by publius
From the Post, “Hussein’s Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted”:
Feith has vigorously defended his work, accusing Gimble of “giving bad advice based on incomplete fact-finding and poor logic[.]”
184 thoughts on “Noted Without Further Comment”
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It’s all
waterbodies under the bridge.mistakes were made, but we were correct to make them; because not making them would have been a mistake. and we don’t make mistakes.
There’s a house in my town that’s known as the former residence of a notorious ship captain. My stepson used to date the daughter of the family that lives there now.
The ship went down in a storm with all hands, except the captain alone, who somehow escaped in a dory.
The widows of the lost seamen tarred and feathered the captain and whipped him out of town.
Good times.
THanks –
I never thought there were connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda (but I’m was still a war supporter so feel free to discount everything I have to say), but what do you make of this statement in the linked article?
“said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.”
“said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.”
it’s simply impossible (and not in our interest) to go after every country that has links to some terrorist group. for example, we didn’t invade Chechnya.
that means palestinian groups. that’s not good obviously, but it’s not al qaeda and it’s not sufficient for war
Right.
“said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.”
so what? we were supposedly going into invade Iraq b/c of their connections w/ Al Quaeda, not ‘other terrorist groups.’ that’s way too general to be of any use whatsoever. It’s like the constant propping up of straw men by the neo cons when they use “some Democrats say.” Well define your terms. Say exactly who some democrats or ‘other terrorist groups’ are. Otherwise this is just more example of the Republicans gumming an issue.
Maybe we should invade parts of Spain because of indigenous support for ETA?
it’s simply impossible (and not in our interest) to go after every country that has links to some terrorist group. for example, we didn’t invade Chechnya.
not to mention that the US probably has ‘links’ to more terrorist groups, in every continent, than any other country out there.
Wrong byrnie.
They’re not terrorists if they support causes that we agree with. Like destabilizing Cuba. Or other Latin American regimes we have issues with. Also, any group willing to bloody Iran’s nose.
I hear that Great Britain has had prolonged negotiations with representatives of the IRA. I call for the immediate bombing of London.
For the sake of efficiency, we should outsource the job to somone who has experience bombing London. Germany’s pacifist these days, so I suggest we contact the IRA.
Brilliant!
I guess the reports of us actually *supporting* Al Qaeda linked terrorists in Lebanon means we’ll have to invade ourselves, now.
I see what you’re saying (even through the rather substantial layers of snark/sanctimony and arrogance).
(To be fair Moe99, the quote is from the article, not me.)
I think you are right that they are referring to Palestinian terrorist groups. I’m not sure why that makes it okay. The Palestinians have been known to go international. Personally, I thought support of terrorism was only 1 piece that led to my support for the war.
I’m curious, if Iraq had links to Al-Qaeda as deep as their links to Palestinians would support for the war have been acceptable then? Assume we’d still be in the same spot we are now.
enrak gets at a larger point (one I think yglesias and others have been getting at lately). war is not a good solution. so even assuming all these doomsday scenarios (deep AQ ties, WMDs), it’s not clear that war is the right way to respond to that.
i’m a little hesitant to rely too much on the Feith stuff, b/c i think war was a bad idea even if much of what he said was true.
america (and conservatives in particular) need to get rid of their embrace of war as a foreign policy solution. yes, maybe it’s justified sometimes, but there needs to be a heavey presumption against. and it’s b/c war has unintended consequences and (like the Heinsenberg(sp?) principle) it changes the society upon which it is thrust. hilzoy has made this point before and it’s a good one.
it’s not like you have Country X, war, then better Country X. You have X, war, and then some entirely different beast.
Meanwhile, never letting reality get in the way of politics, Cheney reasserts al-Qaida-Saddam link:
Smart guy, Cheney — he knows where to go for the audience that will buy his crap regardless of how out of touch with the facts it is.
Since the issue has been brought up, now seems as good a time as any to put forward a question which I have eben wondering about for years. Even before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, we have heard a lot about “Saddam’s support for terrorism” – and the main instance of this that has usually been cited is the infamous offer of payments ($25000, I think) to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers blown up attacking Israel.
Does anyone know, or have a link to any proof that any such payments were actually made? Or was this just Saddam’s way of getting cheap points with the “Arab Street”.
I realize that the issue of said payments is moot by this time: I was just wondering if there really was any such Iraqi “program” in existence, or was it all just more scaremongering, a la Saddam’s “nuclear” activities?
america (and conservatives in particular) need to get rid of their embrace of war as a foreign policy solution. yes, maybe it’s justified sometimes, but there needs to be a heavey presumption against. and it’s b/c war has unintended consequences and (like the Heinsenberg(sp?) principle)
The Law of Unintended Consequences, which conservatives have been banging liberal heads with for many, many decades.
Obviously, neocons think that this law doesn’t apply to them…
Obviously, neocons think that this law doesn’t apply to them…
To be fair, this is a universal human trait – irrespective of race, creed or political position.
What I find most depressing about the whole thing, was the big debate over moral justification, and the complete absence of debate over war aims and practicalities.
The administration never put forward any concrete war aims (‘regime change’, transforming the Mideast etc. are all vague waffle). I know quite a few conservative foreign policy wonks who were staunchly opposed to the war because, like most everyone else, they foresaw disaster for America’s national interest.
The hawk vs. dove debate really was a smokescreen; things shouldn’t even have gotten that far because the administration never even told us what they wanted to do, and how. (Why know now of course, that they had know idea themselves). Shouldn’t they at least have had to put forward a solution that was feasible before we even debated whether it was moral?
The Feith, rogue-intelligence thing is just depressing. I study FP/national security stuff for a living, mostly stuff in the 1960s. I can see for myself, even with subjects for which we have 40 years of hindsight, how you could pretty much find ‘evidence’ for any damn theory you want once you’re dealing with the vagaries, report-everything, qualify-everything of intelligence stuff. It’s not that they lobbied for their own policy that irks me, it’s that their independent intelligence-gathering was so damn amateurish. You wouldn’t pass an undergraduate paper with their standard of argumentation, let alone make national security policy. It’s such a sad window on the clownish realities of decision-making in Washington.
Jay C: Here you go.
OCSteve, from the article you linked to presented without comment:
“The Saudis used to give $US4000 to the martyrs, but now it depends on public donations.”
“The Saudis used to give $US4000 to the martyrs, but now it depends on public donations.”
remember all the conservatives demanding that we invade Saudi Arabia ? me either.
I think you are right that they are referring to Palestinian terrorist groups. I’m not sure why that makes it okay. The Palestinians have been known to go international.
Well, so do many other terrorists groups – some that we sponsor, tolerate or at least do not take action against.
As an aside: what international Palestinian terrorist acts are you referring to?
Klinghoffer, Munich.
What terrorist groups does the U.S. government support?
And, while I have learned my lesson and do not advocate invading Saudi Arabia, I and other war supporters would support action against SA. I consider them enemy number 1 in the GWOT (oops, War in Afghanistan/War in Iraq/no connection).
Publius, I’d be curious to see your thoughts on what we should do in the event we discover an enemy state actively supporting an international terrorist group? (feel free to point me to a prior post rather than rehashing something you’ve already discussed). Thanks.
As a side note, the payments to the families of suicide bombers always went primarily to rebuild their houses.
Why would they need to rebuild their houses, you ask? Because Israel destroys the house of the families of suicide bombers. It’s roughly analogous to how we in the U.S. destroy the house of convicted murderers.
Wait, we don’t do that? Well, why not? Because collective punishment is immoral and ineffective?
Well shoot. Somebody better tell the Israeli government.
Snark aside, the point is this: Though I don’t know where all the money from Saddam/Saudi Arabia/wherever went, there’s a huge difference between, on the one hand, supplying someone with money so they can buy bomb-building materials or fake documents that help them get into Tel-Aviv or whatever else a terrorist would need money for and, on the other hand (what I’ve read and heard from Americans who have spent time in Gaza), helping a family who has just lost a son and their home rebuild that home. The first enables terrorism, the second, frankly, doesn’t.
Look, I’d love to kill every terrorist on earth if we could. But we don’t have a policy of taking out every regime that lends support to any terrorist group anywhere, because it’s complete pie-in-the-sky stuff. We do what we can.
If you’re reduced to arguing that we took out Saddam because he supported Palestinian terorrists, and well, Palestinian terrorists killed people outside the boundaries of Israel in 1972 and 1985 therefore they’re “international terrorists” just like al-Qaeda… forgive me but you don’t have much of a case for war left.
And if your anti-terrorism strategy is that we should randomly pick a regime that lends some kind of support to terrorists and spend 5-10 years dedicating our armed forces to replacing that regime and restoring order, at which point we can move on to the next regime, I’m afraid I don’t find your plan very realistic. Too bad, really, because these organizations are pure evil.
Klinghoffer, Munich.
I’m sure we can all agree that this act, while clearly wrong, is not really comparable to al-Qaeda type large scale terorrism. The key factor is not that there is some literal cross border, international component to a given group’s actions, but rather the nature of the target, scope of operations, etc.
What terrorist groups does the U.S. government support?
Which decade?
In the 60s and 70s, Latin America provides a rich quarry. See, for example, Operation Condor as overseen by certain Argentinian generals and one Augusto Pinochet. This program’s handiwork even involved a terrorist act committed on American soil – Washington DC no less! Targets: Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffett. Means: Car bomb.
During the 1980s, I’d say you could probably still stick around south of the Rio Grande and take a look at roving death squads targeting civilians (including American Catholic nuns) in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, etc.
Of course, the use of mercenary type proxy forces to commit acts of terrorism on the civilian population predated the 1980s, and was quite a common practice for US companies/government agencies in connection with exploitative industries in the region such as oil and agriculture.
More recently, the CIA has funded Cuban terrorists who have gone on to blow up civilian jet liners, and set bombs at a university in Panama in order to destabilize and target Castro. In fact, these guys were recently let back in the country and given sanctuary by the Bush admin.
If we want to shift gears toward the Middle East, there has been some questionable links to the MEK – a terrorist group targeting Iran. More recently, the Jundullah in Pakistan with the same target in mind.
http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/3375
There are other examples, of course, but there are only so many hours in a day.
Joe Thomas:
You don’t think sending $25,000 to the family of a suicide bomber induces suicide bombing? I think one can build more than a house w/ $25,000 in Gaza.
Steve:
That’s not what I’m arguing. Iraq wasn’t random and you seem smart enough to know that.
Look, knowing what I know now I wouldn’t advocate for war in Iraq. But keep in mind what we know now:
1) Iraq didn’t have active WMDs or an active WMD program.
2) Iraq did not have operational ties to Al Qaeda.
We didn’t know that then.
Iraq is not the last conflict in the war against whatever the heck you want to call it. Given that War is no longer an option, what are our options in the event of state-sponsored terrorism? (No I don’t lie awake thinking about this, but I sincerely doubt that we will never face this issue in the future.)
Eric Martin: Weren’t those supported by the realist school of international relations?
How about this decade?
Publius, I’d be curious to see your thoughts on what we should do in the event we discover an enemy state actively supporting an international terrorist group?
It depends on what you mean by “international terrorist group.” If you’re counting the Palestinians, then that is a pretty wide net. We’d have dozens of regime targets.
Further, it depends upon the aims and objectives of the international terrorist group in question. If the group is seeking an Irish homeland, Tamil homeland or some such nationalistic dispute, I’d say we’d be hard pressed to find that sound reason to launch a war.
Most importantly: are we being targeted? Is the threat credible?
Our particular response should also depend on the characteristics of the enemy state: size, military strength, possibility of deterrence, possibility of negotiated settlement, alternative dispute resolution, etc.
For example, if China were funding a terrorist group that was attacking some of our business interests in, say, Indonesia, should that necessarily lead to war with China?
We should not come up with a clumsy, one-size-fits all doctrine. Such black and white policies are seductive for their apparent ease, but in real life lead to a plethora of negative repercussions.
We didn’t know that then.
yes we did.
How about this decade?
Uh, the activities vis-a-vis the MEK and Jundullah are ongoing as we speak – and are supported by neocon elements.
The Cuban terrorists are currently being shielded by the Bush administration – hardly a realist foreign policy bastion.
Also, the Bush administration has, reportedly, been aiding certain jihadist groups in Lebanon in order to attack Shiite Hezbollah. Those jihadist groups actually have ties to al-Qaeda.
If ties to Palestinian groups constituted a legitimate casus belli against Iraq, then surely we should be making plans to invade Gaza right now.
Sorry Eric, skimmed your post too quickly. I reread including the link.
I’m not advocating a one-size fits all policy. I’m interested in alternatives to war. As someone who has recently given up his “embrace” of all things war.
We are all going to need to think about that. I’m pretty sure that this group would be the first to point out that there just might be some “blowback” from our invasion of Iraq, yes?
And despite the fact that you are all sure that you are all always right, all of the time, you’ll actually need to convince people like me. Whom, I’m sure this group would be the first to point out, aren’t all that smart.
P.S. Sure we did cleek, sure we did. Just like we know that Iran is at least 5 years away from a nuclear bomb. Sorry, I mean we KNOW that Iran is at least 10 years away from a nuclear bomb.
We didn’t know that then.
Not wanting to open that particular can of worms, I’ll agree to call WMDs an open question. But as far as Iraq having operational ties to al-Qaeda, come on, there was no reason to think that was true. All you had were vague insinuations concerning a single meeting in Prague and lots of coincidental mentions of Iraq and 9/11 in the same sentence during administration speeches.
Iraq is not the last conflict in the war against whatever the heck you want to call it.
Well, it might be our last full-blown war of the type, actually, considering the loss of international credibility that we’d need for any non-unilateral action and the loss of domestic political capital for further adventures of the sort.
It doesn’t mean we have to pack up and go home, but it means we have to get a lot smarter about our strategy. If we play our cards right, we can do an awful lot to isolate the bad actors of the world – look how Bush’s father convinced all those Arab countries to actively take our side in the first Gulf War.
It’s important to keep in mind, though, that there’s not ever going to be some kind of zero tolerance policy, like you give one dime to a terrorist organization and blam, Uncle Sam kicks down the door. First, as with the example of the Iranian group, it seems we’d be in violation of our own zero-tolerance policy. Second, there simply isn’t enough money and there aren’t enough soldiers to take out each and every regime that violates this sort of policy. Nor, as we see from Iraq, does taking out one such regime have much of a deterrent effect. Hell, we’ve invaded TWO of Iran’s neighbors and they still keep sticking their thumb in our eye. But there’s a lot of room on the spectrum between a guy like Saddam, periodically writing checks to the families of suicide bombers (by the way, I’m not a big fan of the apologia above), and the Taliban and their deep-rooted relationship with al-Qaeda. There’s still room for serious engagement with the latter, as long as we remember to set the bar high and not go around invading every country that’s rumored to have some sort of connection to a group like al-Qaeda.
“We didn’t know that then.
yes we did.”
cleek, you beat me to it. We definitely knew there were no major ties, if any at all with al-Qaeda. And anybody that understood the ME knew that as long as Saddam was in poer there probably wouldn’t be any.
And as far as WMD, we may not have been sure there weren’t any, but by the time we invaded it was looking extremely dubtful.
OCSteve: Thanks: strange that I have never seen this til now.. oh well….
Enrak:
But keep in mind what we know now:
1) Iraq didn’t have active WMDs or an active WMD program.
2) Iraq did not have operational ties to Al Qaeda.
We didn’t know that then.
DID we “not know” that then? Or was it more of a case of the Bush Administration doing its damndest to make sure we “didn’t know”
– or more, precisely, never bothered to find out? Both the points you cite were highly questionable – even at the time: the Adminstration, in its headlong rush to war, utilized every bit of leverage with every media outlet it could influence to shut off, dismiss or ignore any and all evidence that contradicted its flimsy “rationales” for launching the invasion/occupation of Iraq.
The evidence was there – and “known”; it was just that too few Americans bothered to question the Powers That Be.
Steve, I agree with everything you wrote. I would probably disagree on the specifics in an actual case. My main worry is that our intelligence is so poor, how do we draw these kinds of distinctions in the future knowing now that we know so little.
We could easily be wrong in the other direction in the future.
JayC: Where is the evidence that we knew either one of those things at the time? We may have had evidence that neither supposition was true, but we didn’t KNOW it. There was no way to know it without being on the ground. Heck, it looks like Saddam didn’t KNOW it.
There’s a difference between the Bush administrations trumpeting of poor intelligence and actively knowing that the WMDs did not exist. The only person I know saying that at the time was Scott Ritter and he hadn’t been on the ground in 5 years.
I’m not advocating a one-size fits all policy. I’m interested in alternatives to war. As someone who has recently given up his “embrace” of all things war.
We are all going to need to think about that.
Indeed Enrak. I agree completely. But I would argue that we’ll mostly have to assess each case as it comes. And thinking hard about alternatives will be a must. Avoid the very human, knee jerk reaction to want to lash out at enemies real and perceived.
We must begin with a presumption against the use of the military where possible – it is clumsy, creates fertile ground for radicalism and terrorists, alienates moderates, is costly, and generally weakens our moral position.
That doesn’t mean never: I was in favor of the intervention in Afghanistan, and still am.
But we must try to marginalize and push to the fringes the terrorists and extremists. Then use law enforcement and targeted military solutions to neutralize them when they are thus vulnerable. In the meantime, we must try to repair the immense damage to our standing that the Bush administration has done in order to embody the more compelling ideological node in the larger battle for hearts and minds.
Finally, we should not only avoid war ourselves, but put an emphasis on tamping conflicts in general. They breed radicalism and terrorism – yes, even when WE’RE not involved.
Sadly, that’s just a start.
I suppose someone should make the obligatory point that while most thought Saddam had some WMD – at least before the inspectors got in pre-invasion and didn’t find any – very few thought he had a nuclear program. No serious voice thought he had a nuclear weapon.
Chem and bio weapons are very hard to weaponize, and very hard to use in a terrorist attack. Even if Saddam had some of the chem and bio weapons most groups believed he had, this was not a major threat. That would be, even if he had such agents AND had ties to al-Qaeda AND decided to share them with al-Qaeda AND al-Qaeda could use them in a successful attack.
Keep in mind: the use of Sarin in the Japanese subways was a failure from a terrorist’s perspective. Conventional explosives, ala Madrid, would have likely led to a higher death count. al-Qaeda was not, and is not, in need of Sarin gas to conduct successful ops.
In fact, they could probably still get more bang for their buck out of C-4.
We didn’t know that then.
Yes, we did.
Iraq is not the last conflict in the war against whatever the heck you want to call it.
I don’t want to call it anything. I’m not advocating a war against it, whatever it is.
If you think there’s an existential threat to the US out there someplace, you really ought to be able to name it.
If you expect anyone to think it’s important enough to go to war over, you better be able to say who the enemy is.
It’s been five and half years. We really should be drawing a bead on that particular question by now.
Thanks –
Sure we did cleek, sure we did. Just like we know that Iran is at least 5 years away from a nuclear bomb. Sorry, I mean we KNOW that Iran is at least 10 years away from a nuclear bomb.
hmm. what? i’m afraid you’ve confused me.
your 2:28 sounds a lot you’re saying like ‘we’ all thought, or had to assume, that those two things (Iraq+WMD, Iraq+alQ) were true.
i’m saying ‘we’ didn’t know or have to assume those things were true at all. in fact, i’ve never believed either of them. and i don’t believe BushCo believed them either.
Cleek, then I wrote poorly. I just meant to say that in 2003 we didn’t know those two things. Now we do.
Russell: Why does the threat have to be existential? 9/11 wasn’t existential. I do not believe there is a current threat out there that is existential, nor one in the near future (NF = 5 years). That is not the same as saying there is no threat. I believe there is a threat. I’m asking you all a hypothetical because I think we differ on that point. If there is a threat what are our options? If the threat is state sponsored what are our options. I for one think sanctions suck as an option. I’m becoming convinced that war sucks more. But, for me, lying back and waiting to get hit is also a fairly poor option. Do we have any others?
eric has my proxy on this (though said proxy does not extend to musical preferences)
I’d just like to thank those of you taking this seriously for doing so. I realize that many of you probably feel like “Man haven’t we been over this, like a thousand times.” or something like that. But I wasn’t here for that.
For me discussion like this is how I learn, and frankly there are not many sites on the internet where you can discuss this. Mostly what I get is snark. (From both right and left, I generally only post when I disagree.)
Enrak,
I think you’ll find that if you engage this site’s commenters in good faith – which I believe you have – you will get a response in kind.
Initially some, including me, were probably a little on the snarky side but, hey, it’s Friday. And we didn’t know where you were coming from. At least, in speaking for myself.
PS: As publius’ proxy I hereby proclaim, on his behalf, that in his most sober judgment Slanted and Enchanted is a better Pavement record than Brighten the Corners.
PPS: No backs.
Slanted and Enchanted is a better Pavement record than Brighten the Corners
like, duh.
Enrak, we, or at least I, will try to avoid snark.
In terms of WMD, by the time the actual invasion had taken place all evidence pointed to no WMD’s. The inspection teams, who were at that time being given full cooperation from Iraq, had found nothing, even when the US told them where to look.
I believe the main reason Bush pulled the plug on the inspections was because he started to realize they weren’t going to find anything, and there would go his primary rationale or the war.
The only terrorist group in Iraq was the one lead by Zarqawi, but Saddam had no relationship with them. In fact, they were based in the Kurdish area which was under our aerial protection. There are reasonable reports that the Pentagon gave Bush plans to wipe them out prior to the invasion but he nixed them, again because then he would lose part of his rationale.
The key phrase you used was “state-sponsored” terrorism. One of the rationales that this administration gives for why we shouldn’t pull out of Iraq is that then al Qaeda would have a foothold because Iraq would become a failed state.
This is why they were in Afghanistan and in the tribal aera of Pakistan where the government had litle control. Afghanistan because the Taliban tolerated them (questionable if they really sponsored them) and Pakistan because the government has litle to no power in the regions where they are.
I question if any state (including Syria or Iran) is likely to actually sponsor a terrorist organization that is attacking any of the major western powers, simply because it would be suicidal to do so.
And if they did, then I would probably support some military intervention. But otherwise, the best IMO option is to work with governments around the world through intelligence and police work to locate and take care of the terrorists we find.
Most of the current in custody terrorists have been captured that way, not through military intervention.
Secondly, we have to figure out some way to lessen the attraction of those groups, and invasion is usually not the best way. Afghanistan did not have much recruiting benefit for al Qaeda, but Iraq has. Plus it has resulted in more splinter groups that are loosely allied with al Qaeda or totally independent.
Slanted and Enchanted is a better Pavement record than Brighten the Corners
Hear hear! And let it be further noted that Wowee Zowee is a criminally underrated Pavement record. (My kingdom for an indie-geek open thread…)
I post this with the preface that John Miller really did nail it. But since I like to hear myself type, I’ll add what is most likely superfluous:
I believe there is a threat. I’m asking you all a hypothetical because I think we differ on that point. If there is a threat what are our options? If the threat is state sponsored what are our options. I for one think sanctions suck as an option. I’m becoming convinced that war sucks more. But, for me, lying back and waiting to get hit is also a fairly poor option. Do we have any others?
I can tell by your lack of engagement with my amorphous answers that you’re not really digging them. But, again, if you’re looking for a magic bullet, you will never be satisfied.
In my opinion, there is a threat from al-Qaeda, though not existential. This does not mean we should ignore it, though. As for responses – again, our reaction should be tailored to the contextual variables.
In order to find the right response for a given scenario, you must first answer the following questions:
What is the specific threat – ie which international terrorist group? What level of state sponsorship? What is the nature of the state doing the sponsoring? What is the likelihood that a non-military solution will affect the problem positively? Military solution?
Until you do that, you’ll be stuck in the world of abstraction and generalized platitudes like: war is not the answer; or we need to take the fight to the enemy; or we can’t just sit back and wait to get hit again, etc.
As John Miller pointed out, it’s highly unlikely that an actual state would sponsor a group targeting America like al-Qaeda because of the likely response on our part. Further, absent such a clear cut case, starting wars to generate a pro-American wave of democracy is about as foolhardy a foreign policy as can be imagined.
But if a situation arose where there was clear evidence of an actual state providing meaningful support to a terrorist group targeting us, we should ask the questions mentioned above and figure out a response.
In the parlance of the day: all options would remain, of course, on the table.
I think you’ll find that if you engage this site’s commenters in good faith – which I believe you have – you will get a response in kind.
I generally find this to be true. On this site. Most others, not so much.
Don’t worry about the snark. I can handle some, heck I probably deserve some. I just don’t stick around when the snark/content ratio goes over 1.0. As far as where I’m coming from I could lay it out, but I’m sure it would only bore you as you’ve probably seen it all before.
One thing I’m confused by here is the insistence that we knew that there were no WMD/WMD programs in Iraq. If that was the case, why weren’t the Democrats singing that from the rooftops?
Most of the current in custody terrorists have been captured that way, not through military intervention.
True. Keep in mind this has been accomplished through close coordination with our allies including France and the rest of the EU, despite the war in Iraq. I’m not sure that the WII has hurt us as much with our allies as the left generally maintains (I know, I hate that phrase (“the left”) too, but what’re ya gonna do).
I question if any state (including Syria or Iran) is likely to actually sponsor a terrorist organization that is attacking any of the major western powers, simply because it would be suicidal to do so.
Why not? In fact, this is one of the areas I think that I was most wrong about in my support of the invasion. My thought was that it would increase our deterrance in the Middle East. I think most people would agree with me that it has not.
I would not be surprised if Iran was covertly supporting terrorism in Iraq right now. Why wouldn’t they? They just committed an act of war with no repurcussions (which I think was the right move – the no repurcussions, not the snatching).
Secondly, we have to figure out some way to lessen the attraction of those groups, and invasion is usually not the best way.
Agreed. How? One of the reasons I supported the war was the democratic-Iraq idea (fantasy). Laugh if you must, but that was actually my biggest reason for supporting the war. Given that that has not worked, what’s the plan Stan?
2008 is less than 2 years away. It’ll be your turn. What’s the plan?
As John Miller pointed out, it’s highly unlikely that an actual state would sponsor a group targeting America like al-Qaeda because of the likely response on our part.
Look, if this is true then there’s no problem. But I’m not sure how comfortable I am with countries like Iran supporting groups like Hizb’allah. Sure, right now they are contained, same with the Palestinians, but that won’t last forever.
BTW, for me, the plan wasn’t invade Iraq then sit back and bask in the adulation and thanks of the now Pro-American Iraqi population. My feeling was democratic government, then I don’t care if they hate us. I’m all for letting countries vote in Islamic governments (including Saudi Arabia, I’d rather an elected Islamic gov’t than the current one) that hate us as long as it isn’t one-person, one-vote, one-time. If the government is truly accountable to the people I’m not concerned with how they view Americans. Heck, the French hate us, but I’m certainly not worried about them.
I can understand why you think that was a “flawed” policy prescription, but describing it the way you did is not accurate.
States and non-state groups do business out of mutual interest, and it’s general in a state’s interest to have contacts with as many such groups as possible. Without contacts you can’t keep an eye on them, you can’t get them to keep on eye on someone else for you, and you can’t influence them. The USA, which considers itself to have national security interests basically everywhere, therefore has contacts of variable and varying nature with all sorts of outfits.
I would also add that it’s extremely rare that some non-state group genuinely is an extension of a state’s foreign policy – they have their own agendas. One glaring exception would be certain communist parties during the Stalinist period, but even very loyal parties in Western Europe etc. were increasingly independent as time wore on. The most important parties, ie those that took over countries such as the CCP and Vietminh, were also the most independent.
It’s for that reason that, although I personally know very little about them, I treat with skepticism claims that Hezbollah are Iran’s proxy etc.
If the government is truly accountable to the people I’m not concerned with how they view Americans.
Well the current Iranian government has a pretty credible public mandate…
It’s for that reason that, although I personally know very little about them, I treat with skepticism claims that Hezbollah are Iran’s proxy etc.
Really? I’d be interested to learn where you get that idea. Yes, I’m serious. I have my own biases and read too much on the libertarian/conservative side of the blogosphere, but I try to keep an open mind.
Well the current Iranian government has a pretty credible public mandate…
Are you serious?
I understand that a vote was held in Iran. Even assuming, best case that the vote was not influenced by the mullah’s, the candidate selection was limited to those mullah-approved. I’m not sure how that gives them a credible mandate. Also, from what I’ve been led to understand Ahmadinejad is only allowed to go so far by the Ayatollah.
it’s highly unlikely that an actual state would sponsor a group targeting America like al-Qaeda because of the likely response on our part.
Eric, I generally agree, because the US is a powerful country, and they have declared Al Qaeda to be ‘untouchables’. The glaring exception though, is Pakistan. Although they originally supported the Taliban/Al-Qaeda for regional motivations, it also serves as a good example of how contacts with a ‘terrorist’ group can be parlayed into cash and favours from another power (the USA here) who decides one day that they want you to cut that group off.
Hence, as a general rule it’s useful to have contacts with such groups, as you never know when it might be profitable/useful. It’s not unusual for a capital like Washington to maintain contacts with multiple opposing factions, since you never know who might ultimately win out and take over the country.
Really? I’d be interested to learn where you get that idea.
Well, based on the fact that history is chock-full of revolutionary/terrorist groups that were portrayed as being the puppets of one state or another, and hindsight has proven that this is in fact extremely rare. Even groups that really do get set up initially by a foreign power tend to grow more and more independently-minded as they grow.
Hezbollah is a very real political force in Lebanon, it could perhaps claim a plurality in an election. It is actively runs local politics in the areas it run. In other words, it is a real localised political force with a local constituency. I find it extremely dubious that an organisation like that, whose day to day activities mostly consist of getting the trains to run on time and getting the trash collected, is merely the puppet of a foreign government. I doubt that Hezbollah would do anything Tehran asked that would jeapardise their local political base. In fact, with a real prospect of coming to power, they might well currently enjoy being the dominant partner in that relationship, as they’ve become an asset too valuable to risk losing.
Yeah Byrnie, Pakistan is the wrench in all of my nice talk. I was kind of afraid Enrak was going to raise that specter and then ask where my formula would take us then. Lucky for me, he’s playing nice for now 😉
It’s the hardest nut to crack. But I will say this, my erstwhile AmFoot colleague Blake Hounshell has some pretty good ideas about where to start
Also, as you point out, Pakistan went from supporting al-Qaeda to being (at least officially) hostile. Now in my opinion certain elements of the Pakistani government (particularly in the ISI) are probably still more than just sympathetic to al-Qaed – and are doing more than just keeping contacts alive.
But how do you target a country for the actions of some of its governmental apparatus?
BTW this question:
But how do you target a country for the actions of some of its governmental apparatus?
Could easily apply to Iran now and in the future given the serious internal divisions.
Okay, I see what you are saying. I find that reasonable.
Yeah Byrnie, Pakistan is the wrench in all of my nice talk. I was kind of afraid Enrak was going to raise that specter and then ask where my formula would take us then. Lucky for me, he’s playing nice for now 😉
I’m not playing nice. I’m just not sure what to do about Pakistan either. I’m all for democratic governance for Saudi Arabia, but my own theory (if you can call “Democracy for All – Yay!” a theory) hits a wrench when it comes to Pakistan. I’m not sure how a democratic government in Pakistan would play out for the U.S. in the short- to mid-term.
One more thought on Pakistan, the US and al-Qaeda:
I think Jim Henley was playing around with the theory recently that there might be an understanding between the Pakistani government and al-Qaeda that the govt will leave Waziristan (and al-Qaeda in it) more or less alone as long as al-Qaeda doesn’t do anything spectacular to force Pakistan’s hand – like a major attack on the US. In the meantime, there is a useful proxy force for exerting influence in Afghanistan eventually (and/or currently).
Obviously that’s pure speculation in terms of the existence of such a deal – but in practical terms, the result is not that far off from the status quo. At least thus far.
And it would fit in with the hypothetical Pakistani plan to use al-Qaeda as leverage to get goodies out of the US govt. Fighter jets are nothing to sneeze at.
I think this is pretty much what Ethiopia has been doing vis-a-vis Somalia and the Horn in general – hyping the threat to get money and arms from the US. Also: US military support in neutralizing long time rivals.
But then, Von and me might start fighting again if he hears me say that;)
Why does the threat have to be existential?
Fine, dial it down. Make it “merely serious”. Make it whatever you like.
Who’s the enemy?
Who is our opponent in this “war against whatever you like to call it”?
Thanks
Russell: I’m not sure we have anything to discuss. Our points of view are too far apart for there to be value for either of us. I believe that there is a small set of radical islamists (radical muslims?people of islamic descent?) struggling achieve mass casualty attacks on the U.S. and the West to increase their own standing in the region and draw more supporters to their cause. I believe the Cole and 9/11 were both a part of that strategy, and I think the Cole worked and 9/11 sort of backfired. I don’t think they can destroy the U.S. I do think they can hurt us further. I do think we should do everything we can to prevent that. Obviously, your mileage varies. We’ll have to agree to disagree.
Enrak: about what we knew: that Iraq had no serious connection to al Qaeda was, to me, the default assumption. (By “no serious connection” I mean, basically: no connection beyond whatever sort of connection anyone operating in the ME might have picked up, just in virtue of operating in the same region. It would no amaze me to learn that the CIA had some connection to AQ, not in the sense of funding them etc., but e.g. having someone we paid who worked for them, having gotten information from someone linked to them, etc.)might be able to create a democracy. But this will generally not be possible if you invade just in order to create a democracy. And it was not possible in Iraq.
I spent some time in the Middle East, and especially after 1988, when I was in eastern Turkey near the Iraqi border during part of the Anfal campaign, I followed events in Iraq (more or less; not the way serious experts do.) With this level of background, it was obvious that Saddam and AQ had next to nothing in common, other than being dreadful, and that they were in a lot of ways natural enemies.
Obviously, this didn’t mean that they couldn’t have been working together. Natural enemies sometimes do; e.g. Hitler and Stalin. But my default assumption was that they weren’t, and I saw nothing in the runup to the war that made me think otherwise. On the contrary: I heard a series of attempts to run the two of them together on the grounds that they were Dreadful People Who Were Arabs, and who therefore somehow must be working together, but when I looked for the substance, it just wasn’t there.
About WMDs: I believed that Iraq probably had them until maybe Jan. of 2003, on the grounds that they had had them before the first gulf war, and Saddam struck me as the sort of person who would probably go on trying to get them. But in Jan. 2003, or sometime around then (before the war began), I began to think: wait a minute. Blix is finding nothing. We have to be telling him where to look, both because it would be so obviously in Bush’s interest for him to emerge from some warehouse somewhere clutching a flask of anthrax or something, and because it seemed to me that it was a perfect opportunity for us to test the reliability of our intelligence. (I mean, how often does this sort of opportunity come along for a country’s intelligence services? And how could you possibly not want to take advantage of it?)
And yet Blix had found nothing. This didn’t make me think Saddam didn’t have them; far all I knew, he did. But it did make me think that we didn’t know where they were. And this in turn implied several things: first, that Rumsfeld and the others who claimed they knew where the WMD were were either liars or misled, and second, that whatever we knew, we knew on the basis not of technical intelligence but of human sources, and human sources who did not know where the WMD were, but (at best) that they existed. This latter point made me think that our intelligence, if we had it, was a lot less reliable than people were saying.
Fwiw, I didn’t think that Saddam’s having WMD wold have been a good reason to go to war if he had had them; I opposed the war when I thought he did, and when I decided that we just had no clue, it didn’t affect my views on the war.
About democracy promotion: the short version of my views on that score are: democracy promotion involves the creation of institutions and a bunch of other things that can only be done if a significant part of the population is willing to cooperate with you. Generally, people you invade are willing to cooperate with you only if they (or: a decent proportion of them) see your presence in their country as legitimate. This is true when their country commits an act of war against you, and you are retaliating in some basically fair way. (Japan, Germany, also Afghanistan.) It is also true when there is some ongoing humanitarian catastrophe that is bad enough that people really will understand why you invaded (Rwanda), or when the part of the country you invade will secede, and you have rescued its people in a way that they welcome (Kosovo.) In any such case, you have a reasonable reason for being there, and people (some people, at least) will probably react accordingly, even if they don’t like it much. In such cases, therefore, you
I had also watched with real dismay as this administration squandered the chance to really do Afghanistan right, and therefore had no confidence that they would do Iraq right. And even under the best conditions, democracy promotion is incredibly hard, and takes a level of thoughtfulness and commitment of which this administration seemed to me than, and seems to me now, to be incapable.
All the while, though, I loathed Saddam Hussein (being across the border during part of the Anfal campaign will do that to a girl.) I just didn’t see how invading was going to be a good idea. What I did see was how it would empower Iran, distract us from fighting al Qaeda, and in the worst case (which is being realized) provide al Qaeda with a replacement for the safe haven we were then in the process of denying them in Afghanistan — something I thought Saddam would never have given them. (He was a control freak, and would not, I thought, have tolerated uncontrollable people like AQ on his territory.)
What infuriated me was that to see this, I did not have to be an expert, just someone who had paid some attention to this area for a while. Ordinary citizens don’t have to pay attention to it, but I somehow imagined that the people in my government would do better than I did, since I wasn’t all that expert or capable. But no. Or rather, some of them did, but the people making decisions decided to disregard them. People like Feith.
Btw: guess where I’m going this summer? To the wrench in Eric’s nice talk, that’s where. (Capacity building in bioethics.)
This is an excellent jumping off point:
I think Jim Henley was playing around with the theory recently that there might be an understanding between the Pakistani government and al-Qaeda that the govt will leave Waziristan (and al-Qaeda in it) more or less alone as long as al-Qaeda doesn’t do anything spectacular to force Pakistan’s hand – like a major attack on the US. In the meantime, there is a useful proxy force for exerting influence in Afghanistan eventually (and/or currently).
How comfortable would you be if this is the case? Keeping in mind that Pakistan’s current government is not all that stable and Al-Qaeda knows this. How long do you think this agreement can hold? Does Al-Qaeda keep this agreement even after it purchases a loose Russian nuke? (I’m aware of the low likelihood of that last one. But I think we can all agree that Kerry had a pretty valid attack point against Bush on that one, didn’t he?)
What hilzoy said.
I believed that Iraq probably had them until maybe Jan. of 2003>
And this is one of the things I find frustrating. You can say this and no one here will laugh at you. But me saying that in March of 2003 I thought they had WMD is worthy of contempt. I understand what you are saying about Hans Blix, but Iraq is a big country. I did not have that much faith that Iraq wasn’t capable of hiding the weapons. Remember Saddam was only cooperating as much as he had to. It wasn’t really a free and open search until Jan or Feb of 2003. Plus, he was very much acting like he had something to hide.
Ordinary citizens don’t have to pay attention to it, but I somehow imagined that the people in my government would do better than I did, since I wasn’t all that expert or capable. But no. Or rather, some of them did, but the people making decisions decided to disregard them. People like Feith. I can understand your frustration here, but this is a fault of the Bush administration which I am not here to defend. They decided to push the WMD angle, not me. I had other reasons for my support.
This is true when their country commits an act of war against you, and you are retaliating in some basically fair way. (Japan, Germany,
Do you really think Japan and Germany were cooperative with democracy promotion because they figured, “well we did start this whole thing.”? Or because we literally bombed them into submission. I think the latter. I also think that is the missing ingredient in democracy promotion in Iraq, now. I also think, knowing what I know now, that if bombing into submission was required, it most certainly was not justified. Therefore democracy promotion was not a suitable strategy. Too little, too late of course.
(He was a control freak, and would not, I thought, have tolerated uncontrollable people like AQ on his territory.)
You and John Miller can have your own discussion about that.
JM The only terrorist group in Iraq was the one lead by Zarqawi, but Saddam had no relationship with them.
I had also watched with real dismay as this administration squandered the chance to really do Afghanistan right, and therefore had no confidence that they would do Iraq right.
I was not as much of a critic of the job they did in Afghanistan at the time. I thought the way they took down the Taliban was a good strategy with the necessary consequence of Tora Bora. I did not realize at the time that not having boots on the ground was going to be such a preference for Rumsfeld et al. But as much as I would love to cling to the “Incompentent Bust” meme as an excuse for Iraq, I don’t think that that explains the full monty.
I do agree that one is unlikely to create a successful democracy in a population like Iraq that has not been crushed by war. I also think that crushing a population like Iraq, already suffering from a totalitarian dictator like Saddam, is an undefendable thought.
Course, that leaves me in the same position that I had when I began this conversation. What do we do now? Which, I guess, has been answered. I’m not too happy with the answer, but what’re ya gonna do?
I also think that is the missing ingredient in democracy promotion in Iraq, now. I also think, knowing what I know now, that if bombing into submission was required, it most certainly was not justified.
By “knowing what I know now” I mean knowing that democracy promotion is not going to work as it was fashined in Iraq, not anything about ties to Al Qaeda or WMD. I don’t think those would have justified bombing into submission either. Just to be clear.
How comfortable would you be if this is the case?
Not very.
Which is why I think that Blake is right that we should start looking for other avenues of influence beyond Musharraf in Pakistan. If we can do that, we might eventually see a more capable and well-intentioned leadership. Also, tap into more flows of intel to better anticipate and react proactively to such an eventuality.
I expect Hilzoy to cultivate these entry points on her imminent trip. That is your mission Hilzoy, should you choose to accept it ; )
But seriously, Blake’s article makes a lot of sense on this front – which is his habit.
Also, that fear is why we need to be spending more – not less – on securing Russian loose nukes. Which is what Kerry argued, quite correctly (as acknowledged).
Enrak: the thing about Zarqawi was that he kept being trotted out as an example, but his group was in a part of Iraq that Saddam had no control over, since it was in the Kurdish part, and we had kept Saddam from exercising control there since the first Gulf War.
I don’t think that Japan and Germany were cooperative just because they thought that we had a good reason to be there. I absolutely think that it colored their attitudes towards us. — I mean, I assume that most people’s reaction to having someone take over their country would be fury and hatred, which is why I found the whole ‘we will be greeted as liberators’ thing bizarre. But I think this might be ameliorated somewhat if, say, one’s country was Germany and it was 1945, since then you would probably hate the occupation, but you probably wouldn’t think: and what are you doing in my country anyways? I’m not saying I’d expect anyone to like it; just that the difference between utter fury and bitter acceptance is significant, if you need people to help create institutions.
And Eric: I don’t do that sort of thing. I restrict myself to generally hoping that the larger the web of personal contacts between citizens of different countries, the more chances there are to mitigate any misunderstandings that might arise.
And Eric: I don’t do that sort of thing. I restrict myself to generally hoping that the larger the web of personal contacts between citizens of different countries, the more chances there are to mitigate any misunderstandings that might arise.
Only a joke ; )
And this is one of the things I find frustrating. You can say this and no one here will laugh at you. But me saying that in March of 2003 I thought they had WMD is worthy of contempt. I understand what you are saying about Hans Blix, but Iraq is a big country. I did not have that much faith that Iraq wasn’t capable of hiding the weapons. Remember Saddam was only cooperating as much as he had to. It wasn’t really a free and open search until Jan or Feb of 2003. Plus, he was very much acting like he had something to hide.
The thing is, though Enrak, not all WMD are the same. Nuclear weapons are leaps and bounds ahead of most chem and bio weapons in terms of destructive capacity (especially when you factor in difficulty of weaponization and delivery systems). It’s not like Saddam, or al-Qaeda, was going to get a chance at aerial bombardment or massive, sustained artillery barrage on US soil.
So to say that you thought Saddam had WMD in March 2003 demands a follow up question: Which WMD? Because it matters. That is why the Bush administration’s most egregious lies came in the context of hyping Saddam’s nuclear capacity. That’s the aluminium tubers, Niger yellow cake and ominous warnings about mushroom clouds.
Anyway, I’ll repeat this earlier comment because it’s still relevant:
I suppose someone should make the obligatory point that while most thought Saddam had some WMD – at least before the inspectors got in pre-invasion and didn’t find any – very few thought he had a nuclear program. No serious voice thought he had a nuclear weapon.
Chem and bio weapons are very hard to weaponize, and very hard to use in a terrorist attack. Even if Saddam had some of the chem and bio weapons most groups believed he had, this was not a major threat. That would be, even if he had such agents AND had ties to al-Qaeda AND decided to share them with al-Qaeda AND al-Qaeda could use them in a successful attack.
Keep in mind: the use of Sarin in the Japanese subways was a failure from a terrorist’s perspective. Conventional explosives, ala Madrid, would have likely led to a higher death count. al-Qaeda was not, and is not, in need of Sarin gas to conduct successful ops.
In fact, they could probably still get more bang for their buck out of C-4.
There’s also the question of whether going in with an army and trying to overthrow the government/police everybody/find the bad guys is actually the best use of our cash and resources.
That’s what really has pissed me off about Iraq–even if we had had more boots on the ground it’s a textbook case of what Arthur C. Clarke outlines in his short tale “Strategy”. About the only result so far has been one broken country, a la Yugoslavia after Tito, a lot of dead people on all sides, and the US having demonstrated that although it has nukes, it still can’t handle a standard guerrilla insurgency. Rather than bolstering US power, Bush et al have demonstrated the soft yellow underbelly of it to everyone.
I’m not sure we have anything to discuss
Maybe, but through the magic of the internets here we are anyway.
The names of the small groups of Islamic militants that have attacked Americans are Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, and to a lesser extent Hizbollah. If you want to make an argument that an armed response against those groups is a good idea, I’d be happy to entertain it.
Talk about the “War on Terror”, “the Long War”, etc., seem to me to be talk about not much of anything at all. It’s blather. Hot air. It’s a phrase devoid of content.
What I find remarkable here is that, in 2007, four years into our increasingly futile adventure in Iraq, you, as a self-professed supporter of that war, have managed to engage the polite attention of folks here in a sincere effort to explain to you why invading Iraq might not have been a good idea.
I mean you no personal ill will, at all, and am happy to take your claim of earnestness at face value, but what I want to know is why every supporter of the invasion of Iraq isn’t spending every minute of the time they spend addressing other folks apologizing and rending their garments out of grief for the calamity they have helped bring to this nation.
Why do folks who opposed the war have to explain why they opposed it? Look around you and see for yourself.
The topic of the original post here was Doug Feith’s refusal, after all that has been said and done, to acknowledge or accept any responsibility for the travesty he contributed to. I think Doug Feith should be ashamed to show his face in public. I think he should be laughed off of any public forum on which he tries to appear. I think his name should be remembered, forever, as the man who deliberately distorted legitimate intelligence in a deliberate effort to lead the nation into an unnecessary and disastrous war.
So, if I seem to be impatient with your requests for explanations and justifications, that’s why. I’m waiting for someone, somewhere, to say “I was wrong, I have incurred a debt I can never repay, and I am deeply sorry”.
Haven’t heard it yet. Not once.
Thanks –
Mr. Enrak, I’d like to offer two points for your consideration:
First, on the statement that terrorists can hurt us. You know, one of the interesting things about the immune system is that it works best when half of all deaths from infection come from the immune response rather than the infection itself (think about the survival factors and you’ll understand why). My point is that the reaction to something can be more damaging than the stimulus itself. Such is the case with 9/11. That attack cost us about $200 billion (estimates vary). But our response has already cost us about $500 billion in direct costs and when you factor in deferred and indirect costs, the cost easily passes a trillion dollars. In other words, our ill-judged response cost us much more than the attack itself.
My second point concerns your comment about Germany and Japan embracing democracy because we bombed them into submission. There is very little causal connection between our victory and their embrace of democracy, other than wiping out the old government and creating fertile ground on which democracy could flourish. But it is important to remember that democracy succeeded in Japan and Germany because both societies were already prepared for it. They had all the necessary social factors in place. I am absolutely certain that, had we merely defeated them but not destroyed their political structures, both nations would have evolved into democracies of their own accord — although it would have taken several decades.
Victory in war doesn’t force democracy upon people. The basic concept that makes democracy work is a broad respect for the rule of law. A society that has that respect can readily become a democracy. A society that doesn’t have that respect cannot become a democracy. Iraq doesn’t have it; therefore Iraq will not become a functioning democracy at any time in the foreseeable future. The feeble democracy that we are propping up will collapse shortly after our departure, and a new despotism will rise in its place. That’s what will happen no matter what we do. Even if the surge works and the place is completely pacified, that’s how this scenario will end. Guaranteed.
john miller: from the article you linked to presented without comment
cleek: remember all the conservatives demanding that we invade Saudi Arabia
No doubt. I predict that dealing with the Saudis is going to be one of the biggest challenges of the next administration. Man I hate our dependency on the oil ticks. I repeat myself, but – even though I am not on this GW bandwagon I’ll support anything that gets the oil-tick boot off of our throat.
Enrak,
And this is one of the things I find frustrating. You can say this and no one here will laugh at you. But me saying that in March of 2003 I thought they had WMD is worthy of contempt. I understand what you are saying about Hans Blix, but Iraq is a big country. I did not have that much faith that Iraq wasn’t capable of hiding the weapons. Remember Saddam was only cooperating as much as he had to. It wasn’t really a free and open search until Jan or Feb of 2003. Plus, he was very much acting like he had something to hide.
Well, maybe…
But look at the statements of ElBaradei to the UN Security Council:
” To conclude: we have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons programme since the elimination of the programme in the 1990s.”
(Jan 27, 2003)
“After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.”
(March 7, 2003)
During that later UN Security Council meeting he also “killed” the “aluminium tubes/centrifuges claim” (“There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminium tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment.”) and the “uranium ore from Niger claim” (“Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents – which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger – are in fact not authentic.”).
That took care of the most dangerous WMD.
And as to Blix:
“As I noted on 14 February, intelligence authorities have claimed that weapons of mass destruction are moved around Iraq by trucks and, in particular, that there are mobile production units for biological weapons. The Iraqi side states that such activities do not exist. Several inspections have taken place at declared and undeclared sites in relation to mobile production facilities. Food testing mobile laboratories and mobile workshops have been seen, as well as large containers with seed processing equipment. No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found. Iraq is expected to assist in the development of credible ways to conduct random checks of ground transportation.
…
There have been reports, denied from the Iraqi side, that proscribed activities are conducted underground. Iraq should provide information on any underground structure suitable for the production or storage of WMD. During inspections of declared or undeclared facilities, inspection teams have examined building structures for any possible underground facilities. In addition, ground penetrating radar equipment was used in several specific locations. No underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far.
…
How much time would it take to resolve the key remaining disarmament tasks? While cooperation can and is to be immediate, disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant. Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months.”
(March 7, 2003)
Note that Blix is asking for months, not years.
And of course we also had the Briefing Notes On UNSCOM Interview
With Hussein Kamel published in February 2003. (Pretty much everything was destroyed after 1991 according to him.)
So – as hilzoy notes – one could get pretty skeptical about those WMD claims in early 2003. At least that´s what happened with me. Especially if assuming that Western intelligence agencies were giving information to Blix and ElBaradei. And still their teams found nothing significant.
And concerning hiding the production sites during inspections with accompanying reconnaissance flights (“American U-2 and French Mirage surveillance aircraft already give us valuable imagery, supplementing satellite pictures and we would expect soon to be able to add night vision capability through an aircraft offered to us by the Russian Federation. We also expect to add low-level, close area surveillance through drones provided by Germany.”). Somewhat difficult – maybe even impossible – in case of nuclear WMDs. You need an awful lot of equipment for that.
And for chemical and biological weapons?
Probably depends on the amount you want to produce. You want to make a small amount? Sure, that´s possible to hide. Others have already mentioned the Sarin attack in Japan.
You want to produce an amount significant for your armed forces? Once again probably difficult because the production sites need to be somewhat larger. 🙂
Not to mention that even if you hide them in the desert or underground, you´d see traffic to the sites. You have to get the “raw materials” there, you see. Like precursor chemicals in case you want to produce chemical weapons. Larger sites also need “dedicated” electrical power. Which means either land lines or a power station on site. And you need to staff those sites. Not only technicians but also some of the experts. Not totally impossible but pretty difficult if foreign intelligence services are monitoring you.
To conclude:
– No evidence for nuclear weapons.
In fact, American and British claims were proven to be false before the war.
– No production sites (mobile or otherwise) found for chemical or biological weapons. Despite hundreds of trips, tests, interviews and accompanying air surveillance.
– The only thing remaining was the difference in documents between chemical (and maybe biological) weapons produced before 1991 and the amount “used” during the Iraq-Iran war / destroyed by the UN teams between 1991 and 1998. Here we had the Hussein Kamal interviews from 1995 (Everything destroyed. But unconfirmed by the UN). Still it was a question of how many of these “old” chemical weapons were still “functioning” after a shelf life of 10+ years.
russell: what I want to know is why every supporter of the invasion of Iraq isn’t spending every minute of the time they spend addressing other folks apologizing and rending their garments out of grief for the calamity they have helped bring to this nation
There are only so many hours in the day?
Russell – you did not direct this at me and this is not directed at you, but it is something I get a lot, so this is just a bit of a rant.
Beyond expressing your regret, acknowledging your mistake, and abandoning your party, I don’t know what else we should do. Do I cringe at every new American death or report of toddlers blown up in the marketplace? Yes. Do I feel guilt and personal responsibility? Yes.
I drive by Dover frequently, up and down Route 1. Many days there is a cargo plane coming in for a landing. I always wonder, how many caskets on that one? What parts of the country are they going to? How many kids get their daddy back in a box this time? It is often 30 miles before my cheeks are dry.
I did that – my fault and my responsibility. I own a piece of each of those caskets.
I’ve attended memorial services for soldiers here in MD. No one I knew. Just close enough to make the drive and I felt an obligation. Stood in the back, hung my head, and avoided looking into the face of the spouse and kids. National Guard or RA, they bury them the same.
I don’t know what else to do dude. Other than promising you that I will never support another war short of our shores being invaded – I don’t know what else to do.
Detlef –
Correct.
The material “proof” for connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq were all found to be weak and insubstantial before we invaded.
The material “proof” for WMD programs — aluminum tubes etc. — were all found to be weak and insubstantial before we invaded. Anyone remember the “unmanned drones” that were going to fly across the Atlantic and bomb the US?
UN arms inspectors were in country for the months prior to our invasion, and in spite of their best efforts, found nothing.
The idea of inserting a democracy into the heart of the middle east is something that emerged after these other causi belli were proven false.
The war was bullshit. Hook, line, and sinker. Bullshit from beginning to end.
I’m not looking to pick on Mr. Enrak in particular, but instead of him requiring us to explain why we opposed the war, I’d like him to explain why he supported it.
Enrak, you were wrong. There was sufficient information available for you not to be wrong, but you failed to avail yourself of it. Own it. Or, at least, quit requiring the rest of us to explain why we thought it was a bad idea at the time.
You were wrong. Own it, and give it a freaking rest already.
I can’t tell you how sick I am of hashing over these same stupid, tragic, idiotic arguments over and over again.
Iraq is a disaster, for us, for the Iraqis, and most likely for the entire region. 2,000+ Americans have been killed, tens of thousands wounded, and the Iraqi casualties are an order of magnitude more than that. Billions upon billions of dollars have literally been pissed away into the sand. The nation of Iraq is a train wreck. The end result is exactly the sectarian knife fight intelligent people predicted it would be four years ago.
Can we please stop having this debate. Enrak, you were freaking wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. For Christ’s sake, please own it and move on. You were, and probably continue to be, wrong.
I suspect I’m on the verge of being rude, so I’ll appreciate the editors letting me know if I look like I’m going to cross any of the lines of ObWi etiquette.
Thanks –
Russell – you did not direct this at me and this is not directed at you, but it is something I get a lot, so this is just a bit of a rant.
Hey man, rant away. You’ll get no objection from me.
I don’t know what else to do dude. Other than promising you that I will never support another war short of our shores being invaded – I don’t know what else to do.
Not that you owe me anything, but that works for me. Many many thanks, in fact, I appreciate it.
I own a piece of each of those caskets.
We all own a piece of it.
Respect –
OCSteve, I don’t think you have to do anything. This is not a matter between you and anybody else, and you owe nobody any apologies, rituals of remorse, or anything else. You made your call; you were wrong; that’s a personal matter for your concern only. I do object to those who publicly refuse to admit that they were wrong, who loudly declare their continuing support of this ongoing disaster. Their pride is the cause of continuing suffering.
There weren’t that many Americans who were dead set against this war from the getgo. I am proud to be among that group. But my pride does not extend to demeaning those who were wrong and now recognize their mistake. I’ve been wrong myself, too, and I won’t genuflect and apologize to those who were right when i was wrong. I’ll just pay more attention to what they have to say the next time.
russell: you haven’t crossed the line yet, but you are in its vicinity. Enrak asked a polite question; I gave him a polite answer. The rest is his business alone.
Like you, I get angry at people who actually helped bring on the war — in some more material way than thinking it might be a good idea — and either don’t admit their mistakes or go on talking as though those of us who did not get it wrong have something to prove to them. For this reason, I have been known to get mad at Cheney, Bush, Feith, Rumsfeld, the rest of the neocons, and also various columnists like, oh, Tom Friedman. But that’s different from being mad at the likes of Enrak or OCSteve (assuming neither is Doug Feith under a pseudonym): those were people who had a responsibility to get it right — a job or a position of influence that involved staking their judgment and asking the rest of us to trust it — and who not only failed, but don’t recognize that fact or draw its consequences.
If Richard Perle shows up here in comments (I can foresee that this will produce lots of spoofs, but what the heck), I will lecture him and demand apologies on behalf of people who have died and families who have been torn apart. But I will not lecture normal citizens who ought to have a government that they can trust to get things at least basically right, and who did their best, as I see no reason to doubt that Enrak and/or OCSteve did; nor do I think it;s any of my business to ask them why they don’t spend the rest of their lives in self-abasement. As OCSteve reminds us, we don;t know what they do when they’re not online; when they are, we owe them, like everyone else, generosity and the benefit of the doubt.
Erasmussimo: that’s a personal matter for your concern only
I’ve said a few times that blogs are group therapy writ large. To that extent, I do owe honesty and remorse to the folks I wish to engage with on issues of the day. Can I honestly comment about potential conflict with Iran without acknowledging my complicity on Iraq? Hilzoy is the ethicist among us so I leave that to her. From my perspective, if I don’t come clean on Iraq, why the hell should I expect you to listen to me on Iran?
Hilzoy: assuming neither is Doug Feith under a pseudonym
You know my IP 🙂 I know what you are saying. But Doug Feith? It’s a good thing I like you…
when they are, we owe them, like everyone else, generosity and the benefit of the doubt
This is why I think you represent the left. If I hadn’t stumbled across this site I would have thought Jane Hamsher represented the left. I’ll take Hilzoy any day.
you haven’t crossed the line yet, but you are in its vicinity.
Noted. I think I’ll take a break for a while. Thanks for the heads up.
For the record, I have no beef, nor have I ever had any beef, with OCSteve.
Thanks –
What terrorist groups does the U.S. government support?
Currently, at a minimum, the MEK and the Jundullah.
Historically, the contras, UNITA, a whole collection of Cuban terrorists.
For the record, and only because I was not aware of ObiWi, if it existed at the time, I offered an apology to members of another blog (that held many members from outside the US) an apology on the eve of the Iraq invasion. It drew nasty crticism from a couple but each year on the anniversary of same, I return to it and am both glad and sad that I offered it.
OCSteve: I don’t know what else to do dude. Other than promising you that I will never support another war short of our shores being invaded – I don’t know what else to do.
I don’t think there is anything else you should have to do, OCSteve – well, with regard to starting wars, anyway.
Enrak, the notion that it wasn’t possible to create a “successful democracy” in Iraq because it hadn’t been “crushed by war” is just plain false. It would have been very difficult for the US occupation to “create a democracy” in Iraq, after the history of injustice and mistreatment towards Iraq that the US had, but we’ll never know if it was impossible if tried, because the US didn’t try.
Do you know what the first violent action of US troops against unarmed Iraqis in Fallujah was, and when? April 28, 2003. A few hundred Iraqis having a peaceful demonstration against the occupation and demanding free elections were fired on by US troops. 17 Iraqis killed, no US casualties (even though the US troops later claimed that it was gunfire from the protesters that had started the “incident”). For the first couple of months, Fallujah was one of the most peaceful areas of the country: the mayor of the city was pro-American.
The US did not succeed in creating a democracy in Iraq because, from the beginning, there was absolutely no intent to do so and, in fact, rooted opposition against the idea of Iraqis getting to vote in their own government which would then be in control of all Iraqi resources – including the oil.
And, this too was fairly obvious from the beginning, Enrak. In March 2003, no one in the US was making plans to run elections in Iraq in the near future. That wasn’t at any point part of the invasion/occupation plan, even though the Bush administration then claimed they were planning to leave the country in a few months. So, whatever they were planning to do in those few months, it was obvious to anyone who cared to look that they weren’t planning to run national elections and help Iraqis vote in a new government.
Concerning post-WW2 democracy in Germany
Quite a complex thing.
1.The country knew how democracy worked and there were a few democrats left from the first experiment.
2.Knowing what didn’t work the last time played a huge part in the new constitution.
3.There was no real “de-Baathification” and even a lot of truly guilty officials either kept their job or got something similar(that reduced the number of people that would not accept the new way of things).
4.The democracy was quite authoritarian in the first 1-2 decades.
5.Nobody believed that the US was there to steal the resources.
6.There was a true outside threat (the USSR) and the US was seen as a protector (not a “loved” one but clearly better than the alternative).
7.The country was/is far more homogeneous (separatist lenings in Bavaria aside) than Iraq
8.The nazis had made themselves quite unpopular in the last days of the war.
9.The US brought real help to the people/country and without apparent evil intentions (including but not exclusively 5.)
…
It took decades for the democracy to take permanent hold here and there was no 100% guarantee that it would not go the way of Weimar (post-WW1 was a textbook example of how to botch it from both the allied and the German side).
Btw, Can anyone tell me how much direct contact Bin Laden had with any of the 9/11 hijackers? How many did he meet with personally? How often did they meet?
I would ask if the ones he didn’t meet at all were still effective in their mission, but I think we all know the answer to that question.
Just wondering?
6.There was a true outside threat (the USSR) and the US was seen as a protector (not a “loved” one but clearly better than the alternative).
Maybe right up to the time we deployed the Pershing II missiles. My German friends were suddenly convinced that our intent was to have a nuclear war in Europe so as to spare the US (as if it would stop there). There was never much acknowledgement of all the SS-20s targeted on Europe – it was the Pershing that was going to bring about the destruction of Europe. Schwäbisch Gmünd was never the same. People who had been friendly to me in Darmstadt were mad at me personally, as if I somehow had control over the situation. And they never once protested against the Soviets or the SS-20s – just the Americans and the Pershings.
Byrningman: Well the current Iranian government has a pretty credible public mandate…
Enrak’s response: Are you serious?
I understand that a vote was held in Iran. Even assuming, best case that the vote was not influenced by the mullah’s, the candidate selection was limited to those mullah-approved. I’m not sure how that gives them a credible mandate. Also, from what I’ve been led to understand Ahmadinejad is only allowed to go so far by the Ayatollah.
Well, I’ve been hoping that someone else would take this point… It’s pretty dangerous to go around calling someone else’s elections not credible. Things look different to an outside observer with a different cultural filter.
Of course, in judging an election you don’t want to see voter suppression or voter fraud, but take a look at the U.S. system. There have been serious charges of both, from one party or the other.
And as far as “mullah-approved” — don’t our own religious leaders make a big show of approving certain candidates? And some of the most vocal religious leaders have been very supportive of aggression against what looks like enemies from their point of view.
Do we not have our own approval process by those here who are as influential as the mullahs? It seems our candidates have to be approved by the rich and powerful here, and by the schooling media — lest they get mocked for wearing sweaters or misquoted as “inventing the internet” or simpleton’s swift-boat lies get repeated over and over. (And, don’t forget Dean’s scream.) Even now as the media turns on Bush he is getting a much different treatment than last year.
I’m just saying that it’s hard to judge from the outside. I love my country and it saddens me that the things we are known for at the present are quite different than what I stand for. I hope that we are not pushed into a war with Iran based on judging their system from an outsider’s perspective.
I hope that in the near future we can work to change not only the way our country is perceived, but also they way it truly functions, especially as more people are increasingly talking to each other.
OCSteve, I’m late to this, as I had to stay away from the computer for severals. But one of the things I mostrespect about you, despite some of our philosophical differences, is your willingness to actually look at things and be able to change your viewpoint.
I have to say that you are better at it than I, and I admire that and hope to learn from you.
I sometimes think it is much harder for someone who once supported the war and now has chnaged than for someone who was against the war from the beginning. Unfortunately, too many who were against it from the beginning have developed an attitude of superiority and righteouness when dealing with people like you who have changed their minds. I have worked hard to avoid this.
To me, that smug attitude is almost as bad as those who still support the ar and still view those against it as traitors. BTW, can 70% of a country be traitors?
I take enrak at his word that he is really struggling wih this issue and wants to gain a better understanding and that is why I try to present my viewpoints to him as constructively as possible.
I really think that if the administration had not worked from the fear angle, Americans would never have fallen for everything else. But people who are afraid, even when there is little to nothing to be afraid of, will seek out anything that they feel will make the fear go away.
Unfortunately, the actions of this administration have increased the reasons to be afraid, not lessened them.
BTW, as someone who was agianst the war from the beginning, who sent letters off to my representatives prior to the vote on the authorization begging them to vote no, I feel some guilt as well. I sometimes wonder if I didn’t do enough, didn’t persuade enough people. I sometimes think that if I could only have been more eloquent, perhaps, just perhaps, soemthing different may have been done.
Blame does not rest on the shoulders of only one group of people.
OCS, nothing personal, but you’re just the latest to trip a trigger for me. I just can’t stand it when people say how hypocritical it is to protest conduct of one’s one government (or one’s government’s patrons, clients, or allies) and not against the adversary, who is inevitably worse.
Leaving out completely the difference between accountability of one’s government to its citizens, and non-accountability of the adversary to the other side’s citizens. It’s beyond a waste of time to have a demonstration protesting what the other side is doing. When my government, though, representing me, is making a policy decision that is unwise, I have every right to call it on that, and every right to expect my doing so to be heard, even if not followed right away.
You understand this, and we all understand it. So why do we constsntly hear the comparison made about how people protest the small sin of their own government, and leave the greater sin of the other unremarked? It’s misdirection at best. (Although I’ll grant you that there seems also to be a small but hard core of people who are pure relativists: it’s ok for us to torture captured AQ suspects with waterboarding etc because AQ beheads captured Western suspects).
What a wonderful world this would be if it turned out that OCS is the sincere (but pseudonymous, for obvious reasons) voice of Mr. Feith.
CharleyCarp: If I read OCS correctly, he was saying that the West Germans were excessively mad at the Americans and not mad at all at the USSR. And the West Germans aren’t citizens of either country.
Hil, my reading is exactly the same as yours. You might be aware, though, that West Germany had a government at the time, and that its government was closely allied with that of the United States. And that it was commonly perceived in West Germany that the West German government was going along with US policy — despite real concern within West Germany about the wisdom of the policy.
BTW, I think ‘our’ side of this argument was absolutely right, and has been vindicated by history. There was no Soviet plan to invade wetsern Europe in the 1980s, and before someone comes along and brings up the time that the Soviets went on alert because we were acting provocative, let me say that it proves our point from the time, not that of the US administration.
CharleyCarp: fair enough.
So why do we constsntly hear the comparison made about how people protest the small sin of their own government, and leave the greater sin of the other unremarked?
Hilzoy is correct. I was talking about the West German protestors. To the best of my knowledge there was never a single protest against the Soviets. It was the Soviets who had West German cities targeted by SS-20s, yet all the protests were against us Americans for deploying the Pershings as a deterrent.
CharleyCarp: And BTW I take your larger point. It just personally made me angry at the time. As in here I am far from home protecting your butt and you want to protest me?!? Screw ya – I’m taking my toys and going home.
I’m taking my toys and going home.
Which is exactly what they were asking you to do, nicht wahr?
Look, I understand why you’d take the protests personally, especially since you were apparently singled out personally — and probably with a fair amount of rudeness and self-righteousness, 20-somethings being who they are. But with the benefit of hindsight, surely you can see the logic in protesting against the foreign government that already has troops in your country, before taking on the foreign government that might, or might not, have plans to send troops in.
OCSteve: As in here I am far from home protecting your butt and you want to protest me?!? Screw ya – I’m taking my toys and going home.
As Vetiver said.
You don’t get any gratitude for “protecting” someone who actively doesn’t want you to “protect” them. And especially not when your “protection” is what appears likely to actually put them in danger. As was the case with the American nuclear missiles on US military bases in countries like West Germany – or the UK.
Not that this justified in any way any personal harassment of the US soldiers serving at the bases, and if that happened to you, OCSteve, I’m very sorry. But peace protestors/anti-nuclear protestors had no reason to feel any gratitude towards the US soldiers, and the US soldiers should have expected none. By the 1980s it was clear that the US military operated its bases to protect US interests, not the countries they were based in.
vetiver and Jes: I didn’t expect gratitude in any way. But I also didn’t expect personal friends to turn against me, associates who were at least amicable to become bitter and rude, or to be accosted in the streets for doing the job I was asked to do. It was not like I was making policy or could do a damned thing about it.
nicht wahr?
As I said, I felt I was there to protect them (whether its true or not that protection was needed). The experience led me to agree with them: if they don’t want our protection then lets pack up our crap and go home. Let’s see if they like the Soviets any better.
Well, obviously, OCS, it’s a drag when people who you think should be thanking you aren’t. I never bore any ill will to individual soldiers, and never expressed it then or now.
You can see, though, that a little of that attitude can go a long way. I’ve no doubt, for example, that Spc. Graner is at some level quite taken aback by the reaction to his efforts to protect you, me, Hil, and everyone else in Western civilization. Just because he thinks (or gen. Miller thinks) that certain actions are required, doesn’t mean we have to agree. Even if, for example, in some particular instance, Spc. Graner actually did get a prisoner to say something useful.
Most Germans I knew did not feel threatened by the Soviet missiles, because they had no belief in an unprovoked Soviet attack.* Warlike rhetoric from the US beginning in 1981, and the deployment made the Soviet missiles more of a danger than they were before.
Again, it’s too bad that it became personal. Not too surprising, though, really. We’re a pretty flawed species.
* At the time, things like the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, and involvements in Nicaraugua and, through proxies, in Angola, were offered up by people on the fear mongering side as reasons that Europeans should be nervous. To anyone paying any attention to the contexts, though, this argument was truly ridiculus. Nothing about the Soviet activities in the 3d world told you anything about the North German Plain.
Noted without further comment.
Nothing about the Soviet activities in the 3d world told you anything about the North German Plain.
True. I know “what ifs” aren’t always that useful, but what do you think would have happened if Reagan had decided to pull US troops out of Europe? The bear would have pushed west pretty quickly. The Soviets focused their expansion in the third world in the 80s only because we stayed in Europe. Western Europe would have been a much more lucrative prize than Angola or Afghanistan.
The Soviets had 10 tank divisions just in East Germany, and more tank divisions in Poland. I don’t think they were poised there strictly for defensive reasons. (Were the Soviets ever seriously concerned about NATO invading East Germany?)
The Soviets deployed the SS-20 in the late 70s. It was a first strike weapon – so every German should have felt very threatened by them. After NATO decided to deploy Pershing and it hit the fan, Reagan said we don’t have any intermediate range missiles in Europe and we’re willing to forgo them entirely. But the Soviets didn’t budge.
The sad part is that popular knowledge had it that America was forcing the missiles on Europe. But Helmut Schmidt tried to get Carter to do something similar in the late 70s. And it was a NATO decision to deploy the missiles pushed by European NATO members, not an American decision. The Bundestag gave the final OK. Yet it was evil Americans to blame.
In the end we got the INF treaty.
A long post, but one that I think Enrak‘s question deserves:
One thing I’m confused by here is the insistence that we knew that there were no WMD/WMD programs in Iraq. If that was the case, why weren’t the Democrats singing that from the rooftops?
Because they were spineless triangulators.
And I’m being completely serious here: in the Senate, Feingold stood up against it — yay Russ! he does us proud 🙂 — but he was pretty much it. The exact reason for the failures of the remaining Democrats has been a topic of much debate amongst the liberal blogosphere, often heated to the point of inarticulacy, but the general consensus boils down to four interlocking claims:
1) The country wanted war. I think it’s impossible to overstate the belligerence Americans felt after 9/11, especially after our “victory” in Afghanistan failed to provide us with the requisite catharsis. I’m not saying it was anything as obvious as “Let’s go out and f*** someone up” — unless you’re Michael Ledeen — but it was clear to me, as it was to most people out of the country, that we were still mad as hell and someone was going to pay even if they weren’t actually responsible. Sort of the way a drunk bully will clobber the nearest available nerd even if he got hurt by someone else. If the nerd in question happened to be a genocidal Arab freak, of course.
2) The White House really really really wanted war, and they were prepared both to ramp up the jingoistic propaganda and to tamper with the intelligence community to get it. This, btw, was evident back in late 2002 — I picked up on it in around October, I think it was — and unquestionable by January 2003. I’m not claiming that the Bush Administration outright falsified intelligence, though that seems likely; I am claiming that they deliberately and mendaciously constructed an elaborate web of bullshit to obscure what was known and what wasn’t known. This ranges from Condi’s “we don’t want the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud” to Rumsfeld’s “We know where the WMD are” to Safire’s pushing of the Mohammed Atta connection. Bullshit, all of it.
As an aside, I use bullshit here (as pretty much everywhere) in the Frankfurtian sense of “saying things without any regard for their truth whatsoever”. If I tell you something I know to be false with the intention to deceive, e.g. I’m an ex-Ranger so my opinion on the military is more valid than yours, that’s a lie. [If I tell you something we both know to be false it’s more usually a joke, e.g. hilzoy’s a man, baby!] If, on the other hand, I tell you something without caring whether it’s true or false, e.g. there were 40 people killed in Baghdad today, I’m not saying it because it’s true or because it’s false — I simply don’t know — I’m saying it because it’s something I want you to hear. My motives are completely orthogonal to relaying either truth or falsity, and it’s deceptively hard to combat for precisely that reason.
[It’s also deceptively hard to combat people who will outright lie to your face and, when pressed, will continue to simply lie to your face. My dad has some horror stories about that; suffice to say that unless someone in power is willing to confront them repeatedly with accusations of lying, it’s all-but-impossible to stop.]
I also use “bullshit” for something not technically covered by Frankfurt’s definition, namely the obstinate refusal to change one’s claims in the face of the facts. It might be perfectly reasonable to believe that, say, the Chicago Bears are creating a minimally-passing offense for next year. If we get reports from Soldier Field that the Bears haven’t changed their drills, however, maintaining your original storyline is bullshit. You had a reasonable proposal, it got shot down, end of story. That’s why I lump Safire in with Condi and Rumsfeld; however plausible the Atta connection might once have been, it was completely discredited by April 2002 and yet he continued to push the story well through the beginning of the war. He might still be pushing it today, I don’t know.
3) The American media, by and large, utterly failed to do its job, as it continues to fail to in its job today. The Bush Administration was making bullshit claims, and was making claims known to be bullshit. Foreign media pretty much cottoned on by October 2002, which is how I knew the Administration was full of it; the American media, for the most part, was and is still in the bag vis a vis the run-up to the war. The usual reason I’ve seen for this is that the upper echelon media players — name-brand pundits, corporate executives, that sort of thing — were far too cozy with the Administration (itself a horrifically complicated story, see The Daily Howler for more details) and got suckered. Alternatively, as in Judy Miller’s case, they got suckered by the same people (Chalabi, in her case) who were suckering the Administration. The narrative, once established, couldn’t shift and continues to remain stuck in its rut to this day.
The other key point about media complicity is that finding out the truth is hard work. You have to sit down in a dank room and read official documents, a mind-numbingly tedious task even if they weren’t deliberately designed to confuse. You have to cultivate sources without making friends. You have to painstakingly tally things up, check one source against another, seeing where the discrepancies lie and pressing the issue until the truth finally emerges. [Ew!] That’s hard friggin’ work. It’s much easier to simply swallow the prepackaged truths provided by the GOP — see again Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler, who has extensive documentation of this phenomenon — who will fete you and make you feel special and give you lovely high-ranking interviews where everyone is “serious” but not too serious. The illusion of speaking truth to power is so much more comforting than the act itself.
The rub is that having found they had been horribly duped, they’ve spent the last four years trying to cover their tracks. Hence the “but everybody believed it!” line — shades of Pauline Kael — it’s flat-out untrue, but it justifies their culpability.
4) The most important point: the Democrats were triangulating cowards. Certainly some Democrats were actively for the war; I think they were grievously wrong and I’d vote them out of office in a second, but I (kind of) respect them in their convictions. The vast majority of Democratic Congressfolk, however, appeared to be under the sway of the DLC (the Democratic Leadership Committee), and it was their policy of “centrist triangulation” that’s one of the most important reasons we’re in this mess today.
It’s essentially a (culpable) Overton Window argument: instead of pushing back against the Republican march rightward-to-war, they tried to split the difference between the nominal center and the right wing. Coupled with an abject fear of the Republican noise machine — anyone remember “Objectively pro-Saddam”? “You’re either for us or against us”? the whole “Democrats are weak on terror” schtick? — this basically resulted in them knuckling under to whatever the Administration demanded. [Or in Lieberman’s case, suffering the most severe case of Stockholm Syndrome I’ve ever seen in a politician.] They didn’t want to be seen as weak, or cowardly, or traitorous, not realizing that they would be described that way anyway. They bought into the Administration’s bullshit because to question it would be tantamount to active opposition. And ultimately, IMO, they caved because they had been so shellacked by the Republican Congress — particularly the Democrats in the House — that they simply lost the will to resist in anything but the most token of ways.
I realize that I haven’t provided links for any of this, as we’ve gone over it so many times I’ve pretty much forgotten the sourcing on it by now. Sources for these statements do exist, however, and if you’re interested I’m sure someone will be able to provide them. Not me, alas, because now I really have to get back to work; dissertations, contrary to what I had hoped, don’t actually write themselves.
PS: Give my best to your brother.
Huh. That’s the second time this hour that I’ve hit “Preview” and had it post. I think the last edit I did was adequate; the kitty might want to look into the problem, however.
john miller: You are always constructive. It is commenters like you who encourage conversation here and make it more likely that folks from the right will stick around once finding this place.
I really think that if the administration had not worked from the fear angle, Americans would never have fallen for everything else. But people who are afraid, even when there is little to nothing to be afraid of, will seek out anything that they feel will make the fear go away.
Anarch: The country wanted war. I think it’s impossible to overstate the belligerence Americans felt after 9/11, especially after our “victory” in Afghanistan failed to provide us with the requisite catharsis. I’m not saying it was anything as obvious as “Let’s go out and f*** someone up” — unless you’re Michael Ledeen — but it was clear to me, as it was to most people out of the country, that we were still mad as hell and someone was going to pay even if they weren’t actually responsible.
Sadly, at the time, Michael Ledeen was me.
Speaking only for myself, it wasn’t fear. It was blind rage. I wanted “shock and awe” and I really didn’t care who it was against. It was about 9/11 and I didn’t really care how tenuous the ties were. The fact that Saddam was paying off the families of Palestinian suicide bombers was enough for me; one terrorist supporter was as good as another. I wanted to lash out; I wanted my country to lash out.
I’m sure I’ve told the story, but 9/11 messed me up pretty badly. I didn’t personally know a bunch of people who died that day. I just had a grandstand seat to the whole thing from across the river in Newark with a group of people who did have family and friends in the towers.
I thought it was great when we went into Afghanistan, but it wasn’t enough for me. I didn’t want Special Forces making deals with tribal chieftains; I wanted the full might of our military to be used against someone. Hulk mad – Hulk smash. Oh I could give the list of talking points and I paid lip service to spreading democracy yada yada yada – but when I’m honest with myself I know it was just pure anger and an urge to strike out at someone.
So to the extent that I was manipulated, it was what I wanted at the time. It took a long time for that rage to fade enough for me to start to pay attention to all you naysayers.
I’m not proud of the fact that my rage clouded my judgment – but that’s how it was at the time. I feel like it was a different person, a very bad person. I wasn’t capable of listening to serious counter arguments. If you were arguing against the war I didn’t think you were a smelly hippy or a traitor – I didn’t think anything because you were pretty much invisible to me through the fog.
So did Bush use me or did I use Bush?
So did Bush use me or did I use Bush?
Interesting, and I think unanswerable, question. What I’m more interested in is, why did 9/11 affect you in that particular way? I had a roughly similar experience of 9/11 and an almost diametrically opposite response. Why? Just a difference in temperament? In experience? In political philosophy? I’m quite certain it’s not because I’m a better, smarter person. I’ve read many of your comments here and I admire your honesty, your intelligence, your willingness to reconsider your position, painful as that is for each of us–but I just can’t wrap my brain around why you would respond that way at all, much less so very strongly, for so very long.
That may be an unanswerable question too, and here’s one more: if there were a similar terrorist attack here next Tuesday, how would your reaction be different?
A couple of quick things, if I may.
I didn’t support the war. I don’t think that makes me any smarter, better intentioned, or whatever, than folks who did. It doesn’t make me feel smug, or self-satisfied, at all.
After 9/11, I wanted revenge as much as anyone else. I also wanted to see someone pay. So, I’m not sitting in judgement on anyone. I own a piece of this war as well.
I’m just really, really tired of rehashing those same, tired questions, over and over again. It makes me really depressed, and, apparently, really angry. So, I should just stay out of it and let folks with more constructive things to say speak.
Enrak is here in good faith asking reasonable questions. He deserves the many very reasonable answers he has received. I’m sorry that my voice was not among those giving reasonable answers, and for that I offer him, and you all, my apologies. Nobody engaging in good faith deserves to get blasted.
ObWi is a good place. I’ll confine myself to joining in to times when I have something useful to say.
Thanks –
Anarch, that was an outstanding exposition about how and why the opposition got rolled.
Russell: I sympathize a lot at the moment. I don’t want to rehash (which respecting the need for it, because people learn at different paces). I want Democratic congresspeople to pay more attention to their constituents. I want pre-Bush Republican voters of decency and integrity to start throwing the bums out. I want to see more action.
Random observation before I disappear again. [Just when I think I can get out…] I used to hang out on a messageboard several years back, where one of the members did something truly unforgiveable. I won’t go into the details but suffice to say that I’m basically unshockable about things on the internet and I was flat-out stupefied. What I remember most clearly about the aftermath was that I was one of the first people to say — about a day or two after the matter broke, IIRC — that we should simply let the matter drop and vent our feelings privately. Not because I thought what he did deserved forgetting, or that he deserved mercy, but because anger has a way of feeding itself, rage building on rage until nothing’s left but the fury.
Unfortunately, the fact that I could see what was going to happen didn’t help me in stopping it. Sure enough, what could have been dropped became a minor flamefest — not exactly a war, since it was too chaotic for that — that burned for several weeks. People needed to be angry, which was fine, but as I predicted they fed off each other’s anger.
Interestingly, almost exactly the same thing happened on 9/11. I was stunned to the core watching the planes hit the towers… but within the two days I was telling my friends to focus on helping the survivors and not seeking vengeance for the dead precisely because I knew what would happen if we let ourselves focus on the loss. In fact, I remember saying to a friend on 9/13, I think it was, that I saw really bad times ahead; not because we’d be attacked again, but because we were about to blindly go on offense and f*** someone’s sh** up… regardless of whether they were involved or not.
Sadly, I was proven right.
To answer OCSteve’s question, then, I’m going to go with Bush having used you rather than the other way around. You were genuinely angry; whatever my personal reaction — primarily shock, sorrow and nausea over things to come as I recall — I respect the honesty of the emotion. Bush, however, has never struck me as the kind of person who was cut to the quick by 9/11 (and Cheney et al. even less so), in the sense that I don’t think rage blinded his judgment. To me, it seemed then (and seems now) the Administration cynically exploited your honest rage to further their own ends. In that sense, they didn’t just fail to help you by trying to defuse your anger, they deliberately enabled it, feeding on it and guaranteed that you fed in turn. It’s like providing a bottle of Jack to an alcoholic. His thirst is genuine, even if it comes from a bad place; your deliberate exploitation of that thirst is the real sin.
Bloody hell. Preview = post again. Kitty?
It was symbiotic, OCS.
I wanted, and still want, AQ rolled up. I still don’t understanhd how the whole ‘Hulk mad, Hulk smash’ thing got diverted from the war that we were going to win, the one against the people who’d attacked us and might again, the one where the whole world was backing us (with 90% domestic approval) to the one that was totally fraught from the moment it was proposed. Why did not the objections of people like Brent Scowcroft carry more weight? Why did hatred of the ‘hippies’ who opposed the war blind so many otherwise reasonable people?
And as it’s turning out, the loss — nand no matter what the outcome is from this point, it’s a loss on any reasonable comparison with the status quo — removes nearly all the benefit from the victory in the first war, indeed, has actively undermined it.
Makes me think of the closing narration from Henry V.
OCS, have you read the Packer story in the New Yorker? If not, do so right now — you won’t regret it.
Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,
Our bending author hath pursued the story,
In little room confining mighty men,
Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.
Small time, but in that small most greatly lived
This star of England: Fortune made his sword;
By which the world’s best garden be achieved,
And of it left his son imperial lord.
Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown’d King
Of France and England, did this king succeed;
Whose state so many had the managing,
That they lost France and made his England bleed
So did Bush use me or did I use Bush?
I think there’s no question but that Bush used you, just like he’s used so many of the “values” voters. It’s ok for us powerless, uninformed citizens to let our anger loose, at least for a little while. After all, we can’t do much damage. Those in power have a greater obligation to act in the country’s best interests, regardless of how their personal feelings may run.
If Bush would have simply let his emotions loose that would have been bad enough. In a way, as mentioned upthread, what he did was worse. He cynically built and manipulated that anger for his own purposes.
An important consideration in whether Bush used OCSteve is what we learned later about decision-making at the top: the decision to attack Iraq and call it a response to the 9/11 attack was made literally within hours. By the end of the week, it was policy. And it wasn’t people overcome by rage picking out the most handy target – it was people with a decades-long agenda grabbing an opportunity, with supreme calculation.
Let’s put it this way…
OCSteve, if you’d been president in 2001, I don’t think you would ever have let bin Laden escape, nor ever say anything like “I don’t think about him that much.” I think that even if some of your anger may have been disproportionate – and that’s really not my call to make, not after seeing how personal grief has messed me up this year – it was an honest passion, just as what you feel now is honest passion. And that puts you on the side of those exploited by the calculators, not the exploiting.
I’m not proud of the fact that my rage clouded my judgment – but that’s how it was at the time. I feel like it was a different person, a very bad person. I wasn’t capable of listening to serious counter arguments. If you were arguing against the war I didn’t think you were a smelly hippy or a traitor – I didn’t think anything because you were pretty much invisible to me through the fog.
So did Bush use me or did I use Bush?
Bush used you.
Humans are human. Terror produces just the mindset you describe in yourself. The anger fogs out rational thought.
But leaders with any kind of integrity don’t hijack a country’s grief and anger and fly it into a pre-planned war of choice.
vetiver: why did 9/11 affect you in that particular way?
I’m not sure. Prior service maybe? Thinking about your question, I most wanted to feel the security of an M-16 nestled tight to my right shoulder. I wanted to smell gun oil and cordite. I wanted to do something. I wanted to shoot something. I did go target shooting a couple of days later and a couple hundred rounds made me feel a little better – not for long. I wanted us to be blowing some shit up.
I tried to re-up. My wife almost left me over that. Not much call for 40 something overweight dudes though, so we survived and I am now a chickenhawk.
if there were a similar terrorist attack here next Tuesday, how would your reaction be different?
I like to think that I have learned something from this. But that is the key question isn’t it? I said to Russell last night I would never support another war unless our very shores were threatened. If there were another 9/11 tomorrow? I like to think I would take a few deep breaths and not decide anything for a month. If my family were involved? All bets are off. If a city goes radioactive? Ditto.
I want to be a better person, but the smell of gun oil and cordite are very seductive…
have you read the Packer story in the New Yorker
No. But I will.
OCSteve, I don’t think there’s anything at all shameful or wrong or anything like that in thinking “This calls for firepower.” The art of virtue lies in shackling that to overall good goals, focusing the blowing up and all on deserving targets pursued in worthy ways.
(I have strongly pacifistic impulses, and favor being slow to war. But the fact is that there will continue to be problems that men and women with guns can best solve, if they’re smart and careful about it. I’m also a big believer in the explosions and other fun of intelligent civil engineering.)
Regarding “triangulating cowards”:
IIRC, some suggested at the time that Bush follow his father’s example on the Gulf War and have the Congressional debate on the AUMF after the elections. He chose not to. I think the Democrats could see what was in the wind if they opposed him. Even so, look at what happened to Cleland in Georgia.
So, yeah they were @*&^()_%#, but consider who (Rove) they were up against.
.
Not to go OT or anything, but the preponderance of evidence is that our very shores are indeed threatened, along with everyone else’s. Quite literally in fact. May I respectfully suggest that anybody who wants to know what the phrase “existential threat” really means should spend a few years studying paleoecology and extrapolating forward.
p.s. It doesn’t seem to be happening this time, but my last two comments here posted when I hit preview.
I am now a chickenhawk.
This ain’t what the word means, man. It ain’t what the word means.
To OCSteve:
I can’t of course apologize for the behaviour of my countrypeople towards you (that’s their problem and my political awareness at the time [=preteen] was nonexistent).
But you might consider what would have happened, if the US would have indeed withdrawn from Germany. I think most people allowed themselves to be that rude only because it was inconceivable that the US would indeed leave. In my experience “futile” protests that people know to be futile tend to be the loudest over here. I would see parallels to the Vetriebenen-Verbände that yearly demand(ed) their right to return to the lost territories and made political hay (on the extreme right) with it but would have panicked, if Poland/Czechoslovakia/etc. had said “OK, come back”.
In Berlin after the fall of the wall there were even demonstrations for the Allies to stay* (there was even a certain amount of sympathy/pity for the Russians).
I think even today most Germans are able to distinguish between Americans as persons (net positive) and US policy (loathed).
*not out of fear but out of affection
This is a general response to OCSteve’s comment about September 11.
On 11th September 2001 I was at work, and wasn’t (then) in the habit of checking online news at work. (I am now. Have been ever since.) A colleague said “Hey – someone flew a plane into the WTC!” and I said “Oh yeah, and the Queen Mum died.”
And then I checked a news site, and discovered that it had actually happened.
I went home early – lots of us did. By the end of the day (UK time) I had established that none of my New York/New Jersey friends had been killed, and the friend who worked within eyeshot of the Pentagon was also OK. After that, I had time to panic about what this would mean for the world.
Over the next three days – I had (still have) a lot of American friends and acquaintances – I watched in astonishment and horror as so many people I’d thought I knew reacted in ways I’d never known they were capable of. Shock and horror and anger I could understand – but not this. Not the need to attack another country for a terrorist attack. (In particular, not the need to attack Afghanistan, a country which had already suffered way too much from US international politics.)
I said what I thought/felt, on the mailing lists/bulletin boards – and got piled on. From my point of view, it seemed as if almost every American I knew had gone slightly or terribly insane – and other Brits agreed: this just wasn’t the way we understood people react to terrorist attacks. (Fury against al-Qaeda, determination to track down every member of al-Qaeda – sadly, even the imprisonment of so many Muslims of ME origin because they might be al-Qaeda – that, we understood: but the desire to bomb Dublin? Or Boston? That, we didn’t get.)
In part I think that’s just because we knew war isn’t the way you respond to terrorist attacks, no matter how terrifyingly successful those attacks are.
There was a website set up by Americans after the 7/7 bombings: “London Hurts”. It was meant to be to post twee and sentimental pics expressing sympathy with distraught Londoners. Distraught Londoners discovered it shortly after and used it to post pics like this one.
But the US is different. Maybe because you have no mass national experience like the Blitz in living memory. Maybe because you have never suffered a war with mass military casualties, and all the mass civilian casualties caused by US wars in the past century happened somewhere else. I do think that – even for Americans with military experience – there’s still a notion deepset, that when war happens, it doesn’t really mean that hundreds of thousands of civilians will be killed.
And the main reason I think I started hanging out on American blogs, arguing this with so many Americans, was just because, in the week after September 11, and the month following, I learned about a side of my American friends I hadn’t suspected existed – a yawning cultural chasm besides which the habit of spelling words without a “u” or calling chips “fries” and eating them with ketchup is nothing.
I like OCSteve. But I lost at least two American friends after September 11 because of this cultural chasm and the fog of misunderstanding that filled it. I suspect that if OCSteve and I had known each other then, we’d have lost each other as friends then too.
I’ve spent more time in the US than I have in any other country but my own. (Except France.) I’ve more American friends than I have friends of any other nationality, except my own. And until September 11, though I disliked the US government and US foreign policy, I had no notion that Americans in general felt so differently about war.
(A longer version of this already too-long comment is posted on my journal.)
Maybe because you have never suffered a war with mass military casualties,
Um, JFTR, the US lost more military in WWII than did the UK — nearly half a million men and women in all. (cite).
60,000 dead in Vietnam and, more importantly, more than 600,000 dead in the Civil War are nothing to sneeze at either.
Just what are you considering “mass military casualties,” here?
Jes:
I don’t know how to explain it. Bloodlust would be about the closest I could come.
I like to think that I am a nice guy. I would give a stranger the shirt off my back. I’d stop and change your tire if I passed you on the highway with a flat. I carry cash normally just to have something for the homeless guy who hits me up every time I walk down a certain street. I give money and I volunteer my time for those less fortunate in my community. I’m a sucker for just about any sob story.
But something inside of me snapped that day. I became a person I didn’t even know existed inside of me. I’m horrified by this now – but if we had nuked Mecca on 9/12 I would have been just fine with that. On that day anyway, I would have approved. Hell I would have pushed the button myself. Somebody had to pay, and pay big.
What you say about the Blitz makes a lot of sense. I remember being astounded that Londoners just kind of shrugged off 7/7 – that whole stiff upper lip thing. I suppose it comes from dealing with it for decades.
Fortunately you can’t maintain that kind of anger forever. It fades over time. Then I look back and it seems like it was a different person.
But I know what we are capable of. We made a conscious decision to firebomb Dresden and use two nukes. I’m not proud that we are capable of such things. I like to think that I have moved past it.
But every so often, when the sky is a certain shade of blue and there is not a cloud in sight, it comes flooding back.
Thanks to all for an enlightening discussion. My 2 cents worth
Jesurgislac said
“In part I think that’s just because we knew war isn’t the way you respond to terrorist attacks, no matter how terrifyingly successful those attacks are.”
How much of that is rooted in the understanding that there is virtually nothing that any European country could do militarily to respond to such an attack? If for example, the UK had been attacked with airliners ala 9/11, I don’t believe the UK would have any military options aside from nuking Kabul, and I am reasonably confidant that your government is rational enough not to do that.
Part of the reason that the US responded as it did is that it could. For that matter, if the US had decided that it was going to abstain in the 1990 Iraqi seizure of Kuwait, does anyone doubt that Kuwait would now be part of Iraq? Note, I said abstain, as in “We do not approve of this, but do not intend to militarily oppose it. Europe, you can do what you like.”
Judging by the consequences in Iraq, Europeans may have an advantage in that since they lack significant military options, they don’t even consider them. Given European history up to the 1950s, this may be a good thing. At the same time, it is limiting. While the American problem may be because they have a good hammer, too many problems start to look like nails. The European problem is that they have to hope none of their problems are nails because they don’t have any useful hammers.
Hopefully the Iraq fiasco (yes, I know, it is a very faint tinge of silver in a very dark cloud), will persuade the next the next President to pay better attention to his or her comic books, in particular that line about “with great power comes great responsibility”. This administration clearly f—ed it up. However, the fact that they abysmally failed to use their power responsibly does not in and of itself prove either that military power can not be used responsibly (generally left lurking in the background) or that there are no problems for which military power is the best solution.
Yes, sometimes the problem is a nail.
A few nits
OCS Steve said
But I know what we are capable of. We made a conscious decision to firebomb Dresden and use two nukes. I’m not proud that we are capable of such things. I like to think that I have moved past it.
I can’t say I am proud of those things either, but a couple of points. The US did not firebomb Dresden. Although we did toss in some conventional bombs during the day, the fire bombing was done at night by the RAF. If you want to point to US sins, look at our firebombing campaign against Japan. Just one raid killed more civilians than either atomic bomb and burned out more square miles of city then both bombs put together.
The truly depressing thing about the atomic bombs is that they probably saved more Japanese lives than not dropping them. If the Japanese had just held out until the Allies were ready to invade, the deaths from starvation alone would have been in the hundreds of thousands. Even after the bombs there was an attempted military coup to keep fighting.
What gives me some hope is that despite our history, we have managed to refrain from using any more nuclear weapons in anger. May this particular trend continue indefinitely.
Phil said
Maybe because you have never suffered a war with mass military casualties,
Um, JFTR, the US lost more military in WWII than did the UK — nearly half a million men and women in all. (cite).
60,000 dead in Vietnam and, more importantly, more than 600,000 dead in the Civil War are nothing to sneeze at either.
Just what are you considering “mass military casualties,” here?
Err, I think Jes was thinking about WW 1, where the UK suffered 2.6% dead and France suffered 4.8% dead. If the US had suffered proportionately in WW2, it would have had either 3.4 or 6.3 million dead. To assess the impact, you have to look at the relative populations, not just the absolute casualty count. You are right that the Civil war was the worst in US history, but it isn’t just the app 600,000 dead, it is that they were taken from a population of only 34 million. The same proportion in WW2 would have resulted in about 2.3 million dead.
Clearly, on a proprtional basis, US casualties have been (fortunately) relatively light.
Phil: Um, JFTR, the US lost more military in WWII than did the UK — nearly half a million men and women in all.
JFRT, the UK lost 0.8% of its population as military casualties: the US lost 0.31% of its population as military casualties. The US lost 11,200 civilian casualties in WWII: the UK lost 67,800 civilian casualties.
60,000 dead in Vietnam
…is less than the number of British civilians killed in WWII. (I misremembered the figures for the Blitz – that’ll teach me.) You think that 60 000 soldiers dead over 15 years is “mass military casualties”?
Stick to wars within living memory – if you want to bring up the American Civil War I’ll start talking about the British Civil War, and then you’ll be sorry.
Seriously, Phil: bringing up Vietnam as proof that Americans know what war is like is really not a good argument. The Vietnamese did not bomb American cities. No American civilians were ever in danger. Most Americans of military age weren’t in danger.
If we’re going to go that way, Donald, we have to look at military casualties as a proportion of military-eligible population, not of total population, something I have neither the time nor the inclination to undertake. I’m just a little insulted by the idea that the US hasn’t suffered large military casualties in wars.
I just want to say, this is one of the best threads I’ve ever seen on ObWi.
Like most everyone else here, my reaction while watching 9/11 unfold on TV was grief and rage. I said to a friend, “If this isn’t an act of war, then what is?” Pearl Harbor was much in my mind. If, as immediately seemed likely, some Arab group was responsible, I wanted massive retaliation – I wanted to see smoking parking lots where there had once been countries. If Bush had said – on that day, or the day after – that the US was going to do precisely that, I would have cheered.
So, yeah, I had the bloodlust, too.
It’s just… that it didn’t last. In my case, it didn’t last because I went on a long-planned and much joyfully anticipated trip to Canada to go bear-watching, just a few days after the attacks. I was in a lodge in the wilderness, with no TV or newspapers at all, among people who (bless them) never brought the topic up, for 5 days. It was exactly what I needed: a breathing space from being angry and heartsore. And when I came back, I was still upset, still grieving, but the white-hot was gone, and I could think somewhat rationally about it again.
The thing is, when we elect people to lead us, we expect (or I do, at any rate) that they are more qualified than the average citizen to respond to things like that.
“More qualified” meaning they don’t make decisions that affect millions while in the grip of overwhelming emotion; “more qualified” meaning that they have enough self-knowledge and wisdom to know they need to step back and cool off before making those kinds of decisions; “more qualified” meaning they have access to information I don’t, and the ability to analyze it accurately and honestly, and advisors (all people of intelligence and integrity) to assist them.
(This, by the way, is what so enraged me about Condi Rice as NSA, when people defended her by saying they couldn’t have predicted the attacks, so why did anyone think she should have been able to? Answer: Because she’s the freaking NSA, for God’s sake, and it’s her job to be able to put information together and know what’s going on.)
In other words, I have much higher standards for our elected leaders, and esp. Presidents, than I do for private citizens. They’re supposed to be smarter than us, wiser than us, better decision makers than us. That’s why we put them in office.
You or I can yell “Bomb ’em all!” all we like: we’re not the ones who actually send the bombers. The people who do actually send the bombers should damned well have the very highest standards – personal, political, and in terms of intel analysis – before they do the sending. That’s why they’re there, and not you or me.
For an elected official, and esp. a President, to take a national trauma, take the grief and rage, and use it to grease the passage of a war, a policy, that has nothing to do with the national trauma (and in fact only exacerbates the problems that led to it)… well, words fail. That’s not a President; that’s a con artist.
JFRT, the UK lost 0.8% of its population as military casualties: the US lost 0.31% of its population as military casualties. The US lost 11,200 civilian casualties in WWII: the UK lost 67,800 civilian casualties.
You were the one who specified “mass military casualties.” Don’t change the subject just because someone decided to argue with you about it. Civilian casualties are irrelevant to the point you decided to try to make.
…is less than the number of British civilians killed in WWII. (I misremembered the figures for the Blitz – that’ll teach me.) You think that 60 000 soldiers dead over 15 years is “mass military casualties”?
Again, civilian casualties are irrelevant to the point you think you were making.
bringing up Vietnam as proof that Americans know what war is like is really not a good argument.
I’ll tell my great Aunt Betty, whose son’s name is on the Wall.
The Vietnamese did not bomb American cities. No American civilians were ever in danger. Most Americans of military age weren’t in danger.
Again with the civilian irrelevancies. Do you want to talk about military deaths, or not? If not, say so outright.
Oh, and corollary to this:
JFRT, the UK lost 0.8% of its population as military casualties: the US lost 0.31% of its population as military casualties.
The US was only actively involved militarily from 1941 to 1945. The UK was involved militarily from 1939. So we lost more troops in two fewer years. We lost 29,000 on D-Day alone to the UK’s 11,000, thank you very much.
Bugger, that last comment to Phil was a mistake.
Look, this is not the argument I want to have. The point I was trying to make was the point that Phil and I just demonstrated again: the US and the UK have a massive cultural chasm over the concept war, and part of it is that an American thinking of “mass military casualties” will think of 60 000 people being killed over 15 years, and a Brit thinking of “mass military casualties” will think (Donald’s right) of 58 000 people being killed in one day. We’ve had wars like Vietnam where soldiers went and soldiers died – during the 19th centuries, we had a lot of wars like Vietnam – and none of them had “mass military casualties” in the sense that the 20th century taught us wars bring.
OCSteve: But I know what we are capable of. We made a conscious decision to firebomb Dresden and use two nukes. I’m not proud that we are capable of such things. I like to think that I have moved past it.
Actually, you know, we firebombed Dresden, not you. And part of the reason – a large part – that we firebombed Dresden was because Germany had firebombed us. It didn’t make any sense at all – Dresden wasn’t a military target, it wasn’t justifiable in that sense, and we should have known in our guts that bombing the hell out of civilians is not how you get a country to surrender. But we didn’t.
Donald: How much of that is rooted in the understanding that there is virtually nothing that any European country could do militarily to respond to such an attack?
Well, we have suffered terrorist attacks, and recently, too. Of course there military responses possible. We couldn’t have bombed Boston or Chicago, but we could have bombed Dublin. We didn’t.
I used to have variations on the Jes-Phil interchange when talking with Germans about the WWII memorial planned for the mall. It always took them some time to realize that on the whole — and of course there are exceptions — we in the US view the liberation of France etc as our civilization’s Finest Hour. Germans, of course, view the whole exercise as a catastrophic obscenity.
Our view of the Civil War is not dissimilar: on the winning side, the deaths are ennobled by the Cause (and President Lincoln’s never-to-be-matched rhetoric). Somehow even the losing side finds nobility, seemingly in Gen. Lee’s wearing a clean uniform to Appamattox. At this remove, we are able to laud even Gen. grant, with his terrible war of attrition.
In between the American experience of war, and the German, lies the British. Obviously neither 20th century war was as catastrophic, but they were each damaging enough that people are not nearly as drunk with the potential for glory. I strongly doubt that you’d have aspirants for the PM position going around telling people that the only really great PMs are wartime PMs. As our current President is credibly said to have done.
This discussion has veered in a very interesting direction, and I’d like to thank Jesurgislac (how DO you pronounce that, anyway?) for bringing up the matter of American attitudes towards war. First, a minor point, then a discussion of this issue.
The minor point is that my own reaction to 9/11 was quite different from that of others. My first reaction was “Well, it finally happened. The chickens have come home to roost.” Not many of my friends understood my point. I had been expecting something like this for years. You can’t go around treating other people badly and get away without some sort of nasty repercussion. This was one of those nasty repercussions. It seemed inevitable to me. Other people treated it as if it were impossible, incredible. I asked them “What did you expect?!?!” and they had to admit, after some questioning, that they really hadn’t thought about it. Oops. Gosh, we never thought that they’d actually attack us. Chalk one up for American perceptiveness.
This leads into my main point: Americans have this sense of superiority that renders them (in their own minds) immune to foreign reaction. This was always part of the American character because of our protective oceans. It really dipped from the 60s through the 80s when we realized that ICBMs changed all that. We actually started worrying about the consequences of our actions. But then we “won” the Cold War and the bounceback was gigantic. We were ten feet tall, we could lick any kid on the block, there was nobody who could challenge us. And so the real blow of 9/11 was not the casualties but the blow to our pride. This is important — the 3,200 American deaths in Iraq are not as important in the American mind as the 3,000 deaths on 9/11. (Interesting aside: “Who has killed more Americans: Osama bin Laden or George Bush?”) The casualties in Iraq were heroes but the casualties on 9/11 were victims. Perhaps the most revealing response to 9/11 were all the bumper stickers saying “The Power of Pride” superimposed over a flag.
If you think in terms of overweening pride, everything America has done in the last five and a half years makes sense. And of course, pride goeth before the fall. The gods punish hubris.
Yeah, Eras, all the people who were talking about oceans in 2001/02, and I kept thinking: Where were you when we had all those Russian missiles pointed at us? Where were you when the milennium plot(s) were broken up? Oceans? You thought it was 1885?
BTW, I’ve been reading a book about the punitive expedition Gen. Pershing led into Mexico after Pancho Villa. It’s clear enough that the biggest ‘exception’ in American Exceptionalism is that we never learn a goddam thing.
Still reading and digesting. Thanks for the comments.
Russell: I don’t recall asking you to defend your stance on the war.
Please keep in mind, I didn’t lose my right to vote just because I supported the war. I’m doing my best to figure out exactly where I went wrong, and what a good policy is now and in the future. I’m not going to stop voting.
I can’t just assume that I am going to be always and everywhere wrong in the future. If I’m always and everywhere wrong, then I guess the surge will work and everything’s going to be just fine in Iraq.
Anarch: Thanks for your responses. Will do. Get back to work!
Jmiller: Thanks for your responses.
Much to think about. I still have some questions, but no time.
Once again, thanks to everyone taking this seriously. I am quite sure that to most of you this is the oldest of old. I want to point out again that there are not many places to hash this type of thing out on the interweb. I had not found one til now, so this is new to me.
Donald Clarke: The US did not firebomb Dresden. Although we did toss in some conventional bombs during the day, the fire bombing was done at night by the RAF. If you want to point to US sins, look at our firebombing campaign against Japan.
Jes: Actually, you know, we firebombed Dresden, not you
We were supposed to have led the attack, but bad weather prevented that and the RAF took the lead. We dropped 771 tons of bombs the next day, and 466 tons of bombs the day after that. We certainly made the decision to do it, and dropped over 1,100 tons of bombs in 2 days. Japan was probably worse, but we certainly lent a hand in Dresden.
The larger point stands I think – we, as a people, are capable of savagery that boggles the mind.
The other really interesting thing about the ‘Hulk mad’ sentiment abroad in the land after 9/11, to me anyway, is how it relates to what I thought then, and still think now, is the primary motivational force behind our adversaries: humiliation. I think this much more important than religion (although some of the humiliation is religious) or lack of democracy (which I’ve always thought a very small part) or ‘hatred of our freedom’ (which I’ve always thought was about zero).
The thing about this is where one side is motivated by humiliation, and the other is motivated to inflict humiliation, you’re going to get quite the dynamic. And you can never humiliate someone into not being motivated by humiliation. It is for this reason, principally, that I’ve always thought the Bush/Rice transformation/birth pangs agenda to not only be unlikely to succeed on even its own terms, but precisely the opposite of effective.
One of the old-time heresies in Christian theology is antinomianism, the belief that once you’re saved, you’re immune from moral and social laws – since God’s grace covers you, you have no obligation to heed any command to do this or not do that. It’s by no means an original observation to say American civic culture has something like that running around in it, this conviction that since we’re the chosen good guys, nothing too bad will happen to us. I think this is what feeds into that historical amnesia CharleyCarp mentioned. Bad things do happen to us from time to time, but we’re acculturated to regard every one of them as exceptions that don’t change the underlying truth of the situation, so they always come on as surprises.
Side note: I really detest the habit of using “we” to cozily denounce groups one doesn’t belong to. C.S. Lewis’ essay “On the Dangers of National Repentance” is very much worth reading; the upshot is that it’s very easy to fall into self-righteous condemnation of one’s neighbors and fellow citizens in the guise of repentance. This manifestation of American exceptionalism is one I find in myself as well as in others, and so I mean “we” to include me.
OCSteve:
Thanks for your honest and thoughtful response. After I hit “post” I was worried that you’d take that last question as a dig of some kind, which was not at all what I intended.
I want to be a better person, but the smell of gun oil and cordite are very seductive…
See, I don’t think your attraction to gun oil and cordite, or your Hulk-smash reaction, makes you a person in need of betterment. You’re just a person, as am I. Whatever our differences, we’re both hard-wired to look for patterns, for analogies and repetitions, and we’re both limited by experience and memory.
In this situation, it took you longer to recognize a reality I saw early on. Now we both have more experience, more patterns to draw on in the future. You have to guard against your weakness for eau de materiél, and I have to resist the human (and very vetiver-ian) temptation to overvalue my own judgment.
So that’s us sorted. What’s the deal with Cheney and the remaining dead-enders? Is there any way to reach them? Do you understand their thinking any better than I do?
When 9/11 happened, I was absolutely flattened. Luckily (or not? I don’t know), it was on a day when I didn’t have to teach, and I just sat in front of the TV for most of the day, shellshocked. And there were so many different layers to it. Realizing that on reflection I had never asked my little brother where exactly his office was in NY. (Midtown; and he had the presence of mind to email everyone instantly that he was OK.) Trying to find the one friend I did know who worked in the WTC (and who was, in fact, on a business trip that day.) Knowing throughout that all these worries were comparatively trivial, and were shared by almost everyone in the country and many people outside it, and having this massive multiplication thing going on in the back of my mind. When I did teach next, my students were talking, and as best I could tell each of them had eaten only one sort of food since — for some, pizza, for others, donuts, but they had all, for some reason, just got stuck on one thing and couldn’t leave it. I thought: who would have imagined that? Not me.
It was like I imagine recovering from being horribly beaten would be: each day you feel in some barely perceptible way better, but at the same time each day brings brand new dull aches you hadn’t been aware of the day before. This went on for the better part of a month.
Like Erasmussimo, though, I wasn’t exactly surprised. This was partly the result of having lived in Israel, where awareness of the possibility of terrorism is just a fact of life: ever since then, I had been aware of how easy it would be to blow something up in a public place, and while the scale of 9/11 was a surprise, the fact of a terrorist attack on US soil was, to me, surprising only by being relatively novel, and (unlike previous episodes) not homegrown.
I don’t think I ever just wanted to lash out, though. This was also partly due to living in Israel: one of the things that struck me most about living there was the way in which decisions that were, in context, perfectly comprehensible, though wrong, could have horrible consequences that went on and on and on for generations; and when you try to explain why you screwed things up to the people who suffer the consequences of your mistake, “it was all perfectly understandable at the time” cuts very little ice. While I was there, the thought: you have to get these things right just lodged itself in my bones. It had become second nature.
So it didn’t occur to me to simply lash out, because this was second nature: even though I feel free to be an idiot when nothing is at stake, when something like this happens, my eyes get very narrow and I think: now of all times is not the time to get things wrong. Not even “understandably.”
Which is why I found what seemed to me to be the crazy aspect of our national response utterly alien. Lots of parts were not — the horror, of course, but also things like: the way it moved me that so many people put flags on so many freeway overpasses, the sudden sense that any American, from some completely out of the way place where I had never so much of thought of going, was my kin. This I had completely. But the lashing out part I didn’t, and mostly this was not due to morals so much as to the thought: now of all times we have to get things right. I mean: the urge to protect my country was already completely melded with the thought: and that means being smart.
And the random hatred of anything to do with the Middle East was, of course, not an option, since I knew enough about the region that wanting to strike back at Saddam for what al Qaeda had done made no more sense to me than if, after having been attacked by a Spaniard, I had decided to get revenge by beating up the nearest Latvian.
— One other thing I think I got from Israel put me at odds with some of my compatriots, and that was the very, very clear realization that mistakes do have consequences, and that it is possible to do real and lasting harm to your country by getting things wrong. Most of America’s mistakes genuinely do not come back and bite us (they do, of course, affect others.) We have oceans to protect us, and while they won’t protect us from missiles, they do mean that we have normally not had to worry about invading armies. We have never had the same relationship to foreign policy mistakes that, say, Belgium or Hungary necessarily had.
One of the aspects of the immediate post-9/11 period that was strangest to me was not just the sheer amount of wanting to beat people or countries up — that was understandable — but the sense that there was no need at all to ask whether yielding to this would be a horrible mistake. People talked about how not yielding to it might be a sign of wimpishness or secret al Qaeda sympathies or something, and other people talked about how yielding to it was a moral issue, but very few people (as I recall it) talked about how what we did might be a horrible mistake from the point of view of our national interests. It was as though everything we did got to be magically cost-free. I found this bizarre beyond words. Especially in the case of the invasion of Iraq, which I thought then, and think now, was a mistake that will make Vietnam seem like nothing.
It was a strange, strange time.
Getting passed my initial pissed-offedness: It’s absolutely fair to say that America, as a nation, has never had to suffer the potential for invasion and civilian devastation that other nations have. It’s fair, and absolutely true, and we’re fortunate in that regard. And it’s certainly had an effect on our cultural psyche — most Americans have never had to live with what a resident of Baghdad in the last four years, let alone Vietnam in the 1960s, or London in the Blitz, or Ireland in the 1970s, has had to live with.
But to take that a step further and imply that we’ve never had to watch our military suffer? No, sorry — that’s just wrong. I mean, frankly, the US and the UK both look like pikers next to the USSR, Germany and Japan in terms of WWII military deaths; but the fact remains that the US, separated by two oceans, still lost more fighting men and women in that war than any of the Allies aside from the USSR, China and Yugoslavia, and in a lot less time. So no slagging the US military for not having suffered, please.
Phil, rather than feeling insulted because the US as a country (and that includes, proportionally, the number of US military who have been killed) has suffered less in wars in the 20th century than European countries did, or the USSR, or any of the South Asian countries: why not feel grateful?
As I wrote on my journal, and perhaps should have written here; I don’t wish mass deaths on the US. I don’t wish mass deaths on any country. Knowing what it’s like to lose large numbers of your population to war is not a good thing.
Jesurgislac said
Donald: How much of that is rooted in the understanding that there is virtually nothing that any European country could do militarily to respond to such an attack?
“Well, we have suffered terrorist attacks, and recently, too. Of course there military responses possible. We couldn’t have bombed Boston or Chicago, but we could have bombed Dublin. We didn’t.”
Yes, you could have, but I imagine any potential desire to do so was mitigated by the Irish government’s regarding of the IRA as terrorists IIRC. As I understand it, they were considered criminals on both sides of the border. For the Taliban, Al Qaeda was providing a portion of their army and had just completed an assassination mission against head of the Northern Alliance.
It was probably also mitigated by the UKs long history with terrorism. To some extent, I wonder if it is like that story about the frog and boiling water. Since each step toward a total casualty count that probably rivaled 9/11 on a proportional basis was a relatively small incident over 30 or so years, the UK adapted and no single incident was enough to consider a military response (the slow boil technique). The US, on the other hand, despite a few incidents had essentially zero experience and suddenly got hit with the largest terrorist attack in history (dropped in boiling water). Note, we did not bomb anyone after the first WTC attack and there wasn’t anyone to bomb (except ourselves) after Oklahoma City.
As a thought question, if an insane Irish government recruited the IRA as part of its forces and they subsequently flew airliners into equivalent UK buildings, and killed 1,900 odd civilians, do you think military action against Ireland would be considered? How about if the Irish government provided no meaningful assistance in trying to capture the terrorists?
As a thought question, if an insane Irish government recruited the IRA as part of its forces and they subsequently flew airliners into equivalent UK buildings, and killed 1,900 odd civilians, do you think military action against Ireland would be considered?
Well, not at all as a thought question, as a matter of fact: when American civilians were funding the IRA and the US government invited an IRA representative to meet the President, at a time when the IRA was planting bombs in British cities to kill civilians and cause disruption and terror, do you think the UK should have considered military action against the US?
As a plain matter of fact, of course, we couldn’t, and you’re right that this has affected the way we think about terrorism and military reactions against governments that allow terrorist supporters to operate freely and gather support in their nation.
But I ask you: would it have made the US more or less likely to act against the American IRA supporters, if the UK had bombed Boston?
Charley Carp: It’s clear enough that the biggest ‘exception’ in American Exceptionalism is that we never learn a goddam thing.
This one’s a keeper; thanks, CC.
I never supported the war but I don’t claim any moral highground. Like most people my reactions are a manifestation of my training and upbringing. I was raised to be suspicious of Republicans. The minute I heard abouut 911 I thought that now we were going to attack some little country in the Middle East and beat that country up because we would need to restore our national “honor” (pride, actually ) that way. My assumption was that Republican leadership wouuld exploit a tragedy for domestic purposes, and respond by appealing to pride annd jingoism. That’s how I believe the Republican politicians of the Viet Nam era handled thhat war and I assumed thhat thhey would continnue thhe pattern.
I was (and still am) sufficiently cynical about Americans to assume that most of my fellow citizens were more upset that AMERICANS got killed than then that people died. The outrage seemed misplaced to me, too much “How dare they attack US!” rather than a focus on the tragedy of the deaths.
Charley Carp makes an important point about wars, loss, and feelinngs of humiliation. To this day there are people who are still enraged with humiliation over thhe loss of the Viet Nam war. I don’t have much respect for the moral values they display. The most important thinng about a war should be the reason why it is is fought and if the reason isn’t good ennough–isn’t worthh killinng large numbers of people- then the fighhting should stop. The Viet Nam dead enders don’t care about why we fouughht. They are embittered to this day because they feel humilitated by the loss and they wanted to feel pride at the victory. To them winning is everythinng annd what you fighht for is not worth thinkinng about seriously.
We are in a similar place now withh thhe Iraq war. Some people simply can’t think about the war rationally. All thhey care about is thhat we win so thhat they can feel like winners and avoid the humiliation of losinng. There is an unfortunate tendency to equate this egocenntric approach to war withh patriotism.
I’m actually more angry with Democrats in Congress who supported thhe war than withh anyonne else. As it was said upthread, politicianns are supposed to be better judges of the issues than us citizens. That’s why they are the leaders. My expectation of Democrats is that they will respond to events thoughtfully annd responsibly, without jingoism , vanity, and hysteria. I was really sickened by the failure of those who voted for the authorization.
It all comes down, in my mind, to how one defines patriotism. To me, patriotism means to understand and support thhe basic prinicples of democracy. In my view America isn’t so much a place or a people or a history or a set of politicians as it is a set of ideas. I’ll salute the Bill of Righhts any day of the week. But I don’t thinnk of America as being my team and I don’t feel a need to cheerlead and I don’t feel personally identified with the place, people, or politicians. If someone attacks the concepts of democracy, I get riled. If they insult Americans or American politicians, I don’t.
Mr. Clarke writes: As a thought question, if an insane Irish government recruited the IRA as part of its forces and they subsequently flew airliners into equivalent UK buildings, and killed 1,900 odd civilians, do you think military action against Ireland would be considered?
I believe you’re mixing together two very different situations: Afghanistan and Iraq. The invasion of Afghanistan was not opposed by a significant number of people; even I, who strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq from the outset, felt that, all in all, the invasion of Afghanistan was a prudent policy decision (although I was much concerned about the likelihood of poor followup, a concern that has been borne out subsequently.) It’s the invasion of Iraq that is the object of so much criticism.
Jesurgilac said:
“Well, not at all as a thought question, as a matter of fact: when American civilians were funding the IRA and the US government invited an IRA representative to meet the President, at a time when the IRA was planting bombs in British cities to kill civilians and cause disruption and terror, do you think the UK should have considered military action against the US?
As a plain matter of fact, of course, we couldn’t, and you’re right that this has affected the way we think about terrorism and military reactions against governments that allow terrorist supporters to operate freely and gather support in their nation.
But I ask you: would it have made the US more or less likely to act against the American IRA supporters, if the UK had bombed Boston?”
Fair enough. It probably would have made the US less likely to act. But how many operations were carried out from the US against the UK? I had the impression that the US provided funds, but operational planning and missions were conducted from Ireland or other European locations. You know more about this than I do, but bombing Boston would probably have made just as much sense as the US bombing Saudi Arabia, even though I suspect a fair amount of Al Qaeda’s funding still emerges from there. As for me, if the NORAID headquarters building had burned down one night with no deaths, I would not have shed a tear. But I think the Israelis showed after Munich that James Bond has a much easier time in the movies.
My apologies if I seem to be minimizing the pain and casualties suffered by the UK and other European countries from terrorism. That was certainly not my intention and I will try to judge my words better. My further apologies for the frustration the UK must have undergone over those decades knowing that their “ally” was providing aid and comfort to their enemies.
My first thoughts, when I got the 9/11 news, were:
1. I hope it was not the Palestinians
2. I hope someone stops the moron in chief to
immediately and indiscriminately nuke the Middle East.
and a bit later (after the Pentagon got hit):
3. What incompetent is running the air defenses?
At that time there were rumours that at least 2 more planes were on their way.
The seemingly calm reaction was quite relieving at first. Noone I know did blame Bush for keeping a low profile after the attacks btw (My Pet Goat was not yet in the news), it seemed most prudent.
That the US then went to war in Afghanistan after seemingly considering all options was seen as legitimate over here.
The great disillusionment started when we learned about Bush’s domestic actions and was complete whith his drive to get a war with Iraq at all costs.
The effect on German politics was that Stoiber (right-wing, pro-war) lost against Schröder (who seemed not to have much chances at the time). For many that was the only good deed that Bush had (involuntarily) done 😉
Phil, what I was taught was that the UK lost ~500K military dead in WWII; the US lost ~350K military dead. BTW, (again, IIRC) France lost ~200K military dead, from a far smaller population.
Erasmusimmo said
Mr. Clarke writes: As a thought question, if an insane Irish government recruited the IRA as part of its forces and they subsequently flew airliners into equivalent UK buildings, and killed 1,900 odd civilians, do you think military action against Ireland would be considered?
“I believe you’re mixing together two very different situations: Afghanistan and Iraq. The invasion of Afghanistan was not opposed by a significant number of people; even I, who strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq from the outset, felt that, all in all, the invasion of Afghanistan was a prudent policy decision (although I was much concerned about the likelihood of poor followup, a concern that has been borne out subsequently.) It’s the invasion of Iraq that is the object of so much criticism.”
Err, no. looking up thread at Jesurgislac’s comment on her reaction to 9/11 it seems pretty clear that she opposed a military response at that time (ie Afghanistan). I was responding to that. I agree with you that the military action in Afghanistan was broadly supported here in the US in general and (I believe) among the front pagers here. For that matter, NATO invoked common article V, so it was supported by at least some other governments.
As for Iraq, well I was wrong. I had mixed feelings about going in. I had doubts about most of the stated reasons, but wondered if the status quo was any better, particularly since it did not seem that it was going to last. The choice didn’t seem to be between war and a continuation of sanctions. The sanctions were going away in the next couple of years regardless. I also had no idea of just how incredibly bad policy planning and execution could be in the Bush administration. There is an old army saying “failure to plan = planning to fail”. I would like to brand it on the forehead of every member of the administration, and then send them over here as a peace corps type deal to try to fix even a small part of what they have broken. I wonder if Katrina had happened in Sep 02, would we have trusted the Republicans with Iraq?
Donald: That was a very gentlemanly correction about the toll of terrorism. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate it – it’s this kind of thing that keeps me coming back, and feeling like I’m learning things. An environment where people can and do go “oops, I’ll fix that” and then do fix it is rare and precious to me.
CharleyCarp: I made it through that article finally. Christ – how depressing.
Other people have made the points I would have made and better than I would have made them–I just wanted to say that much of this thread is going to be copied and sent to friends as a justification of my blogreading habits. Why is it that so-called liberal media outlets like the NYT rarely if ever publish commentary anywhere near as good as what I’ve seen just in this thread? (I said something similar in response to a hilzoy post some weeks back–the question pops into my head on a fairly frequent basis.)
Okay, enough of the flattery–back to lurking.
What’s the deal with Cheney and the remaining dead-enders? Is there any way to reach them? Do you understand their thinking any better than I do?
Sorry – no. The closest I can come is something like this (which I have been going through over the last year or so):
I have to be right, because if I’m wrong and acknowledge that, then I have to acknowledge all the really bad things that came from being wrong. So of course I am right.
Barry: this is one of the better estimates I found last time I searched for it.
I grew up in a country that had been occupied. Many people from my parents generation still saw Rotterdam as something similar to your ground zero. My mother told tales of a childhood in the war and right after that were mostly not especially horrible, but that made the horrors of war and the cost of it for the population a real thing. It does make me prone to identify with the attacked country, and I have the ingrained feeling that war should really be the last last last ressort.
The US has a history of fighting on other peoples territory, so even though their soldiers get killed it is still ‘far away’. When most Americans talk about the cost of the war, they talk about the hugh deficit of the US – or about the 3200 dead American soldiers. When I talk about the hight cost of the war I also talk about the 600.000 death Iraqi’s and their bankrupt and destroyed country. I see my stephfather crying (a rare sight, the only other time I say him crying was when my mother died) because he still hears the planes that flew over when he was a boy in WW2 and that might drop bombs – and wonder how many Iraqi kids will be as damaged. My mother lived in Amsterdam in the Hungerwinter. Their stories will always give war (and the effect on the population) a more personal feel.
Right after the war our country fought in Indonesia, to try to prevent independence. Though I was tought at school that we were wrong and did bad things, they were not made specific. Not in numbers, not in specific actions, not in how soldiers that refused to go or to do immoral things were punished much more harshly than soldiers who killed and mistreated civilians.
The fighting in that region isn’t as personal. And that is not just because we were the bad party in that case: Many people who had come back right after the capitulation (and the Dutch that were captured by the Japanese suffered greatly) were – and are – frustrated because nobody was interested in their suffering. We celebrate the capitulation of the Germans, remember Market Garden, but there’s hardly any mentioning of the capitulation of the Japanes.
The last encounter we had with terrorism was because of our Indonesian actions and still it is not as “personal” as the German occupation.
I was sort of shellshocked the first days after 911 (I saw it on the tv as from 15 minutes after the first plane flew into the towers). I remember how weird it was that Bush was ‘lost’ all day long and I was scared that there would be an instant retaliation to whichever party was handiest for the government. When that didn’t happen I felt very relieved and I hoped that sanity had won. Which is why I supported the attack on Afghanistan: I thought Bush was appearantly more trustworthy than I had given him credit for.
When he started to make moves to Iraq he lost the trust again. There were too many things that didn’t feel right, too many faulty facts, not enough achieved in Afghanistan, not enought room for the inspectors. I did not see anything trustworthy to proof that Iraq was a threat except maybe in their own region. I still cite the late Robin Cooks resignation statement because it summarized most of my feelings at the time.
For the record: a few years back, we in the US used to hear about how we understood about the need for war, while the Europeans were wimps who just didn’t get it. Whenever I heard this, I used to think (to the people who were saying it): shut up, you ahistorical twits! Isn’t it just barely conceivable that some part of the difference between the US and Europe, on this topic, is related to the fact that they have had major wars fought on their soil in living memory, while we have not? And in view of that fact, can’t we just stop this “they don’t get it” stuff?
But that was before I was blogging, and it occurs to me that I’ve never said, the the Europeans reading this: sorry about that particularly odious bit of ahistorical petulance. You may be right, you may be wrong, but for Americans to lecture you on who really understands about war must be pretty annoying. So, on behalf of my country: apologies.
Hilzoy: This is one of those comments I am smart enough (now) to sleep on before commenting on (much). But think about the American lives lost due to those European Ahh, mistakes? Apologies?
OCSteve: I’m just apologizing for one small thing: people dismissing the views of Europeans about war in 2003. Not, God knows, for anything really big, like, say, the US intervention in WW2, for which I have no apologies. I’m also not saying something like: if you tot up all the good and bad things we and Europe have done, war-wise, we’re the ones who should be apologizing. (I have no idea how to measure something like that, let alone how to discount for Europe’s longer history, etc.)
I just think it was stupid to say that Europeans just didn’t understand the need for war, because they are from Venus and we are from Mars, or whatever it was people used to say. And it must have been sort of annoying.
OCSteve: But think about the American lives lost due to those European Ahh, mistakes? Apologies?
If you ever come to the UK, OCSteve, you will find in many cities (certainly in mine) expressions of gratitude and appreciation cut in stone and steel to the Americans who fought in WWII.
Hilzoy: Gottcha. As I suspected, I misread you.
Jes: Understood.
Hilzoy, my biggest compalint about those who were criticizing the French, Germans and even Canadians because they did not join us in Iraq was that they seemed to totally disregard the fact that they were with us (and still are) in Afghanistan and still losing lives in that country.
My son, while stationed in Kuwait and working with the coalition, was particularly impressed by the French and German officers he was in contact with. The Italians, not so much.
And they forget, that despite our arrognat attitude towards any country that doens’t agree with us totally (you are with us or against us) these countries have been verycooperative with intelligence and police assistance.
The fact is they realized Iraq had nothing to do with the WAT.
OCSteve, a late comment on your response to my commenta bout fear. You are of course correct that anger and rage played a big part in our response. I would put to you though that fear is a secondary emotion, primarily deriving from an intial response of hurt or fear.
In the case of 9/11, I think the first response was from hurt (which includes sorrow) but this adminsitration keep the anger going primarily by keeping the fear angle front and center. The whole “mushroom cloud” thing is a direct example.
OCSteve: But think about the American lives lost due to those European Ahh, mistakes? Apologies?
In addition to what Jes said: OCSteve, I grew up in Amsterdam where the Canadian veterans are invited back regularly to thank them again. Have you seen this site about Market Garden (very heavy, but very extensive)? In 2005 there were schoolchildren besides each gravestone, reading the names on them one by one because those should not be forgotten. There are actually waitinglists for people who want to adopt a grave to care for, since that is hard for family oversea.
Hilzoy: I actually put remarks like that on the heap with a lot of other stereotyping. I have to much respect for you to assume you’d be so misinformed 😉
Russell: I don’t recall asking you to defend your stance on the war.
Quite right.
Revisiting these old, old issues makes me want to yell at people. Not a great response, but there it is. Tag, you were it.
Lots of folks feel that way, about something or other, now and then. Most of those folks have the good sense to take a walk and cool off. Kick some cans, if that’s what you need to do. Punch a pillow. Apparently, I am in short supply of that good sense.
My comments in reply to your posts were inappropriate, certainly here, and quite possibly in any context.
I was wrong. You’ll do me a great favor if you’ll accept my apologies.
How much of that is rooted in the understanding that there is virtually nothing that any European country could do militarily to respond to such an attack?
Actually, several European countries, notably the UK, have strong and well-respected militaries. If they decided to respond to a terrorist attack militarily, they could no doubt make a pretty good dent.
there’s still a notion deepset, that when war happens, it doesn’t really mean that hundreds of thousands of civilians will be killed.
I think what’s unique about the US experience of war is, exactly, the very low number of civilian casualties in any war that anyone remembers from personal experience. Even Pearl Harbor was primarily a military target.
No living American has experienced having their home destroyed, their goods or livelihood torn away, their city occupied, or their civilian family and neighbors killed in their own homes. Neither did their parents, or grandparents, or anyone else they might have known personally. It makes a difference, I think.
I also think that that is the root of a lot of the trauma of 9/11. While recognizing the reality of the threat on paper, in real life we always assumed we were immune.
Thanks
Sorry, a couple of final points for anyone still reading.
very few people (as I recall it) talked about how what we did might be a horrible mistake from the point of view of our national interests.
I actually think this is not correct.
Both Scowcroft and James Baker argued publicly against the invasion on purely pragmatic grounds. Ditto Lawrence Eagleburger.
Chuck Hagel and Dick Armey were both critical of both the plans and the justifications of the Iraq war before we invaded.
I think it actually took Bush quite a lot of arm twisting to get the authorization for the use of force passed through Congress. A lot of folks thought it was a bad idea.
Hulk mad – Hulk smash
The funny thing is that, understandable as this reaction might have been, it wasn’t how we responded to 9/11.
We waited a month before attacking Afghanistan. In retrospect, that’s kind of astounding to consider. We engaged the Taliban diplomatically, and sought the peaceful surrender of Bin Laden. The towers fell on 9/11, we made no military reprisal until 10/7.
No doubt that time was spent getting our folks ready to go in, but it’s far from clear to me that a military action in Afghanistan was a foregone conclusion. If the Taliban had surrendered Bin Laden and allowed us access to the training camps, IMO it’s likely that we would not have gone to war with them. There was no lashing out, but rather a deliberate, measured, and reasonable response.
I remember at the time being favorably impressed with Bush’s restraint and patience, if you can imagine that.
The really sad thing, to me, is the tremendous opportunity that was lost in Afghanistan. Had we made a real investment of attention and effort there — had we disarmed the warlords, put enough people in place to make the whole country secure, helped establish a really robust civil government, provided real assistance in rebuilding the economy — we’d be heroes not only in Afghanistan, but in a lot of the Muslim and Arab world today. It would have been the second coming of the Marshall Plan.
Want to transform an oppressive regime into an exemplar of representative government? Want to transform a bastion of militant jihadism into a model of moderate and open Islamic governance? That was our best shot.
All of that is just one more thing thrown away for the foolish adventure in Iraq. If I live to be 100, I’ll never understand it.
Thanks –
Russell said
How much of that is rooted in the understanding that there is virtually nothing that any European country could do militarily to respond to such an attack?
Actually, several European countries, notably the UK, have strong and well-respected militaries. If they decided to respond to a terrorist attack militarily, they could no doubt make a pretty good dent.
Err no. The big problem is lack of reach. If they could reach the terrorists, they could do a good job, but European militaries are designed primarily to defend Europe in Europe. The big difference between a major power and a super power is reach. The UK, for example, could mount a very effective response to terrorists from Ireland, but had a hard time fighting Argentina. France can raid into Africa. The ability of either to to attack Afghanistan without the US is effectively nil, unless they want to nuke Kabul.
I agrree with you on your last post. I had friends who voted for Bush who were thinking too bad Gore wasn’t elected. They felt he would have beeen compelled to start bombing earlier due to perceived Democtraic weakness on national security.