by hilzoy
Megan McArdle thinks that liberal bloggers need to acknowledge the good news coming out of Iraq:
“Lately, however, the anti-war side is beginning to sound a lot like the boosters they were so angry at. This is the particular example that caught my eye, but there is an increasingly rich body of blog posts and other writing that are the collective equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting “La la la la la la la I can’t HEAR you!””
Since I have only begun to catch up on the blog reading I missed while I was playing dead, I have no idea whether McArdle is right about the liberal blogosphere (though I can’t see what she thinks is wrong with Thoreau’s piece.) However, speaking only for myself: consider the good news acknowledged. As Charles noted, casualties, both coalition and civilian, are down. Moreover, things like electricity are up:
“For the week ending December 8, availability of electrical current rose in all but one of nine sites where Slogger’s sources estimate average daily power supply from the grid each week.
While no Baghdad area reports a full and uninterrupted power supply, the increase is remarkable in some areas when compared to the data from previous weeks.”
Obviously, this is good news. Even one fewer casualty would be a blessing; drops of a thousand a month are really wonderful. That said, it would be nice if more conservative bloggers acknowledged some of the following:
First, it should not surprise us that casualties are down. We have an excellent army. Our soldiers are good at what they do. It is predictable that putting more of them in places where armed groups are fighting one another might cause an initial rise in casualties, as more of those combatants are engaged, but would ultimately cause those combatants to at least defer their conflict until we leave. That would bring civilian casualties down.
Second, that is not a good enough reason for us to deploy our troops somewhere, especially if the result of deploying them is simply to postpone conflict, rather than bringing it to an end.
Third, for this reason, reducing casualties was never the point of the surge. The point was to provide the breathing space needed for political reconciliation. This hasn’t happened:
“The U.S. troop buildup in Iraq was meant to freeze the country’s civil war so political leaders could rebuild their fractured nation. Ten months later, the country’s bloodshed has dropped, but the military strategy has failed to reverse Iraq’s disintegration into areas dominated by militias, tribes and parties, with a weak central government struggling to assert its influence.
In the south, Shiite Muslim militias are at war over the lucrative oil resources in the Basra region. To the west, in Anbar province, Sunni Arab tribes that once fought U.S. forces now help police the streets and control the highways to Jordan and Syria. In the north, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens are locked in a battle for the regions around Kirkuk and Mosul. In Baghdad, blast walls partition neighborhoods policed by Sunni paramilitary groups and Shiite militias.
“Iraq is moving in the direction of a failed state, a highly decentralized situation — totally unplanned, of course — with competing centers of power run by warlords and militias,” said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group. “The central government has no political control whatsoever beyond Baghdad, maybe not even beyond the Green Zone.”
The capital’s Green Zone mirrors the chaos outside. Once the base of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime, it is now the seat of Iraq’s fractured and dysfunctional representative government. The U.S. troop buildup was intended to help Iraq’s national leaders overcome differences and give them space to pass compromise measures to end the country’s sectarian war, but lawmakers remain divided and continue to harbor suspicions about each other’s motives.
In the summer, the country’s Sunni Arab minority quit the coalition government, leaving Shiites and Kurds with a razor-thin majority in parliament. They appear unable to push forward any solution to the country’s problems, whether a national oil law, a review of Iraq’s new constitution or legislation defining the powers of provincial councils. All efforts to define relations between Baghdad and outlying regions are stalled.”
Fourth, noting that political reconciliation has not happened is not the “equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting “La la la la la la la I can’t HEAR you!”” It’s more like this: suppose I had a friend who insisted that he couldn’t kick his crack habit because he was under too much financial pressure, so I agreed to pay his bills for a few months, on condition that he use that time to actually try to quit. Liberal bloggers thought this was a bad idea: my friend had no apparent interest in kicking his crack habit, and thus it seemed pretty likely that I was just throwing my money away. No, I assured them: I have made it clear that my commitment is not open-ended. I’ve said: it’s time for you to perform, and I will judge you now less on your words and more on your performance. I’m not just giving this money blindly; my friend has adopted benchmarks for success, and I plan to hold him to them, though I won’t say how.
Now suppose that while I paid my friend’s bills, to no one’s surprise, his financial problems got better, but he made no effort to stop smoking crack. Liberal bloggers said: well, of course it’s good that your friend isn’t feeling as much financial pressure, but the fact remains that the whole point of this was to let him kick his crack habit, and not only has he not done that, he hasn’t even tried. That would not constitute sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting “La la la la la la la I can’t HEAR you!”, or refusing to take yes for an answer. It would just be basic common sense.
Finally, one major difference between the example I just made up and the actual surge is that the surge doesn’t just involve spending a lot of money. It involves sending people off to fight and die. If we are going to ask our soldiers to risk their lives, the very least we can do is make sure that we are doing so for a good reason. In the case at hand, that means asking not just whether our troops can reduce casualties in Baghdad — which, of course, they can — but what strategic goal that reduction is supposed to serve. Are we planning on keeping our troops in Iraq forever, at their present levels? Of course not: we don’t have that many troops, and this administration has shown no interest in taking the steps it would have to take to change that basic fact. Is there any reason to think that once we reduce the levels of troops, and even more so once we leave altogether, the violence we have damped down won’t just resume? Not really: that was what political reconciliation was supposed to achieve, and it hasn’t happened. Moreover, as best I can tell, one reason why casualties have dropped is simply that various parties have decided to wait us out, and to spend the surge retooling their militias, jockeying for position, and preparing for the coming civil war.
Megan McArdle may think that liberal bloggers who point out that while the surge has reduced casualties, it has not achieved its stated goals, are just refusing to acknowledge good news. As I’ve said, I disagree. But conservative (or other) bloggers who point to the reductions in casualties as though they made the surge worthwhile, without asking whether the surge is likely to achieve any lasting improvements in Iraq, look to me as though they were more interested in being able to point to something that looks like success for their side than in the actual outcome in Iraq. But those who go further and belittle people who ask what strategic goals the surge was meant to serve, and whether it is achieving them, are doing something worse.
As I’ve said, we owe it to those we ask to fight and die for us to make sure that we never ask them to do so without a very good reason. Anyone who tries to paint the question what strategic goals an undoubted tactical success actually serves as a sign of a politically motivated inability to acknowledge good news makes it more difficult for the rest of us to try to live up to that responsibility. Given a choice between “sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting “La la la la la la la I can’t HEAR you!”” and undermining our ability to ask the questions we need to ask if we are to do right by our troops, I know what I would choose.
But the improved financial condition gives the people who think your friend smoking crack is fine and dandy and, in fact, think your friend should stay smoking crack forever, something shiny to waive in front of the faces of people who aren’t up to speed on all the facts about your friend and distract them from the whole non-crack smoking promise, allowing your friend to smoke crack for six more months, at which point another shiny distraction will be found and another six months will go by, and soon we’re in January 2009, and all is fine with the pro-crack smokers is it’s someone else’s problem.
Another major difference is that presumably you weren’t responsible for getting your friend addicted to crack in the first place, whereas if the United States hadn’t invaded (and completely bungled the occupation from the start) there wouldn’t be this sort of chaos in Iraq now. That difference makes me feel queasy whenever people take the path of blaming the Iraqis, however convenient that path may be for US political purposes. That’s not to say that I have a better solution.
Sadly at some level, US death toll is what matters most (all?). So as long as our death toll runs <30/month, there will not a strong push to depart by our populace. Additionally, war supporters will argue, "why should we leave when the cost of remaining is not high". $$$ is really not that important to most folks when it comes to the Iraq War (would say that's true on both sides).
I have noted the US death tolls are way down, but am now curious to pull up the latest Brookings report (unfortunately i have to produce a report for work now) but will be curious how/whether Utilities and oil production have improved noticeably recently.
Epic epic simile. I’d only add that, even if this guy finally quits smoking crack in 2012 or something, you have to ask yourself whether it was worth all those years of giving that guy your last penny/drop of blood to bring it about.
I think we should be charitable towards our conservative friends. Everything they have supported has been a failure. They have had to cope with so much bad news that I’m happy to indulge them their good news. I’ll celebrate with them.
But a tactical success in pursuit of a strategic impossibility is still a failure. Charles XII of Sweden won almost every battle he fought in, yet his fundamental strategic goals were impossible and his entire reign was nothing but a disaster for Sweden. Sure, he won lots of glorious battles, but when he left Sweden a worse country than he found it. The same thing can be said for Napoleon: he won lots of battles but ultimately lost the war. Now, Mr. Bush is no Charles XII and he certainly is no Napoleon, but his strategic goal (currently declared to be the establishment of a stable democratic government in Iraq) cannot be achieved in anything less than, oh, forty years and not without many more billions of dollars.
If you smoke enough crack, though, you might get purple fingers.
“Now, Mr. Bush is no Charles XII and he certainly is no Napoleon, but his strategic goal (currently declared to be the establishment of a stable democratic government in Iraq) cannot be achieved in anything less than, oh, forty years”
I actually think it’s quite possible Iraq will semi-settle down into a half-working semi-democratic state, with continued violence, but not necessarily worse than that of Northern Ireland at its worst, and in only parts of Iraq, within ten years.
(Note: “possible” isn’t “definitely,” or even “most likely,” or even “likely.” It’s merely “possible.”)
I don’t see that that would make the decision to have invaded in 2002 correct and worthwhile, but I don’t have to be as pessimistic as to go to not-for-forty years, or even twenty or fifteen, to think that, since I already think that the massive death and suffering up to now were too large a price to pay.
If there had only been a few thousand Iraqi and foreign violent deaths in Iraq after 2003, while any kind of improvement on Saddam Hussein had been left governing Iraq, with relative peace after that, one might have called that some kind of “victory,” and argued it was worthwhile. I’m not saying that argument would have necessarily been correct, but there would have been a case.
But this? This?
Too much “we had to destroy the village in order to save it,” super-sized.
Dear Megan –
Yes, things are incrementally better in Iraq. And yes, it’s likely due at least in part because we’ve sent more troops there.
If we were send even more troops, perhaps another 75 or 100 thousand, we might even be able to establish a basic level of security on the ground across a wide area of Iraq.
If we were able to accomplish that and sustain it for, say, 25 years or so, Iraq might even develop the stable indigenous political institutions needed to let its people sort out their internal issues politically, rather than by force.
In other words, what Erasmussimo said.
There are things we could do on our end to help all of that along. Not least of those would be letting the Iraqis decide for themselves how to organize and operate their oil industry, and how to distribute the revenues that flow from it.
In other words, deal with them in something like sincere good faith.
In the meantime, we need to do what we can to insure that Afghanistan and Pakistan don’t slide back into chaos. Pursuing the original Al Qaeda gangsters would probably also be a good thing, even if just to settle old scores.
Let me know when all of this is on the table as a realistic option.
Yours truly –
russell
Lest we lose sight of the Big Picture here, a reminder for everyone: the reason Iraq is such a complete disaster is because every move made by the U.S. was done for the sole purpose of providing the Republican Party with some short-term advantage over the Democrats. Every move.
That’s not fair, Johnny. Some moves were made for the purpose of enriching military contractors.
….but, KC, those military contractors, like Blackwater, then gave back to the community by giving massive campaign donations to the GOP. The snake swallows its own tail, this circle jerks itself.
For the modern day Republican, war is crack.
Stepping back a bit, it seems that Ms. McArdle et al. are engaging in a bit of post hoc ergo propter hoc, while the actual causation is considerably muddier.
Yes, both military and civilian casualties have declined materially recently (and hooray for that, whatever else), and certain aspects of less-disordered life have begun to reassert themselves. But from what I’ve read, it is far from certain either that the “surge” has been responsible for — or even a major cause of — these events, or that they will last, even if the “surge” itself continues.
It has been reported, and it seems entirely plausible, that much — perhaps most — of the decline in violence has been due to two causes: (1) a turnabout in the political relationships between Sunni tribal/local leaders and the militants responsible for much of the violence from the Sunni side, and (2) a deliberate reduction in activity by Shia militants, allegedly at the behest of leaders such as Moqtada al Sadr. The provenance of the first has been repeatedly linked to a “hearts and minds” campaign by the US that has included the provision of a great deal of weaponry to said Sunni leaders. The provenance of the second is murkier, but it could easily be in part simply a reaction to the first.
In other words, we’ve bought a temporary peace with a lot of guns.
The question, of course, is what circumstances will lead to those guns being used. Or worse, assuming they will be — which is by no means a farfetched assumption — how can we affect the situation now to minimize the carnage?
One trusts Ms. McArdle has answers to these questions as easy and glib as her celebration of today’s (relatively) reduced violence.
Bleh, there’s also (3) sectarian killings are reduced because in many areas the members of ethnic minorities are all dead or have fled, so there’s no one left to kill.
By the way, is there any chance you could pick a name that’s not an interjection? We have to grandfather Ugh, but bringing in huh and bleh and whoever else shows up could get confusing.
You missed one of the biggest reasons for the drop in violence: the sectarian civil war has largely run its course to ethnic cleansing. At the start most of Baghdad’s districts were mixed. Now only 1 is – and it still has substantial violence. Civil wars are generally finite things. Ours only lasted four years – one less than the five years since Bush invaded. There’s no reason at all to give the surge credit because violence has plummeted in the British regions – and all they did was stop patrolling and pull many soldiers out. Fading violence results from what the Iraqis are and aren’t doing, not from what we have.
It’s also amusing that after spouting off about “surrender monkeys” Petreus’ strategy in Anbar has basically been – to surrender. He stopped attacking the insurgents, gave them political control of Anbar, and even gave them weapons! It’s a pity Bush’s plans caused so many horrors before the lieutenant realized the best strategy was to – give up.
With half a million Iraqis dead, trillions spent, and our reputation in ruins, Iraq is a catastrophe no matter what happens now.
Gary, I realize that forty years sounds pessimistic but look at the experiences of other countries. The closest example would be Turkey, which started down the road towards democracy in 1922 (under the benevolent dictatorship of Ataturk), slowly evolved in that direction, underwent a number of military coups, and finally, FINALLY started to look democratic in just the last five years. That’s 80 years it took!
Don’t make the mistake of using Germany and Japan as examples. They both started tinkering with democracy in the 1870s. More important, both had a strong sense of the rule of law at the end of WWII, so it really wasn’t that difficult to start up a functional democracy.
“Gary, I realize that forty years sounds pessimistic”
I take it “Note: ‘possible’ isn’t ‘definitely,’ or even ‘most likely,’ or even ‘likely.’ It’s merely ‘possible.’ was unclear, since you seem to be attempting to disabuse me of an opinion I directly said I did not hold.
If we settle for some lesser goal than democracy, then maybe we’ll achieve that goal in less than 40 years. Stuff happens. I’m sure that over the next few decades life in Iraq will get worse, and better, and worse, and better, and worse, and at certain moments things will look like something that someone could call success.
If we’re willing to settle for an Iraq that’s in more or less one piece, that’s ruled by a stable dictatorship that manages to prevent civil war and keeps armed gangs from terrorizing most people, that’s somewhat anti-American but not actually a security threat to the United States–well, that might be a realistic hope and we might manage to achieve it in less than a decade. Just think: with enough effort, we might even manage to bring Iraq up to the level of freedom and security that it had in 2002.
Erasmussimo: first invasion of Germany in the name of democratic liberalism, republicanism, the Rights of Man, the whole shebang?
1792 in the Wars of the French Revolution.
Ignoring Iraq, Germany is not a good example of interventionism’s brilliance.
I think a significant part of Germany welcomed the invasion of the French revolutionary army and Napoleon later brought a lot that people would have liked to keep (and the Code Civil even remained as the book of law in the West of the country until replaced by the BGB a century later). The innovations had to be suppressed violently by the reactionary elites. On the other hand the French did not come at that time to steal the oil (or coal at the time). That motive came later (and was shared by the German leadership that wanted the French coal).
Nonetheless Germany at whatever time is a highly flawed analogy to the Iraq of today.
Nonetheless Germany at whatever time is a highly flawed analogy to the Iraq of today.
are you saying that all the people who compared Saddam to Hitler and [genreic Democrat X] to Chamberlain were wrong ?
impossible! there were too many of them for them all to be wrong!
Wait – are people saying that all answers to history, and all rock- solid predictions about the future, cannot be found within the last fifty- sixty years? Tell me it ain’t so!
KCinDC: Another major difference is that presumably you weren’t responsible for getting your friend addicted to crack in the first place … That difference makes me feel queasy whenever people take the path of blaming the Iraqis, however convenient that path may be for US political purposes.
As well it should. Blaming the Iraqis is an obscene ploy, given the massive suffering our invasion and occupation brought about and continue to inflict.
Leave aside the continual deaths from U.S. artillery collapsing houses onto men, women, and children and helicopter gunships spraying cars and sidewalks. Just focus for a moment on the two million Iraqis who have become “internally displaced” (a nice sanitary phrase that fails to capture the sheer grinding misery of living in tents and abandoned buidlings for months and years).
Reflect on the million or more driven to Syria and Jordan, where the overwhelmed authorities are going Tom Tancredo on them: hunting them down, enforcing visa violations, and sending them back. Only the most prosperous are able to dig in.
Women, just as in the aftermath of the horrendous war with Iran, are left responsible for whole families. Some are resorting to prostitution to survive. Children are traumatized on a scale and to a degree that is almost impossible to imagine.
A wave of anger and shame and horror overwhelms me when I let myself see these Iraqis. And it takes a personal effort of reading and imagining, because the U.S. media are not often putting their images before us.
So when I hear politicians and commenters blame Iraqis — whether they do so as a way to justify staying for years or leaving immediately — it’s a struggle to keep from loathing most of my fellow Americans. Because presumably this disgusting political tactic is designed to maintain in the U.S. population the sense that whatever we do in the world, bad results are not really our fault. We’re good, our intentions are good, it’s all about spreading that democracy.
Can we handle the truth? The flight from self-knowledge after the Viet Nam war was pretty rapid.
Oh, and: welome back, Hilzoy!
“Just think: with enough effort, we might even manage to bring Iraq up to the level of freedom and security that it had in 2002.”
Speaking of smoking crack…
It’s difficult to take you “moderates” seriously when you don’t immediately mock such statements. This may be an accurate statement WRT security (though I think that depends upon the individual Iraqi in question), but freedom? I do realize, of course, that Bush is worse than Saddam, and that we really can’t speak our minds in this country without fear of being shipped off to the Gulag (and that under Saddam they at least had the freedom to know that they wouldn’t be hauled off in the middle of the night), but could you really call that “freedom?”
Serious question for you Crimso:
Can a country and it’s people ever be truthfully said to live in freedom when the country and it’s people are occupied by a foreign military?
Crimso, the comparison there is between the level of freedom under Saddam Hussein and the level of freedom in Iraq now, not the level of freedom under Bush in the US, and not the level of freedom in some ideal situation that we would actually use the word “freedom” to describe under normal circumstances.
It’s very easy for something to be better than something else without being good. Bush is better than Saddam, despite being a catastrophically bad president. Similarly, although the situation in Iraq under Saddam was bad, there are plenty of indications that the current situation is worse, especially for women and ethnic minorities.
Hilzoy is just painfully smarter than McArdle; it’s uncomfortable to see the comparison in action.
Hm. As long as you aren’t counting those 2 million Iraqis, it seems.
Not sure you have a good grasp of what’s going on over there (and that’s more than a tad ironic)…
Crimso, it’s just a fact: before the US invaded Iraq, 50% of Iraqis had far more freedom than they have now.
Iraqis who were able to wear Western-style clothing are now forced under threat of rape or murder to wear the hijab and the abaya before leaving the house: Iraqis who do not abide by strict fundamentalist dress-codes and behavioral codes, are being found, decapitated, with notes pinned to their bodies saying “She was a collaborator against Islam.”
One straightforward effect of the US invasion seems likely to be that Iraqis who had more freedom under the secular civil code instituted in 1958, will now be forced to live under the restrictions of Sharia law.
Another straightforward effect of the US invasion was outlined by Roz Kaveney* a few weeks ago:
*Note: the link goes to Roz’s livejournal, and you may see an “adults only” warning. Don’t worry, this is just more livejournal silliness: it’s perfectly safe-for-work.
It’s difficult to take you “moderates” seriously when you don’t immediately mock such statements.
You have a point here, and the statement gave me pause as well.
But after I thought about it for a few minutes, it struck me that, amazing as it might be, at a purely pragmatic level a lot of Iraqis were probably more free under Hussein.
Kind of shocking, but it’s likely true.
Thanks –
Obligatory reminder: a country doesn’t need a despot to lack freedom.
Crimso, in an interview on60 Minutes one of the few remaining Chritians in Iraq was asked if he had been better of before the innvasion under Saddam’s rule. He laughed. He said thhat there was no comparasion. Before thhe invasion there was a thrivinng Christina community with five or six chhurches in Baghdad and no religious persecution. Now the handful of survivors meet inn secret. No Iraq is not more free now.
It may be a shock to some of our libertarian friends, but giving people the freedom to murder each other without government interference is generally not a positive thing . . .
Reading the Megan McArdle post hilzoy linked to, I was sruck by how closely it resembled Charles Bird’s piece here of a few days ago. The same litany of caveats and disclaimers about how &$@!%#-up the occupation of Iraq has been, and how %$#!@*-up the country still is; the same careful exhortation to “cautious optimism” over recent casualty statistics; and the same leading-up to the same basic point: a scathing jab at opponents/critics of the war/occupation. As if “Ha ha – we were right all along!” were some sort of conclusive argument.
At least Charles padded his post with nifty graphics.
Oh, and Crimso: if you want to make a point about the war, just a hint: the reductio ad Saddam ploy is getting a little stale at this point in time. After nearly five years of war and destruction, and given the vast expenditures in lives and money the invasion and occupation of Iraq has cost this country (not to mention what it has cost the Iraqis) – self-righteously whining “But Saddam was Eeeeevil!!!!” really doesn’t cut it as a talking-point any more.
Was Germany better off in 1938, or after Hitler’s suicide in 1945?
–So much for stupid questions.
Reading the Megan McArdle post hilzoy linked to, I was sruck by how closely it resembled Charles Bird’s piece here of a few days ago.
“I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.” –Dan Bartlett
It may be a shock to some of our libertarian friends, but giving people the freedom to murder each other without government interference is generally not a positive thing . . .
Bingo.
Most self-described libertarians I have seen are actually mere government-phobes. They don’t actually care about liberty, only about less government. These are not the same thing at all. Good government is the greatest possible protector of liberty — and even most bad governments protect a minimal amount of liberty as a byproduct of securing stability. Anarchy limits one’s options (and life) starkly.
What Jay C said, with a tinge of envy because of the way he said it.
“Iraqis who were able to wear Western-style clothing are now forced under threat of rape or murder to wear the hijab and the abaya before leaving the house: Iraqis who do not abide by strict fundamentalist dress-codes and behavioral codes, are being found, decapitated, with notes pinned to their bodies saying “She was a collaborator against Islam.””
A good reason for staying?
“Was Germany better off in 1938, or after Hitler’s suicide in 1945?”
A better question might be whether Germans were more free in 1938 or 1946. They were unquestionably “better off” in 1938, unless you happened to be the wrong ethnicity. But then, the same could be said for the Iraqis under Saddam.
Problems with reading comprehension there, Jay C? I didn’t write “But Saddam was Eeeeevil!!!!” though I have no doubt that’s what you read. It says more about your mindset than mine.
What I did do was take issue with the statement that Iraqis were more free under Saddam. And I have enjoyed the responses. The commenters here do in fact generally offer thought-provoking responses.
A good reason for staying?
you really think we can create a secular society in a place where we can’t even create a stable society ?
Crimso: A good reason for staying?
A good reason for allowing any Iraqi who wants out of Iraq asylum in the US. Especially, any Iraqi woman, and any Iraqi LGBT person.
Why do I think there’s no way that’s going to happen?
A better question might be whether Germans were more free in 1938 or 1946. They were unquestionably “better off” in 1938, unless you happened to be the wrong ethnicity.
Or a woman. Or gay.
Oh, never mind. Godwin’s law.
Crimso,
What criteria are you using to gauge said “freedom”?
Women’s rights, as mentioned above, have been severely curtailed. Iraqis are less free to walk around Baghdad. Sunnis/Shiites are less free to live in certain neighborhoods, or even enter certain neighborhoods. Iraqis are less free to take cabs for fear that the cabby might kidnap/cleanse them. Iraqis are less free from violent crime and banditry in general. Iraqis are less free to practice minority religions such as Christianity. Iraqis are less free from a LGBT rights perspective.
Iraqis do not have a functioning justice system, or an independent judiciary. There are no prisoners rights, and torture and extrajudicial execution are commonplace. The police force is hopelessly corrupt.
Roughly 2 million Iraqis deemed the unbridled of freedom so intense that they opted to leave (and continue to do so). Another 2 million exercised their “freedom” and chose to relocate internally to another, more homogenous region (from a sectarian vantage point).
During Saddam’s reign, odious and brutal as it was, there was never so acute an exodus (internal or external).
So, other than the vote, what has gotten better in terms of freedom?
(Please exclude Kurdistan because that region was already doing better prior to the invasion)
I don’t understand this, Crimso:
A better question might be whether Germans were more free in 1938 or 1946. They were unquestionably “better off” in 1938, unless you happened to be the wrong ethnicity. But then, the same could be said for the Iraqis under Saddam.
Germans in the Western zones were unquestionably “more free” in 1946 than they’d been in 1938. Germans in the former East Prussia, not so much (especially German females).
But in 1946 the Rhine river ran clear for the first time in decades; all the factories had been obliterated. So German fish were definitely freer.
And Iraqis in Baghdad can now enjoy the thrill of cholera-laden water in their taps. What do these cases have to do with one another? Nothing whatsoever.
So EM, I’m confused. Are you advocating staying and doing something to make things better, or leaving and letting the chips fall where they may? Or another option altogether? I don’t think there’s any question that the average German was far better off in 1938 vs. 1946, but would that be an argument for letting things go on as they were?
“Germans in the Western zones were unquestionably “more free” in 1946 than they’d been in 1938.”
Really? Even though they were under military occupation by foreign powers? Who knew it was possible?
The French did manage to tidy up Germany, in a sense — they got rid of the detritus of the Middle Ages, like the Holy Roman Emperor — but they never really set up a collection of democratic states.
In fact, in Spain, the association of liberalism with the foreign occupier retarded progress, I am told.
Crimso,
I take it from this:
Really? Even though they were under military occupation by foreign powers? Who knew it was possible?
that you are unequivocally answering “no” the serious question I asked you above at 9:52 AM?
Hmmm, I’m not sure if I would have been so categorical. But, still, it’s a fair answer.
Thank you for addressing it.
So Crimso, I’m confused.
You completely dodged the question. First, you seemed to be making the claim that things are freer in Iraq now than under Saddam, and you questioned the motives/bias of those that disagreed with your contention. You actually resorted to a straw man argument ad absurdum about Bush being worse than Saddam, and American freedoms being equivalent to Iraqi freedoms.
Then, when asked to clarify what criteria you were using to define this freedom that was so obviously more bountiful now than under Saddam you…resorted to another non-sequitur! As for said non-sequitur:
Are you advocating staying and doing something to make things better, or leaving and letting the chips fall where they may?
I would answer with a question: How, exactly, do you propose we stay and make things better? Can you define the strategy, the costs and the paramters?
If we can accomplish something worthwhile at acceptable costs in a reasonable time period, then I’m all for it. If not, then we have little choice but to face the inevitable. As of yet, I have not seen such a plan. And wishes, you see, are like ponies.
Either way, I would actually rather have an answer to the question that I posed to you: please define the metrics you are using to claim that Iraqis are so much freer now that, to disagree with the contention, is to betray an immoderate bias.
“First, you seemed to be making the claim that things are freer in Iraq now than under Saddam”
No. I was rejecting the assertion that the reverse was true. In plain fact, I don’t know which is true. Again, it would likely depend very strongly on the Iraqi in question. Better now for the average Joe on the street? Beats me. Better now for the Sunnis? As a sweeping generalization, probably not.
Good post Hilzoy;
Islamic texts lay out what a hudna is. It is a temporary peace, up to ten years, in which war may be suspended in order to re-arm and then strike with strategic advantage.
Mohammad struck ten-year hudna with the Quraysh tribe that controlled Mecca in the seventh century. Over the following two years, Mohammad rearmed and took advantage of a minor Quraysh infraction to break the hudna and launch the full conquest of Mecca, the holiest city in Islam.
Hilzoy: “I have no idea whether McArdle is right about the liberal blogosphere …”
McArdle’s record of being right on anything is poor.
What’s always interested me about her is that she’s a Cohen or Friedman or Dowd, but in larval stage. I didn’t really think that these pundits were born; I sorta felt that they were made in secret factories. But here we have one, growing up from blogger to (internet) Atlantic columnist.
We’ll watch her shill shamelessly from power for decades to come.
But Crimso, “better” in what ways?
You still haven’t addressed that question.
But I won’t flog this horse any more.
“But Crimso, “better” in what ways?”
That is indeed the question. So when someone asserts Iraqis were more free (“freer” sounds too weird) under Saddam, then it would be legitimate to question what “free” means. The way I see it, this argument eventually reaches the “but the trains ran on time” excuse. As a point of argument involving what I consider to be a real human right that at least a couple of commenters have invoked, why should I care if gay people aren’t treated as equal, as long as I’m okay with my life? I might consider myself “free” in the current situation, but do people who self-identify as LGBT generally feel as though they are accorded all of the benefits of society? Probably not. So are they “free?” In a very real legal sense (and often in more common senses), not as free as I am. So I guess it depends upon who you ask (and believe).
It’s difficult to take you “moderates” seriously when you don’t immediately mock such statements.
In plain fact, I don’t know which is true. Again, it would likely depend very strongly on the Iraqi in question.
Some say the ability to entertain multiple points of view simultaneously is evidence of a keen and subtle mind.
Crimso, I bow.
Thanks –
McArdle’s recent reportage on her trip to Vietnam, where she assembles, by hand, every fatuous observation that can be made without acknowledging the fact that here was a country that the US tried to blow back to the stone age for the better part of two decades, making it a paean to the free market.
But the true key can be found in this post, where she recounts some marginalia left by her college boyfriend, who wrote
Remember, every time you do something stupid, it will leave a memory with which you will have to live for fifty years. This is the great advantage of drinking to excess: memory loss.
McArdle, contrarian that she is, decided that she could forget about all the stupid things she had done if she just wrote as many stupid things as possible. It certainly seems to work for the blogosphere, as I would have thought that someone running around with an Ayn Rand handle would have hopelessly embarrassed herself and made any opinions null and void.
Well, not really.
Freedom as we usually definite it depends on a stable society and a substantial middle class. If the vast majority of society is shoved back down to a survival or subsistence level, then the potential for freedom is much, much lower, due in large part that you can’t even begin to think about freedom because you spending more time thinking about survival. Literally.
“Crimso, I bow.”
I would bet that many of you would be surprised about my views on any of a number of subjects. The fact that I don’t truly know whether “the Iraqis” were better off under Saddam or under U.S. military occupation has no bearing on whether someone who asserts that they were in fact better off under Saddam should question their assumptions.
“the fact that here was a country that the US tried to blow back to the stone age for the better part of two decades”
Now see, that’s what I’m talking about. “Tried?” Please. If we’d tried then they’d be there. And it’d take two hours, not two decades.
“depends on a stable society and a substantial middle class.”
That’s kinda what I’m getting at when I use the term “trains run on time.”
Really? Even though they were under military occupation by foreign powers? Who knew it was possible?
A few things:
1) “More free” != “free”. A subtle, but important point in the above argument.
2) Many of the people who would have been “more free” in 1946 Germany were unable to enjoy this freedom on account of being dead. Not just the victims of the Holocaust, but vast swathes of more “mainstream” Germans. This has, or should have, a profound effect on any such analysis.
[Much as any serious analysis of the differences between American post-colonialism and post-colonialism elsewhere needs to account for the fact that most of the indigenous peoples of the colonies were long dead.]
3) The occupation of post-war Germany is a sickeningly complicated subject. Suffice to say that one’s “freedom” in 1946 would have varied quite highly depending on a) where you were and b) what you were trying to do. Speaking purely of Berlin, the Soviet sector was not the American sector was not the British sector was not the French sector, and each piece had its own set of rules and priorities; and once you start talking the country as a whole, all bets are off.
4) The all-consuming point which your posts above fail to address: post-war Germany was not in the middle of a bloody internecine war, nor was it ever in any danger of so being. [Potentially a bloody externally-imposed conflict, but that’s not the same thing at all.] Whatever fight the Germans might have had in them had been stomped out by six years and some of the most horrific battles the world had ever seen. Their nation-state had gone to war and lost; they’d pretty much had enough of war at that point.
Further, none of the religious or political violence attendant to Iraq — hell, none of the religious or political tension attendant to Iraq — was present in post-war Germany. Even after the Cold War emerged in full force, Germans on both sides of the Wall considered themselves “German” — that particular barrier had been ultimately broken by Hitler, irony of ironies — only of differing political ideologies; it’s fair to say that a large number of people in Iraq are identifying themselves tribally and/or religiously first, nationalistically only a distant second.
By the by, if all you were saying was “Look! Sometimes military occupations don’t end in a bloodbath!”, well, congratulations, but that’s a point that’s been made thousands of times on both sides of the aisle. The relevent question is whether the preconditions of a peaceable occupations had been met which, well, they kind of obviously had not.
Crimso: The fact that I don’t truly know whether “the Iraqis” were better off under Saddam or under U.S. military occupation has no bearing on whether someone who asserts that they were in fact better off under Saddam should question their assumptions.
Why? Because Saddam was a priori the worst fate that could befall the Iraqis and that a priori the US military occupation must be better? Someone here certainly needs to check their assumptions, but it ain’t us.
Now see, that’s what I’m talking about. “Tried?” Please. If we’d tried then they’d be there. And it’d take two hours, not two decades.
The time-frame would depend on whether we used nukes or conventional weaponry but yeah, that’s pretty much accurate.
That’s kinda what I’m getting at when I use the term “trains run on time.”
But you’re kinda missing the point. Yes, Mussolini made the trains run on time while being a bad bad man, but, as abhorrent as the Fascist government was, it was by no means the worst that Italy could have undergone. Hell, consider the state of the Italian peninsula just a few centuries earlier; the murder rate in Florence alone would make you blanch. Likewise, Hitler’s Germany was bad, but the Red Army’s Germany — I’m referring specifically to the invasion of Germany in ’45, which was as close to anarchy as one could imagine — was a whole hell of a lot worse for a whole hell of a lot more people*. Rampant anarchy isn’t just comparable to totalitarianism, it’s almost always worse,** at least from a utilitarian standpoint: instead of a single centralized entity with a monopoly on force, you have the seeds for a decentralized epidemic of violence. Which is really a libertarian argument — look! decentralization really does work! — so I’ve never understood why more people don’t grok it.
All of which leads me to my central point over the last years: the measure of how badly we f***ed up Iraq is precisely that Iraqis, en masse*, were better off under Saddam than us. How awful is that?
* “Whole lot more people” (above) and “en masse” (below) being the key words here. The surviving Jews in Germany during the Red Army offensive were almost certainly better off than under Hitler, but Germans, especially German women, were categorically not. In Iraq, Marsh Arabs are far better off now than they were previously; OTOH, the women of Baghdad are far worse off, and there are a hell of a lot more of them, and god only knows who all is getting shat upon in the sectarian strife.
To put it in a more visceral way: Uday and Qusay could only rape a handful of women at a time, but there’s no limit to the number of women who can be abused now. That’s not really an improvement.
** Obligatory exception made for the Khmer Rouge, of course. It’s hard to imagine much worse than that.
If so, then I think you do a terrible disservice by dismissing the idea.
As others have said, “free” is not necessarily a binary condition. You can be freer and less free. Dismissing an argument as you did seems to be treating the condition as a binary concept.
Spending more of your time thinking how to feed yourself and your family seems to me to be less free than spending more of your time thinking how you could rid yourself of the dictator. You have more resources in the latter than you do in the former. And it seems to me that there are more people in the former situation than in the latter.
That is indeed the question. So when someone asserts Iraqis were more free (“freer” sounds too weird) under Saddam, then it would be legitimate to question what “free” means. The way I see it, this argument eventually reaches the “but the trains ran on time” excuse
Because the ability to leave the house without wearing an abaya and to hold down a job and earn a living, without having your head cut off for being a traitor to Islam, is equivalent in your mind to trains pulling into the station on time?
That is the level of freedom and security that Iraqis had in 2002. Half of all Iraqis now don’t have that right.
LGBT Iraqis, in 2002, had this level of freedom and security: they were not being killed on discovery. LGBT Iraqis in 2007 don’t have that level of freedom and security.
I’m still waiting for you to explain why you can’t take us “moderates” seriously because we don’t immediately mock statements wishing Iraqis the freedom to live openly without being murdered – the level of freedom and security they had in 2002.
It’s worth noting, too, that the new backlash isn’t restricted to LGBT individuals in Iraq, either. Assyrian Christians, who enjoyed relative safety under Saddam’s secular regime, are now being executed in religious attacks as well.
Iraq, for better or worse, was one of the most “Western” countries in the Middle East in terms of equality for minority groups. Saddam was a brutal dictator who terrorized his enemies, to be sure. But the fact still remains that many groups are now suffering — dying — because the country’s social and religious mores are being pulled back to Mideast’s violent standards.
Crimso: That is indeed the question. So when someone asserts Iraqis were more free (“freer” sounds too weird) under Saddam, then it would be legitimate to question what “free” means. The way I see it, this argument eventually reaches the “but the trains ran on time” excuse….I guess it depends upon who you ask (and believe).
So you’d rather ask no one and believe no one? Make no judgment at all? You can’t be seriously trying to pass off this sophomoric, po-mo wankery as cogent analysis or critique.
Pick any measure you want, and Iraqis as a whole are measurably worse off than they were in 2002. That’s not a “trains run on time” excuse. That’s how you distinguish functional societies (however nasty and screwed-up) from ones that are near collapse.
While we’re on the subject of crack-addict analogies, might I suggest a different one. The benefactor gives the crack addict some money to undergo a 12-step program. After a serious case of withdrawals and methodone treatments in the first couple of steps, the fella has come around, showing progress after completing the third step. However, there’s plenty of work ahead before that person’s life becomes stabilized, and it’s unclear which way that person’s going to go. He should’ve gone into treatment two years earlier, when he had a better chance at recovery, but alas, it didn’t happen because the person’s parole officer was incompetent.
That’s where the current COIN plan is right now. Counterinsurgencies take time to take hold.
Sorry, CB, that is not where the COIN is right now. The COIN may have reduced violence to a minor degree, but nothing has occured anywhere near the crack analogy you have created.
And the biggest problem with the COIN strategy is that counter-insurgency is meant to be against A group of insurgents against a relatively viable government.
There is not A group of insurgents in Iraq, and the current government is hardly viable.
“Some say the ability to entertain multiple points of view simultaneously is evidence of a keen and subtle mind.
Crimso, I bow.
Thanks -”
It’s entirely possible to read those two comments of Crimso’s as simply indicating a genuine shift of perspective.
Crimso also wrote: “And I have enjoyed the responses. The commenters here do in fact generally offer thought-provoking responses.”
I read Crimso’s comments as quite possibly indicating a move to considerable less certainty in the proposition that Iraqis were less “free” (a term nobody has bothered to define in any useful way for this conversation, as yet) than Crimson started the thread with.
My confidence in that reading is only so-so, so perhaps Crimso will speak up to agree or disagree.
I’d suggest that the conversation would be more productive if people would get a lot more concrete, and offer a specific metric to use to compare what kind of “free” you’re talking about, as Eric Martin asked for.
One might start by distinguishing the different sorts of things we seek to be
“free” from.
Freedom from an oppresive and brutal and unjust governmental security is one type of freedom.
Then there’s FDR’s Four Freedoms:
The EU also guarantees by treaty:
And for special fun, ya gots your Chomsky Fifth Freedom to go, with fries.
Feel free to offer better concepts or metrics as you like!
I’d focus on how “free” common Iraqi citizens in various regions feel to do whatever they secretly want were, under Hussein, and now, and compare.
Things I’d like to think weren’t particular controversial observations would be that most people felt far freer to simply walk the streets and travel the roads and byways and across Baghdad and the country, under SH, than now, although there were certainly limitations.
But fewer people were killed on a daily basis because they traveled to another neighborhood, I’m pretty sure.
Freedom of speech? More now, perhaps, in certain areas, either those that have been ethnically cleansed, or the few that are otherwise somewhat peaceful, if you’re of the right ethnicity/religion/tribe. Outside of that, it you were apt to be killed for saying the wrong thing in the wrong place under SH, and the same now. But it’s more democratically distributed oppression, without doubt.
There is no doubt that are are various limited ways we can define and observe that people were more free to do a certain thing under Hussein, and the same is true of the post-Hussein period. The underlying question is how does it weigh up altogether?
What I’ll say definitively for myself is what I said earlier: overall, I can’t begin to see that the cost to the Iraqi and American people, not to mention other countries, has been remotely worth it to any of us, compared to the admitted negatives of having continued containing Saddam Hussein until he eventually was out of power, whether through death natural, or othwereise.
There’s uncertainty, of course, in that we can never know very well how such an alternative history would have played out, but it seems to me that it would require less than the most probable courses for it to have turned out worse for any of us.
But that’s opinion, to be sure.
Jeepers, I’d never noticed this before:
That’s… so special.
Speechless now.
And the fascinating thing is that it really is the same as Chomsky’s Fifth Freedom: just in different words.
Well, one suspects that the connotations intended by Chomsky probably aren’t the faux-somber, “it’s a dirty job . . . but someone’s got to do it” (for that ellipsis please substitute one of the pauses from a Reagan Iran-Contra testimony “I . . . don’t remember”, along with faux anguish) that the Splinter Cell game is no doubt intended to convey.
Crimso:
Let’s talk:
We didn’t nuke Vietnam, which we could have done in “two hours,” and therefore the entire horror of what U.S. bombing did to Vietnam — along with the ground-based killing and corruption — aren’t even worth acknowledging.
You can do better.
“Yes, Mussolini made the trains run on time while being a bad bad man”
God, I wish people would quit saying that.
Pro-fascist urban legends suck. It’s as true that “Mussolini made the trains run on time” as it is that arbeit macht frei. Why do people keep repeating this fascist Big Lie?
Because it fills a conversational lacunae, apparently, in which people need something to fill in with in the “but at least [Bad Person] did [Good Thing]” genre.
But it’s simply Mussolini’s propaganda from 1929.
I should add that I otherwise agree with every word of Anarch’s 6:40 p.m. comment.
I would bet that many of you would be surprised about my views on any of a number of subjects.
No worries, Crimso, I’m just taking the p*ss.
I bet you’d find that folks here would not be all that suprised by, and in fact might be interested in, your views were you to simply state them.
Thanks –
I would have thought that someone running around with an Ayn Rand handle would have hopelessly embarrassed herself and made any opinions null and void.
The thing I’m always struck by is how all the folks who are infatuated by Rand always see themselves as one of the few, the proud, the “individuals of the mind”.
It’s really annoying.
How many freaking “individuals of the mind” can there be?
And who will pick up the garbage in their brave new world?
Somehow I think that when these bold Atlases shrug, noone will really notice the difference.
Thanks –
What’s always interested me about her is that she’s a Cohen or Friedman or Dowd, but in larval stage.
That about sums it up. I’ve never understood her appeal.
Now see, that’s what I’m talking about. “Tried?” Please. If we’d tried then they’d be there. And it’d take two hours, not two decades.
Five times the bomb tonnage that was dropped on Germany during WWII was dropped on North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos by the US.
With regard to your last sentence, take a good luck at a map. Do you honestly believe that anyone other than Curtis Lemay would have decided to use a nuclear device on a nation that has a 500+ mile border with China?
Thanks Gary, I missed that Crimso was speaking to my comment. I initially typed one decade, then changed it to 2, but am still not sure how one would define the period of time. And, of course, I was referring to the air force general (and George Wallace’s vice presidential running mate) Curtis LeMay’s quote about bombing Vietnam back to the Stone Age, though it was just an allusion to quote rather than an actual quote, since he said it in his 1968 memoir and it may have been LeMay taking a line 1967 Buchwald column. link
Sorry, Gary. Missed your earlier response to Crimso
“How many freaking ‘individuals of the mind’ can there be?
And who will pick up the garbage in their brave new world?”
I always found Rand pretty laughable, but I’m not sure this a real problem in her work. It’s been decades since I read her, so I may well be remembering her entirely wrongly, but my admittedly vague recollection is that her thrust would be along the lines that a garbarge collector should take pride in being the best possible garbage collector, if that’s the best possible thing they can do. Or something to that effect.
“That about sums it up. I’ve never understood her appeal.”
I remain friendly with Megan because political differences aren’t something that get in my way with that unless someone crosses certain lines on certain issues, largely of bigotry. If they don’t cross my lines on those points, I’m good friends with people I have vastly stronger political differences with than Megan, or Charles, for that matter.
I also distinguish strongly between opinions and actions. Even the most vile opinions, if unattached to any damaging action to anyone — which is a separate question — have limited evil effects.
And Megan and I and a bunch of others were blogging back in 2001 and 2002, back when there was a lot of blog consensus, and relatively little political division.
And lastly, I find her views far less disagreeable than innumerable others on the right side of the blogosphere. Jeepers, there are so many of them that do offend me, Megan is just someone disagree with on a number of matters. BFD.
Not to say any of this should matter to anyone else, of course. But since you effectively asked the question.
Oh, and she linked to my post last week, and suggested people donate, so full disclosure there and all. But, what, I’m gonna think someone is a big meany, then?
That’s, again, I point out, entirely separate from saying I find her analysis always compelling.
Though there are certainly and infinite number of worse, and dumber writers.
I wrote: “One might start by distinguishing the different sorts of things we seek to be
‘free’ from.”
Poor phrasing compells me to add “or free to do.”
Good little piece by Cullather, LJ, and quite correct.
These people should spend their days in shame and penance for the consequences of what they advocated, none of which they themselves have felt.
Jes, the actual position of German women (despite nazi rhethorics) was better in the 3rd Reich than in the 50ies (though worse than in the 20ies). The rollback of women’s position by the Nazis was effectively compensated by the needs of war*. The post-war “restauration” really turned the clocks back and it took the forgotten 4 mothers of the new constitution a long and nasty fight to even secure (on paper) equal rights for women. It took at least 2 decades to get rid of the worst legal violations of that.
*and the nazi method of undermining the family in favour of loyalty towards nazi organisations worked in many cases for not against women because it weakened the power of the patriarchs over their daughters.
Hartmut; Jes, the actual position of German women (despite nazi rhethorics) was better in the 3rd Reich than in the 50ies (though worse than in the 20ies).
I’m no expert on German history, Hartmut, but according to my understanding, the women who before Hitler came to power had worked as doctors, as civil servants – had had ordinary full-time jobs – were sacked in the first few months of the Third Reich, and within a few years, very few German women were in full-time work. If this is true – if the proportion of women in full-time work went down after the Nazis took power, and if women who were working at the time were sacked for being female, I don’t see how you can argue that women’s status was better under the 3rd Reich.
(Though obviously, when WWII started and the skills shortage inside Germany became acute, like most other countries at war, women started doing work outside the home again.)
rant:
In the wake of the Iraq invasion there is a disquieting tendency among some parts of the left to adopt a Kissinger style nonchalance towards the concept of freedom. Iraq under Saddam Hussein was not a free country by any definition. The GDR, which was an infinitely better place to live in than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, was not a free country by any definition. Those pointing out that one could live a reasonably normal life under SH’s rule if one toed the line are making the same mistake as the leftwing apologists for the GDR made when they played down the fundamentally inhumane nature of this comparatively restrained regime. The fact that the situation was worse in Iran or the USSR respectively is not relevant to the question if these societies were free. The fact that western democracies are deficient in implementing ideals of freedom is also irrelevant. The fact that crazy warmongers have used the lack of freedom in Iraq under SH to justify a criminal and botched invasion is not relevant either.
Talking about the freedoms enjoyed by some people living in fundamentally unfree societies flies in the face of the very idea of human rights, which are universal, inalienable and indivisible.
/rant
“In the wake of the Iraq invasion there is a disquieting tendency among some parts of the left to adopt a Kissinger style nonchalance towards the concept of freedom. Iraq under Saddam Hussein was not a free country by any definition.”
Which person or article are you attempting to refute?
I assume you have a bunch of cites? Why not just link in the first place?
Setting that aside, let’s read that stuff, so we can refute it. Cites?
(I’m pretty unclear why people make these sorts of announcements nowadays without including cites in the first place. Why do that, other than to make your cause look like you, you know, have no cites? It seems baffling; do people not understand how to make an argument? Do they set out to say that their argument has no facts behind it?)
The rational part of novakant’s rant is his complaint about the use of the word “rights” to refer to the freedom women had to walk around in Western attire before 2003. People under Saddam only had the rights or the freedom to do what he allowed, or I suppose that’s the argument.
Nonetheless women did have the “right” (insert whatever term is more appropriate) to walk around in Western attire before 2003 and they don’t now, and people are correct in pointing out that Iraqis are suffering more after 2003 than before. Novakant’s rant would be appropriate if anyone here were actually speaking in favor of totalitarianism, rather than merely pointing out that anarchy can be worse than dictatorship.
It’s nice to have the accusation right in the thread where its accuracy can be checked. Out in the real world anyone (like Howard Dean) who said something about Iraq being worse off after 2003 would soon find himself or herself at the center of a manufactured controversy over whether they actually liked Saddam’s dictatorship.
People who thought it would have been a good idea to invade East Germany and violently overthrow its government were wrong. Doing so would have been catastrophic far beyond the (non-existent) harm allegedly caused by a few misplaced utterances by people at the margins of political life in the West.
Whining about what “the Left” says or doesn’t say is virtually always misdirection from apologists for authoritarianism.
Iraq under Saddam Hussein was not a free country by any definition.
Quite right, and you are quite right to insist on the point.
What seems undeniable, to me, is that many, many Iraqis live in an environment of extreme chaos and anarchy, in which simply going about their daily lives can result in their dying a horrible and random death. I don’t think that’s something they had to live with under Saddam.
How that compares, as a real human experience, to living in a totalitarian state, I couldn’t tell you. But I doubt it feels, in real, concrete terms, like any meaningful or useful form of freedom.
Thanks –
Apologies if someone already made this point, but I gotta get back to work & don’t have time to scan–your analogy’s fine, but it doesn’t really work unless YOU gave your friend his first vial of crack.
Or, like, broke the lock on the door of the self-storage unit where the crack was kept. That’s probably more apt. But still.
Which person or article are you attempting to refute?
Whining about what “the Left” says or doesn’t say is virtually always misdirection from apologists for authoritarianism.
It’s hard to condense an impression created by observing the political debate over several years into links to a few posts and I’m sure you’d be very good at describing these as unrepresentative or not saying what I think they do, if I did so. But to point you in the general direction, a look at Matthew Yglesias’ blog (with whom I agree on many things, just not these issues) might be instructive, as his general outlook is quite close to what I’m criticizing, in that he continually pushes a rather amoral, utilitarian realpolitik angle that doesn’t seem to be concerned much with human rights, but more with not rocking the boat out of fear that this would embolden the neocon wingnuts to embark on new adventures.
Or, for starters, have a look upthread. To me, it doesn’t make sense philosophically to talk about ‘freedoms’ and ‘rights’ unless these are universally guaranteed by law and enforced by an independent judiciary. If people possess these ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’ only as long as the dictator or the regime don’t decide to take them away at random or if they only apply to a certain part of the population (as was the case in both the examples I brought up), then, to my mind, they don’t have any rights or freedom, since these are by their nature universal and indivisible.
This does make make me a human rights absolutist and puts me (and has always put me) at odds with a sizeable portion of the left – so be it, but do not pretend that there isn’t a conflict there and that I am imagining things. This does not make me a neocon or any less left than I am and always have been (I will just ignore the ‘apologists for authoritarianism’ slur, thank you very much), since I don’t favour violent conflict resolution except in the case of ongoing or imminent genocide.
novakant: Talking about the freedoms enjoyed by some people living in fundamentally unfree societies flies in the face of the very idea of human rights, which are universal, inalienable and indivisible.
Interesting turn I think. I agree with novakant in that I think you have to take freedom out of this discussion.
Question for anyone making the “Iraqis had more freedom before” argument: Are the people of Iran in any way “free” today – this morning – right this moment?
Religious freedom?
Political Freedom?
Women’s Rights? Women can vote and serve in parliament so there’s no problem there?
LGBT Rights aren’t a concern because there are none in Iran.
Most Iranians can walk down the street in relative safety, provided they are dressed appropriately and keep their heads down etc.
Are Iranians as a people more free right now than they would be after some kind of regime change that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths? Now I’m not saying regime change via an external event and I’ve been solidly against any kind of military action. Even funding opposition groups is iffy at best and likely offers them more problems than benefit. So let’s call this an internal event. Opposition groups organize and attempt to overthrow the regime and it leads to 5 years of bloody internal conflict. A million people die. Millions more are displaced. After 5 years some things are better and some things are worse. Are they as a people better off today as it is? Does all that carnage and however the new regime works out somehow make them “free” today? Two very different questions IMO.
I don’t think that anything that happens in that scenario should make people look back and say that Iranians are somehow free today. If you keep freedom out of it, then “better off” makes more sense, as in a lot of the population was better off as long as they went along with the regime. But they are not free as a people in any (Western) definition of the word.
This is in part one of those arguments where people agree on the facts and argue about word usage. Whatever.
Where it slides a little into something substantive is in novakant’s accusation that people upthread are like Matt Y
“in that he continually pushes a rather amoral, utilitarian realpolitik angle that doesn’t seem to be concerned much with human rights, but more with not rocking the boat out of fear that this would embolden the neocon wingnuts to embark on new adventures.”
Yeah, right, that’s exactly what people upthread were saying.
Time to go look for more interesting threads.
“Five times the bomb tonnage that was dropped on Germany during WWII was dropped on North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos by the US.”
And the effect was… maybe only to the Bronze Age?
And I was greatly amused at the upthread mention of my “po-mo” reasoning. I am perfectly capable of deploying such reasoning in environments where it will be understood, though certainly not as a tool to enhance my own understanding of the world. I entered this precisely because I felt that the clear meaning of the word “free” was apparently not understood by certain people. I try very, very hard to say exactly what I mean, though I clearly don’t always succeed (who does?). But seriously, great stuff to chew on. So, what do we do NOW?
So, what do we do NOW?
we leave
“Free” –a binary state or one with a scale?
“we leave”
So then the women can uncover and the gays can go about their lives and…
Is it entirely possible that in terms used in any given upthread cite about how much better the Iraqis were under Saddam and how much worse off they are now, that it really could get MUCH worse? Becuase I suspect that it could, and that it could do so by us leaving. Not “will” mind you, but “could.” Do you take that distinct possibility into account when you suggest “we leave?” How about we leave and then Iran dominates Iraq. Sure, the mullahs will impose law and order, but will women and gays and Jews and…be better off? Or will our leaving result in a return to those great “free” times under Saddam?
How about we leave and then Iran dominates Iraq. Sure, the mullahs will impose law and order, but will women and gays and Jews and…be better off? Or will our leaving result in a return to those great “free” times under Saddam?
yes, all terrible things. nevertheless, we are probably not capable of turning Iraq into a place where those things don’t happen.
there comes a time for each of us, where we take a deep breath and come to terms with the real-life limits of our country’s capabilities – i had mine a few years ago. wishing we could turn Iraq into the Netherlands, or even Turkey or Iran, is a noble goal. but are we capable of making it happen? looks like the answer is No.
“And who will pick up the garbage in their brave new world?”
I think we can find clues to answering this conundrum by observing how Rand afficianados handle Ayn’s garbage in this world.
They bind her garbage, as in a reliquary, between hard covers (or paper) and place the product, not in the bodice-ripping section, but in the philosophy section of the bookstore, where they outnumber the volumes of Plato, Kant, and Barbara Cartland by a fair margin.
Readers of her garbage pore over and underline key passages and when a discussion of one’s favorite novels comes up, they brightly chime in with “Atlas Shrugged” to parry others’ suggestions of Joyce, Tolstoy, and Austen, though there is always some wag in the crowd who believes Barbara Cartland is better at character development.
If all of that wasn’t enough, readers (mostly 12-year olds sequeing their reading habits from Nancy Drew to Tolkein with a little pubescent objectivism) of Rand
turn their chiseled visages into the harsh wind of egalitarianism (actually, they set up a fan to blow their hair back) and stand next to a lifesize cardboard image of Fabio, otherwise known as Howard Rourke (sp?) or John Galt, who is depicted as stepping over his garbage collector with a look of revulsion on his face.
Worse, Rand lovers set up blogs to discuss how it is that an individual could aspire to be the best writer they can and end up giving the world barely warm tripe, but strongly earnest ideological tripe none/nevertheless. Worse yet, tripe that becomes the model of how the world should live. I’d call it Soviet-style agitprop but Dagny Taggert would accuse me of not fulfilling the virtues of selfishness.
Speaking of the horny Dagny, who gazes longingly at the Chrysler Building for reasons known only to architects and Larry Flynt, I’ve often wondered how Randers will handle their sewage in the brave new world.
But then I noticed Dagny never goes to the potty in “Atlas Shrugged”, so I guess there will be no need for a sewage and sanitation district with taxing privileges, which will be a relief to the congenitally constipated Ayn Rand Institute.
Speaking of trains running on time, the problem with Mussolini and Hitler is that certain trains to unfortunate destinations ran too much on time.
On the other hand, I’ve never understood our society’s reluctance with having trains running on time, as if trains running on time
might conflict with other freedoms.
I might even let Rudy Guiliani be the Czar of Trains if they would run on time. But that’s all he gets to run, because he would inevitably start doing Mussolini gestures and sticking his chin out and deciding that I should be put on a train to a final destination to finally solve our problems.
Crimso: Do you take that distinct possibility into account when you suggest “we leave?
Yes. Which is why I think the US (and the UK) ought to be opening doors to Iraqi refugees/asylum seekers. Because the fact is, things in Iraq will get much worse whether or not the US stays or goes, and indeed there is a strong probability that the US military occupation staying will help things get worse. That’s precisely what has happened so far, after all. The presence of the US military has not protected women, LGBT people, or Christians: you can’t therefore argue that the US military ought to stay on that basis.
At the moment, Crimso, all anyone can certainly say is that when the US leaves, the people who worked for the US military occupation will very likely be killed. Which is why Americans who profess a concern for Iraqis really ought to focus their attention on the one thing their country can do, and isn’t doing: ensure every single Iraqi who wants to leave Iraq before the US goes can do so, especially if they’ve worked for the US military over the past few years.
At some point, the US military HAS to leave. It is fair to neither to the US nor to Iraq that they stay.
What we’re arguing about is the conditions under which they leave. And many people are arguing that there is no way they can get to a situation where there is relatively little violence or bloodshed when US troops leave.
The better question is, Crimso:
Do you have a better alternative to leaving?
Do costs enter the equation (not just financial, but strategic, military, opportunity, etc). Remember Afghanistan?
So since the way forward is unclear, we should at least ACT? And the only obvious ACTion we can take is to leave?
“we are probably not capable of turning Iraq into a place where those things don’t happen.”
By what measure? I see a lot of “It’s hopeless, we should leave.” How about we stay and TRY? I can just as easily assert that it is possible for the U.S. to stay and make things better. My crytsal ball is just as good as anyone else’s.
“Do costs enter the equation (not just financial, but strategic, military, opportunity, etc). Remember Afghanistan?”
Just out of curiosity, any idea how much it’s cost us to have troops in any other countries? And before anyone bleats that post-war Germany didn’t have an insurgency, can I argue that it’s not “post-war” in Iraq? I take issue with the assertion that Iraq is a Gordian knot. If we can stay and help, we should. And I think that is at least possible.
Crimso: So, what do we do NOW?
I have no idea. As far as I can tell, all the options are bad. Barring some deus ex machina (Space aliens invade and all humans unite against a common enemy! The Iranian leaders become obsessed with WoW and resign en masse to spend more time with their guilds!), every single “what next?” involves massive costs, in blood and treasure. Plus, the risks and benefits are so uncertain that it’s very hard to decide which is the “least bad” among the choices.
But someone has to make that decision, and it should NOT be the same people who created this disaster.
And, yes, we were using different definitions of “freedom.” I tend to rank “freedom from cholera” and “freedom from anarchic violence” pretty high. Is that just Mussolini Lite?
How about we stay and TRY?
we’ve been trying for almost five years.
Crimso: So, what do we do NOW?
I have no idea. As far as I can tell, all the options are bad. Barring some deus ex machina (Space aliens invade and all humans unite against a common enemy! The Iranian leaders become obsessed with WoW and resign en masse to spend more time with their guilds!), every single “what next?” involves massive costs, in blood and treasure. Plus, the risks and benefits are so uncertain that it’s very hard to decide which is the “least bad” among the choices.
But someone has to make that decision, and it should NOT be the same people who created this disaster.
And, yes, we were using different definitions of “freedom.” I tend to rank “freedom from cholera” and “freedom from anarchic violence” pretty high. Is that just Mussolini Lite?
[sorry about the double post]
Crimso: How about we stay and TRY?
Try HOW? What, specifically, are you proposing we do? How long will that take? How much should we be willing to pay? Is it even possible, given the current state of our military?
“Is it even possible, given the current state of our military?”
At least you’re asking.
“Try HOW?”
Another excellent question. I’m not Henry Kissinger (or Warren Christopher). I’m in no position to answer these questions as I’m as big an idiot as anybody.
“But someone has to make that decision, and it should NOT be the same people who created this disaster.”
But of course it should be. They were duly and legally elected to take such decisions. That fact has absolutely nothing to do with whether you agree with those decisions, though.
a look at Matthew Yglesias’ blog (with whom I agree on many things, just not these issues) might be instructive, as his general outlook is quite close to what I’m criticizing, in that he continually pushes a rather amoral, utilitarian realpolitik angle that doesn’t seem to be concerned much with human rights, but more with not rocking the boat out of fear that this would embolden the neocon wingnuts to embark on new adventures.
That’s one of the things I like most about Yglesias. Making human rights a centerpiece of fooreign policy is a luxury that we can’t afford in the wake of Bush’s diasters. What we need right now is stability.
To answer Crimso’s question about what to do now, I would suggest a gradual withdrawal of American forces from the field combined with intensive diplomacy with the various Iraqi factions, with Iran, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and with our allies, in various combinations as needed, to try and achieve some kind of settlement in Iraq.
Maybe we ought to bring Kissinger and Scowcroft out of retirement first, though.
“I would suggest a gradual withdrawal of American forces from the field combined with intensive diplomacy with the various Iraqi factions, with Iran, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and with our allies, in various combinations as needed, to try and achieve some kind of settlement in Iraq.”
Great if it works. But then, I guess any path (even immediate withdrawal) has the same uncertainty in terms of how you define “works.” In which case we might as well write all of our options on pieces of paper and draw one out of a hat. I really hate equations that can’t be solved.
Another excellent question. I’m not Henry Kissinger (or Warren Christopher). I’m in no position to answer these questions as I’m as big an idiot as anybody.
Here’s the thing Crimso:
People that are smarter than me, you and them haven’t been able to figure it out either. If no one can come up with a viable plan with even modest chances of succeeding, then we should assume such a plan does not exist.
As cleek pointed out, in a few months we will have entered our sixth year of STAYING and TRYING. And at the end of five years we are all irrationaly exuberant at the prospect that we might reduce the levels of horrific violence to the absolutely unconscionable levels witnessed in one of the previous years.
Trying is not a plan. A plan is a plan. And if none exists that can achieve our objectives within our given means, then the other option is to leave. The reason that no plan exists is that we cannot alter the types of societal forces unleashed with roughly 150,000 troops spread thin over a country that size.
Ergo.
Speaking of which, here is what I believe is the best argument for leaving, and the best plan wrapped into one:
(You don’t have to pay money to order it, you can download the pdf):
http://www.cfr.org/publication/12172/
Highly recommended.
Gary: God, I wish people would quit saying that. Pro-fascist urban legends suck.
Fine: Mussolini made the trains run on Italian time.
(:
Your point is well-taken, of course, and I was being lazy. The point underlying “making the trains run on time”, though — that despite the horrors fascist and totalitarian governments do occasionally have benefits, suitably localized — is still valid, despite your description of the sentiment as, I dunno, anti-lacunary.
novakant: Talking about the freedoms enjoyed by some people living in fundamentally unfree societies flies in the face of the very idea of human rights, which are universal, inalienable and indivisible.
On the contrary, in my case (at least) it highlights the distinction between a right and freedom. The existence of a “freedom” to me implies either the absence of a restriction — in the case of an active freedom, like the freedom to worship — or the absence of effect — in the case of a passive freedom, like freedom from violence — without making any further claims. One can parse this finer, between de jure freedoms and de facto freedoms, and so forth; one can talk about the freedoms of various groups, or the contingency of a freedom, or the statistical likelihood of a freedom (bizarre though that may be), and so forth.
To wit, I have no problem whatsoever saying that many of Saddam’s subjects were de facto free in many ways in the sense that, for the most part, he simply didn’t rape/kidnap/torture/annihilate most of his citizenry. They were not, however, de jure free — nor were the de facto freedoms guaranteed by much of anything other than chance — and the freedoms which they did, um, “enjoy”, did not encompass all the freedoms to which we usually refer when we talk about a “free society”.
Or, to summarize:
1) Saddam’s Iraq was not a free country, lacking several of the essential prerequisites. Yes, I know, be still my beating heart.
[Ditto the GDR, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, etc.]
2) Iraqis nevertheless had a number of de facto freedoms under Saddam.
3) Said de facto freedoms are now non facto (?) in the current anarchic “regime”.
4) A number of freedoms that did not exist under Saddam’s regime now exist de jure in Iraq…
5) …but said de jure freedoms are rarely de facto.
6) On balance, then, Iraqis now have less de facto freedom than they did five years ago.
Does that strike you (and Donald Johnson, come to that) as an adequate description of what’s going on?
“then we should assume such a plan does not exist.”
I question that assumption. By that logic I spent quite a few years looking for something that doesn’t exist. The fact that I haven’t found it (nor have many other thousands of people who were also looking) is evidence that it isn’t there? I submit that nothing is unknowable, except that which is by definition unknowable. I don’t think the answer to the question “What do we do now in Iraq?” remotely approaches unknowable. If you argue that it’s unknowable to the present “deciders” you may be right. Who would you suggest be the new “deciders,” and how should we select them?
And the effect was… maybe only to the Bronze Age?
And the larger point was that simply using brute force could not win that war.
Gary,
I’m sure Megan’s a nice person and probably fun to be around, but I’ve read her stuff from time to time and I don’t think it’s anything particularly interesting or substantive.
Great if it works. But then, I guess any path (even immediate withdrawal) has the same uncertainty in terms of how you define “works.” In which case we might as well write all of our options on pieces of paper and draw one out of a hat. I really hate equations that can’t be solved.
Well, you can never know for sure how things are going to turn out, but I think some options are more obviously (to my mind) likely to fail than others. I agree with the neocons that an immediate, unconditional American pullout would probably be followed by open civil war and the temptation for Iraq’s neighbors to intervene. However, an indefinite American troop presence (especially as combatants) isn’t likely to get us any closer to “victory” than we are now. As long as we are here in force, Maliki and the Kurds have no incentive to negotiate a real settlement with the Sunnis.
A settlement may not be possible, but everybody wants something, and the US (as well as Iran, the Saudis, and Europe) all have much to offer the various Iraqi factions, and each other. To my mind, a gradual “Vietnamization”-style pullout combined with some adroit horse-trading is probably the best solution avilable to us.
Crimso: How about we stay and TRY? I can just as easily assert that it is possible for the U.S. to stay and make things better. My crytsal ball is just as good as anyone else’s.
Your crystal ball patently doesn’t even work in hindsight.
As others have already noted, the US has been staying and continuing to smash up Iraq for nearly five years now. To argue that the US should continue to do this because it will “make things better” when doing so has in fact continued to make things appreciably worse, is… well, at some point, the bull just has to be made to leave the china shop.
Cleek said it already but it bears repeating:
How about we stay and TRY?
we’ve been trying for almost five years.
Doesn’t matter anyway. Republicans like this war and want to keep it up and Democrats are completely helpless to do anything about it.
“They like this war,” she said. “They want this war to continue. That was a revelation to me. I had thought they would listen to their constituents and change their position.”
Uhm Nancy? They didn’t listen to their constituents when they were in power! What made you think losing the House was going to be some kind of revelation to them? And all in all IMO they did not lose due to the war. They lost by ignoring their constituents, but the topic wasn’t the war. The last thing on their mind is what the bozos back in their district think about anything.
“And the larger point was that simply using brute force could not win that war.”
Of course it could. That it didn’t doesn’t mean it couldn’t. And even that assertion presupposes that what was used constituted “brute force.” Was more tonnage dropped on North Viet Nam during the war or on the Soviet Union during WWII? Anybody want to try to argue that the damage done to NVN was greater than that suffered by the USSR? By even an order of magnitude?
Crimso,
you seem fixated on my comment about the Vietnam bombing campaign, which you think counts as a knock down argument against everyone at ObWi and their notions about Iraq. If you revisit comment, you may note that the comment had nothing to do with Iraq, it had to do with McArdle’s blog posts on Vietnam. (two post titles ‘Travel in the time of Cholera‘ and ‘Isn’t it Quaint‘) That you want to make it some sort of defense of our Iraq policy suggests that you have a few issues you need to work thru.
“To my mind, a gradual “Vietnamization”-style pullout combined with some adroit horse-trading is probably the best solution avilable to us.”
Perhaps. Let’s hope it turns out better if we do.
“well, at some point, the bull just has to be made to leave the china shop.”
Precisely why I currently live in the Confederate States of America.
“Republicans like this war and want to keep it up and Democrats are completely helpless to do anything about it.”
So because Pelosi says they like it you believe her? And you believe the Democrats are helpless to do anything about it? They are quite capable of doing something about it.
“That you want to make it some sort of defense of our Iraq policy suggests that you have a few issues you need to work thru.”
Question your assumptions. Please. Such as: “which you think counts as a knock down argument against everyone at ObWi and their notions about Iraq.”
The estimates of civilian deaths in Vietnam range from 2.1 to 5 million. USSR was about 20 million. I think on an order of percentage of civilian population it’s probably an edge to the USSR, but if you throw in Cambodia and Laos, the Indochinese Peninsula probably suffered a lot more in the 1960’s and 1970’s than the USSR did, especially given the unequal duration of the wars.
I also neglected to mention that they attempted to defoliate much of Vietnam, both North and South.
Brute force also didn’t conquer the USSR in WWII.
IIRC, the brutality of the Soviet-German phase of the war was in the ground war.
DNFTT.
Crimso, you’ve made any number of comments in this thread concerning the fact that we could have but didn’t and related it to the discussion of Iraq. Read my comment again, and explain to me how it relates to anything other than McArdle’s ability to report accurately about Vietnam, a country she traveled thru.
“the Indochinese Peninsula probably suffered a lot more in the 1960’s and 1970’s than the USSR did, especially given the unequal duration of the wars.”
I disagree. Some estimates make 20 million look conservative (I’ve seen twice that). Either way, I assert that the war in the USSR was far worse. Do you think 20 million SE Asians died during that time frame? If so, would the number have increased or decreased if we had stayed, and why? Should we have deposed the Khmer Rouge? Would that have made the number increase or decrease?
Well, having been branded a troll, I bid you goodbye.
Crimso, I want to make sure I understand your rhetorical question. You seem to mean something like, “if at least ten times [an “order of magnitude” is a factor of ten] the tonnage dropped on the USSR in WWII had been dropped on North Viet Nam, they would have lost, therefore brute force could have won that war.” If that’s wrong, let me know.
Not sure if you mean absolute numbers, or proportional to population, land size, or urbanization index, but let that pass. Also, of course, the Eastern Front in WWII was not primarily an air front, for logistical reasons – the attacks were mostly made with artillery, tank rounds, and rifles, which makes it a little difficult to compare. And let’s assume that the increased tonnage you suggest was expended intelligently rather than, say, all dropped in an unpopulated region. All that aside, I still don’t exactly see your point.
Taken at its broadest, you seem to say that if you beat down a country enough, it will surrender and you win. Well, yes and no.
Taken a look at Ireland lately? Beaten down by brute force, it surrendered, more than once, and yet the war never really ended. Decimated, starved, blighted, mortgaged, occupied by foreign rulers and crofters…it kept rising. The writing is now on the wall, the Irish will probably have a united country again within our lifetimes.
The lesson to learn: in an age of nationalism, you cannot conquer. You can either limit your aims (war as extension of diplomacy), ethnic-cleanse (genocide or displacement), or lose.
In Viet Nam, we wanted to conquer or convert: keep the population there, but make them stop trying to be Communists. We poured billions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and a decade of changing plans down that hole, and failed. We could have exterminated the Vietnamese with more force, but there is no reason to think we could have converted them if we had only bombed harder.
Crimso: So because Pelosi says they like it you believe her? And you believe the Democrats are helpless to do anything about it? They are quite capable of doing something about it.
Heh. Full disclosure – I’m a (somewhat) reformed Republican. Independent now. That was all snark. I forget we have a lot of newer commenters around. My bad. I’m more on your side than theirs dude. You’ve fought the good fight here – don’t go away! I need some help here!
Well, having been branded a troll, I bid you goodbye.
Again – you are not and I will defend you against that. You ain’t no troll. These are good people, highly intelligent, as a group extremely formidable. I think you held your own. Don’t go away please.
You can either limit your aims (war as extension of diplomacy), ethnic-cleanse (genocide or displacement), or lose.
You’re missing one of the alternatives: saturation and cultural destruction. See, e.g., China and Tibet.
And FTR I don’t think Crimso is a troll either. Wrong, naturally, but not a troll (:
That seems to call for a TiO thread
Crimso, what are you trying to do here?
With your “supercilious condescension” dialed up to 11, you pick a fight over a purely semantic point regarding Iraq now v. Iraq then. When asked to share your informed and informative insights, it turns out you have none.
Now you’re trying to goad liberal japonicus into a slap-fight over–what? What, exactly, is your point?
Question your assumptions. Your assumptions will lead you to your ass, Grasshopper. You are wise, Crimso. A thousand thanks for your enlightenment. Seriously: spare us (spare everyone) this preening hubris. You’re not the ObWi sensei.
If you want a direct and honest discussion, then state your arguments, define your terms, communicate in a direct and honest way. Your reluctance to do any of these things does give rise to suspicions that you’re a t-r-o-l-l.
I’m curious: Does this Crimso persona match up with how you interact with strangers down there in the CSA? If so, you must get punched in the face all the damn time.
Well, having been branded a troll, I bid you goodbye.
And really folks… Can we pin this down a little better? Crimso has been around a week or so. H/She has made their points, defended them, responded to questions, clarified when asked, taken a lot of abuse – and been civil the entire time. If that’s a troll then so am I…
Christ. From time to time people will say we need alternate viewpoints around here. Then look what happens when one comes calling.
Crimso is clearly not trolling, in my view. Crimso is conversing. Disagreement is not trolling.
Trolls simply repeat whatever they have to say, without ever responding to what people say to them. Crimso is doing nothing of the kind.
And FTR I don’t think Crimso is a troll either. Wrong, naturally, but not a troll (:
To give an example, Bill simply repeats quotes from the Koran endlessly, and no matter how many times anyone introduces the point that texts are not people, and that the texts of the Old and New Testament are equally filled with lunatic and murderous commandments and anecdotes, he never responds, but simply repeats more quotes, as if it made a point, no matter that it’s completely non-responsive. Talking to Bill is talking to a wall. It doesn’t matter what one says, the same responses come out. It’s a non-interactive experience.
That’s a troll.
Crimso, on the other hand, simply engages in normal conversation. There’s absolutely no reason I can see why Crimso should be branded a troll.
I’m not going to be very active in the discussion, due to time-zone and IRL thresholds, but I’d like to add my voice to the choir. I don’t think Crimso is a troll, a think he/she has been rather civil at defending the (wrong) opinion.
Though there has been some evasion on his/her part I feel the pile-on was worse.
I think that the only thing that is knowable about pulling out or staying is that if the US pulls out, fewer US soldiers will die in Iraq…right now. As far as women’s, Christians’ or LGBT freedoms/rights are concerned, those won’t get any better, for why should they? I’d guess that Saddam kept those freedoms in place because they were useful to him and if not then they might have been more of a hassle to take away.
But how long did it take for him to get to a point where he could do that? How long did it take for him to be able to stop building schools and start building palaces? How long did it take him to consolidate his position long enough to start putting people into shredding machines; five years, ten? And he had the benefit of being able to be more and more ruthless as he gained power not less and less as we do.
So, let’s say that it’ll take decades to get Iraqis to the point where those that don’t want women to be forced to wear a burka if they don’t want to will have the capability to stand against those who do… even with our help*. It’ll take decades of a gradual dying off of the older hardliners and constant destruction of those younger ones that stick their heads up, by US forces and then, hopefully, gradually, more and more by Iraqi forces. But, and this is key, I think that eventually that would happen. Eventually, given the opportunity, Iraqis would want to give women the rights they once had, to live peacefully with one another and even to decide that LGBT people not only exist; but are valued members of their society**.
And, that says to me that there is a solution, it’s to outwait the fundamentalists and give the secularists a chance to survive and lead.
Is there a historical precedent for this? Maybe just across the border. In Iran, once the Shah was overthrown, a theocracy took hold, a theocracy that is now under a lot of pressure from the young and secular.
The first question I would ask is “Is it possible to get Iraq to where Iran is now (meaning to a point where the populace seems to prefer secularity to theocracy) without the intervening years of theocracy and necessary overthrow of such, and if so, would it take less that 30 years (assuming, wishful thinking alert, an internal overthrow of the theocracy by say 2009)”? The second question I would ask is “Would it be worth it?”
My answers are yes and I don’t know. My first yes answer is based on the speed at which the world moves and information travels now and in the future compared to the ‘70s – ‘00s meaning that I’d guess the same change of attitudes would happen, but in less time. But, would it be worth it? Well, if we assume that our leaving kicks off a civil war that brings Saudi Arabia in on the side of the Sunnis and Iran (along with China and Russia maybe) in on the side of the Shiites and a giant economic meltdown to follow, I’d have to say yes. But I just don’t know, that’s worst case. Thoughts?
*Mea culpa. Someone in a thread (yesterday maybe?) asked for that from a war supporter and so there it is. I thought the war made sense originally for a number of reasons that I don’t want to rehash here, but partly because Iraq had once been a place where people voted (I mean really voted) for things and women could be doctors and wear skirts. I thought that culture would surely be bubbling under the surface ready to show itself once again. And, once others saw that the Iraqis could do it, so might they, in Syria and Saudi Arabia etc. But, and I’m sorry if I sound like I’m blaming the Iraqis for this, it wasn’t there. And I was wrong. Why is that? I don’t recall an argument from anyone that went “With Saddam gone there will be a civil war because all these people really want to do is kill each other”. I honestly don’t. Because if I had heard that from someone(s) brave enough to make the statement, I might not have supported this. And I say “brave enough”, because that sounds a bit like “Democracy? They can’t handle Democracy.”, which sounds kinda rascist to me. I thought Democracy is what they would want, but didn’t realize that it would take 20 years not 2.
**I could be wrong (again). Maybe those people don’t exist there in a large enough amounts. Maybe it was the threat of Saddam that made people accept these things (freedoms) in the first place. But, I don’t want to believe that a majority of those folks support, for instance, the killings of gay people. Rather I’d like to believe that just the hardliners believe that and the difficulty is that they are willing to blow themselves up to make their point. Now’s your chance. If the right answer is that the majority really do want to kill gays, then let’s hear it now and I’ll join the chorus of voices asking us to leave right now, and take the Christians, LGBT, intellectuals and any women with us.
Greed, no0t a troll. And there are two reasons I say that.
One, he has, as Gary indicated, stayed around to defend his points, none of which were inflamatory. As OCSteve said, for the most part, he held his own.
Granted, some of his points (possibly her) were vague and non-conclusive, but that happens a lot here. In fact, in regards to Iraq, he/she did point to a part of hilzoy’s post that did merit discussion, and it goes beyond mere semantics.
Secondly, he, several times acknowledged that he found some of the responses to his comments thought provoking and worth considering.
In the beginning he/she was somewhat like Gary at times in that he was trying to get people who were making declarative statements to back them up through definition or some degree of data.
The unfortunate part is that the terms being bandied around (free, rights, etc) are by their nature somewhat open to interpretation.
Regarding the Iraq discussion, the only thing I would try to point to (and Gary I don’t have the specific cite and don’t at the present time have the time to find it) various polls of the Iraqi people which have indictaed, up until the past month or so, and increasing sense of having been “better off” under SH than now. What “better off” means is, again, open to interpretation.
Opening line was supposed to be “Agreed, not a troll.”
Gary Farber: Talking to Bill is talking to a wall. It doesn’t matter what one says, the same responses come out. It’s a non-interactive experience.
That’s a troll.
No, that’s a non-interactive experience. A troll posts comments with the sole intention of stirring up a response.
Crimso, on the other hand, simply engages in normal conversation.
Gary, if jesuitical inquisition is your idea of “normal conversation”… I just don’t know what to say.
Meh. When Crimso gets challenged, he often does bring things to the table.
I just think that sometimes he’s brings out factoids and doesn’t quite take the next step on their ramifications and implications, or hasn’t been encouraged to do so.
Crionna, support for the insurgency grew because of the US reaction to the insurgency–kicking down doors, carting people off to prison, torture, and possibly also a lot more civilian deaths caused by US forces than we hear about in the press. (That last point is controversial). So the Sunnis started supporting the insurgents, and some (not all) of the insurgents began targeting Shia civilians, and then after an especially vicious attack in Feb 2006, all hell broke loose as far as the civil war was concerned.
My point being that it wasn’t just that the Iraqis weren’t ready for democracy. If there was a right way to invade Iraq and install a democracy, we didn’t do it. (I’m conceding more than I actually believe even in implying that Bush seriously meant to install a democracy, or that there was a right way to do it. But we certainly made things worse than they had to be with some of our early actions.)
“Gary, if jesuitical inquisition is your idea of ‘normal conversation’… I just don’t know what to say.”
My family was Jewish, but, sure, exquisite examination of the nuances of language is the delight of my people.
“My people” being defined as those that fit that description, to be clear. I’ve tended to find them in the world of publishing, of science fiction fandom, of literate fandoms of every sort, of literate sorts on the internet, and so on.
You probably don’t want to be on any of the copyediting discussion lists/groups.
Myself, I delight in conversation that dwells on facts and cites and logic, rather than emotion and irrationalism and non-sequiturs. It’s why I like ObWi.
Crimso, to be sure, doesn’t seem to me to be playing/conversing at a terribly high level, but I’m not seeing any reason to challenge Crimso’s sincerity.
I’m, personally, delighted to have any kind of sincere conservative challenging voice to engage in discussion with.
I’ve been saying since I was of single digit age that I’d rather converse with people I disagree with on a reasonably intelligent basis than hear from folks who agree with me without being at all interesting. The latter is just boring, at best, after all.
My point being that it wasn’t just that the Iraqis weren’t ready for democracy. If there was a right way to invade Iraq and install a democracy, we didn’t do it.
That’s certainly a fair enough point. But, is the damage irrevocably done, or did that just lengthen the time required on the back end?
Also, would you say that the Sunnis recent change of heart (such that it is/has been reported) is real change or just waiting us out?
wherever the Sunni’s hearts may be, the notion that we have the ability to make them create an Iraq that’s open, tolerant, and liberal, even if they don’t want to, is silly.
it’s unknown right now if we can even force them into making a stable country (and i lean towards No, on that question – it’s something they’re going to have to work out for themselves, one way or another). demanding that it’s also ‘free’ is a bit hubristic, IMO.
but, of course, i repeat myself.
Do you think 20 million SE Asians died during that time frame?
Let’s speak proportionally. Given that the USSR had a larger population (indeed what it once was is now 15 countries) than Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, let’s not be disingenuous here and talk in sheer numbers, let’s speak proportionally. I believe that porportionally the number of civilian deaths were probably greater. Throw in the French Post-War Colonial war and I would say it surpasses it.
As for toppling the Khmer Rouge, are you not aware that when the Vietnamese toppled the Khmer Rouge, our antipathy towards Vietnam was so great that following happened:
PS: I don’t think you’re a troll.
From time to time people will say we need alternate viewpoints around here. Then look what happens when one comes calling.
It’s unclear to me whether Crimso is trolling or not. But I can damn sure tell you that I have no idea what his (or her) viewpoints are, because with precious few exceptions, they weren’t shared. The exceptions are (a) the USSR took a bigger beating than Vietnam, and (b) we could have decimated Vietnam in two hours.
Other than that, his comments here consist of challenging other people on their statements, then giving them grief when they replied to his challenges. Kind of entertaining for a while, I guess, but it gets old pretty fast.
So, you know, troll or no troll, I don’t, personally, find Crimso particularly congenial company. But, that’s just me. YMMV.
Thanks –
Hot damn. Welcome back, crionna; you’ve been missed.
On which note:
I don’t recall an argument from anyone that went “With Saddam gone there will be a civil war because all these people really want to do is kill each other”.
Really? Because I remember the specter of Yugoslavia being raised early and often in 2002…
Given a choice between “sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting “La la la la la la la I can’t HEAR you!”” and undermining our ability to ask the questions we need to ask if we are to do right by our troops, I know what I would choose.
–from the well-written article
So I’m hanging out with an acquaintance who has an ownership interest in the local True Value hardware store. The City has a population somewhere around 15,000. It’s a nice place with no real crime. You’ve had stuff delivered to your home from here if you live west of the Mississippi.
He has sold six AK-47s in the last two days. He attributes it to the upcoming election. I think it’s something deeper. I said; ‘you won’t be able to buy these things in ten years’. He said; ‘shorter than that’. He’s smarter than I am, and ended up selling me a 40-round magazine; ‘You won’t be able to buy these much longer’, he said.
Twenty-five bucks for probably a dollar’s worth of Russian steel. It looks cool though. Like a banana.
Jes, I did not say that the 3rd Reich was a golden age for women’s rights. It was just less bad than is usually assumed. What I wanted to say is that the real step down for women happened AFTER the end of the 3rd Reich in the Adenauer era (except for the right to vote he turned the clock back about half a century and he opposed the equal rights article of the new constitution). To be nasty, the Gestapo was gone but in a number of areas people (especially women) were actually less free up to at least 1968.
This doesn’t attempt to whitewash the nazis. Had they been in power longer (and had there been no war) the situation for women would have been much worse.
Really? Because I remember the specter of Yugoslavia being raised early and often in 2002…
Well, I may not have been the best read individual back then (still not as much as I’d like to, so little time) so I’ll take your word. But jeez, I really never heard that, at least often enough to break through. And I guess that’s where the Iran comparison breaks down a bit too huh, they’re primarily Shiite whereas there’s a much larger population percentage-wise of Sunnis in Iraq.
Oh, and thanks, been a while, and I don’t know how much I’ll actually comment (started lurking a while back) but this issue seemed to be an opportunity to say something about “my kind” 😉
wherever the Sunni’s hearts may be, the notion that we have the ability to make them create an Iraq that’s open, tolerant, and liberal, even if they don’t want to, is silly.
I getchya cleek, but I guess what I’m suggesting is not that we can make them do something that they don’t want to, but that eventually, given some support, they will want to and the support will have given them the breathing space to do so. If they’ll never want to, well that’s another kettle of gummi fish and like I said, I’ll support us getting out right now. Or are you saying that they may want to, but our presence is stopping them?
Hartmut: Fair enough. I did say I was no expert on German history! Thanks for making it clearer.
crionna: I getchya cleek, but I guess what I’m suggesting is not that we can make them do something that they don’t want to, but that eventually, given some support, they will want to and the support will have given them thebreathing space to do so.
Yes, quite possibly, but how is this an argument against the US occupation getting out of Iraq? It’s not as if the US military is providing support.
As for Iraqis not being ready for democracy: they were demanding elections right after the invasion. There could have been elections in 2003. Bush didn’t want the Iraqis to be able to vote in their own government, because a freely-elected government would have been highly unlikely to allow the Bush administration to sell off all of the Iraqi nationally-owned industries into foreign ownership.
Let’s not forget the US opposition to free elections as a source of support for the insurgency…
Does that strike you (and Donald Johnson, come to that) as an adequate description of what’s going on?
I have to say: yes and no. Your distinctions are helpful to an extent and I see were you’re going with this, but I have to question even the notion of “de facto” freedom in SH’s Iraq: if someone grants me the freedom to do something but can rescind this freedom at a moments notice and furthermore burn down my house, rape my daughters and torture me at any given time – well then I’m not sure if freedom is the right word, even with the qualifier attached. In the case of the GDR we actually had a somewhat opposite case, in that the regime took great pains to appear as a state based on the rule of law with a proper constitution, trials and lawyers for the defense – so you had nominally some sort of de jure freedom. The problem was: most of the oppression happened outside this legal framework and if your case got to the trial stage, they would get at you anyway and lock you up for life for nothing if they so chose.
It all comes back to my fundamental argument, that if freedom is granted and taken away arbitrarily by someone else, I have a hard time calling it freedom.
in a number of areas people (especially women) were actually less free up to at least 1968.
I think you’re overplaying the undeniable repression of the Adenauer era a bit here, but more importantly, and this is the other point of my argument, it’s hard to call it freedom if it means freedom unless you are a Jewish woman, a lesbian woman, a woman married to a Jew, a socialist woman, a woman who happened to make a joke about Hitler, in which case you were constantly having to fear that you and your children will be carted off to a concentration camp at any given moment. I know you’re probably the last person wanting to make excuses for the nazis, but I think there’s a problem with your argument, since, as repressive as the Adenauer era was, nobody had to fear anything like this.
But I have to go and am paging our esteemed resident ethics professor to clean up the mess, if she happens to have nothing better to do. I think there are actually quite interesting ethical questions here.
Yes, quite possibly, but how is this an argument against the US occupation getting out of Iraq? It’s not as if the US military is providing support.
So, they do want to, but the US’s presence is not currently helping? Again, I won’t claim to be the most well-read person, but a quick read of Totten in Fallujah and it sounds like we’re helping the Iraqis there start to get back to normal lives (compared to when AQI owned the city) and the Iraqi police, do their jobs. Granted, you can’t enter the city if you don’t live there, so, not so “free”, but, not a start? Not better than the last few years?
As for Iraqis not being ready for democracy: they were demanding elections right after the invasion.
Fair enough. So, eventual elections were too little too late and still are. No hope for that opinion to change there?
crionna: So, eventual elections were too little too late and still are. No hope for that opinion to change there?
Not so long as the US atrocities in Iraq go unpunished, no. A country which regards it acceptable for its military occupation to torture and murder the civilians and soldiers of the country it occupies, cannot hope to present itself as a country acceptable as a source of neutral support. Is it at all likely that Bush and Cheney are going to be impeached for Abu Ghraib, or Donald Rumsfeld put on trial, and on down to each American who committed atrocities in Iraq going on trial for it? Further, the Bush administration has in fact ensured that American mercenaries in Iraq are not subject to any rule of law, and while Americans may have lost track of this, or think that this is all last years news, I somehow doubt that Iraqis have.
But, is the damage irrevocably done, or did that just lengthen the time required on the back end?
The well-educated middle class population of Iraq, who on average, was most ‘secular’ in practise, has been the main target in Iraq. I think that a lot of them are amongst the millions of refugees and without them it is hard to build.
Add to that, Marbel, that there has never yet been a dedicated effort by the Bush administration to do anything about the reconstruction that did not directly entail large profits for big American corporations.
The Bush administration seemed to think that the reconstruction of Iraq was to be a source of profit for large Republican donors. I am not interested into getting into the argument about whether this was a motivation for invading Iraq: but I don’t see how anyone could now disagree that – at least – the Bush administration saw this as a useful secondary effect, a good way to reward loyal corporations in the US by giving them fat no-bid contracts.
The obvious problem with that (even Tacitus, at least back in 2004, agreed with me on this one) was that if reconstruction contracts had gone to Iraqi companies with Iraqi employees, using a normal bidding process, each dollar poured into Iraq would have been money spent to get three times its value: one, reconstruction might actually have started happening; two, the money paid to Iraqis would have been spent in Iraq, boosting the Iraqi economy; three, the Iraqis employed on reconstruction contracts would have had a strong motivation to support the new regime and oppose the insurgency.
And again, Crionna, while to Americans the money supposedly poured into Iraqi reconstruction that never left the US may be last year’s news, I’m certain that Iraqis living in the middle of it think of this as current news. Any Iraqi with access to the Internet knows how much money Halliburton and its subsidiaries got for “rebuilding”, and how little work was actually done.
“That’s certainly a fair enough point. But, is the damage irrevocably done, or did that just lengthen the time required on the back end?
Also, would you say that the Sunnis recent change of heart (such that it is/has been reported) is real change or just waiting us out?”
I don’t think the damage is irrevocable. I don’t feel comfortable with the antiwar argument I sometimes hear (though not here) that it was stupid to go into Iraq because those crazed Muslims/Arabs couldn’t possibly be ready for democracy. (I’m more in the camp that sneers and rolls its eyes at the thought that the Bush Administration was sincere about wanting to install a real democracy.) Saying that damage is irrevocable seems uncomfortably close to that.
Which doesn’t mean that we can repair it or that the damage can be repaired quickly. I’ve never known what should be done once we got into Iraq. For one thing, I’ve never thought we have sufficient information to be sure how much damage our own forces are inflicting, a point I make ad nauseum and this question is virtually never raised in the mainstream press, with the exception of a couple of articles by Michael Massing, one in Salon and the other in the Dec 20 issue of the New York Review. If Massing and others (like the Lancet paper authors and Andrew Bacevich) are correct, the toll is much greater than we know and yet people in mainstream circles continually talk about the effects of the troops almost entirely in terms of their ability to control Iraqi violence. A great many Iraqis, last I heard (in a poll from August, I think) still think attacks on US forces are justified, so there’s obviously something counterproductive about their presence. Are Iraqis just xenophobic, or do they have good reasons for feeling as they do?
I don’t know what the Sunnis feel. I suspect most of them still resent us,but at the moment find us useful and dislike the most extreme al Qaeda factions more. I might be wrong.
Andrew Bacevich writing last year on the subject of US-inflicted noncombatant deaths and the general lack of US interest in this.
Link
If I remember correctly there was much talk over here before the Iraq invasion what would happen after Saddam was dethroned (that this would not take long was seen as given). One main expectation was that Bush would simply install the egg-thief and his clique, get favorable contracts and go for the next target (Syria or Iran). The other discussed possibility was that Iraq would blow up in his face because without a strongman the country would fall apart (with the usual side effect of a lot of people dying through ethnic cleansing). I remember nobody (worth listening to) predicting that the Iraqis would become a model democracy. Not because they were somehow incapable but because the tradition was different and actual experience with democratic rules low.
A possible solution could have been a Soviet Republic (in the original sense, not a communist dictatorship) with local councils electing councils on the provincial level and those again electing a federal council. I think something like this was actually proposed but immediately rejected because this would heve interfere with the other war aims that would only work with a top-down approach.
—
On the German analogies
I find it interesting that the GDR was seen by many as actually more oppressive and intrusive than the 3rd Reich despite the latter being without doubt the more dangerous environment. This may have something to do with Hitler’s correct assumption that the older generations would be impossible to completely nazify. This resulted in a policy of “qualified tolerance” that allowed people to “not participate” as long as it was not openly oppositional (passive resistance was out of the question though). This was known as the “inner emigration”. The GDR on the other hand required the permanent acclamation by everyone and “insufficient enthusiasm” could get one into trouble (even in 1989 children were expelled from school for refusing to sign “petitions” praising the state for mass arrests of and violence against demonstrators). In Western Germany in the early postwar years it was more a generally oppressive climate that was more felt than actually enforced by state violence (despite some McCarthyite activities). In hindsight this was known as the Muff/Mief (fug, stale air).
Sorry, have to leave now.
Bill:
“I think it’s something deeper.”
Do these people need the weapons because they are moving to Belize?
“He attributes it to the upcoming election.”
Who’s he fixing to kill? Or is his personal banana a little on the small side?
My experience with folks who own weapons is that the real men and women don’t talk about their armory, being fairly well adjusted and not requiring the rolled-up socks in their pants for the bulge effect.
Then we have the “Bring ’em on” loud types in the camoflage pants and the erstaz flight suits (like our dear leader) who let everyone know they’re ready for … what? ….. but who require a diaper when “What” comes along.
If I wanted some gun humping, I’d hang at Redstate. But thanks for the effort.
This exchange has got me to thinking.
Were my forefathers prior to Columbus more free than my Native American brethren are today-cooped up on their reservations with their poverty, casinos, and alchohol?
Is freedom measured soley by the ability to read, undisturbed, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and dabble in the stock market?
Was the death of millions of my forbearers justified to bask today with this freedom?
I think it’s something deeper.
Me too.
It looks cool though. Like a banana.
Aha! A clue.
Thanks –
Quanto, “was it worth it” is one of the hardest questions anyone can ask about history, I think. Since we can’t go back and fix the past, we need to look at what we can do – rejoice in the good, fix the bad, and plan for the future so as to get more of the former and less of the latter. But since that requires acknowledging when we have done or are doing bad things, it’s understandably not popular in some circles.
“Aha! A clue.”
Bill: “He said, ‘shorter than that’ ”
I hate when it when Freud and the NRA pass cigars around.