Here’s a thought-problem for folks to chew on a bit.
I watched Tim Russert on the hotel-room TV late Saturday night, interviewing James Fallows and another magazine editor who supported the war (sorry, was reading Tommy Franks’ book, and only paying half attention). Fallows, who I respect greatly, kept coming back to one point: “The inspections were finally working just before the war. We didn’t have to invade, we could have kept Saddam contained.”
I keep hearing this from people, think this is a truly dumb statement, and since I think James Fallows is very smart want to toss the issue out here for discussion.Here are my points, and some questions:
* In the end-game just before the war, Saddam was suddenly much more cooperative with the inspectors. But we had about 150 – 200,000 troops on his border. How long could we have kept them there, and what would the impact on the Arab world have been had we done so?
* Containment and the various embargoes we had erected around Iraq were leaking, and leaking progressively more and more. At what point would they have become so leaky as to be ineffective?
* Saddam was using the skimmed funds from Oil-For-Food to weaken the Western coalition, by bribing executives, journalists, and politicians. At what point would the political environment have become such that sanctions would have collapsed?
* The people of Iraq were suffering horribly under sanctions. Even if we take Matt Welch’s math as correct (as I do), we get this result: “Between August, 1991, and March, 1998, there were between 106,000 and 227,000 excess deaths of children under five.” Incomes collapsed, infrastructure decayed, as Saddam built palaces and was screwed out of millions on deals to buy North Korean missiles. Somehow, this places the casualties of the war into some kind of context for me.
And as a bonus question, let’s do some research over the next few days. How many opponents of the war were also opponents of sanctions? There was a well-developed international movement to lift the inhumane sanctions on Iraq. Just to end them, because the human cost was unacceptably high. I haven’t mapped people and organizations who supported this with those who opposed the war, but given some time, I bet a bunch of us could put together a very interesting list.
And a question I have for the left…When did you become such an enthusiastic supporter of a brutal fascist? Iraq was no socialist utopian paradise by any stretch of the imagination/truth. It boggles my mind, yet utlimately actually reveals so about the true motivations of the so-called left. Christopher Hitchens, though I disagree with much of his opinions, is one of the few honest/true leftists I’ve seen.
I believe this boils down to one issue. What would Fallows’ opinion have been if everything were exactly the same and if President Gore were following exactly the same policy and taking exactly the same actions Bush took?
Fallows is smart, but he’s also a partisan liberal.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in Fallows’ intelligence and once-close relationship with John Boyd – I think Mr. Heddleson nails it with his observation about Fallows’ opinion changing with the party of the President. Go back and read all the stuff that liberal democrats were putting out in support of Clinton vs. Saddam in 1997-98 and it’s quite clear that many of today’s doves were hawks back when they had a leader they trusted in the White House.
I’m hesitant to attribute Fallows’ comments to partisanship without a more concrete reason to do so. He’s someone I also respect, and rather than dismissing the messenger I think A.L.’s points addressing the argument are a far better place to start a productive discussion.
All of these attacks on Fallows are cute, but they have nothing to with AL’s question.
I could probably drum up an argument fairly easily on one side of the other of the sanctions debate. The site’s down, but I could draw heavily on leaked documents from the British Government that are posted on Cryptome.
But no matter; this was never really about WMD anyway. It was about basing rights and pivoting on the Saudis.
Fallows wants to maintain the status quo. We are entering a period of change similar to the late 1950’s and 1960’s. President Bush is performing the role of Ike. Clinton did FDR. Kerry is Stevenson.
Hans Blix said he did not want to find WMD and be the cause of a war.
The inspectors met in rooms, later found to be bugged, to verbally map out their upcoming inspection locations.
To me, this was intentional sabotage of the inspection process, and causes me to conclude that continuing inspections would have been less than useless.
The thinking behind the statement is inspections = containment. I don’t get that feeling when I look at the 1994 agreement with North Korea that included inspections or with the current “inspections” in Iran.
Prathke
You say that like its a bad thing.
Why don’t we listen to the “Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy”:http://www.sensibleforeignpolicy.net/letter.html.
“While the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime was desirable, the benefit to the U.S. was small as prewar inspections had already proven the extreme weakness of his WMD programs, and therefore the small size of the threat he posed. On the negative side, the excessive U.S. focus on Iraq led to weak and inadequate responses to the greater challenges posed by North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear programs, and diverted resources from the economic and diplomatic efforts needed to fight terrorism in its breeding grounds in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Middle East.”
Note especially the “small size of the threat he posed”.
When you are checking out this letter, be sure to check out who’s signed. Some nutcases included, but a lot of experts from all over the map.
My response here is of course a logical fallacy – “argument by authority”. Still, it would behoove you to take a look. While you most likely consider yourself more “right”, the basic answer to your question is this:
1. We had Saddam contained for 12 years.
2. The status quo would have continued with Saddam.
3. There were bigger fish to fry.
Also, if Praktike is correct (and that’s some throwaway comment Prak. Can you refer to any supporting information either on Tacitus or Praktike’s place?), the question itself is flawed.
Well, it is a dumb statement, even when it comes from Fallows. I guess Fallows isn’t that great — or, along with Krugman, he touts the party line above all, smarts coming afterwards (if at all.)
Flawed question? Perhaps. Yet it follows the practical advice given to me by my dear old grandmum: “What would you expect, asking whether fish would be good for dinner, from the butcher?”.
Blix & Co exist at the largesse of the United Nations. If he’s poking around in foreign lands, cobbling report after report together for the security council to munch, then he has a job, prominence, potential for bigger and better things, a place in the media limelight, and greater political clout. If he is ‘on call’, but doing nothing, he is a flapjack.
In fact, it is entirely self-serving [just as with the butcher] to ask the opinion of an inspector whether inspections were
[1] given enough resources
[2] working to serve their ends
[3] prematurely ended
[4] an alternate course of action
[5] more powerful than the sword
[6] on the verge of discovery
[7] could be restarted effectively
[8] were well enough funded
[9] are “done” to a high degree
Or, to sum it all up — It is entirely predicted that any inspection-arm would come up with the net opinion:
[1] We weren’t given enough resources, nor did we have enough funding, but [2] the process was working well to serve the Security Council directives. [3] I is a pity that the inspections were halted prematurely, as [4] they were the alternative to armed conflict, and [5] frankly, a far more powerful tool at causing regime change. The evidence we were uncovering [6] was tantalizing proof that soon we would find caches of contraband, and although we were forced to leave, [7] the effort could be restarted with a new mandate and [8] additional funding. The international community of course demands [9] accountability and a full, complete disclosure. This is only attainble through [7] restarting the program now that The Chief Cheese is ousted.
See?
As predictable a reaction from an ‘inspector’ as talking to a butcher about potato salad and blinzes.
*GoatGuy*
I am constantly astonished about the willingness of right-wing types to smear people’s motivation and integrity. It’s just incredible.
James Fallows, a guy you like, is suddenly a partisan hack whose opinion sways with the political breeze when he comes to a conclusion that contradicts your preconceptions. Hans Blix, a professional with a long reputation for excellence and integrity, is suddenly a bureaucrat that will toss the UN, the US and world safety to the fire in order to protect his salary and position.
It is simply appalling. The lack of respect. The lack of honor. The tone of your comments suggests that you take yourselves seriously. I shudder to think about your internal state if you think this is a way to talk about people and to conduct a thoughtful dialog. Yuck.
Bush shouldn’t have had the troops there. He should have waited until the inspections were complete. Then, if the answers or quality of the results supported the need to invade, he should have proceeded. Instead, he sent the troops in ahead of inspectors and, surprise surprise, set you guys up to accept the necessity of moving quickly because the troops were there. Doesn’t that circularity make you suspicious?
Fallows is a brilliant guy. The point of his article is precisely that Bush and Co. took their eye off the ball during 2002. In their infatuation with overthrowing Sadam, they missed many, many opportunities. The mistake culminates in Bush having committed to invasion by putting troops on the field even though thorough research by Fallows makes clear that, even with what they knew at the time, it was premature to invade.
But, he’s not supporting your preconceptions so he moves from the category of smart journalist to partisan hack. What changed to make that so? He doesn’t support your view of Bush’s rush to war.
This entire thread, and most public discussions on the topic, ignore a really serious problem with the sanctions: the impact on our military.
The operations tempo of enforcing the no-fly zones was killing our Air Force. The USAF academy couldn’t even assign many pilots to teaching slots because so many had to keep flying operation missions around and over Iraq. The strain on our pilots, technicians — and on the equipment — was significant and worsening with every year.
Maybe that would have been worth it if the Europeans were enforcing the sanctions. The fact that people were defying and undercutting the sanctions — and openly working to remove them — meant that the “containment” regime was mostly containing the US and UK air forces rather than Saddam’s regime.
It was time to call a halt to that. Containment was NOT working well and was eroding rapidly. It was NOT a strategy that could be maintained much longer.
JC, I have a problem with the SSSFP assumotions – and with the membership. I’d welcome a discussion, but not on the premises they put forth.
bq. “On the negative side, the excessive U.S. focus on Iraq led to weak and inadequate responses to the greater challenges posed by North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear programs,”
Of course, one must remember that maintaining the pre-war status quo in Iraq was also expensive, ate resources, and was often cited (probably by many of the same people) as a source of resentment in the region. We could have the status quo ante going in Iraq, with Hussein in power, and we’d be hearing many of the same arguments.
Which makes me wonder if the arguments mean anything, or whether the point is the goal (don’t act).
Back to A.L.’s points: if invasion is bad, and sanctions were bad, and they were unlikely to last forever, Saddam was going to be contained… how?
And just what are these mythical alternatives that toppling Hussdein took off the board in Iran and North Korea, that would have had a good chance of working, and that aren’t available to the USA now?
Nobody ever seems to answer that one… like just making the assertion is enough. I’m calling b.s. on this whole argument until someone presents a concrete course of action that looks credible and meets these criteria.
bq. “and diverted resources from the economic and diplomatic efforts needed to fight terrorism in its breeding grounds in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Middle East.”
Note the assumption: that the way to fight terrorism is through economic and diplomatic efforts. Um, step outside the Ivory Tower, folks.
The way to fight terrorism is to kill the cadre who plan and commit these acts, kill or terrify the people who fund them, and remove the officials who overtly or covertly support them with state resources. That isn’t enough by itself, but without that you’ve got nothing.
Economic and diplomatic efforts are ADJUNCTS to security. They may even help to create more secure conditions, but they do not provide security in and of themselves. Very academic to forget that. Also very wrong, and dangerous.
Note also the flawed assumption that diplomatic cooperation was forthcoming from the countries mentioned before the invasion of Iraq, rather than insincere promises up front and stonewalling or outright incitement in the background.
I’d love a serious debate on the USA’s war strategy – but I sure wouldn’t trust these “security scholars” to conduct it. Sounds like the security they understand best is… tenure.
Correction: I should have said if the Europeans and other countries had been abiding by and enforcing the sanctions.
TQ –
A serious question: How would we know when “inspections were complete”?
A.L.
I’ll add that Fallows is NOT a signatory to the “Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy” document that i’ve just finished ripping.
I’m working on something about the SSSFP and other ‘credentialed’ opposition to Bush’s policies. Short version: in the same ways that the MSM has ossified, and is, simply doing a bad job of reporting, I’m not sure how I feel about the FP establishment these days. The CIA, that missed the fall of the Soviet Union, the Oil Embargo, the Iranian Revolution, etc. seems to be somewhat – deficient – in credible track record. Similarly the diplomatic establishment seems to have done a poor job over the last few decades at major issues like Israel/Palestine – or even the Cold War, which was won in no small part (and annoyingly to me) by one irrational man.
Does this mean we dump them and appoint a small-town mayor as Secretary of State? Nope. But neither am I quite prepared to defer to their credentials as much as I believe they expect I should…
A.L.
AL
Given that the inspections were attempting to prove a negative and Saddam planned to resume WMD development as soon as sanctions were removed, there is no way “inspections could be completed” to the satisfaction of those who correctly doubted Saddam’s good faith. New objections and questions would have been raised almost immediately, had Saddam ever been given the UN Seal of Approval. And even though the Seal would have been warranted at the instant given, the objections and questions would have had merit by the time they were raised.
Joe,
The thing is, with Iraq the policy in question had been SUCCESSFUL. The two “if’s” (if invasion is bad, and sanctions were bad, and they were unlikely to last forever, Saddam was going to be contained… how) are just that, pretty big ifs. How about “if the sanctions continued to be successful, the United States could have put more energy into chasing down Al Queda units that got away”.
Or other possible if’s, regarding Pakistan or Iran. If’s are easy.
Also, your blase dismissal of these academics as
“Sounds like the security they understand best is… tenure” truly betrays a fundamental unseriousness to this subject. You should revoke it.
To cavalierly belittle the PhD West Point Air Force veteran “John Mearsheimer”:http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/AuthorBiography.aspx?AuthorId=508 for example is absolutely myopic.
I would say the same of Stephen Walt.
You can do better.
Didn’t most of the ‘evidence’ for serious oil-for-food corruption come from Mr Chalabi’s office?
Might it be reasonable to suggest this diminishes its credibility?
Your point about Mearsheimer is well taken. OK, I’ll call that shot back and withdraw it. It was unworthy.
My points above about the fundamental flaws in their assumptions and arguments, however, remain.
The thing is, with Iraq the policy in question had been SUCCESSFUL.
Someone I know fell 4 stories. 3 stories down, he was still SUCCESSFUL. Seeing him after that last inch, though, isn’t an experience I recommend.
Hence Bush’s clear state of the Union point that he would NOT wait for threats to become imminent. This is what changed in the world post-9/11… the realization, among some, that these sorts of games were too dangerous to play any more, and that the only question left was when (not if) we would address the threats of Islamofascist powers and organizations who were (a) demonstrably hostile and (b) sought the weapons and means to make that hostility real.
At present, there’s still a major divide about this. Some people get that, and argue from there about tactics, sequences and plans… and some are “Sept. 10 people” who just don’t – and I haven’t the slightest idea how to bridge that gap.
A.L.’s point, and it’s a good one, is that the sanctions could not last. Other commenters here note that inspections were a joke, and that major foreign powers (esp. France & Russia) were working to get them removed so they could cash in. Illicit trade was going on, and expanding.
There’s no stability in that. The sanctions regime was clearly crumbling.
This is NOT success. This is a scenario in which failure is merely a question of time – and both Kay and Duelfer note that the removal of sanctions was going to be Saddam’s “start the WMD again” point.
To be convinced that Saddam could have been saved for later (and that’s all it would have been), I’d have to see another option that promised bigger gains while Saddam was left to himself. Which brings me to my next point….
Or other possible if’s, regarding Pakistan or Iran. If’s are easy.
That was kind of my point. IF we hadn’t gone after Saddam, we could have… what, exactly? No-one ever seems to finsih that little construct, except through hand-waving that says “things would be better elsewhere” without ever explaining why or how.
Actually you can go through The Nation magazine’s archives and find articles where they are against the sanctions to contradict their current claims of how sanctions were just fine.
Back in May, I did a post on my own attempt at a blog about The Nation magazine’s case for war in Iraq based on archives from ’99 on.
Here is one of the articles I talked about. It’s from The Nation magazine’s March 4, 1999 issue entitled: Sanctions as Siege Warfare
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=19990322&c=1&s=gordon
The article argues that the sanctions program is so effective that it’s too effective and needs to be changed, if not ended, in order to facilitate the poor Iraqi people getting their food faster.
So in 1999, the sanctions were unfair and killing thousands of poor Iraqis but 2003-04 it was a great idea.
OK, time to do better. I’m going to start by taking back my retraction re: Mearsheimer. From “the individual statements page:”:http://www.sensibleforeignpolicy.net/statements.html
bq. “The United States took a decade to accept defeat and exit Vietnam. The Soviet Union took a decade to reach the same end in Afghanistan, while the Israelis took 18 years in Lebanon. How long will it take the United States in Iraq?”
— John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago
…and with that, he drops right off my “give them respect” list. A guy who is a transparent defeatist is not a credible discussion partner re: our Iraq strategy.
Interesting, too, that Brown and Columbia are heavily represented on that page – not exactly a pair of universities that inspire credibility.
On the bright side, Keohane’s first 5 “lessons learned” points are worth taking seriously – but not his last 2.
Which is exactly what you’d expect from “reading his profile”:http://www.apsanet.org/PS/sept99/keohane.cfm and noting the criticism that has come to him from [a] constructivists and sociological theorists, who complained that both Keohane and Waltz neglected the role of culture, ideas, values, the internalization of norms, the constitutive elements of identity, etc.; and [b] “A third school, consisting largely of security specialists, attacked Keohane’s stress on institutions, on the way these operate, and on the neglect of security issues, generally, and in relation to the functioning of institutions, specifically.”
When I look for intelligent discussion partners re: the GWOT, I’m looking for intelligent people whose strengths lie in the very areas Keohane _neglects._ Frankly, this profile tells me that I’m dealing with someone who may have some ideas about international political organization worth listening to, but who fundamentally does not understand issues of war and peace, pretext and pride, agreession and deterrence.
That’s fatal – and common among academics – and that’s why I tend not to take long lists of professors very seriously.
A.L.
The inspections would be complete when Hans Blix said they were complete. Pending that time, one should look at the results so far, determine the odds that something dangerous has not yet been found and then do it all over again. After the Duelfer report, I am even more comfortable that this is workable.
Blix’s report in early 2003 gave every reason to think that Sadam had no WMDs around. Certainly not enough to endanger America. Probably not any. By “certainly” and “probably” I mean to signal his evaluation of his experience on the ground.
I rant on to note that I was and am an opponent of sanctions. I sincerely hoped that they would fall apart. Their influence on the Iraqi population and hope for the future was appalling. I would, however, have conditioned their removal on tolerance of, as they termed it, ‘intrusive inspections’. If we had to run the Iraqi customs operation, so be it.
I am not completely opposed to invading Iraq. I oppose doing it on false pretenses (claiming WMDs when the real reason is to depose Sadam), doing it without adequate allied support (I simply do not believe his removal or his threat is worth $200 billion dollars or more), and without adequate preparation (they say that the Marshall Plan had been in the works for two years before it was used; the Iraqi plan for two months).
It is the incompetent rush to war that bothers me. I am also distressed by the cavalier attitude about sovereign borders suggested by Bush’s flip attitude about international law. I loathe the corrupt dishonesty shown by Bush’s fake embrace of inspections. I don’t see how anyone can trust Bush’s word ever again.
tqii
Joe,
I REALLY don’t think Mearsheimer is defeatist, in the sense you mean. In his book “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/039332396X/qid=1097625652/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_2_1/002-1852631-6032004, one of his main theses is “Offensive Realism”.
But again, my point really isn’t to defend Mearsheimer – by any “liberal” criteria the guy is a conservative isolationist – it appears that a lot of his concern revolves around the rise of China in the next 20 years.
My point was that there are a vast variety of viewpoints in this list. Actually, it may be interesting in the next few days for me to “roundup” so to speak, some information on these various signatories, as many have books and articles, opinions that can be accessed via the web.
Back to the main point of my comment on A.L.’s post.
If such a variety of positions in the group of experts, that have been living and breathing this stuff for 20 years, and who also violently disagree on ways to proceed in foreign policy – but in spit of these disagreements on foreign policy happen to agree that Iraq was a minor threat which could be contained – well, guess what?
(Snark on)I’ll believe them over a couple of 101st Fighting Keyboarders.
Wouldn’t you? (End snark).
Without the snark, it behooves those of us who care about these security issues, to truly ask: why do people who have been living and breathing this stuff have this view? What can I learn here? What might I have been missing?
I wonder how many of those signators were against sanctions back in 90’s?
JC –
Well, as a founding member of the 101st, I’ll rise to the question.
I hire experts all the time. Often, their advice is critical and useful. But when I take that advice, I’m always mindful that experts created the situation that I’ve been hired to clean up. Similarly, let’s look at the post Korea record, and hit the high points…Vietnam – consensus take of the foreign policy establishment. Central America policy – consensus take of the foreign policy establishment. Middle east Policy – consensus take of the foreign policy establishment. Cold War containment & rapproachment under Carter – etc.
Not a record that covers them in glory. I’m actively interested in the question of institutional failure; I’m certainly not prepared to call our foreign policy an institutional failure – but neither am I prepared to call it a success.
So I’m back to the arguments they make, rather than their simple authority and status.
A.L.
”In the end-game just before the war, Saddam was suddenly much more cooperative with the inspectors. But we had about 150 – 200,000 troops on his border. How long could we have kept them there, and what would the impact on the Arab world have been had we done so?”
Please. This is a reason to be impatient? Who put those troops there, and why?
”Containment and the various embargoes we had erected around Iraq were leaking, and leaking progressively more and more. At what point would they have become so leaky as to be ineffective?”
Who knows, if nothing was done about them perhaps at some point they might have lost effectiveness; but on the other hand, they could have been strengthened as well.
”Saddam was using the skimmed funds from Oil-For-Food to weaken the Western coalition, by bribing executives, journalists, and politicians. At what point would the political environment have become such that sanctions would have collapsed?”
See answer to above.
”The people of Iraq were suffering horribly under sanctions. Even if we take Matt Welch’s math as correct (as I do), we get this result: “Between August, 1991, and March, 1998, there were between 106,000 and 227,000 excess deaths of children under five.” Incomes collapsed, infrastructure decayed, as Saddam built palaces and was screwed out of millions on deals to buy North Korean missiles. Somehow, this places the casualties of the war into some kind of context for me.”
Is there a question here? Are we comparing lives lost from the embargo to those resulting from American bombs?
”How many opponents of the war were also opponents of sanctions?”
It would have been much better to keep the sanctions but work (with the international community) to make sure they were administered properly. The inhumanity of the embargoes was a result of Saddam’s, not our, efforts. If you counter that this places a moral burden on the US to depose Saddam to correct this you would be justified, but in that case Iraq would have to be placed on another (long) list of countries with similar humanitarian problems that we might feel morally obligated to address. But this argument inevitably lead immediately to questions regarding the elevation of Iraq to the top of this list, which brings us back to the WMDs of course.
“We didn’t have to invade, we could have kept Saddam contained.”-J. Fallows.
I don’t see how you can argue against this point given what we now know about Iraqi WMDs (i.e., the lack thereof), and if you agree that the goal of the sanctions was to achieve just that, a WMD-free Iraq.
This revelation should give pause to all who advocate a strong version of the “Bush Doctrine”.
I think you are just trying to puncture the idea that containment and sanctions would have kept Saddam in check so that an invasion wasn’t necessary. But this is a silly effort. Of course it is possible that containment might not have worked in the long run. Who knows, perhaps in 10 years Saddam could have become a threat to the US. Unfortunately for this argument, we now have clear evidence that predictions of iminent doom were way off the mark and that containment/sanctions were an option that should not have been so abruptly foreclosed on.
Pro-war advocates need to explain why they do not want to entertain the (more likely at this point) possibility that Saddam could have been kept as a marginal threat at best while working within the sanction framework. Please do not respond by looking into your crystal ball and telling us that Saddam was evil and wanted to kill us all.
VT –
Uh, I think I did just argue against them, and with respect, I think your responses are handwaving.
“Please. This is a reason to be impatient? Who put those troops there, and why?” C’mov, VT – without the troops, there would have been no meaningful inspections. Without meaningful inspections, explain how well a leaky blockade works.
“Who knows, if nothing was done about them perhaps at some point they might have lost effectiveness; but on the other hand, they could have been strengthened as well.” How? Make an argument, at least…
“Is there a question here? Are we comparing lives lost from the embargo to those resulting from American bombs?” It looks like that’s exactly what I’m doing, and since many of the opponents of the war use lives lost as their sole calculus, let’s calculate.
“I don’t see how you can argue against this point given what we now know about Iraqi WMDs (i.e., the lack thereof), and if you agree that the goal of the sanctions was to achieve just that, a WMD-free Iraq.” Well, if a) the sanctions were increasingly porous, and we didn;t have meaningful inspections, how long was Iraq likely to stay WMD-free? And what odds are you willing to take on that bet, since we live in an world of imperfect information?
Back to you…
A.L.
“We didn’t have to invade, we could have kept Saddam contained.”-J. Fallows. I don’t see how you can argue against this point given what we now know about Iraqi WMDs (i.e., the lack thereof), and if you agree that the goal of the sanctions was to achieve just that, a WMD-free Iraq.
Actually, I did argue against this point above. So far, no one has addressed my points.
”C’mov, VT – without the troops, there would have been no meaningful inspections.”
OK, so now you seem to be arguing that the presence of 150K troops was, what, to establish credibility? Yeah, right. It’s an invasion force. Nothing was going to stop it. And Saddam knew that. Why play the patsy then?
Anyway, that’s bull. The inspections were meaningful, in the end. They correctly concluded there were no WMDs. Bush’s intelligence apparatus came to the opposite wrong conclusion.
” Well, if a) the sanctions were increasingly porous, and we didn;t have meaningful inspections, how long was Iraq likely to stay WMD-free? And what odds are you willing to take on that bet, since we live in an world of imperfect information?
You’re assertion that we didn’t have “meaningful inspections” appears to purposefully ignore the fact that we found that there were no WMDs in the end. So, I guess the inspections were more than “meaningful”, they were accurate.
”…since we live in an world of imperfect information?”
Indeed we do. But only the dangerously stupid do not factor in previous mistakes when formulating future plans.
Also, if Praktike is correct (and that’s some throwaway comment Prak. Can you refer to any supporting information either on Tacitus or Praktike’s place?), the question itself is flawed.
Sorry, Cryptome is inexplicably down and I can’t reference the documents.
Late to the party, I see. Well, call it the rope-a-dope school of blog commenting;)
In my opinion, there were two separate cases for war, the national security case for war (we have to remove Saddam & occupy & reconstruct Iraq because it will make America safer) and the humanitarian case for war (we have to remove Saddam and occupy and reconstruct Iraq because the Iraqi people will be better off, at least in the long run).
The national security argument for war was, and is, to me, bogus. I am not impressed by talk of leakages, and all the things Saddam could have done, if the US had somehow abandoned sanctions and left Saddam blissfully unhindered. We had a US military response to Saddam throwing out the inspectors in 1998, conducted by Gen Zinni, and it seems to have been pretty damned effective. My judgement was that Saddam was weak and getting weaker, not stronger. For gods sake, we had soldiers roaming around Iraq, recruiting Iraqis, with a fair amount of success, months before war was declared. If Saddam had any military capability at all, he would have at least been *aware* of this, but he wasn’t. My judgement was that Saddam had next to nothing in nuclear, next to nothing in biological weapons, and probably some residual chemical weapon capability, but not the ability to use or deploy them effectively. Charles Duelfer is the adminstration’s man, and I think we will find if Kerry gets in that his report exaggerated Saddam’s potential ability to deploy chemical weapons. As for Robin Burk’s argument that patrolling the no-fly zones was stressing the Air Force, it seems preposterous to me, in view of the burden of a 100,000 soldier occupation, and all the flying the Air Force must have to do in support of those soldiers. But I have no real knowledge in that area, and Burk obviously does.
Now the humanitarian case for war was *not* bogus, though I think the “sanctions are causing Iraqi deaths” argument is wrong. I am somewhat skeptical of the “excess deaths compared to normal times” argument, and *very* skeptical about attributing excess deaths to sanctions, as opposed to war with Iran, war with Kuwait, and Saddam’s misrule in general. In any case, if the sanctions were causing misery, the simplest and most direct way to remedy that suffering would have been to directly ship the medicines, food, etc. to Iraqi hospitals, and to crack down on corruption in the UN programs. If cracking down on UN corruption is an impossibly difficult and complex task, well then what about nation-building? In other words, “sanctions killing Iraqis” is not a reason for war, it’s a justification for war. And I am skeptical that the war in Iraq has decreased the number of “excess deaths compared to normal times” in Iraq, now or in the near future.
Nation-building in Iraq and constructing an Iraqi democracy is an indisputably noble endeavor, and in hindsight I think that the Clinton administration can be strongly criticized for not talking or doing enough about the suffering of the Iraqi people under Saddam, especially if Saddam was as weak as I say he was. (In that vein, its very heartening to me that Kerry said that the human rights of the North Korean people would be an issue in his negotiations with Kim Jong-Il) But we should have been clear about what we are doing and why, and if our primary purpose for this war was the long-term well-being of the Iraqi people, we should have gone about in pursuing regime change in a different way. Above all, we should not have shattered our credibility by falsely asserting Iraq was a national security threat to the US, and we should have held elections as soon as possible, (May or August 2003?) as Jay Garner and Sistani and Juan Cole wanted to do, and tried to deal with legitimate Iraqi leaders trusted by the Iraqi people, instead of trying to install leaders that *we* liked, or thought we liked.
Lastly, I’ll just mention that Salam Pax around May 2003 was getting a lot of questions “Was the Iraq war the right thing to do?”. His slightly exasperated response was basically “What fool cares? Maybe once upon a time we might had a nice chat about what the alternatives were, but its a moot point”. That’s basically right, but since you asked. . .
After 9/11, no American politician to the right of Barbara Lee would have ended sanctions. Before 9/11, even Colin Powell discussed loosenng them, but9/11 fortunately changed his thinking. So this post is arguing against a straw man. Saddam would not have got any WMD anytime soon, unless Ralph Nader became Pres.
A.L.:
The inspections were finally working just before the war.
The inspections were verifying that Iraq was mostly in compliance, and identifying and removing areas of non-compliance. Do you call that working or failing?
We didn’t have to invade, we could have kept Saddam contained.
You call this a “truly dumb statement” because sanctions could not have been enforced indefinitely. But containment isn’t sanctions, it’s readiness to meet force with force. Maybe the reason you find Fallows’s statement so dumb is that he still remembers back to the Cold War.
How many opponents of the war were also opponents of sanctions?
Include me in.
Robin Burk:
So the US (1) had an ongoing program for violating Iraqi air space, but (2) failed to resource it adequately. And this is supposed to prove what?
You guys remeber Beirut, Mogadishu, Kobhar Towers, the Embassy bombings, the U.S.S. Cole. Do you seriously think that having a few hundred thousand troops in the ME just to contain Saddam wasn’t going to cause more of these!? Come on, think a little.
Inspections in Iraq would have never got Libya. Inspection is Iraq would have never got the officials in Qatar rounding up Al Queda. Inspections in Iraq would have never got Pakistan working it’s tail off to catch terrorrists. Inspections in Iraq would have never produced an Afghani or Iraqi election. Inspections in Iraq would have never got us allied with Kryzigistan or Lithuania, get the point.
It’s normally better to happen to something than to have something happen to you! That’s what pre-emption is all about!
Chads
Chad:
You guys remeber Beirut, Mogadishu, Kobhar Towers, the Embassy bombings, the U.S.S. Cole. Do you seriously think that having a few hundred thousand troops in the ME just to contain Saddam wasn’t going to cause more of these!?
So your argument against containment is that you can think of a really dumb way to do it?
It doesn’t take a few hundred of thousands troops permanently stationed; it takes deployability, forward bases, and a few tens of thousands to serve as a trip wire — like the one those crazy North Koreans haven’t stepped over in half a century.
Inspections in Iraq would have never got Libya.
It may be an article of warblogger faith that Gulf War II got Libya, but it ain’t necessaryily so.
Inspections in Iraq would have never got Pakistan working it’s tail off to catch terrorrists. Inspections in Iraq would have never produced an Afghani . . . election. Inspections in Iraq would have never got us allied with Kryzigistan or Lithuania, get the point.
Not worth replying to; that isn’t the case for the Iraq war, just a reminder that every cause attracts some stupid advocates.
It’s normally better to happen to something than to have something happen to you! That’s what pre-emption is all about!
With results described in Thucydides 3.82.
S Korea is probably not a very good Corollary to Iraq. You have a country that wants us there, for starters. You also have one of the largest minefields in the world, and untill recently, a large number of nuclear weapons pointed at the North. With, yeah, a few 10,000 troops as a tripwire, that may well get rolled over. All this while the North Korean people are indoctrinated to hate the West and starve. NK should have been solved in the 50’s, and now they have nukes. I don’t think NK is much of an argument for either sanctions or containment.
Remember, the few troops we already had in Saudi Arabia and Qatar were a large source of propaganda for OBL, and targets for attacks.
“Every war has some stuped advocates”
That is just an assinine statement.
Chads
Chads:
Remember, the few troops we already had in Saudi Arabia and Qatar were a large source of propaganda for OBL, and targets for attacks.
Saudi Arabia is a special case. For centuries, non-believers were excluded from the Land of the Two Holy Mosques; Christians there is like strangers in the harem. US troops could be and have been stationed in Kuwait or Qatar with no great repercussions.
“Every war has some stuped advocates”
That is just an assinine statement.
You misspelt “truism”.
“Assinine” is arguing against containing Iraq on the grounds that it wouldn’t bring elections in Afghanistan.
The bombing of the Cole wasn’t a repercussion? Bombing of Embassies in Africa wasn’t a repercussion?
Come on. The whole Middle East is a special case. An American presence anywhere in the area is seen as a prick in the Islamics side.
No, assinine is arguing about the War in Iraq as if it is the Central part of the war on terror, and as if there is no repercussions from us being there in other parts of the world. Assinine is trying to equate N Korea with the successful applicatin of a “containment” strategy.
A “truism” would be that the coalition established in Iraq is one of the largest and most comprehensive in history, and it’s growing, not shrinking.
Chads
The bombing of the Cole wasn’t a repercussion? Bombing of Embassies in Africa wasn’t a repercussion?
Come on. The whole Middle East is a special case. An American presence anywhere in the area is seen as a prick in the Islamics side.
No, assinine is arguing about the War in Iraq as if it is the Central part of the war on terror, and as if there is no repercussions from us being there in other parts of the world. Assinine is trying to equate N Korea with the successful applicatin of a “containment” strategy.
A “truism” would be that the coalition established in Iraq is one of the largest and most comprehensive in history, and it’s growing, not shrinking.
Elections in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq are just battles in one war. To see them as separate and distinct is the mistake. They are as related as the War in Africa was to the war in Europe in WWII. What you lack is a vision of the overall strategy.
Chads
Chads:
The bombing of the Cole wasn’t a repercussion? Bombing of Embassies in Africa wasn’t a repercussion?
Brilliant. So if Al Qaeda bombs US embassies in East Africa, that proves their grievance is that the US has embassies there? By that logic, September 11 was a repercussion of the building of the Twin Towers.
An American presence anywhere in [Western Asia] is seen as a prick in the Islamics side.
To some extent; especially when they’re pissed off about first the economic strangulation then the invasion of one of the major countries there. Which might be a clue, given the area’s strategic importance, maybe you shouldn’t do that stuff when you don’t really need to.
assinine is arguing about the War in Iraq as if it is the Central part of the war on terror . . .
You told the truth there, probably accidentally.
. . . and as if there is no repercussions from us being there in other parts of the world.
Sure there are repercussions: Syria is edgy, Iran is looking forward to a new sphere of influence, and Arab and Muslim hatred of the U.S. has skyrocketed. Also, every other potential U.S. target is happy to see Iraq keeping the U.S. military busy. A mixed bag, but mostly negative.
Assinine is trying to equate N Korea with the successful applicatin of a “containment” strategy.
If you’d paid attention, you’d have noticed that I didn’t do that. I used Korea as an example of a successful application of a tripwire, and the broader Cold War as an example of successful application of containment. The error in US policy toward North Korea isn’t containment but a deliberate policy of tension maintenance. Keep a regime under death threat for decades, refuse to negotiate peace or normalisation, don’t be surprised when it reaches for the biggest baddest deterrent it can find.
A “truism” would be that the coalition established in Iraq is one of the largest and most comprehensive in history, and it’s growing, not shrinking.
Even if that were true (which of course it isn’t) that isn’t the kind of statement that can be a truism. Get a dictionary.
Elections in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq are just battles in one war. To see them as separate and distinct is the mistake.
Supposing they are one war, it’s plain as dogs’ balls that election in Afghanistan didn’t depend on invading Iraq. No competent advocate of the the invasion would pretend otherwise for a minute.
You’re really not doing your side a favour in volunteering yourself as its advocate.
What you lack is a vision of the overall strategy.
Maybe you should go give General Zinni the benefit of your experience and expertise; he doesn’t seem to appreciate its brilliance either. Maybe you could talk to Generals McPeak and Hoar while you’re at it.