monstrous moral error. What warrant do I have for casting myself (the Mr. X of the example, actually) as a meritorious hard Wilsonian, who holds my values for the right reasons, and Paul Wolfowitz as a sink of heternomous moral motivation?
So leaving aside motivation, how do we discriminate between hard wilsonians and neocons? Here's what I take as your "money paragraph":
A hard Wilsonian tends for purely empirical reasons to be suspicious of NGOs and the UN: that is, he views them as ineffective. But his liberalism will tend to pull him toward 'soft' liberal internationalism wherever those empirical considerations do not apply, and he'll work to remove those empirical obstacles. Not so the neocon. Neoconservatism is conceptually stable in the context of a useless UN, whereas for a Wilsonian, 'hard' or 'soft,' that is not a conceptually stable.
But wait. Surely the level of governmental organization which enforces and supports human rights and democratic values should be a matter of moral indifference. We just want to know which system works best. If the nation state system and a weak UN does the best job of realizing the good life for man, great. If strong super-national bodies, and weak nation-states equally great. If it's no govenrments at all, anarchy in the UK! If the Hard Wilsonian view isn't stable in the absence of strong international instititutions, surely this shows that this view has misunderstood why those insitutions are valuable: they are means only, not ends in themselves.
Surely the level of governmental organization which enforces and supports human rights and democratic values should be a matter of moral indifference. We just want to know which system works best.
Not quite, I think. The liberal is likely to have a mistrust of nation-states and unilateralism. That is, in Best of All Possible Worlds scenario, the liberal belives multinational instutions work best. And, pursuint to this belief, the liberal wants to work at perfecting such institutions.
The neocon, however, seems to make a pragmatic judgment about which institution best delivers on American interests, and focuses on that instiution. I'm actually not certain that a neocon would ever be satisfied with a multinational body as a source of real power.
A neocon superman will pledge his defence to "the American way, and subsidairily, truth and justice."
I'm not positive, but perhaps Ted is saying that the neocon will not draw that distinction.
Baa, I only have time for a very brief reply.
I think you're misreading my tone (or perhaps I mispresented my tone). I don't mean to be casting aspersions on neocons in my typology. Neoconservatism emerged largely in reaction to Republican old-school realism, and it would be perfectly intelligible if it never really broke with realism -- if its 'idealism' were tied to a conception of the US national interest rather than to ideals less grounded in a particular nation-state.
I want to cast aspersions on neoconservatism insofar as I think its American exceptionalism led to incompetence in Iraq. I don't mean to build the aspersions into my characterization of the position itself. In a way, I think it's a more intelligent realism than the old-school variety, since it acknowledges the role of ideology in our national interest.
I'm certainly not casting aspersions on or adversely judging the motives of any individual neocons. Nor am I claiming individual human beings perfectly instantiate these types. It's a typology of normative positions, not of individuals' motive-sets.
If the Hard Wilsonian view isn't stable in the absence of strong international instititutions, surely this shows that this view has misunderstood why those insitutions are valuable: they are means only, not ends in themselves.
You must be talking about a purely consequentialist liberal view here. The point needn't apply to a liberal view that emphasizes the legitimizing aspect of these institutions.
Or you're manifesting a neoconservative emphasis, not (liberal) hard Wilsonianism. If the thought takes the form 'Only the American nation-state is reliable in promoting these values,' and if the answer to 'Why?' is 'Because these are more deeply our values' or even just 'Because we're more deeply committed to them (than e.g. the French, who hold them but don't understand their potential to liberate),' then that would count as a neoconservative view in my typology.
And again: I'm not saying that neoconservatism is hypocritical or otherwise criticizable in its definition. It strikes me as a perfectly intelligible view, and I can imagine lots of good reasons to adopt it. (As I said last night, I think it's preferable to old-school realism for a number of reasons.)
I'm saying (a) that we can identify some illiberal strands in recent neoconservative thinking (no reader of this blog needs to be reminded of those!), and (b) we can explain this illiberalism by distinguishing neoconservatism from liberal interventionism (i.e. hard Wilsonianism).
The distinction enables us to resist some aspects of neocons' self-presentations. But I'm not saying that they're lying about their views when they present themselves as 'hard' liberals. I'm saying merely that the claim needs to be interpreted. What they mean by 'liberal' may not be what it makes most sense to mean by it, if one's aim to understand the full range of available positions.
Let me also repeat that individual human beings may not line up perfectly with these positions. I think there are liberal strands in Wolfowitz's thinking, for example, as well as neoconservative strands. The point is that my typology enables us to distinguish these strands and to argue that the liberal strands are in tension with the realists elements in his neoconservatism.
This sort of reads like a platonic dialogue, but I cannot tell who the foil is. I intend this to be complimentary.