Invading Iraq: More on the Den Beste Argument
Our earlier discussion based on the Den Beste argument helped, I believe, to focus our discussion in several important ways. I won't list them all now, but I will point out some that are of particular interest to me. So here goes another episode of 4-I's:
It has become clear that one important proposition here is:
(IMA) The invasion of Iraq was (at the time of invasion) more likely to decrease the number/effectiveness of terrorists in the long run than was the killing of OBL et. al. and the (re)building of Afghanistan.
Another important proposition--more important, I believe, is:
(IMC) The invasion of Iraq was (at the time of invasion) more likely to decrease the number/effectiveness of terrorists in the long run than was (what I will call) the more direct, conventional strategy.
Although I'm perfectly happy to discuss (IMA), it seems like it's (IMC) that we should really be interested in, so I'll start there and then if anyone sees any reason to revert to (IMA) we can do so.
What does the more direct and conventional strategy look like? Well, people who know much more about this than I do have much more interesting things to say about this, but, since to some extent we are discussing the question 'what other relatively obvious strategies should we have been considering in 2002?', I think it might be worthwhile to just sketch out some of the other options that came fairly readily to mind at that time. I take the strategy to include e.g.:
1. Pouring far more military resources into Afghanistan than we did, in order to crush all al Qaeda elements in that country, win the battle of Tora Bora in a resounding fashion, eliminate the Taliban, slap the Afghan warlords and drug lords into line, and kill OBL and other important al Qaeda leaders. Aside from the obvious reasons, one reason for bringing overwhelming force to bear in this case is to show the world that attacking us brings immediate and irresistable annhiliation.
2. Pouring massive resources into the rebuilding of Afghanistan. Among the many other reasons--primarily moral ones--for doing this would also be some prudential reasons. This project would solidify the moral authority of the United States and increase the already astonishing amount of good will directed toward us after 9/11 (good will which has, of course, now more than evaporated). It would also give us a stable, liberal democratic ally in the region, on the border of the crucial and volatile Pakistan. (Mr. Den Beste suggested in the previous discussion that such good will was not very valuable; I disagree in the strongest possible terms. Such good will is crucially important from a prudential perspective.)
3. Achieving independence from Middle Eastern oil in order to make it feasible for us to sever our ties with authoritarian regimes, Saudi Arabia in particular. Jimmy Carter tried to explain the importance of energy independence to America 30 years ago and was ridiculed mercilessly. In retrospect, there can be no doubt that he was right. Had we followed his advice, 9/11 would never have happened. Now that achieving independence from Middle Eastern oil has become even more obviously imperative, we might even have to consider loathesome options like drilling in the ANWR and more nuclear power. Those are terrible options, but we've allowed ourselves to be backed into a corner and must now consider them, even if they may ultimately be avoidable.
4. Providing aid to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle Eastern countries to establish secular schools. These schools would be alternatives to the Madrassas. They would introduce the Western, secular idea of liberal education and democratic government into these countries and, from a vocational perspective, help the people of those countries build viable, sustainable (i.e. non-oil-based) economies.
5. Working from outside, with the U.N., to encourage the relevant societies to become more open and liberal. This would include helping them to understand that a secular democratic government need not be anti-religious. This might involve, for example, a massive information campaign conducted through the VoA or some similar organ of the U.S. Satelite television is apparently wildly popular in much of the Middle East, and an extremely well-run, well-funded television channel dedicated to explaining the idea of liberal democracy and multi-cultural society would probably have a significant impact.
6. Eliminating our support for regimes such as those of Saudi Arabia and Egypt which repress their people and do not allow them to express dissent, but allow media outlets to criticize the United States in lieu of criticizing their own governments. Currently we are supporting tyrants who re-direct the rage of their populace against us. But if we no longer need their oil, there will no longer be any need to tolerate this. This is not even to mention the fact that our support of such tyrants is morally inexcusable.
These are, of course, only the most obvious steps. The administration's strategy, as partially represented by the Den Beste argument, is flawed, I believe, because it treats the multifaceted problem that is the Middle East as if it were one single problem solvable by a military "hail Mary." The U.S. seems to have become like the man whose only tool is a hammer, so he treats every problem as a nail. But military problems need military solutions and non-military problems need non-military ones. We needed to use the military not just to defeat OBL et. al., but to vaporize them. There should be a national park at Tora Bora where people can go to see the smudge of ashes on the floor that are the mortal remains of Osama bin Laden, so that people will still go there in a hundred years and, pointing to it, say "The Americans did that." There should also be schools and libraries and highways and water purification plants, and people pointing to them, too, and saying "The Americans also did that."
These are just the obvious alternatives to invading Iraq. I'd bet every cent I have that this strategy would be more likely to work than the invasion of Iraq.
[Forgot to reference the propostions as formulated above: to make the conclusion painfully clear, I think that (IMC) is far from being obviously true, and is, in fact, probably false.]
Our earlier discussion based on the Den Beste argument helped, I believe, to focus our discussion in several important ways. I won't list them all now, but I will point out some that are of particular interest to me. So here goes another episode of 4-I's:
It has become clear that one important proposition here is:
(IMA) The invasion of Iraq was (at the time of invasion) more likely to decrease the number/effectiveness of terrorists in the long run than was the killing of OBL et. al. and the (re)building of Afghanistan.
Another important proposition--more important, I believe, is:
(IMC) The invasion of Iraq was (at the time of invasion) more likely to decrease the number/effectiveness of terrorists in the long run than was (what I will call) the more direct, conventional strategy.
Although I'm perfectly happy to discuss (IMA), it seems like it's (IMC) that we should really be interested in, so I'll start there and then if anyone sees any reason to revert to (IMA) we can do so.
What does the more direct and conventional strategy look like? Well, people who know much more about this than I do have much more interesting things to say about this, but, since to some extent we are discussing the question 'what other relatively obvious strategies should we have been considering in 2002?', I think it might be worthwhile to just sketch out some of the other options that came fairly readily to mind at that time. I take the strategy to include e.g.:
1. Pouring far more military resources into Afghanistan than we did, in order to crush all al Qaeda elements in that country, win the battle of Tora Bora in a resounding fashion, eliminate the Taliban, slap the Afghan warlords and drug lords into line, and kill OBL and other important al Qaeda leaders. Aside from the obvious reasons, one reason for bringing overwhelming force to bear in this case is to show the world that attacking us brings immediate and irresistable annhiliation.
2. Pouring massive resources into the rebuilding of Afghanistan. Among the many other reasons--primarily moral ones--for doing this would also be some prudential reasons. This project would solidify the moral authority of the United States and increase the already astonishing amount of good will directed toward us after 9/11 (good will which has, of course, now more than evaporated). It would also give us a stable, liberal democratic ally in the region, on the border of the crucial and volatile Pakistan. (Mr. Den Beste suggested in the previous discussion that such good will was not very valuable; I disagree in the strongest possible terms. Such good will is crucially important from a prudential perspective.)
3. Achieving independence from Middle Eastern oil in order to make it feasible for us to sever our ties with authoritarian regimes, Saudi Arabia in particular. Jimmy Carter tried to explain the importance of energy independence to America 30 years ago and was ridiculed mercilessly. In retrospect, there can be no doubt that he was right. Had we followed his advice, 9/11 would never have happened. Now that achieving independence from Middle Eastern oil has become even more obviously imperative, we might even have to consider loathesome options like drilling in the ANWR and more nuclear power. Those are terrible options, but we've allowed ourselves to be backed into a corner and must now consider them, even if they may ultimately be avoidable.
4. Providing aid to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle Eastern countries to establish secular schools. These schools would be alternatives to the Madrassas. They would introduce the Western, secular idea of liberal education and democratic government into these countries and, from a vocational perspective, help the people of those countries build viable, sustainable (i.e. non-oil-based) economies.
5. Working from outside, with the U.N., to encourage the relevant societies to become more open and liberal. This would include helping them to understand that a secular democratic government need not be anti-religious. This might involve, for example, a massive information campaign conducted through the VoA or some similar organ of the U.S. Satelite television is apparently wildly popular in much of the Middle East, and an extremely well-run, well-funded television channel dedicated to explaining the idea of liberal democracy and multi-cultural society would probably have a significant impact.
6. Eliminating our support for regimes such as those of Saudi Arabia and Egypt which repress their people and do not allow them to express dissent, but allow media outlets to criticize the United States in lieu of criticizing their own governments. Currently we are supporting tyrants who re-direct the rage of their populace against us. But if we no longer need their oil, there will no longer be any need to tolerate this. This is not even to mention the fact that our support of such tyrants is morally inexcusable.
These are, of course, only the most obvious steps. The administration's strategy, as partially represented by the Den Beste argument, is flawed, I believe, because it treats the multifaceted problem that is the Middle East as if it were one single problem solvable by a military "hail Mary." The U.S. seems to have become like the man whose only tool is a hammer, so he treats every problem as a nail. But military problems need military solutions and non-military problems need non-military ones. We needed to use the military not just to defeat OBL et. al., but to vaporize them. There should be a national park at Tora Bora where people can go to see the smudge of ashes on the floor that are the mortal remains of Osama bin Laden, so that people will still go there in a hundred years and, pointing to it, say "The Americans did that." There should also be schools and libraries and highways and water purification plants, and people pointing to them, too, and saying "The Americans also did that."
These are just the obvious alternatives to invading Iraq. I'd bet every cent I have that this strategy would be more likely to work than the invasion of Iraq.
[Forgot to reference the propostions as formulated above: to make the conclusion painfully clear, I think that (IMC) is far from being obviously true, and is, in fact, probably false.]
posted by Winston Smith at
7:54 AM
13 Comments:
As I read your plan I found myself imagining an alternate universe in which this was that plan used (perhaps by President Gore). I imagined what this universe might be like . . . the US not sucked into Middle Eastern quagmire after quagmire, being able to go to the pump without supporting torture, being able to pay our taxes without supporting torture, the arab street deeply impressed with our generosity and awed by our strength, the westernizing of Afghanistan, our social capital skyrocketing, the USA as a solid, reliable force for good.
What a lovely would that would be.
Would that it were so.
I do think you're trying to lay out the situation fairly, WS, but I believe there are other factors:
---9/11 did not make Saddam less of a threat.
One must also accept the proposition that the sanctions regime was failing, however, something that seems heretical to what is now Conventional Wisdom.
The Bush Doctrine never specifically targeted al-Qaeda. Saddam's Iraq openly supported terrorists. That was sufficient. That it was already in violation of its post-Kuwait treaty obligations and routinely butchered its own people was also sufficient in their own right, and although not specifically germane here, was an essential factor.
---Tora Bora was no sure thing. The US could easily have still missed bin Laden, despite a doubling of effort.
---Creating a more pro-US Afghanistan through a more massive occupation instead of co-opting Musharraf was not self-evidently a better strategy. Neither is it self-evident that throwing more money at Afghanistan would have better fought terrorism.
---To posit that energy independence would have prevented 9/11 seems quite a bridge too far. The problem with mixing Islamism and oil is that there are many other customers worldwide. It is the power that oil money brings that's the real worry.
---That Madarasses get their students because they are schools, and not because they are Islamic is not in evidence. Still, offering secular alternatives is interesting, although I would expect them to become magnets (flypaper?) for anti-Western violence.
---The UN is useless except for counting bodies and passing out band-aids.
---Not needing the good will of Saudi Arabia to counterbalance Saddam enables the US to pressure the Saudis to liberalize and stop supporting terror. And there is no percentage in destabilizing Egypt by eliminating our support.
"Another important proposition--more important, I believe, is:
(IMC) The invasion of Iraq was (at the time of invasion) more likely to decrease the number/effectiveness of terrorists in the long run than was (what I will call) the more direct, conventional strategy."
---The meme that confronting Iraq sapped resources away from Afghanistan is not in evidence; as Mr. den Beste points out, there were 18 months between the events. He also points out that liberalization is underway in Egypt, Saudi, Lebanon, and others. Press freedom is also growing in the Muslim world, I believe. Conventional strategy would have been purely reactive.
Tackling "root causes" is tricky and often massively inefficient, as the mixed results of our own social programs have proven. But if the impetus for Islamism is tyranny (and I believe it is), then both realpolitik and moralizing bully pulpitism are insufficient to foster change.
Neither Richard Nixon nor Carter freed anyone. Bush41 and Clinton freed a few people in Kuwait and Kosovo. Bush43 freed 50 million people. What they do with that freedom is still uncertain, but that can't be taken away from him.
Freedom is messy, but has proven less messy in the long run than tyranny. That's a metric you can take to the bank, and the foundation of Mr. den Beste's thesis.
Gotta say I don't see a lot here that matters, Tom.
Much of this comes down to "your suggestion isn't a sure thing," which I, of course, agree with. It's just a surer thing than the ill-considered Iraq invasion.
Saddam wasn't a threat.
Didn't say that Carter freed anybody. Said that 9/11 wouldn't have happened if we hadn't had an I.V. line running from Saudi Arabia into our collective SUV. Pointed out that Carter pointed that out to us.
Carter also wanted to make human rights the centerpiece of our foreign policy. He was ridiculed for it. If we'd have done so we might have made slow progress that would have avoided this whole mess.
Instead Reagan supported Saddam the tyrant, and then we had to go kick his ass.
Carter suggested that we stop supporting tyrants. See, then we don't have to go kick their asses when they tyrannize people we haven't authorized them to tyrannize.
And, again, I've made it clear that I think a humanitarian case for a UN-backed invasion to eliminate Saddam could be made. But that's a different point.
It's crucial in these matters to keep the crosshairs on the dialectical target.
"But if the impetus for Islamism is tyranny (and I believe it is), then both realpolitik and moralizing bully pulpitism are insufficient to foster change."
Tom,
First of all, I think this point is only valid 'iff' Islamism = terrorism. I don't know if that's necessarily true, depending upon your definition of 'Islamism'. But perhaps I'm just quibbling with your choice of terms.
The more important point is that I don't see the *causal* connection between tyranny and 'Islamism', and certainly not necessarily between tyranny and terrorism. Quick, who's the biggest tyrant in the world? I would submit that it's Kim Jong Il. He's at least in the running...and how many North Korean terrorists can you identify?
More to the point, during Saddam's reign there was virtually NO terrorism in Iraq, nor did the country spawn any significant number of international terrorists. If you review most of the international terrorist events of the past couple of decades, I think you'll find more of the perpetrators originating in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Pakistan, among others. Nowhere near the top of the list is Iraq. You could make the case that these other nations are tyrannies as well, but I would maintain that they are generally not as oppressive as Saddam's regime. Moreover, the point was made in an earlier thread that most of the 9/11 perpetrators lived in western countries much of their lives and had little or nothing to do with Iraq or Saddam.
So I guess I'm just having trouble understanding a dynamic whereby this largely secular, but immensely brutal tyrant in any significant way contributed to 'Islamist'-inspired terrorism. It just seems like there's a huge lacuna in your attempt to connect the Saddam's regime to any 'Islamist'-based terrorism. If anything, I would expect that his regime would be considered a TARGET for those who dream of puritanical Islamic nations.
This may also be related to my comments on a previous thread about terrorism being solely a tactic, and that it's likely that there are many species of terrorists, each of which needs to be combatted in a different way.
All good points, LC. It still comes down to whether the status quo with Saddam was tenable or acceptable. I think it was neither.
You are correct on the terms. "Terrorism" is code in the West for "militant Islam." This does introduce confusion.
No doubt that Saudi Arabia and Iran are more central to militant Islam than Iraq was. But they were not invadable, nor did they have it coming as Saddam did.
Further, Islamism is a tyrannical ideology, but one with great religious resonance in the Muslim world. Its only antithesis is freedom. Will freedom in Iraq bring about more of the same in Iran and Saudi? Dunno. It has in Lebanon, though. The last time the Lebanese people revolted, Syria killed 25,000 of them. Not this time.
That is significant.
You are right about different strokes for different bad folks. As I just heard Bill Kristol point out on C-SPAN, Afghanistan is about the same size and has similar ethnic divisions as Iraq, and the same strategy produced pretty good results there.
Iraq has not gone so well. But it's by no means obvious that other strategies would have been better. Sometimes a thing is simply difficult, but still not impossible.
True, we rolled the dice on freedom and on purple fingers, but I maintain it is the best and most principled bet.
Well, to say that we "rolled the dice on freedom" is a little misleading.
Bush didn't take us to war to free the Iraqis, but b/c of WMDs. Freedom was a *post hoc* replacement justification.
Also to say we "rolled the dice on freedom" makes it sound like we took some kind of noble shot at the brass ring...when, in fact, we just did something dumb that might...*might*....MIGHT...if we're a whole lot luckier than we deserve to be...turn out to be a non-disaster.
Also re: resources in Afghanistan from above: Yes, there's plenty of evidence we diverted resources. Even if you don't buy that, surely you'll admit that IF we diverted resources, then that was a mistake?
And as for the point that more troops wouldn't make getting OBL a sure thing--surely you see why that's not a good point, right?
If you have evidence that we missed bin Laden because of Saddam, I'd like to see it.
But bin Laden has been dead for all practical purposes since then, and here we all are anyway. So you see why that's not a good point, right?
;-)
Bush didn't take us to war to free the Iraqis, but b/c of WMDs. Freedom was a *post hoc* replacement justification.
WMDs were the legal issue requested by both Powell and Blair. It is to the administration's rue that it was necessary to emphasize that factor, which was only one among many.
I do not put the stock in political rhetoric that you do; however, that the whole deal is called Operation Iraqi Freedom belies your post hoc contention, I think.
Now although that may sound glib (and I suppose it is), the fact remains that if Saddam has not been a murderous tyrant smack dab in the middle of three other Muslim tyrannies, even a Kool-Aid drinker like myself would not have supported his whacking, overdue as it was.
TVD said:
---9/11 did not make Saddam less of a threat.
One must also accept the proposition that the sanctions regime was failing, however, something that seems heretical to what is now Conventional Wisdom.
The Bush Doctrine never specifically targeted al-Qaeda. Saddam's Iraq openly supported terrorists. That was sufficient. That it was already in violation of its post-Kuwait treaty obligations and routinely butchered its own people was also sufficient in their own right, and although not specifically germane here, was an essential factor.
If I may be so bold, I think this comment beautifully illustrates one of the major differences between the supporters and naysayers of the Iraq war.
"Sufficient" seems to be the key word here, as in: we caught Saddam doing something that clearly qualifies as a casus belli, and we know he's unquestionably a bad guy for a dozen other reasons, therefore it's ok to go to war with him. A lot of the time it seems like the Iraq war supporters are cops going up against the mob: it doesn't really matter what charges you get the mob boss on, the important thing is that you put the guy away.
And this is a not unreasonable approach, especially if you make the assumption (as many hawks did at the beginning of the war) that by putting Saddam away, we'd scare half of our enemies into behaving, and then be able to go after the other half once we were done.
The problem is, we're not cops, and we simply don't have the resources to go after more than one major target at once. Instead, we're perhaps more like a hunter, going into a jungle filled with dangerous animals, armed only with a front-loading rifle. We can fire one shot at a time, and it takes forever to reload, so it is absolutely imperative that we choose the absolute best target, and not merely one for whom we have "sufficient" cause to go after.
Azael,
Thanks much. You saved me from having to round all that stuff up.
Chris,
Nicely put.
Freedom is messy. Unfortunately, what's going on bears only a passing resemblance to freedom, and tyranny often follows the illusion of freedom.
Sadly, Freedom is also poorly defined. Which is unfortunate, because Tom seems to have mistaken the creeping dominance of fundamentalist Islam that the removal of Saddam seems to have opened the door for for actual freedom. The women stoned to death for violating the Sharia rules that Saddam (and the other secular dictators in the region) kept under wraps may well disagree.
Now if Tom is talking about Liberalism, that's a different story, and a term with a much better definition that is far more conducive to rejecting tyranny. Only the most pie-in-the-sky dreamer, however, thinks that Iraq is moving in that direction.
As for your points in the post, Winston, they were well put, and it is clearly a better strategy. The way to defeat Islamic Fundamentalism is to pull the rug out from under it- to deny it the opportunity to exploit the supposed sins of the west in order to justify the religious paranoia that it feeds on. Developing Afghanistan (which was undermined by the buildup and focus shift to Iraq in 2002, not 2003, contra Tom) would have aided that tremendously, as would a strategy of rooting out the hardcore terrorists (to gain credibility) while simultaneously showing the world the best parts of secular America.
Instead, we got the crusade into Iraq, and the simultaneous theocratization of American domestic politics, the two things guaranteed to alienate allies and drive young Muslims into the arms of the jihadists.
One other point: terrorism relies on the response to terrorism for its success. "Credibility" isn't the issue- the issue is whether the terrorists can inspire fear of the governmental response, and thus (they hope) inspire the people to "see the truth" about their governments and rise up against them.
The US military, by definition, cannot succeed in fighting this alone. It must be a tool used surgically and carefully, always mindful of the risks and side-effects of its activities. That Den Beste ignored this element is unsurprising: that the civilian DoD leadership apparently did is horrifying.
Nicely put, Demosthenes.
And nice to have you around.
It might be true that terrorists seek to provoke a disproportionate response by government to swing the people their way, but its central purpose is to relentlessly commit acts so bestial and ruthless that the stronger power loses its will to resist.
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