The Measure Of Failure
Most Americans think the Iraq War is a failure. Just as those who favor the war are often asked to describe what they would call victory, I'd like to know how the war's opponents determine it's a failure.
I mean, it's clear the war is unpopular, but why? There seem to be two main reasons.
Aside from saying it's a mistake under any circumstances, the two main complaints are 1) we didn't find WMDs (or, more generally, Saddam was not a serious threat), and 2) violence has continued and, if anything, worsened.
But let's be as clear as possible. How would opponents reply to these scenarios?
1) We invade and discover there's a huge stash of ready-to-go WMDs, or a significant program to develop biological, chemical or nuclear weapons well along the way. However, after we've taken Saddam out, the violence in the country continues as it has. Would the war have been the right thing to do then?
2) We invade and quickly kick Saddam out with few casualties. After a short period of unrest, elections are held and there's only a low level of violence, as the people elect their government. However, no huge WMD programs are found. Would the war have been a mistake in that case?
Or, ultimately, is it only the combination of the two that makes it a failure.
Until it's clear why so many think the war is wrong, it's hard to have a straightforward national conversation.
Columbus Guy says: Nice gesture, LAGuy, but this isn't about good faith. This is about destroying, in order, (1), Bush (2) the conservatives, and (3) the Republicans, at any cost, including damage to the country. In fairness to the libs, the Dems and the Manhattan Media, I'm sure they think both that the country can't be destroyed, that they're saving it in any case, and a country governed by conservative principles isn't worth having.
Hmm. Maybe the civil war is here, as much as in Iraq.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:12 AM
17 Comments:
Why isn't the combination of failures the relevant issue? The war seems to have been a severe miscalculation in so many ways. It's just about impossible to think of a level on which it could be said to have succeeded. I, for one, thought Bush must know something about WMD or other serious threats that I did not know at the time we went in. Therefore, I gave him the benefit of the doubt that the intelligence might justify what would otherwise have been a drastic and fundamentally non-conservative move of invading a country that had not attacked us. If he had found WMD and cleaned it up, he could have claimed success. As it is, either they weren't there at all (which makes his manipulation of intelligence look quite malevolent); or they were there, and our tactics allowed them to be dispersed we know not where. Either way, this was a failure on the WMD issue.
When the WMD proved elusive or non-existent, Bush changed his motivation (or possibly revealed his true original motivation)to a liberal notion of bringing democracy to the Middle East. (This from a guy who had pooh-poohed less ambitious "nation-building" during his original campaign.) I'm all for people living in democracy, peace and prosperity, and certainly, the Iraqi people have suffered under extreme treatment for a long time. But the goal was massively ambitious, and would have required so much more commitment and know-how than this administration has demonstrated. If they had pulled it off, that would certainly have been a success. But, instead, they have brought the place more killing, more suffering and very little prospect of democracy or freedom. Simultaneously, our national interest and reputation have been damaged, our friends and allies alienated, and I suspect, anti-American terrorists will find sanctuary that did not exist previously. Isn't the total absence of success the same thing as failure?
All I'm asking for is clarity. If it's a combination of factors, and not just one that makes it a failure, then if you're mistaken about any of your claims, it's not a failure.
But if it's actually one that counts and truly makes it a failure in your eyes, then if I show that one of your arguments is not good, but not the one you really care about, you can turn around and say "it was never really a combination of things, it was actually this one thing, so your argument isn't goo enough."
So that's why, rather than rehash what people claim is not good (and I rehash why they got it wrong) about the war, it would be helpful if they could specifically reply to my scenarios.
Well, pretty clearly, different people are going to have different beliefs about why the war is bad. I can only speak for myself. I repeat that I was not categorically against it in advance. I had the following conversation with a liberal friend: Me: Well, it looks like George Bush is going to invade Iraq. He'd better have the goods. (i.e., he'd better know the WMD are there, like he says they are). My friend: Oh, this is just the beginning. (i.e., even if the WMD are there, it is not good to invade, because it will lead to all kinds of unforeseen consequences, none good.)
If a country invades another under questionable circumstances, (i.e., no attack by the invaded country), the invading country must reach a higher standard to justify the invasion with the results. (I know Saddam was shooting at planes, and all, but come on, it would have to be a serious threat to justify a wholesale invasion.)
With respect to the WMD, if George Bush had found WMD and destroyed them, but massive violence followed in Iraq, my main criteria for success would be, "Are we safer or have we improved our national interest more than if we had not invaded?" In other words, if we found some small caches of chemical weapons that were not about to be used, but incidentally started WW III (IV?), then it would not have been a success. If we found some WMD, but during the invasion, terrorists got their hands on other WMD that they could then use against us, not a success. Let's say, though, that we found and destroyed significant caches of WMD; had reasonable confidence we had gotten all the big stuff; deposed Saddam; and then the Iraqis had a civil war to decide who should be in charge; but their civil war did not spill over into other countries. In that case, GWB could argue reasonably that it had been helpful to our national security. (Of course, depending on our conduct, we might be more or less criticized for our handling of it in allowing civil war to break out -- but still, GWB could say that it's too bad they're fighting, but we had to protect ourselves.)
Once the WMD were not found, we were forced to up the ante (based on my prior assertion that we need to justify this war with a good result, given our questionable conduct in starting it). GWB says that we're there to start them on the road to democracy and thereby to spread democracy to the Middle
East. I'm actually not sure this would have been impossible, if GWB had listened to those who knew and put 300,000 troops in to impose order; not disbanded the military; not de-Baathified all the non-politicos; trained the existing Iraqi military and police to take over; secured the arms; stopped the rioting; gotten the electricity and water on; etc. But even with all that, it probably would have been hard. At least if we had done it right, we could say we really had tried, and then if they still wanted to fight after we did that, we could blame it on them. There is just no excuse for the shoddy work the administration has done: go in on the cheap; use inexperienced people to run important programs; not assign nearly enough people to these programs; run the contracting as a patronage system, etc. AGain, if no WMD, but we got democracy started, the question would still be: Have our national interests and security been served? With true success in that endeavor, they probably would have been served.
The best we can hope for now, as far as I can see, is if somehow the Iraqis fight it out amongst themselves and some type of stable government(s) emerge(s) from that fight without spilling over into the region. If any of those governments were democratic, that would be a major bonus.
Bottom line: the war is a failure if our national interest is worse than it would have been without it, in terms of our security, our influence around the world, our ability to protect ourselves against the real threats, the good will the world has towards us, and the number and effectiveness of the terrorists. Do you have a good argument that any of those things has improved?
This particular post is not about why I think the war was the right thing to do and that we are in better shape for invading than not--I've gone on at length about that in the past.
This post is about suggesting those against the war explain their side as much as they expect those for the war do, rather than simply claiming that this thing or that thing is bad without being clear what overall failure (and therefore success) would be.
While it's obvious things could have gone better, I'd think it's equally obvious there hasn't been a "total absence of success"--in fact, there's been significant success.
But getting it clear what we want, and seeing if we have the same aims, rather than the childish piling on that too often passes for debate, is the first step. The anti-war and, indeed, the pro-war side predicted thousands of things that could go wrong. Some of them did. But until we have some idea what we want and expect, it's hard to answer the real question, which is what to do next.
Great posts about why discussions of "victory" "success" "winning," "losing" and "failure" and other buzzwords of the measurable results-fetish crowd are almost completely useless in this debate.
While looking back at rationales, implementation and changes therein is certainly instructive in looking at the present situation (After all, whats history for?), its kind of hard to look beyond how things are right now and whether we would like to look differently.
There is a huge perception of "failure" (whatever that means) of the war right now based upon how things are going currently-it seems like all bad news with no real hope of any good. There is also a lack of perception of how things could be worse if we had never gone to war (and lack of WMD evidence certainly fuels that). This has little or nothing to do with the original rationale and objectives for the war and whether we have acheived them.
I was going to (and should still) stay out of this, as I have a suspicion of long posts, but nonetheless . . .
Flag on LAGuy #2 for pulling one of his favorites: "That's not what this is about; it's about this." Who do you think you are, James Carville? Having invited some specific discussion, you ought to do more to meet it.
And flag on Maureen #2 for the ridiculous "bottom line." The question isn't some academic black box, "Ooh, let's see, world opinion of us, and "safer," etc. The question is, You're in charge, what do you do now (and I don't mean Jan. 2007 under an assumption that were in, oh, what would we call it, I know! A quagmire!) but all along the way: Oct. 2001; Jan 2002; Aug. 1998; March 2003; March 1991 and so on and so forth. You don't get perfect information or reflection; you get only (the contemporary) today.
Go ahead and put it up to a vote of "world opinion" if you want, but that's not an answer. It's just a statement, "I don't have the will to do this, for good reasons or bad, so you do it. And I'll reserve the right to carp at you periodically back and forth according to what happens over the next election cycle, or year, five years, 20, 50 and 100 years."
Interesting question, that's almost really two questions: which would make the war "right" (ethically) and which would make it more "popular." I think finding WMDs would definitely have made the war more popular - at least for a good chunk of time. While quickly getting rid of Saddam and having minimal violence afterward would probably have made the war more justified after the fact, plenty of people would still claim USA is a bully that interfers where it shouldn't too often and that this was another example of needlessly flexing our muscles.
Columbus Guy, pardon me for sticking to the subject. I was trying to avoid this turning into yet another argument about whether the Iraq war was the right thing to do.
As to looking at whether it was the right thing to do at various points in time, it's true our decisions have to be made ex ante, but they're gonna be judged ex post--they have to be and they probably should be (as long as you don't lie--i.e., rathar than say it was a bad decision, say we were misled or numerous other cheap shots).
Ex ante, on the information that GWB had at the time as I now understand it, I would have put everything I had into kicking butt in Afghanistan and being sure that had been done right. Come out with a real democratic government there and stability and no cover for terrorists. Then, if I had the resources, I would consider other places. The only reason to spread ourselves thin by going into Iraq at the same time would have been a truly imminent threat.
If GWB really said to George Tenet about WMD: "Is that all you've got? I can't sell that to Joe Sixpack," (paraphrase) and George Tenet really said: "It's a slam dunk," then GWB had no business going forward. If the evidence didn't convince him, he should not have acted on it. Getting a slogan from Tenet does not provide any cover for GWB.
We can never know what would have happened in the world if we hadn't gone in, but I haven't seen anything that has happened that has shaken my ideas about what would have been a better course, both on principle ex ante and based on the results.
"Ex ante, on the information that GWB had at the time as I now understand it, I would have put everything I had into kicking butt in Afghanistan and being sure that had been done right."
There you go arguing about specifics, which I've been trying to avoid.
Anyway, I keep hearing this argument, and I don't know who came up with it first, but it's brilliant misdirection. Even if we took the seventeen to fifty years it would take to do Afghanistan right, the world would keep moving and we'd have to deal with it. And if we're going to discuss what hasn't "shaken" our ideas, rather than get into them, I have to admit that nothing I've heard so far from the anti-war side explains why the threat of WMDs wasn't a sufficient reason for the war, or why the threat from other things outside the WMDs wasn't a sufficient cause either. (Whether these ideas could be "sold" or not is a different issue.)
Yeah, come on, the Afghanistan thing is a joke. If there were no Iraq, the Democrats would be arguing now that Afghanistan is a quagmire. In fact, I think you can find some opinion to to that effect, and it could well be right.
(Indeed, there was an article published in the San Francisco Chronicle (and then carried elsewhere around the counry)published before the Afghan invasion--so, keep in mind, within only a month or so of Sept. 11--arguing that there was no basis in "international law" for our invading then, the very same argument that many would like to make about Iraq today. If anyone's interested, say so and I'll dredge up the cite. It's hilarious. It refers to "the U.S. mining industry" mining Nicaraguan harbors in the 1980's. Must make for some interesting SIC codes.)
I have to challenge also the standard, "on the information that (we all [and no cookies about secret intelligence]) had at the time as I now understand it, I would have . . ."
That might be an academic definition of "ex ante", but it doesn't meet the test I posited. Put it this way: Maureen's ex ante test, which includes "as I understand it now," is inherently after the fact, notwithstanding the nod to information "had at the time." That ex ante definition will make you a billionaire in the stock market in short order, given how well now you understand information that everyone else had "at the time." But, starting the moment you read this, I'd like to you to demonstrate how it will make you a billionaire going forward.
I've seen the best, and only necessary, articulation of the reason for going to war stated exactly once, in a published transcript of a Condoleeza Rice interview with the New York Times editorial board, in which she stated simply, paraphrased, "We were already at war," referring to the 1991(?) ceasefire. (Unsurprisingly, this has never (I think) been covered in any news or opinion piece. It's just a statement in a bulk transcript.)
The logic is straightforward and I'm embarrased that it's necessary to articulate it:
1) State of war exists
2) conditional ceasefire entered
3) conditions violated
4) state of war continues
You can argue all day about collateral issues, politically difficult, etc., but the issue isn't why was II justified, but why everyone, including W, was derelict in fulfilling our prior obligations (obligations, primarily, to ourselves). All the arguments LAGuy wants to add in favor of II(while reserving the right to say at any time that he's already added them, or doesn't want to add them), are mere surplusage, regardless, even irregardless, of their conclusiveness.
So, Columbus Guy, do you think Chuck Hagel is motivated by all three, or just numbers one and two? That John Warner has always looked shifty to me, so I'm gonna assume all three for him.
Columbus Guy wrote:
The logic is straightforward and I'm embarrased that it's necessary to articulate it:
1) State of war exists
2) conditional ceasefire entered
3) conditions violated
4) state of war continues
Wait, when did we switch to talking about North Korea?
GWB has argued all along that we should trust him because he knows things that we couldn't know. I actually believed he must know such things, because it did not make sense to me at the time that he would go into Iraq without such knowledge. What made sense to me at the time was, finish what we've started in Afghanistan. Their constant refrain and implication was that they knew things we didn't know. (Shouldn't the president know something about intelligence that we don't know?) I actually trusted him at the time that he did. Later, we discover that he did not have any real evidence or sufficient evidence that it even rang true to him when laid before him by the head of the CIA. Now that I know that, I also know he should not have gone into Iraq. I'm embarrassed to have to explain that.
LAGuy -- you are right that the issue is now where do we go from here. But your original question was backwards looking: What if there had been WMD; what if we had established democratic government in Iraq? I thought I had made a faithful attempt to address those. I did get diverted by Columbus Guy's question about what would I have done at the time.
Even now, if there was a reasonable plan to create democratic rule, I would frankly be for it. I'd like to believe that we were going in on more than a wing and a prayer (literally). What definition of failure would help you outline the best plan for the future?
By the way, there's no way to prove it now, of course, but of course finishing Afghanistan right was a clear choice up front. Opening too many fronts is a classic military error. Even Tommy Franks was stunned to find out he was to plan another war when they were in the middle of the first one.
It is certainly probable that many people would argue that Afghanistan was a quagmire, if we had not gone into Iraq and if we were still in a mess in Afghanistan. But first, we would almost definitely have had a more decisive result in Afghanistan if we had concentrated on it, and the people who made that argument would not have won it. You can always find someone to say anything, but you cannot then pin it on me.
You're right, el jefe, although I have no idea of the details of Korea and am assuming you do. This problem is related to another, the political correctness that results in an unwillingness or even inability to declare war in the first place. It would have been more difficult to gain political capital by cutting Bush off while he went out on the limb had a formal declaration been made. Of course, it's still possible to enter a bad-faith ceasefire even if war had been declared. (The bad faith being on the part of the enforcer who has no intention or ability to enforce; bad faith on the part of the loser is neither here nor there.)
As to the rest, I'll stand on Maureen's being defensive and embarrassed.
Columbusguy's point about declarations of war is an important one. Essentially what congress did post-9/11 was pass a resolution telling the president to "go do the right thing," effectively abdicating their constitutional role.
I'm sure it seemed a savvy thing to do at the time, for the reasons columbusguy states. And it has the lovely consequence, from a self-interested point of view, that you can later say "no, no, we told you to go do the right thing!"
Maybe somebody not wearing pajamas will figure out that the original structure of requiring a declaration of war for any conflict expected to last long enough for congress to meet was better than this buck-passing one. But maybe not. That whole unitary executive idea is like the ring of Sauron -- a lot easier to pick up than put down.
But the opposite was also true: Bush wanted the wishy-washy resolution because he knew he couldn't get the real declaration of war. He purposely left just enough doubt about what he intended to do that enough Democrats could vote for the resolution. He said, "I need this to negotiate with Saddam -- leave it to me, I take responsibility." Now, he can't pretend anyone else really got us here.
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