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July 26, 2007

"Intellectual stakes" no more

I haven't paid much attention to Robert Tracinski lately. I guess I never finished the critique of his "What Went Wrong?" series, but then again, Tracinski never finished the series himself. I've kept up with his mainstream press articles since then, but I've seen none that have warranted much commentary. That is not the case for his latest.

In "The Intellectual Stakes of the War," Tracinski submits the following thesis: "A withdrawal from Iraq would constitute a national disavowal of the principles used to justify the war—yet these include vital principles that are indispensable for the wider battle against radical Islam." I disagree with this conclusion, because I think that the principles in question have already been disavowed, if they were ever in play to begin with.

What are the principles Tracinski has in mind? He tells us:

If you cast your mind back to the long debate over the war in 2002, the primary justification for the invasion of Iraq—and the Bush administration's primary contribution to the debate over the morality of war—was the doctrine of unilateral pre-emption. The main principle used to justify the invasion of Iraq was the need to deny hostile dictatorships and state sponsors of terror access to weapons of mass destruction, a goal which permitted the United States to act pre-emptively and without international permission if necessary. (This last principle was significantly undercut by the administration's repeated declarations that it was enforcing UN Security Council resolutions—even though it did so without the Security Council's permission.)

Isn't it kind of troubling that we have to cast our minds back? Even supposing (somewhat implausibly) that the principle of pre-emptive self-defense was in fact the primary principle cited to justify the Iraq war, if we have to cast our minds back, doesn't that mean it's no longer the going justification? That's a rhetorical question, because I don't need to gather much new evidence to answer it. Tracinski practically answers it for us:

In recent years, I have noticed a widespread misconception among Objectivists (thanks to the inaccurate analysis of a few prominent Objectivist writers) that the Bush administration's primary justification for the invasion of Iraq was the desire to achieve "democracy" there, as motivated by an altruist version of "just war theory." In fact, the administration only began to talk prominently about "democracy" after it received congressional authorization for the war and had already prepared the weapons and troops necessary for the invasion. "Democracy" was the administration's plan for what would happen after the war...—but it was not one of the main justifications for the invasion itself.

From the sound of it, Tracinski is nearly admitting what is widely acknowledged, that the adminstration's stated justification for the Iraq war changed. Yes, it began to change "after it received congressional authorization for the war and had already prepared the weapons and troops necessary for the invasion," but mainly after no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. After all, how could pre-emptive self-defense continue to be a serious justification for the war when there suddenly appeared to be no weapons to pre-emptively defend against? In fact democracy was not just something that the administration "talked prominently about" after no WMDs were found: democracy and Iraqi freedom were for some time the only serious justifications in play. So weren't the principles in question already disavowed?

Now I will concede, that in recent months Bush has made noise about "fighting the terrorists abroad, so we don't have to fight them at home." One can guess how well the democracy justification has gone over after Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. So, perhaps there's a loose sense in which Bush has returned to the self-defense justification. But the sense is about as loose as the threat of Iraqi terrorists is weak. "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is a rag-tag ad hoc terrorist group which probably would never have existed but for the American occupation and which almost certainly would disappear under Shi'ite boots in the absence of the American occupation. Saddam Hussein's support for anti-American terrorism was an extremely weak and underemphasized justification for the war in the first place—and the American public knows that when Bush tries to dredge it up now, he is desperate.

So even if pre-emptive self-defense was an original justification for the war, it ceased to be a serious justification for the war a long time ago. And when I say "serious justification," I mean one that the public can recognize as serious. Because when we talk about the intellectual stakes of a troop pullout, we're talking about how the public will perceive the changing purposes of the administration. Simply pulling out of Iraq isn't going to make the case for attacking Iran any harder than it already is, because almost nobody takes seriously the idea that we are now in Iraq to stop a terrorist threat to America. This is why Bush's approval rating is abysmally low. And even if people believed that Bush intended to defend us, a change in that perception would still be irrelevant, because Bush has botched the war with Iraq so badly that at this point the public will never accept any case on any grounds for any war with any country for 20 years.

Now perhaps Tracinski would object that the public is wrong to disavow Bush, and that they should recognize the real existence of a threat in Iraq. But then we are no longer on the same topic, the topic of what kind of new message will be sent by an Iraqi pullout. The new topic of what is in fact the best way to oppose a threat is then one that I would address by flatly contradicting Tracinski. If we are concerned about real threats to our interests, we should pull troops out of Iraq, march them to Iran, and stop worrying about the case to be made to the public. Which of course will never happen anyway, because Bush has botched things so badly.

Take a step back, Rob. Suppose that it's 1974, and we're in Vietnam. Suppose that the original justification for the war in Vietnam was self-defense against communist attacks on American ships in the Tonkin Gulf. But now suppose that nobody can understand how the the ground war is protecting ships or stopping any communists from attacking Americans anywhere. Now the war is being sold on the grounds that it will prevent the spread of communism in other Asian nations. Tell me, should we refuse to pull out of Vietnam, because maybe we'll need to make the case for invading the Soviet Union some day—and pulling out will stop us from justifying that invasion on the grounds of self-defense? Or: should we cut our losses, cross our fingers and hope that we can still hold back the Soviets, and promise never to sacrifice 50,000 men—or even 3,000—to a negligible threat?

Tracinski says that withdrawal from Iraq will be a disaster. Of course it will. But Iraq is already a disaster and nothing can change that now, slight downtick in attacks following the "surge," notwithstanding. All that we can change now is whether or not more of our men and women will continue to die senseless deaths in Iraq. Someone will need to make a better case than Tracinski to make it plausible that they should keep dying so that our President can make a better case for an impossible war.

Posted by admin at July 26, 2007 01:46 AM

Comments

Posted by: jim at July 30, 2007 04:05 PM

Posted by: noumenalself at July 30, 2007 04:14 PM

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