humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Apr 5, 3:34 am, Charles Bell wrote:
"Acar"  quoted by "Potroast" :
>
> > > Hint: our war is now and has
> > > always been with AlQaeda, and we are not going to defeat AlQaeda in
> > > Iraq, we must go and fight it where it lives.
>
> "Amen brother"  which I assume to be an agreement.

I think there was a miscommunication. I was expressing agreement only
with the claim that we should focus our attention on Al Qaeda, and
dissenting from your attributing to me Potroast's claim that AlQaeda
has no *current* role in Iraq--complicated, but there it is. In the
past going after Al Qaeda meant Afghanistan, and now Western Pakistan.
Al Qaeda becomes a problem in Iraq as a *consequence* of our invasion,
not as a rationale for it.

> Your contribution was: "There are no good options at all now, but at
> least we've killed a lot of people and spent a lot of money on
> nothing."
>
> What does the "at least" mean here any way?

Well, I was being facetious. It has been expensive. People have died.
Al Qaeda acquired a new site for operation. Iran has been emboldened
and expanded its influence in Iraq. These are costs. The benefits
include liberation of the Kurds, who seem to be entirely better off.

> It would be interesting to those like Acar and Potroast, and Barrak
> Obama, who believe the only bad guys on the scene are the Americans if
> they were to ever stand down from their political position that Anglo
> White Guys are the source of all evil in the world. It certainly does
> not help when intellectual Anglo White Guys claim that nothing has
> been done in Iraq except kill people and spend a lot of money.

Well, I'm hip to that. My position is one which is difficult to
articulate and sustain in a partisan polarized environment during
wartime. I want what's best for US national security, honest I do. But
if I honestly believe that serious mistakes have been made and
constructive criticism is called for, it is difficult to hear it as
constructive especially when it is war time. I *have* become
progressively more and more frustrated with the Bush administration's
stewardship of our national security, because I think that it is
indisputably true that US power was at a historic high on 9/10. On
9/11 we faced a strategic crossroads, and we were very fortunate that
we had an administration that did everything right for several months.
In fact, we could've come out of the Afghan War even more powerful
than before, because of the sympathy factor, the rallying to a common
enemy factor--it could've revitalized NATO, being (if I'm not
mistaken) the only time the legitimate function of NATO (attack on a
member) was called upon.

Iraq was a problem, and I don't claim to have had a better plan. There
are a number of credible scenarios if we had continued on our pre-Bush
course, some of them just as bad (some of them almost exactly the
same) as what we have now. Iraq might've disintegrated and become a
failed state even without being invaded (it was kinda falling apart
under the sanctions regime), and we'd have roughly the same problems
we have now. That seems to me a more likely scenario than the Saddam
conquers the Middle East scenario. But there are also clear benefits
to not invading Iraq, the chief one being the preservation of our
forces as credible deterrents. Now they're tied up. And granting the
premise that going in was best, there are the constructive criticisms
of how occupation was handled. We need to seriously learn from that
before we contemplate such bold moves in the future.


> > Second point, I think we should separate the questions of whether it
> > was reasonable to go, whether we should've gone with the wisdom of
> > hindsight, and third, what we should do now. My position was always
> > that (1) it was reasonable to go but nonetheless a mistake, not
> > because of the WMD issue, but because I thought Saddam rational,
>
> That you should think Saddam was "rational" when the fact of the
> matter, if he had simply abided by requirements (and seeing how he did
> not have WMD in any case) he could have kept his country bespeaks to
> the folly of your hindsight.

Past tense. The question of Saddam's rationality was keenly debated,
as I recall, and there were arguments on both sides. It was crucial to
the rationale for the war that he wasn't rational, containable,
deterrable. I *thought* at the time that on balance the evidence was
that he was rational. Whether he was rational in hindsight is another
question. However, I think it is less obvious which way that goes than
you do, because he had some reason to think that we were bluffing (we
didn't go to Bagdad in the first Gulf War) and success at convincing
the world that he had no WMD would be to squander his *own* capacity
to credibly deter aggression against *him*. So I think the jury is
still out on the rationality question. One can be unlucky or
uninformed or even stupid without being irrational. My default
assumption is that everyone is rational. One reason why is that it
usually works, and if you don't assume that, pretty soon you have to
start talking about killing all those irrational people, there being
no telling what they'll do. And if you're wrong, you'll create
rational enemies who want to kill you, which is [BOTTOM EFFING LINE]
bad for business.

 Contrary to the propaganda, the Bush
> Doctrine does not say that we can invade another country "just
> because" but that because Saddam's Iraq was an aggressor nation not
> holding to its agreements and a known harborer of terrorists, one of
> whom had established a camp in Iraq after being chased out of
> Afghanistan.

Since the preponderance of Al Qaeda leadership is in Pakistan, doesn't
that suggest that we should've overthrown Pakistan? That's facetious,
but this goes to questions of proportionality, prudence and cost.

> If this were 2005 or 2006, I myself would be bringing this up, but it
> isn't.  Whatever mistakes were made can be rectified and we move on.
> You speak as though: if any war unneccessarily costs lives and money
> by making any mistakes, that war should never be fought -- a
> ridiculous proposition to say the least.

Well, there's another context here which is that we live in a
democracy in which government staff can be replaced when their
performance is not up to snuff (or indeed for whatever reason we
like). And this is an election year.

> > I sympathize with your frustration at the one-sidedness of the press
> > coverage. I've felt that myself. I felt that once we were in and
> > nothing to be done, we might as well make a go of it, and I deeply
> > resented Democrats scoring political points at the expense of the US
> > troops
>
> I think that is not the worst of it.  It is Wm F Buckley, among other
> conservatives, being for the war before being against it, for
> example.  It is liberal-leftists like Obama who, by any rational
> standard, is simply too immature (not so much by age but by everything
> else that goes into being President) getting as far as he has pretty
> much on hot air about "feelings" and "hope"  and "change" spewed about
> a war and an economy that does not exist in a fanciful utopia of
> perfection. We are in a war that is not short, sweet and perfectly
> executed and we are in the downside of the business cycle, so let's
> throw up the white flag on the war and have government take even more
> of the private sector.

Well, I'm totally with you on the last point, but the preceding point
begs the crucial question: if you are hitting yourself on the head
with a hammer repeatedly, and someone suggests that you stop, saying
that it shows lack of fortitude to want to stop doesn't address the
deeper issue which is whether it was a good idea to start in the first
place. I thought it was and is a bad idea, and that very little of NS
benefit will come of it, though the costs will be clear. More to the
point, I don't think *anyone* has a viable plan about what to do now.
It's like you have your leg caught in a bear trap, and so you order a
pizza with your cellphone. OK, reasonable enough, you gotta eat, but
about this bear trap... (which takes us back to my: we're going to
stay, and we're going to need help, and we're going to need good will
to get help, ergo...)

> Not really a "fair" assessment at all.  You jump on the failure at
> Basra as the green light to surrender. I agree that in analogy to
> Nixon's  "vietnamization" of Viet Nam War, if, after several years,

How many beyond five will do it for you? It's a fair question. How
will it not seem the same in another five years? I've already said
that I suspect that once Obama is in office he himself will feel
compelled to stick with it in some fashion (he and Power have hinted
as much as they can without alienating the netroots). Extrication is
going to be enormously difficult, and I don't think we will achieve
what we wanted to achieve, for the simple reason that Iraqi
nationalism is largely confined to the Sunni, who are in the minority.
A secular democratic national Iraq was probably never in the cards.
And there were non-hippie-dippie types among us (Sandra Kay) who were
saying as much ex ante. Evidence suggests that she was right and will
be shown to be right in the future. I say lets focus on basing in
Kurdistan, pull back to there, let the Shia and Sunni go at it, hope
for something like partition along sectarian lines in the end. And
never ever do anything like this again.

> the regular Iraqi army fails as spectacularly as the S. Viet Nam army
> did, perhaps then we can see failure. It is also entirely wrong to
> assess the situation as without Iranian or other outside
> interference.

That's the problem: Iraq is not *holdable* territory, unless you
conquer the whole flipping Middle East. (It's too permeable, too
mixed, too primitive). I don't know if that was ever being
contemplated, but it is, shall we say, unrealistic.

 It *is* fair to apply the Bush Doctrine to Iran, but it
> is precisely the irrational reaction of Bush's opponents that
> prevented any military action against Iran, and, I might add, the
> withering support of Britain in that option.

Iran ain't over. Funny thing is, with Saudi cooperation, we could end
the Iranian regime in six months without firing a shot: gentlemen,
start your pumps. It was a remarkably effective weapon against the
Soviets once upon a time.