MORE IRAQ

Two great pieces from Mark Steyn. He skewers Kerry here as an "anti-war anti-hero." I like this:

In his testimony to Congress in 1971, Kerry asserted a scale of routine war crimes unparalleled in American history -- his ''band of brothers'' (as he now calls them) ''personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads . . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.'' Almost all these claims were unsupported. Indeed, the only specific example of a U.S. war criminal that Kerry gave was himself. As he said on ''Meet The Press'' in April 1971, ''Yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I used 50-caliber machineguns, which we were granted and ordered to use.''

Really? And when was that? On your top-secret Christmas Eve mission in Cambodia? If they'd taken him at his word, when the senator said ''I'm John Kerry reporting for duty,'' the delegates at the Democratic Convention should have dived for cover.

And Steyn argues that pessimism about Iraq is overblown because violence is regionally concentrated-- like Northern Ireland in Britain. Is he right? Who knows. I've read enough returning soldiers' stories to be convinced that the press over-emphasizes the negative, though I'm in doubt about how extreme the bias is.

Tom offers a comprehensive response to my last post on the case for war. He concludes:

For Nathanael: I get the feeling that you would have supported an invasion of Iraq regardless of the circumstance, and that you would have considered it a success in nearly any event. What would it have taken for you not to support it? What would have been un-successful? Your optimism is truly boundless.

Good questions. When the war began, the predictions I had heard were those of the UN: 250,000 dead and millions of refugees. Without the information to form an independent judgment, I mostly took the experts' word for it, though perhaps taking this as a "ceiling" on what was likely to happen. And I narrowly supported the war. I supported it, first, because Saddam's rule was so murderous, and his and his sons' tenure in power so indefinite, that I thought human lives, in net, would be saved-- though I was extremely unsure about this. If we assume more lives would be lost than saved, one must begin to weigh life against liberty, which is more difficult.

I was delighted when the UN prediction turned out to be completely wrong. Since then things have gotten worse, but we're nowhere near that. If the death toll hit 250,000 and there were millions of refugees, I would start to rethink my support for the war. Alternatively, I could be convinced that Saddam's regime was not as bad as people said. I've read that Saddam's regime killed 50 people per day-- i.e., the death toll from the bloody past week in Iraq (over 300 in a week) was par for the course under Saddam. But among all the anti-war chorus, no one seems to berathe a word of what would be the most potent defense of their position, namely, that Saddam was not so bad.

The other thing that would have changed my position on the war is if the Iraqis supported Saddam. Before the war, there were pro-Saddam demonstrations in Baghdad. I thought these were fake, orchestrated by a regime that held the populace in fear. But we didn't really know. If the Baathist Party were campaigning on the slogan "Restore Saddam" and looked to win a landslide in the elections in January, I would reverse my position on the war.

What doesn't change my mind is the claim, as published in this Cato paper, that

The U.S. forces that in April 2003 may have been liberators are, today, in September 2004, widely seen as occupiers. These sentiments have been building for months. When asked in April 2004 whether they viewed the U.S.-led coalition as "liberators" or "occupiers," 71 percent of all respondents said "occupiers." According to another poll taken in July, two-thirds of Iraqis were either "strongly" or "somewhat" opposed to the foreign military presence in their country.

Unfortunately, it's facile to take public opinion at face value. If, in the US, you conducted one poll asking questions about whether taxes are too high or too low; a second poll asking questions about particular kinds of government spending that people benefit from; and a third poll about the deficit; you would no doubt find that most voters want to keep taxes level or lower them, to keep most spending programs, expand some, and introduce some new ones, while shrinking the deficit. Just because they want this, though, doesn't mean it's possible. Likewise, small majorities of Iraqis dislike the foreign military presence, and they also want more security, and they strongly want democracy. But it is a possibility that the first makes possible the second two, in which case Iraqis' opinions are inconsistent.

Tom agrees with my case for war for the most part, but in the midst of his post he makes an abrupt transition from good sense to this:

But how did we go from everything in our favor, to nothing in our favor? Are terrorist ideals really so attractive, and in certain cases more attractive than democratic/capitalistic ones? How could anyone have supported Saddam over us? Was it really because other countries had secret deals with Saddam? Even then, isn't it preferrable to deal with us than with Saddam? How did we lose all the trust? How did we lose all the faith and goodwill? It's easy to say that the world was spineless and sniveling in regards to Iraq, but it certainly wasn't spineless and sniveling in the matter of Afghanistan or even the first Gulf War. How can this discrepancy be explained? Should we blame the Secretary of State for his faulty WMD case before the UN, even though he was against the timing of the proposed invasion from the start? Should we blame France, Russia, and Germany for not blindly following our lead, regardless of where we took them? We were in the right, there was a compelling case to be made, we should have had support, we should have had a plan, we should have had an understanding of the feelings of the Iraqi people, and we should have broadcast to the world our intentions for a solid year, so that there would be no doubt whatsoever what we were going to do, how we were going to do it, and why we were doing it. There should have been a solid year of rest for war-weary troops coming back from Afghanistan. There should have been a solid year of training and preperation for another war in Iraq. There should have been a solid year for the exceedingly slow and hampered weapons inspections. There just should have been another year. Iraq may eventually be happy and prosperous, but maybe it would have happened in half the time if things had been done correctly.

Hmm. Let's see if I can refute this point by point to Tom's satisfaction.

But how did we go from everything in our favor, to nothing in our favor?

We didn't. There was global opposition to the war in Iraq from the moment it was mentioned, and it was gaining strength before March 2003. Now the position of the former peaceniks is trickier since they risk seeming ill-wishers of Iraqi democracy. We've moved up.

Are terrorist ideals really so attractive, and in certain cases more attractive than democratic/capitalistic ones?

No. Not to the Iraqis. We know that now in a way that we didn't in March 2003: almost all the Iraqi factions support democracy, even declared Islamists and communists. But there is a certain aesthetic appeal to the jihadist vision, of the world being mystically transformed into a caliphate as the corrupt apostate governments fall, of a restoration of Islam's long-lost glory. As long as our complicity with Arab tyrannies locked hundreds of millions out of the world we were building, many in the Third World looked to bin Laden's dream instead. The caliphate, or world apartheid?

How could anyone have supported Saddam over us?

Hardly any peacenik would agree to this formulation of their position, and that's the whole point. The peaceniks were all about not taking responsibility for the implications of their positions. They thought it rude and unfair to confront them with the logical implications of their position. Tom's ideas seem to contain the thought, if only we had had a little more time to reason with them, they'd have come round... I suspect he was not paying close enough attention to the debate back then.

Was it really because other countries had secret deals with Saddam?

No. It was because they believed in a construction of international law by which whatever regime inhabited the space between the world's "sacred" borders was "legitimate," no matter how it came to power or how iniquitous it was-- with the possible exception of genocide, though even there a genocide in progress could be halted by intervention, but a genocide carried out did not destroy the government's legitimacy. They thought this maintained peace, and they were right. But the price was too high.

How did we lose all the trust? How did we lose all the faith and goodwill?

Because we wanted to make a change, and people are afraid of change. But sometimes change is necessary. (A lot of answers are possible here. Another is: we never had it. The left was fiercely anti-American in the 1990s too.)

It's easy to say that the world was spineless and sniveling in regards to Iraq, but it certainly wasn't spineless and sniveling in the matter of Afghanistan or even the first Gulf War. How can this discrepancy be explained?

The biggest reason is international law. People like the idea that peace can be assured by everyone respecting everyone else's borders. They don't realize that this means writing a blank check to tyrants, caging ethnic minorities in states that may exclude, oppress or even kill them. The first Gulf War was a response to an invasion, a defense of international law; and in Afghanistan, it helped that the Taliban regime had never been recognized. Also, that was a clear act of self-defense. In Rwanda, in the Balkans, and now in Sudan, the world proves spineless, with devastating consequences.

Should we blame the Secretary of State for his faulty WMD case before the UN, even though he was against the timing of the proposed invasion from the start?

Maybe.

Should we blame France, Russia, and Germany for not blindly following our lead, regardless of where we took them?

No. Independent thinking is welcome. We should blame them, not for thinking for themselves, but for reaching the wrong conclusions. (Tony Blair is a contrast, a fine example of independent thinking.)

We were in the right, there was a compelling case to be made, we should have had support, we should have had a plan, we should have had an understanding of the feelings of the Iraqi people, and we should have broadcast to the world our intentions for a solid year, so that there would be no doubt whatsoever what we were going to do, how we were going to do it, and why we were doing it.

We worked very hard to get support, but it was not forthcoming, and by the time of the invasion it was clear it would only diminish. The brave leaders who supported us were already under unbearable pressure. I disagree with the "plan" idea: we could never have known what the post-war environment would be like, and the more we planned, the less room we would have to improvise in response to "the feeling of the Iraqi people." Unless Tom means we should have understood the feelings of the Iraqi people before the war, in which case I would say that it would have been difficult for the CIA to conduct public opinion polls in a totalitarian state. Tom himself has recognized that Bush "couldn't make public certain other reasons for going to war;" you can't go to the UN and expect the Chinese not to veto a war for democracy promotion. (The Chinese are vetoing genocide relief in Sudan, no doubt wary of a precedent which could eventually be used against them in Taiwan and Tibet.) How could we ever convince a cynical world, all too poisoned by left-wing and Islamist ideologies, that we were liberating Iraq for the sake of freedom-- that "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was a genuine and not a propagandistic label? Answer: only by doing it.

There should have been a solid year of rest for war-weary troops coming back from Afghanistan. There should have been a solid year of training and preperation for another war in Iraq.

Should diplomacy be suppported to the needs of the military? Maybe. Indeed, surely, to some extent. But Tom should realize the implications of this. One reason the war frightens people so much is that they fear their regimes now exist only at the convenience of the US military. If we let Saddam stay in power a year to give the military a rest, this would be more openly and obviously the case. If Tom means we shouldn't have started the drive for war in January 2002 (yes, January 2002-- Bush did try to give the military a year to rest!), no one could have foreseen the course of the diplomatic maneuvering then.

There should have been a solid year for the exceedingly slow and hampered weapons inspections.

That illusion, in any case, should have been put to rest by now. Even when we control the country it took us months to satisfy ourselves there were no weapons. We're really still not sure. Bill Kristol and other hawks argued that weapons inspections were a false middle ground, that to have a few guys certify a country clear of weapons in the face of a probably sabotaging regime was impossible. In this at any rate, events have vindicated them.

There just should have been another year. Iraq may eventually be happy and prosperous, but maybe it would have happened in half the time if things had been done correctly.

Another year might have improved the military situation (I couldn't say) but it would have made the diplomatic situation worse. Mostly, though, it wouldn't have made much difference. The war would always have involved a risk of bloodshed, chaos, and so on. I'm grateful that it wasn't worse than it was.