There are a couple of other problems with Ted's argument, but the main one I think would be: who says the war is over?
By any military measure, I don't think you can say it is. Our guys are still dying -- not to mention getting their arms and legs perforated or blown off at an average rate of 50 a week. Iraqis are still dying. We can't bring our people home; Iraq would devolve into chaos or theocracy, which would be bad for Iraq and the region and the world. Statements that the war is over are spin, in service of an agenda that is not overly attached to the truth, and they make a bad starting point for any argument.
Ok, I can't resist one more: say your lover dumps you because she says she has evidence that you had an affair. She knows where the hotel receipts and Weird Matrimonal Devices are: they're in the area of your wallet and glove compartment. After dumping you, she searches your wallet, your car, and your whole house, and finds nothing. Would it not then be reasonable to ask her "Where are the WMD?"
Great point about the war. I hadn't thought of it that way. And I love your WMD counter-example but I'll refrain from piling on Ted until he's had a chance to respond.
Then I'll pile on.
As in your Kucinich post, Ogged, I'm not exactly making an argument here. At least, the analogy with breakups is not what convinced me of the point I'm making. But then that's just autobiography...
You do have my main point right, though: it is indeed that "carping about WMD and troop deaths doesn't move us forward and contributes nothing to the present" -- if by "present" you mean the issue now before us, and it by "carping" you mean trying to score backward-looking points (as the Democratic candidates were doing last night with their "Bush had no plan" trope).
But I don't see how I'm making either of the two assumptions you then list.
(1) I don't myself think that "all the decisions prior to the war were reasonable." And I have no problem with forward-looking arguments of the form "The fact that the administration decided thusly shows that they should not be trusted to make future such decisions well." By all means, criticize neocon rashness in its specifics. But (i) don't just assume that any given neocon, or all of them, necessarily speaks for the administration in a given case. And (ii) base your criticisms on the evidence then available.
People who still call themselves "anti-war" tend not to abide either stricture.
(2) What I'm saying is that merely slamming the administration in the spirit of "I told you so" is bad politics. I'm not saying that this isn't a political issue; I'm saying that it's being pursued through bad political argument. The argument is bad because it's unconvincing in both senses of the word: no one should be convinced by it, and no one who does not already share it prejudices will be convinced by it.
I might turn out to be wrong on the latter point -- especially if things don't begin to go better on the ground in Iraq. It doesn't seem promising, however. I supported the administration's decision to go to war despite some grave reservations about their arguments (on e.g. the al-Qaeda connection). But my criticisms struck me then, and still strike me, as comparatively minor complaints. As you know from our exchanges in June, Ogged, the "Where's the WMD?" charge strikes me as vastly overblown -- in application to both Bush and Blair. You disagree, for reasons whose force I can feel but weigh differently. But do you really think that second-guessing the war has a prayer of success as an electoral strategy?
I think the reason it does not is, in part, that most voters can see that it's not deliberatively serious.
Why can't we discredit neocon imperialist fantasies while recognizing that other members of the administration and many Democrats saw good reason for the war last winter and continue to see good reason for optimism about its prospects? Optimism, that is, only if the administration (i) sends more troops and (ii) negotiates an appropriate degree of UN involvement. (I'm in favor of action on both fronts.)
P.S. for jph: I was certainly not claiming, nor do I believe, that the war is over. All I was claiming, or rather presupposing, is that that decision to go to war has been made.
Before the piling begins, let me switch gears and defend the principle that I think Ted is arguing for, which is: the war happening isn't debatable anymore, and we should stop debating whether we ought to have a war and try to figure out how to bring the war we've got to as good an end as possible. I strongly agree with that, I just think he's arguing the case ... less well than he could. Assuming that is what he's arguing, of course.
One of my main problems with Kucinich (speaking of Kucinich), aside from the whole freaky elf thing he has going on, is that he refuses to accept the reality on the ground in Iraq. He's living in candyland if he thinks we can just pull out and not wind up with a much more dangerous world than we had in March.
However, the fact that we are in a hell of a situation with no apparent way out does not excuse the fact that Bush got us into this situation by means of propaganda, deception, and bullying. Some might argue that being trapped in a war we didn't need to fight because we were misled into thinking that we did is in fact worse than being trapped in one we did need to fight. Of course, those people are communists.
Unfortunately, I find little to disagree with in Ted's comment. This, specifically, is our common ground:
"I have no problem with forward-looking arguments of the form "The fact that the administration decided thusly shows that they should not be trusted to make future such decisions well."
Then there are the details. 1) "Don't assume that any given neo-con..." Agreed. In fact, agreed that Bush has done a pretty good job taking a middle-path between the hawks and doves. But, and I think it's a pretty big but, the rhetoric and tone were horrible: we were going to disagree with the French and Germans regardless, but present levels of enmity were not inevitable. And the charade that the war could be averted just insulted intelligent people.
2) "base your criticisms on the evidence then available" I must say, this buys Bush&co. so little relief that I'm not sure why you mention it. Long before the first bomb fell, there was screaming that we would need more troops than were being assigned. Just go to Josh Marshall's site and read about the administration's internal divisions on this point.
3) The I told you so argument. If the argument is "I told you the war was a bad idea," then it's a political loser. No doubt. But "I told you this was a bunch of arrogant, headstrong cowboys who thought they would be able to pull off a hard job without doing hard work" is going to resonate. That's a real problem for Dean, but not Kerry and Edwards. It will be interesting to watch it play out.
I think jhp puts it nicely, "the fact that we are in a hell of a situation with no apparent way out does not excuse the fact that Bush got us into this situation by means of propaganda, deception, and bullying." Right. See it through, but remember who got us into this mess.
Finally, Ted, a lot of the heat and anger this administration attracts is a result of its consistent "who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes" rhetoric. It's almost as if they want to make their opponents so mad that they say intemperate things...
"Do you really think that second-guessing the war has a prayer of success as an electoral strategy?"
It has a chance of succeeding, but it's a slim and very risky chance. Dean has forced the Dems into an anti-war screech-off (for which we maybe should blame the media, since nothing else generated any press). Unfortunately, there is a substantial list of events that could make the anti-war position a serious loser: some WMD could be found; Iraq could stabilize; the UN could assume more of the burden; and/or Bin Laden could be caught (not directly related but would still gut the anti-war position).
So the Dems are pushing almost all of their chips onto one issue where there is a decent chance they will be badly undermined in the next 14 months.
-Magik
PS, I suppose it's at least better than betting the farm on protectionism...
PPS, I think the time may have come on national health care; that's an area where the dems have been building up some capital, though a little more press attention would be a big help.
jhd, your analogy does not fit Ted's; in his version, the dumped boyfriend is the anti-war crowd, the ex is the administration, and the act of invading Iraq is the break-up. Thus, a more consistent version of the analogy would be:
"She dumped me because she said there had to be some Weird Marital Device which could satisfy her better than I could. Well, she'd better produce this WMD or she'll have no excuse not to get back together with me."
Ogged: "Long before the first bomb fell, there was screaming that we would need more troops than were being assigned."
I disagree it's the same thing. The complaint then was that the number of troops was insufficient to take Iraq, and this assertion was proven wrong. But holding Iraq is proving to be a different matter. In counter-insurgency operations, heavy fire support (artillery & airpower) leads to collateral damage, which in turn leads to resentment among the civilian populace, so you need more guys with rifles.
More to the point, the critics at the time were predicting Baghdad wouldn't fall without weeks, even months, of bitter street fighting, thousands of casualties etc., if it would fall at all. The Red Army threw 2.5 million men into the capture of Berlin, and it still took two weeks and massive casualties; what could two to four American divisions--65,000 men at most, assuming the fighting would drag out long enough that the 4th US InfDiv would arrive in-theatre--possibly achieve? As we know, Baghdad fell in a matter of days. So much for that prediction of disaster. Ditto for the streams of refugees, humanitarian distaster, yadda yadda. What nobody was predicting at the time was that the capture would go smoothly, but that the occupation and rebuilding effort would be severely hampered by insurgents.
Of course, neither did the administration, and this is why criticism of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz's "hyperconfidence" (as Ted puts it) is warranted. Just because their critics were wrong doesn't mean they were right; it's not an either/or situation and the fact that one side made mistakes doesn't mean the other didn't either. Lack of foresight is one thing; it's human, understandable, forgiveable. Refusal to acknowledge that lack of foresight and reverting to denial is not. Example: Rumsfeld claiming there was no guerilla war in Iraq, only to be contradicted by Gen Abizaid seventeen days later. When a prblem clearly exists, a "can do" attitude is not claiming there is no problem; it's acknowledging the problem is there, but you're confident you can deal with it.