Month: January 2007

We Will Bury You!

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Via tristero, Newsweek’s blog: “Touring a Caterpillar factory in Peoria, Ill., the Commander in Chief got behind the wheel of a giant tractor and played chicken with a few wayward reporters. Wearing a pair of stylish safety glasses–at least more stylish than most safety glasses–Bush got a mini-tour of the factory before delivering remarks on … Read more

Joe, Joe, Joe…

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by hilzoy Oh, for heavens’ sake… “Mr. Biden is equally skeptical—albeit in a slightly more backhanded way—about Mr. Obama. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”” (TPM links to the audio. UPDATE: The audio makes … Read more

This Slow And Daily Tampering With The Mysteries Of The Brain

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by hilzoy

From today’s Washington Post:

“Chinese Uighurs who have been imprisoned for the past month at a new state-of-the-art detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being held around the clock in near-total isolation, a circumstance their lawyers say is rapidly degrading their mental health, according to an affidavit filed in federal court yesterday. (…)

The Uighurs’ (pronounced weegurs) detention by the U.S. military, after being sold for bounty by Pakistanis in early 2002, has long attracted controversy. The men had just arrived from Afghanistan, where, they said, they had received limited military training because they opposed Chinese government control of their native region. But they said they never were allied with the Taliban or opposed to the United States, and had fled to Pakistan only to escape the U.S. bombing campaign.

By 2005, U.S. military review panels determined that five of the 18 captured Uighurs were “no longer enemy combatants,” but they continued to be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison until their release last year. The panels did not reach that conclusion about the other 13, though all had given similar accounts of their activities during the reviews, according to declassified transcripts of the sessions. (…)

Lawyers for the remaining 13 Uighurs say the men were moved in December to Guantanamo Bay’s Camp 6, a high-security facility at the base completed last August at a cost of $37.9 million. The lawyers say the government provided no explanation for the move, which came shortly after they filed a court petition in Washington seeking the expedited review.

In Camp 6, the Uighurs are alone in metal cells throughout the day, are prohibited for the most part from conversing with others, and take all their meals through a metal slot in the door, lawyer P. Sabin Willett said in his affidavit, which was based on what he was told during his visit Jan. 15-18. They have little or no access to sunlight or fresh air, have had nothing new to read in their native language for the past several years, and are sometimes told to undertake solitary recreation at night, he said.

“They pass days of infinite tedium and loneliness,” according to Willett’s court filing. One Uighur’s “neighbor is constantly hearing voices, shouting out, and being punished. All describe a feeling of despair . . . and abandonment by the world.” Another Uighur, named Abdusumet, spoke of hearing voices himself and appeared extremely anxious during Willett’s visit, tapping the floor uncontrollably, he said.

The account matches another offered by Brian Neff, a lawyer who in mid-December visited a Yemeni imprisoned in Camp 6. “Detainees in Camp 6 are not supposed to talk to others, they are punished for shouting, and if they talk during walks outside they will be punished,” Neff said in an e-mail yesterday. “We are extremely concerned about the . . . conditions of Camp 6 — in particular, the fact that the detainees there are being held in near-total isolation, cut off from the outside world and any meaningful contact.””

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Cully Stimson Update

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by hilzoy Remember Cully Stimson, the DoD bozo who said this: “”I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think … Read more

The Surge

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by von

Richard Lugar, writing in the Washington Post, makes the most reasonable case that I’ve seen so far in favor of giving the Bush Administration’s on last chance:

Some commentators have compared the Bush plan to a "Hail Mary" pass in football — a desperate heave deep down the field by a losing team at the end of the game. Actually, a far better analogy for the Bush plan is a draw play on third down with 20 yards to go in the first quarter. The play does have a chance of working if everything goes perfectly, but it is more likely to gain a few yards and set up a punt on the next down, after which the game can be continued under more favorable circumstances.

Compelling imagery this is not.  Nor is it an endorsement of George Bush as Commander in Chief to think that the most we can risk now is a riskless play — for anything fancier would, in these hands, more likely than not lead to disaster.  Better hand if off for a draw, kick the (almost) inevitable punt, and leave Iraq to the next Administration to fix. 

The Senior Senator from Indiana, however, has given me pause in my opposition to the surge.  In a choice between bad and worse — the choice Lugar recognizes is before us — we should prefer bad.  If you don’t trust your QB to throw, it’s better to run on third and at least set up the punt.

But it is only been pause.  Although I respect Senator Lugar as much as any man — and have gladly voted for him in the past — I’m not convinced that even his lukewarm support for the surge is correct.  Here are three reasons for my continued skepticism (below the fold):   

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Zimbabwe Melts Down

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by hilzoy

A couple of weeks ago, I figured out what all the other bloggers have probably known for years: how to configure Google News to update me on all sorts of stories I normally try, unsuccessfully, to follow. It’s wonderful: so much easier than reading all sorts of newspapers trying to see whether anyone has written anything on Kyrgyzstan recently. One downside, however, is that because I created a Zimbabwe section, I’m more aware than ever of the slow-motion meltdown that Zimbabwe is undergoing. I’ll put part of Zimbabwe’s tale of woe below the fold. As you read it, bear in mind that all of these stories are from this month, and most are from the last ten days. It would be bad enough if all this had happened over a span of, say, a decade. But this is ten days.

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While We Are Preoccupied…

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by hilzoy

Since I would find it unnerving to think that the Bush administration hasn’t done anything good in six years in office, I cling to the two genuinely good things I know of that it has accomplished: the peace accord in the North-South civil war in the Sudan, and the designation of 140,000 square miles of ocean as a national monument. Now, unfortunately, the first of these seems to be unravelling.

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My Trip to the Doctor

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by publius Ok, time to post. Here we go. I haven’t had a chance to talk about Bush’s State of the Union, but there are several interesting . . . “things”?  No. “Whachamawits”?  Jesus no. Let’s go with “things” . . . things to talk about.  I thought the speech was bad. The speech was … Read more

Not Better By Comparison

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by von Moe Lane, who deserves (and will always have) my respect as the founder of this Blog and an all-around good guy, serves up a softball on RedHot: …I link to this Captain Ed article on Sen. Kerry and Davos. Only nostalga, though. Fortunately for everyone, Kerry was not elected in 2004; and he … Read more

Pretty Pictures! Open Thread!

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by hilzoy One of my favorite sites (I waver between having it and ObWi as my startup page) is NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. It occurred to me that I haven’t mentioned it, which seems like a strange omission. So here are two pictures: The different colors are differences in the composition of the … Read more

Compare And Contrast

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by hilzoy Today, the Canadian Prime Minister apologized to Maher Arar: “Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized Friday to Maher Arar for the torture he suffered in a Syrian prison and said the government would pay him and his family $10.5-million, plus legal fees, to compensate them for the “terrible ordeal.” “On behalf of the … Read more

The most important thing right now

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by Charles

Had Iraq clearly been on the path of becoming a free, peace, non-theocratic representative republic, the GOP would have been in the majority today (in my opinion), missteps by Republicans in Congress notwithstanding. The fault for the embarrassing loss last November can be squarely laid at the feet of George W. Bush. Because of his substandard performance on Iraq for the past three-plus years, I became a Dissatisfied. What’s more, after considering the cumulative effects of all of his other un-conservative actions, I’m at a point where I’ve pretty much lost confidence in Bush as even a semi-competent commander-in-chief. This isn’t an easy conclusion to come to because I’ve carried Bush’s water on a whole range of issues over most of his six years in office. It’s also not easy because I’m a Republican and have been one for over a quarter century.

But despite my skepticism of the president, I do support Bush on the Petraeus plan to turn Iraq around, but under one condition: that al-Maliki be reasonably committed to it. I say this not because I have faith in Bush, but because I believe Petraeus is the best man for the job, and the general has literally written the book on counterinsurgency ops.

The Petraeus plan should have been in effect over two years ago, so it is encouraging to hear that the Senate approved Petraeus’ promotion to four-star general and to his new job as commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. At the same time, it is equally discouraging to see Republicans display spines of Silly Putty in supporting resolutions that would rebuke the very plans that Petraeus would execute. And that is why I put my name on the list, and I find myself in full agreement with Mark I.

Petraeus gave a frank assessment of the mistakes we’ve made in Iraq, and it was refreshing to hear it (more on him here). More importantly, Petraeus has a plan to address the mistakes. Embedding more of our soldiers with Iraqi troops and training more Iraqi troops are part of the package, and so is adopting an effective clear-hold-build strategy in the areas of conflict.

To get more of a flavor of what Petraeus will do, the new counterinsurgency (COIN) manual is an indicator, and it’s worth taking the time read (I’ve paged through it and read portions, and am in the process of going through it word-for-word). Military might is but one component of the strategy. Most of the other tactics are political, economic, intelligence and media related. Under COIN doctrine, military responses are measured and judiciously applied. Unfortunately, the media message is harsher rules of engagement and a freer hand at going after Irianian spies and militants. There are cases where harsher tactics are necessary, but in general the focus is restraint. The COIN strategy is indeed "graduate level warfare", but that is what it will take.

Al-Maliki has been more in the forefront recently about securitizing Baghdad, and there may already be signs that it’s working. His most important job is to back up his words with actions and to consistently sustain them. I hope he can do it.

Finally, since this is an Information War, the White House can do its share by better communicating the new plan. There should be less focus on "more troops" and more on what those troops will be doing. Tony Snow can challenge reporters to embed more and rely less on stringers with unknown biases. The mainstream press has faithfully catalogued the numbers of casualties by terrorist and insurgent attacks, and it wouldn’t hurt for Snow to fill in the rest of the picture with insurgent/terrorist casualties (this might trigger Vietnam memories, but this is a different war, different situation).

As embeds Michelle Malkin, Bill Roggio, Michael Yon and Bill Ardolino have pointed out in their posts, Iraq is a complex situation. There are many incidences of success, and obviously there have been setbacks. But most of the soldiers on the ground appear optimistic of success and believe in their mission. Too bad that more politicians in DC do not believe so, and do not have the stones to stick to it.

Quite frankly, it appears to me that those advocating unilateral withdrawal must also believe that Iraq is a lost cause. It is a defeatist position. I believe it’s premature to think that, but I’m closer today to thinking we’ve lost than a year ago. But if we go down, I’d rather go down after making every effort to make it work. The Petraeus plan looks to be one of the last and best tries. If we’ve made no discernible progress by this November, I may just put myself in the defeatist camp and call for a phased drawdown. But not now, and not with this plan.

(Update below the fold)

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Good Leaders Are Hard To Come By

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by hilzoy Here’s one of my little mottos: if you decide to replace the government of another country, think hard about who will take power after you’ve done so. If a new government with real popular legitimacy stands ready and willing to take over immediately, and if the machinery of the occupied state survives more … Read more

Minimum Wage Update

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by hilzoy As you probably already know, yesterday Republicans in the Senate blocked an increase in the minimum wage. (The roll call on the cloture vote is here. Five Republicans — Sens. Coleman, Collins, Snowe, Specter, and Warner — along with all the Democrats and both Independents — voted for cloture, but that only got … Read more

Interesting

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by hilzoy AP: “Every American should have health care coverage within six years, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday as he set an ambitious goal soon after jumping into the 2008 presidential race. “The time has come for universal health care in America,” Obama said at a conference of Families USA, a health care advocacy … Read more

Brunch, Anyone? Open Thread

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by hilzoy I’m going to the March On Washington (against the surge) on Saturday. The website says that people will be “assembling” on the mall at 11, and the actual march starts at 1. Since I’m not a big fan of assembling, I was wondering if anyone else would be there, and, if so, whether … Read more

Yond Chairs Have a Lean and Hungry Look

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by publius One of the more annoying media narratives is that the rickety Democratic House is always on the verge of ripping apart along liberal and conservative fault lines. It’s not true of course, if for no other reason than that the House caucus doesn’t have many conservative Democrats following the white South’s political realignment. … Read more

Anyone Got An Answer?

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by hilzoy

As I’ve said in the earlier posts on the Fairness Doctrine, I’m ambivalent about it. But I can’t think of a better way for the right-wing media to make the case for it than running with an unsourced story about Barack Obama having gone to a madrassa that teaches Wahhabism, even after it has been thoroughly discredited.

It started in the Washington Times’ Insight Magazine:

“Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?

This is the question Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp is asking about Sen. Barack Obama.

An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia. (…)

In Indonesia, the young Obama was enrolled in a Madrassa and was raised and educated as a Muslim. Although Indonesia is regarded as a moderate Muslim state, the U.S. intelligence community has determined that today most of these schools are financed by the Saudi Arabian government and they teach a Wahhabi doctrine that denies the rights of non-Muslims.

Although the background check has not confirmed that the specific Madrassa Mr. Obama attended was espousing Wahhabism, the sources said his Democratic opponents believe this to be the case—and are seeking to prove it. The sources said the opponents are searching for evidence that Mr. Obama is still a Muslim or has ties to Islam.”

(Parenthetical note: given the journalistic standards shown by the nameless author of this article, I’ll need a lot more than his/her word before I believe that this comes from Hillary Clinton’s people.)

Then Fox News picked up the story and ran with it, asserting as fact that Obama went to a madrassa, that madrassas are funded by the Saudis and teach Wahhabism, etc., etc. “Later, a caller to the show questioned whether Obama’s schooling means that “maybe he doesn’t consider terrorists the enemy.” Fox anchor Brian Kilmeade responded, “Well, we’ll see about that.””

Think Progress has the video.

Yesterday, CNN sent a reporter to the school in question, which turns out to be a public school with children of various faiths. Again, ThinkProgress has the video (so, of course, does CNN, but I gave up waiting for it to load, and I have broadband.) It’s worth watching, just to get a feel of the sheer ordinariness of the school, and the bafflement of the headmaster and one of Obama’s classmates.

This morning, Obama sent out a sharply worded memo about the story:

“Insight Magazine published these allegations without a single named source, and without doing any independent reporting to confirm or deny the allegations. Fox News quickly parroted the charges, and Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy went so far as to ask, “Why didn’t anybody ever mention that that man right there was raised — spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father — as a Muslim and was educated in a Madrassa?”

All of the claims about Senator Obama raised in the Insight Magazine piece were thoroughly debunked by CNN, which, instead of relying on unnamed sources, sent a reporter to Obama’s former school in Jakarta to check the facts.

If Doocy or the staff at Fox and Friends had taken [time] to check their facts, or simply made a call to his office, they would have learned that Senator Obama was not educated in a Madrassa, was not raised as a Muslim, and was not raised by his father – an atheist Obama met once in his life before he died.

Later in the day, Fox News host John Gibson again discussed the Insight Magazine story without any attempt to independently confirm the charges.

All of the claims about Senator Obama’s faith and education raised in the Insight Magazine story and repeated on Fox News are false. Senator Obama was raised in a secular household in Indonesia by his stepfather and mother. Obama’s stepfather worked for a U.S. oil company, and sent his stepson to two years of Catholic school, as well as two years of public school. As Obama described it, “Without the money to go to the international school that most expatriate children attended, I went to local Indonesian schools and ran the streets with the children of farmers, servants, tailors, and clerks.” [The Audacity of Hope, p. 274]

To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago. Furthermore, the Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa.”

But after all that, Fox’s John Gibson (on his radio show) said that the reporter CNN sent out “probably went to the very madrassa, now he works for CNN”:

“GIBSON [W]hat did they see when they went to the madrassa where Barack Obama went to school?

HOST: Kids playing volleyball.

GIBSON: Playing volleyball, right. They didn’t see them in any terrorist training camps?

HOST: No.

GIBSON: No. Um, but they probably didn’t show them in their little lessons where they’re bobbing their heads and memorizing the Koran.

HOST: I didn’t see any tape of that, no.”

Again, ThinkProgress has the audio.

***

I see the problems with the Fairness Doctrine. I really do. But this is exactly the sort of thing that makes it seem like a good idea: news organizations with an obvious political slant saying things that are simply and demonstrably false for political purposes, and pretending that it’s news. In a fair universe, anyone who did this, on the right or on the left, would be drummed out of the journalistic profession, the way Jayson Blair was, and regarded with bewilderment and horror by people everywhere.

In this universe, does anyone have a good idea about how to deal with manifest lies like this?

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SOTU

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by hilzoy Andrew has the best line on the State of the Union address (but does he write it here? Noooooo…): “I was shocked, shocked, to learn that the state of our union remains strong. I mean, really, what would it take for the President to say that the state of the union wasn’t great? … Read more

Now I Get It … (More Bush On Health Care)

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by hilzoy Like Ezra Klein, I first wrote about the President’s new health care proposals based on an early story in the NYT and Bush’s last radio address. But now the WHite House has put out more details, and Ezra is right: what Bush is going to propose tonight is really, really bad: “What the … Read more

Arar update

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by Katherine Maher Arar remains, officially, too dangerous to fly over U.S. air space. U.S. officials won’t say what the sources of information against him are. I have a guess as to some of them. I’ve posted it before, but it’s not widely known enough, so here’s one more vain effort.

The Root of the Problem

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by publius Glenn Reynolds, offering his thoughts on the surge: There’s also some reason to think we’re putting the screws to Iran [by adopting the surge]. On the other hand, I’ve been disappointed a number of times by the Bush Administration’s inexplicable unwillingness to deal with Iran’s fomenting of [the] insurgency — it’s really a … Read more

Bush On Health Insurance

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by hilzoy

Rumor has it that President Bush is going to address health insurance in his State of the Union Address:

“President Bush intends to use his State of the Union address Tuesday to tackle the rising cost of health care with a one-two punch: tax breaks to help low-income people buy health insurance and tax increases for some workers whose health plans cost significantly more than the national average.”

He gave us a preview in his radio address yesterday:

“One of the most promising ways to make private health insurance more affordable is by reforming the Federal tax code. Today, the tax code unfairly penalizes people who do not get health insurance through their job. It unwisely encourages workers to choose overly expensive, gold-plated plans. The result is that insurance premiums rise, and many Americans cannot afford the coverage they need.

We need to fix these problems, and one way to do so is to treat health insurance more like home ownership. The current tax code encourages home ownership by allowing you to deduct the interest on your mortgage from your taxes. We can reform the tax code, so that it provides a similar incentive for you to buy health insurance. So in my State of the Union Address next Tuesday, I will propose a tax reform designed to help make basic private health insurance more affordable — whether you get it through your job or on your own. (…)

All of these changes are based on a clear principle: Health insurance should be available, it should be affordable, and it should put you and your doctor in charge of your medical decisions.”

Before I get to specifics, one note: President Bush justifies his proposals on the grounds that we need to cut health care spending. That means that it’s time for me to repost this handy chart (from this report; 2002 data):
Health_spending_2002_1_1

A test of whether any proposal to control health care spending is at all serious is whether it addresses itself to spending by the 50% of the population who account for 96.6% of all health care expenditures, or to spending by the 50% who account for only 3.4%. Things like higher deductibles and copays, which are (I imagine) part of what goes into stripping off the gold plating from health insurance policies, address themselves almost entirely to the second group: the group that accounts for only a tiny fraction of US health care spending.

Which is to say: as a way of controlling health care spending, this is not a serious plan.

Specific problems below the fold.

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Bring Back Fat Apollo!

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by von If you want politics, go here (Andrew on the Fairness Doctrine) or here (Hilzoy on Hillary).  If you want to bs about today’s games, go here.  If you want to gamble on the Cornerites, Publius is your man.  By popular demand, however, this is your Battlestar Galactica Open Thread.  Use it wisely. Because … Read more

Dreams Go To Die

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by von 5:34 left in the 4th, and it looks like New Orleans is about to fall to the Chicago Bears (currently it’s 32-14, with Chicago driving at the NO 20).  I never bought NO as a legitimate contender, and, having lived in Chicago for a number of years, I still have some residual love … Read more

Fairness, Revisited

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by Andrew By request, some more discussion regarding the Fairness Doctrine. One basic tenet of my beliefs regarding government is that government should act only to address specific problems. Some will no doubt disagree with this, but even those with far greater faith in the ability in government than I can probably agree that government … Read more

Place Your Bets

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by publius I’m putting the over/under on the percentage of Corner posts relating to Hillary over the next year at 41%.  I’ll take the over.

No! Stop! This Time With Substance!

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by hilzoy For those who wished my last post had been more substantive and less of a cri de coeur, I offer the following: Q: What is the single most important thing domestic policy issue the next Democratic President will need to do , other than dealing with unforeseen catastrophes? A: Doing something serious to … Read more

No! Stop! Don’t Do It!

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by hilzoy Hillary Clinton has announced that she’s forming an exploratory committee. Her website reads: “I’m In”. The Washington Post article linked above says that this decision “ends months of fevered speculation about a possible bid for the White House.” Wrong. No one was speculating. Everyone knew. The only feverish activity was people praying for … Read more

Elections Matter

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by hilzoy The House Democrats have completed their 100 hour agenda in well under 100 hours. The LATimes has a useful summary of the bills and votes here, at the bottom. I find the Democrats’ discipline nothing short of amazing, for Democrats. Despite a Republican effort to derail it, the Senate has now passed its … Read more

Romeo and Newly-Left

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by publius

There’s been an interesting back and forth on whether the so-called "netroots" is an honest-to-God political movement.  The whole thing was triggered by Matt Stoller’s TPM Cafe post, which led to a number of heated responses (rounded up here).  Ezra Klein sums them up:

The semi-complicated backstory is that Matt Stoller wrote a post on TPM
Cafe taking the 60s left to task, and a bunch of somewhat older, less
netrootsy bloggers struck back at it.

To be grossly general, the Stoller/Kos camp thinks that the netsroots (the New New Left) is successfully building new political institutions, while the 60s Left (the Old New Left) wasn’t very successful on that front.  The Sawicky/Newman camp disagrees, arguing the the 60s-80s Left built an unprecedented amount of political institutions, while the netsroots has accomplished very little in this respect.

What’s striking about this debate though is how much these two sides actually agree about.  Both sides — correctly I think — adopt a Marxist-type assumption that the key to political change is structural change.  In other words, to bring about real political change, you have to do things like build institutions and, more generally, take the steps necessary to assume actual political power. 

Along these lines, I’ve always thought the real achievement of the New Deal was the institutional framework it left in place to serve its constituency’s interests in the future (an achievement that carries on today).  In this sense, the regulatory state is the political manifestation of the progressive movement and a concrete monument to its success. 

The question then is whether we’re seeing something similar in the netsroots, or whether it’s just sound and fury, signifying nothing.   As Josh Marshall said, "Institutions Talk, Enthusiasm Walks."  Before I get to that question though, let me take a detour through Romeo & Juliet.  Bear with me here.

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Heroes

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by hilzoy And now for a change of pace: I was sitting on the airplane reading the NYTimes, when I found a story whose first paragraph just took my breath away: “A 50-year-old Dallas man whose conviction of raping a boy in 1982 cost him nearly half his life in prison and on parole won … Read more

Housekeeping

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by von Please keep in mind that a goal of ObWi is political diversity, even though the commenteriat may lean decidedly left of late.  This is not an activist site for the Democratic party.  (Nor is it, obviously, an activist site for Republicans.)  Please also keep in mind that you need to stay away from … Read more

Not Ready For Primetime

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by von While I’m agreeing with The CalPundit on one thing, let me agree with him on another:  The proposal by Senator Dodd to cap the level of troops at 130,000 is bad policy and bad politics.  As Drum writes, "legislation that essentially locks in place the status quo" is probably the worst of all … Read more

Context, Of Course

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UPDATE by von:  Comments are closed.  Thanks for playing, folks.

by von

Why do the anti-war liberals get no love, despite their apparent vindication by events on the ground?  Kevin Drum has an answer and Publius — an anti-war liberal himself — responds below.  It should surprise no one that I think Drum has the better argument. The dominant arguments of the anti-war camp in 2002 were arguments against preemptive war, and did not emphasize the real flaws that resulted in the current mess.  Indeed, if anything, these pre-war cries may have helped those in power justify a smaller force in Iraq — to our enormous detriment.*

But that’s a digression, and we’ll not know the may-haves or could-bes for a long time to come (if ever).  A contribution can still be made to the debate, however.  It’s important to recall that there were reasonable bases for many liberals and moderates to favor intervention in Iraq (I count myself among the moderates) .  These reasons required neither total allegiance to President Bush nor a blind acceptance of General Frank’s strategy:  Indeed, many of us were calling for more troops from the very start.  For context, consider the following statement, which I posted* on November 25, 2002 and which comes closest to explaining the bases for my decision to provide guarded support for the war.  You’ll note that the context was the ongoing Security Counsel debate regarding whether the invasion would have UN backing.

Resolved: The United Nations’ Security Counsel should endorse a U.S.-led attack on Iraq if Iraq does not fully comply with the U.N.-mandated inspections regime. The credibility of the Security Counsel is at stake; an Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction will destabilize its neighbors; Iraq may share such weaponry with terrorists or other, rouge states; and Iraq’s past violations of international law merit a response, however belated. In addition, even a minimally-democratic Iraq, with its educated and secularized population, will likely restrain the Arab street and serve as a counterweight to an increasingly radicalized Saudi Arabia. Indeed, in no other (so-called) rogue nation — Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya — are the advantages of military action so clear, and the risks of inaction so dire.

There were two significant factual flaws in that analysis, of course.  The first and biggest one was that Iraq possessed WMDs.  Yet, I continue to think that this flaw was an excusable.  Although it’s undoubtedly true that Bush cherry-picked the best intelligence to aid his case, those who (today) act as if this lack-of-WMD thing was totally obvious from the start are doing their own selective remembering.   The evidence for and against WMDs was at best muddled, in part intentionally by Hussein who wanted to avoid letting the world know of the "paper" aspect of his paper tigerdom.

If the first flaw is excusable, however, the second is not.  The assumption that Iraq had a substantial "educated and secularized population" that would dominate the post-war environment was an assumption that was not supported by evidence.   Although I was concerned about inflaming tribal and sectarian divisions post war — one reason why I favored more troops from the get-go — I did not appreciate the depth of those divisions.  Nor did I appreciate that much of Iraq’s education and secularization was skin deep (a partial side-effect, no doubt, of the damage done by the long sanctions regime).  That was a significant misunderstanding, and one I continue to regret. 

But, importantly, the context and course of the war debate did not devolve as straightforwardly and simply as Publius describes.  Those who supported war — those who won the argument at home and brought us this mess — had rational reasons to do so.  It may seem black and white now, but it wasn’t then.  And that is part of the reason why anti-war liberals are still getting no love:  many of them*** saw the issue as black and white from the get go, when it wasn’t — and, truth be told, still isn’t.

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