Peter Bienart has his apologia for his support of the Iraq war in the current TNR.
Obviously it’s something I need to think about and respond carefully to…watch this space.
Update: Bjorn Staerk joins him. Boy, is this gonna be a long post…
Peter Bienart has his apologia for his support of the Iraq war in the current TNR.
Obviously it’s something I need to think about and respond carefully to…watch this space.
Update: Bjorn Staerk joins him. Boy, is this gonna be a long post…
He makes a compelling argument for why he was swayed to think America could be the kind of country that oppressed peoples the world over wish it might be. And the notion that America had suppressed more democratic movements than supported them in the modern era is somewhat tainted by leftist ideology, don’t you think? In contrast to what, Communism? Fascism? Colonialism? Please.
And then Beinert gives no justification or explanation for why that seemingly emotional decision should now be seen as wrong. Other than what he must view as self-evident: the results are bad. Are they?
Forgive me for finding his remorse to be as thin as his commitment to his ideals.
Beinart like all Libs puts the desire to be loved by other peoples over security of the Nation. It’s part of the new priesthood, putting trans-national institutions and classes (Davos Men) over the USA.
A criticism of GWB is that his policies have not addressed the greatest threats: Pakistan and Iran’s nukes, NK nukes and trading in same. About this Beinart has nothing.
It’s striking that Beinart and Co. (Liberals all) put moral considerations over that of the interest of the nation. Suggesting that they view their personal trans-national status akin to medieval priests, with the nation being those pesky peasants who are inconvenient at best.
Staerk’s piece has some heft, some genuine gravitas. Bienart…. Well, someday he’ll get beyond puberty, I’m sure…..
OK: What Did Go Wrong?
bjoern staerk: “Our worldview had three major focus points – Iraq, terrorism and Islam – and we were wrong about all of them.”
I’ve been going through my own process of confronting my errors for a while now. As I told an friend: “Even de-Nile is only so long.” Eventually it runs out. It has run out for the war that we are in, fought in the way that George W. Bush means to fight it, and the way that any likely pro-war successor would fight it.
I now adhere, broadly, to the Jihad Watch / Dhimmi Watch / Diane West view, in which what is needed is defense against jihad and sharia, and a “let’s you and him fight” policy for Islam, with no aid to be given to the enemy. That’s a change of view.
As part of the ongoing process of correcting my false thinking, I might as well meet the main points in bjoern staerk’s post:
Iraq
Terrorism
Islam.
First though, I have to say: the real breaking point, at which unhappily I parted company with all my anti-war / anti-Haliburton / anti-Likud (all the same thing) etc. friends was Afghanistan.
The focus on Iraq was retroactive. People love to say, “I hate you” and add sting to it by implying, “and I was your friend before”. In a similar way, lots of people fiercely opposed to attacking Afghanistan became reconciled partly to it only when the issue was Iraq, to sharpen the emotional cost of support for the war in Iraq. Iraq supposedly cost their support – but if you look back, the basic decision to treat 11 September as a military not a court-room problem and accordingly to attack Afghanistan had already made enemies of them. There was no going back.
Iraq
bjoern staerk: “There aren’t many people left who believe that it was a good idea for the US, Britain and their coalition to invade Iraq in 2003.”
I’m one who still believes that.
On what we knew, the decision to demolish the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein was a prudent one, having in mind the weapons of mass destruction programs he was likely to have.
I supported war on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq because I felt it was a reasonable preliminary to any other move that might be made, such as a move to coerce Saudi Arabia into defunding Islamic expansionism or accepting whatever we though was the minimum change needed to cripple the global jihad machine. Whether you think Saudi Arabia should have faced consequences for 11 September, 2001, as I do, or whether you think that modern jihad ideology flowed from the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran and that had to be dealt with in some way as the top priority, which I think is also a reasonable view, you could not hope for consolidation of some better order of affairs unless you also knocked out the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, and with it, the prospect that it could threaten any friendly military force in the region with weapons of mass destruction within a space of years not decades. Therefore I thought, and think, that it was reasonable to make a spoiling attack on Iraq, to kill any major counter-attack from there before it began.
And, even in retrospect, if Saddam Hussein was in power, sanctions would have collapsed by now, his weapons of mass destruction programs would have been reviving by now, and we would have been facing problems so dangerous that it was worth taking a dangerous course to forestall them.
(In passing, in answer to bjoern staerk’s dismissive attitude to George W. Bush’s brains, I should say that despite many disappointments I am still a Bush-booster, because morally he is still pro-life, even if he literally phones his support in, and on the war he has achieved what I think is the single most important aim of any sane counter-jihad policy, that is reconciliation with India. I think there are few among those who dismiss and despise George W. Bush who would have done nearly as well. Which is a shame, as we need to do much better.)
When the war was redefined as a work of construction – constructing democracy to empower a people committed to Islam and prejudiced against the infidels trying to empower them – then it went wrong. But, the scattering of the dictator’s armies was fine.
bjoern staerk: “And so we came to believe that we could invade Iraq and plant the seeds of a new, democratic Middle East. Yes yes there were also the nukes, but we saw beyond that, towards a spring of freedom that would delegitimize terrorism and fanaticism all over the region. Some people will tell you that they never pretended this would be easy, that they always knew it might not work. There are no certain outcomes, and if you have a good chance of success, that chance is worth taking, even if it doesn’t end well. Also many argued – and I think I may have been one of them – that instability would be a good thing for the Middle East. The stability of these authoritarian and extremist regimes was precisely the problem. A little chaos would only do the region good.
When I think of this chaos argument today I am struck with horror at the stupidity of it.”
We are at war because an unappeasably hostile system – Islam – is at war against us. Part of war is imposing chaos on the enemy – or better yet, getting out of the way to let a violently unreasonable enemy impose chaos on itself. That part still looks OK to me.
bjoern staerk: “War opponents said a lot of things that were stupid, cynical and deluded. Some war supporters find comfort in this, I don’t. The opponents were, on the whole, right. We were wrong, and people in Iraq will pay for this mistake for a long time.”
I don’t think so.
But even if Iraq did remain in chaos for a while, that would be OK by me. I see the Christians are being driven out of the country, anyway, so now it’s only one variety of Islam or another that’s in play there. Whichever side loses, that is something to the good, and if both sides could lose big time and for the long haul, that would be a result devoutly to be desired.
Terrorism
bjoern staerk: “As I wrote earlier (Living With Terrorism), the right way to fight terrorism is to be stronger than our fear of it. There are many things we can and should do to prevent terrorist attacks, but we have to treat fear as the single most damaging weapon terrorists have. Compared to a panicked public, a bomb is relatively harmless. With weapons, terrorists can only do as much damage as a weapon can do. Through fear, they have the full powers of state and society to play with.
When terrorists attack, we should resist the immediate impulse to “do something”. We should not be “swept off [our] feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, ‘Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you.'” I don’t believe this is realistic. I believe that our civil rights are in the hands of terrorists. The more bombs, the less patience people will have with personal freedom. We’ll hear all the old arguments, presented as new, about suicidal liberalism, the chaos of freedom, and the importance of moral unity. We already are. And that’s why I’m a pessimist. We were wrong about terrorism, we still are, and I suspect we always will be. At best we can hope for long periods of calm where personal freedom is allowed to reassert itself.”
George W. Bush’s first main response to 11 September, 2001 was to muffle any warlike response, starting with his first speech. This had perhaps the benefit of reducing to a minimum any hostility to Muslims, and the cost of abandoning a great part of what should have been his leadership in rallying America to war.
I think the cost of putting the war only in the hands of a narrow band of experts in the government and the military, and treating the rest of the country as potentially racist yobs who had no role except to “go shopping” and quietly trust in their betters has been high.
Part of that high cost has been to accentuate America’s great weakness, it’s lack of staying power. Another part of the cost has been absurd “security”, as the masses are treated as enemies who can’t even be trusted with nail-clippers, while government defines itself as the solution to everything. Everybody knows that this is not true, but the absurd show goes on anyway, to the distress of conservatives such as Peggy Noonan.
It’s not freedom, mostly, that’s been lost to the perverse prosecution of the war on global terror. It’s dignity, decency, purpose, momentum and common sense.
It’s not true the Americans have been trading their liberty for security against terrorism, with the support of conservatives or without it. They have been losing liberty for nothing, with no security in trade or even falsely offered. The really great loss of liberty in America in recent years was from McCain-Feingold, which was all about protecting incumbent politicians, not citizens. It was not the work of politicians who were giving the existential threat of jihad adequate let alone excessive weight. It was bipartisan, and a disgrace to the late, un-lamented Republican federal legislative majority: a Senate and a Congress where incumbents acted as though little mattered but retaining their own privileges, through redistricting, legislating to reduce “attack ads” (in violation of the United States Constitution) or any other means handy.
Islam and the culture war
bjoern staerk: “Islam is the key to the European culture war. There is a sense that we have been infiltrated and betrayed, that Europe is slowly falling apart from the inside, and it is all because of Muslim immigration.”
Mark Steyn doesn’t think so, he thinks that demography is the first and deepest woe of the West (other than America), and I think he’s right, as many people apparently do. That does not mean that Islam is not an implacable enemy or that Muslim Immigration is good, but if you follow the Steyn line, “it is all because of Muslim immigration” does not fly.
(And this is one of the reasons I continue to see widespread and chronic high rates of abortion as crucial not only morally but for the global war.)
bjoern staerk: “But there must have been something wrong with that starting point, nevertheless, because why else would so many people who adopted it gradually turn it into something distasteful and frigthening? Or maybe it was like that from the beginning, and it just took me a while to notice. However it was, their lack of doubt bothers me now, their self-righteousness and anger, their clear labelling of people as either corrupt enemies or enlightened friends.
I’m bothered by their humorless sarcasm and gotcha-approach to cultural criticism. I worry that their defense of European culture has become rationalized chauvinism. I’m dumbstruck by their choices of intellectual heroes. And I fear that their constant indignation and certainty will inspire a popular revival of xenophobia.”
I am not at all on the same page with bjoern staerk on any of this, and I never have been. Besides evaluating what we see differently, we see different things. He sees a Europe that is too fierce and too ugly. I see a Europe dying of weakness, more even than from its ancient enemy. That the old enemy is inside the gates is bad, but that it is there and growing because the watchmen are doddering senile is even worse.
…
bjoern staerk: “I know how the culture warriors feel about such doubt, they see it as weakness, a fear of moral clarity. But I see something cold and inhuman in their clarity. Give me conflicting ideas, isolated incidents, and individuals. Keep your angry visions, I’ll do just fine with doubt and curiosity.”
Your offer is good, bjoern staerk. I’ll keep my own visions, which are indeed in part angry, when it comes to Islam, and you and Europe, go with my blessing and “do just fine” with your peculiar mixture of doubt and curiosity. Of course, I will not concede that all I have is delusive, angry “visions” while intellectual inquiry is your province. But, really, go and do just fine – I’ll be as happy as I’ll be surprised if that’s how things turn out for a Europe that won’t fight back against Islam.
bjoern staerk: “And now..?
Now I try not to do it all over again. I think I’ll begin by writing down, in big letters, somewhere I can’t help but notice it: “Warning! Objects in blogs are smaller than they appear.””
And now? I wonder how such an implacable and vicious foe was able to sway us so far from common sense in war that leaders and people, armies and aims have been twisted out of joint, leaving us at least temporarily disabled in fighting for our futures. A lot of answers might be proposed: White guilt, political correctness, the moral and demographic weakness of a “culture of death” (and I suspect the best answer lies near there), oil power and the sway of economic elites, and others.
And I hope we can get our act together. Because the enemy is growing, and growing more dangerous. It’s not going away. And unless we are willing to “go away” like Christian North Africa and Zoroastrian Persia, we need to do very much better than we have.
The windy generalizations in the post above are, like so much of the “arguments” advanced by the neo-cons, weirdly dissociated from reality. They aren’t arguments so much as moves in some strange war game the person is playing in their own head. I hate to bring Mr. Blue down to earth with facts, but: Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Iran had nothing to do with 9/11. Neither attacked the United States.
Now, moving from facts to judgements: aggressive, unprovoked war on those who have not attacked you makes enemies, where there need be none. It is bad to have more enemies than you need to. These basic human truths carry a lot more weight then all these bizarre hypothetical generalizations about a vast and diverse Muslim world that I suspect Mr. Blue has little or no firsthand knowledge of.
The structure of these neo-con arguments seems to be: hornets are a unappeasable, implacable enemy of civilization. Hence, it is our duty to roam the world beating hornets nests with a stick. If they then sting us, this is just more proof of their evil nature.
MQ: “I hate to bring Mr. Blue down to earth with facts, but: Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Iran had nothing to do with 9/11. Neither attacked the United States.”
Iran didn’t attack the United States?
Shouldn’t that carry some qualifier, such as “on 11 September, 2001”? Because the Islamic Republic of Iran routinely carries on low level but often bloody hostilities against the United States of America, and it has done so since it’s founder established the state as an Islamic and Anti-American project, with the welfare of the state’s inhabitants subordinate to the explicitly warlike will of Allah.
(I mean: the Ayatollah Khomeini made it abundantly clear that it was Allah first and the Iranian people second, and the will of Allah was bloody war on infidels and specifically America. This is not a matter of ancient history but of the constitution, in a broad sense, of a modern state.)
To go from facts to values and interpretations…
To act against such an intractable enemy is completely reasonable.
MQ – and yet Iran allowed 8 hijackers enter thier country on thier way to Afghanistan, so while they did not “attack us” but they sure helped out (and we won’t mention the hostages in 1979 or the marine barracks in Beirut), Iraq aided and abbetted terrorists. So your argument is hollow. I still think Iraq was the correct move, GW rightly grasped that greater freedom would eventually lead to peace, he never said it would be quick and easy – the war started on my watch but it will not end on mine, Iraq was an opening salvo, it has positive and negative consequences. Positive – it cleared the deck of one enemy of America, showed the world how powerful our military was, killed lots of Jihadists, exposed Pakistan, libya, the UN, led to the Cedar revolution. Negatives – unleashed the SUNNI-SHIA civil war, chaos – etc. But Iraq has not turned into utopia yet – boo fricking hoo. Bush has made mistakes, things have not gone as well as hoped, the political class reacted slowly to the problems, they have not spent enough time reminding people what is at stake – but their are 4 choices, play defense and hope no hail mary’s take out a us city – , take the offensive and take the fight to them, wipe them off the face of the earth, or do nothing and let them win
All the options suck – but taking the fight to them is better the nuking them to stone age,
I think the facts will show that Jeb Bush’s Florida had more to do with shelteing and training tha 9/11 terrorists than did Iran.
Ha ha ha! Let’s say (for the sake of argument) this could be true. Do you think we’ll ever find the “facts”? I’m pretty sure we don’t. The truth is US was involved in Iran politics since 19… I don’t know the year. All those “good deeds” are turning against us now.