July 29, 2007

We flunked the "Iraq test" from word one

Robert Tracinski has now posted his second pro-Iraq war article. I would like to make a few choice remarks.

In my earlier criticism of Tracinski, I pointed out that it was ridiculous to justify a continuing war in Iraq on the grounds that stopping now would cause us to abdicate the principle of pre-emptive self-defense, when the administration seems to have abdicated that principle long ago. Tracinski claimed that the goal of spreading democracy was never a serious justification for the war, and he embellishes on this point in the new article:

As I hinted at in the first part of this article, the greatest proof that the Bush administration did not invade Iraq primarily to spread "democracy" is the fact that they made no preparation to use military force to achieve that goal. The invasion was designed only to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, with the assumption that a relatively free society would simply emerge on its own in the absence of a tyrant to suppress it. And the administration assumed that this new liberal society would require only our diplomatic and political support--since that is the only real support it offered.

Even as late as 2006, when we were beginning to use counter-insurgency techniques in Iraq, the overall military strategy (now usually referred to as the "Rumsfeld-Casey strategy") was simply to keep the insurgents suppressed until we could goad the Iraqis into achieving a grand political reconciliation. The handover of sovereignty to the interim government, the drafting of a new constitution, the Iraqi elections in 2005 and 2006--all of these events were supposed to create that political breakthrough, on the assumption that a political reconciliation would cause the insurgency to wither away. It was assumed that purely political means could be used to win a military conflict (an illusion that still holds sway among many members of Congress). It is only now that General Petraeus is attempting to implement a unified political and military strategy against the insurgency.

My first big comment: This argument is really preposterous. Here are three reasons why.

First of all, if the Bush administration really believed that the new Iraq would require only diplomatic and political support, rather than military support, then why did they bring any ground troops at all? Why didn't they just bomb the Iraqi government to hell and let the "new liberal society" take control? Or, if they thought that ground troops were necessary to clear out the last vestiges of the Baathist regime, why didn't they withdraw the ground troops shortly after those last vestiges were gone? Why did they almost immediately start to build long-term bases? No, it defies all common sense to say that Bush had no long-term intentions to occupy Iraq. Even if he did not intend to use this long-term presence to spread democracy, it is entirely implausible to disqualify that possibility by saying that Bush only wanted to topple the regime and let the Iraqis do the rest on their own!

Second, it is utterly mindboggling for Tracinski to assert that only now is the administration attempting to use a military, as opposed to purely political, strategy in Iraq. If the military strategy has only just started, then what were we doing in Fallujah in 2004? What were we doing at Tal-Afar in 2005? Why have our troops been dying continuously since 2003? They haven't just been sitting in their bunkers. Indeed Tracinski himself has often been the one to catalogue the progress he alleged the troops to be making, urging us to continue his military solution.

Third, and this is a point that I probably should have made in my first post, but if the Bush administration never seriously intended to justify the war on the basis of spreading democracy, then why did Tracinski himself cite that justification himself in defense of Bush's war, back during the 2004 election?:

So why would Bush be better than Kerry?

He is better because of the "forward strategy of freedom."

The "forward strategy of freedom" is the name Bush has given to his grand strategy--the administration's highest-level plan of action--in the War on Terrorism. It is a grand strategy that necessarily puts America on the offensive, committing us to spreading representative government and free institutions to overhaul the political system of the Middle East....

The only long-term answer is that the Arab and Muslim worlds must be civilized. They must have imposed on them a better system of government, one that allows, for the first time in the Arab world, the material vibrancy of a relatively free economy and the spiritual vibrancy of the free exchange of ideas. This would do exactly what the clashing examples of East Berlin and West Berlin did in the Cold War: it would provide an unanswerable demonstration of the benefits of a free society on one side, contrasted to misery and oppression on the other side. It is, in my view, the most important thing that can be done in the military and political realm to defeat the philosophy that animates Islamic terrorism.

Considering the above, it seems that Tracinski's justification for war has changed as much as—and seemingly in lockstep with—the Bush administration's.

Second major comment: I find it stunning that Tracinski has now consciously chosen to try to justify the Bush administration's use of the term "War on Terrorism":

But there is one final, broader reason why an insurgency war is a strategy peculiarly suited to the advocates of modern Islamic totalitarianism. I used to grumble about the use of the term "War on Terrorism," citing the objection that terror is a tactic, not an enemy. But I eventually accepted the term, in part because terrorism is a tactic that is distinctive to our enemy and describes his particular methods and goals. The same applies to an insurgency, which is a terror bombing campaign writ large.

First response: Terrorism is certainly not a tactic distinctive to our enemy. There have been terrorists all of the world who have used the tactic to destabilize local regimes, without any ambitions against the United States. Tracinski knows this, which is why he does not (I presume) advocate exporting the "War on Terrorism" to Colombia or Sri Lanka.

Second, I would think that the proper name for a "terror bombing campaign writ large"—particularly if it is a campaign by one religious group against its civic peer—is a "civil war."

Finally, it is suprising that Tracinski should begin to embrace the term "War on Terrorism" only now that some mainstream, even liberal commentators, like Sam Harris, are starting to realize that we are fighting a War on Islam.

My third major comment on Tracinski's article regards the following:

For all their talk of an Islamic "caliphate," today's Islamists do not really have such an organized vision. Their ideology is not taken from Lenin but from Mohammed--a cruder, more primitive source. It is a charter, not for a modern state, but for tribal gang warfare, and the rule of the Islamists has been dominated by the capricious whim of holy warriors, usually without much pretense of scientific organization or the rule of law.

This can be seen in many of the societies where Islamists have risen to power: their model of the ideal society has been on display in Somalia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Gaza, and Waziristan. It is best described as anarcho-totalitarianism: total control over the individual, not by an organized state, but by roving criminal gangs of religious zealots.

I think that this section is supposed to support the idea that terrorism is something "distinctive" to our enemy Islam. But it does nothing of the sort. The examples Tracinski cites are of aspiring or failed Islamic states, so of course they are anarchic (if they are fighting an existing regime or in the process of losing control of one of their own). But bin Laden and many other Islamist groups are very clear about wanting to re-establish an Islamic Caliphate. The fact that they don't achieve it is more a result of their differing visions about how to do it (e.g., Sunni vs. Shi'ite), than of anything inherent in Islamic ideology. The fact Tracinski cites, that the religious police in Saudi Arabia look to be a kind of vigilante force, is probably more evidence for my point: Islamists in Saudi Arabia are not in control, but they would like to be.

Finally, my last comment. Tracinski's point in urging that we do need to fight a war on terrorist insurgency, not just Islam, is completed in the following:

Let's say, for example, that we were to withdraw from Iraq now--then set out at some later point to topple the Iranian regime. Don't you think the remnants of that regime--even if they were defeated in a conventional conflict or faced an uprising from their own people--would have every incentive to turn Iran into another terrorist "quagmire," replicating the model that succeeded for them in Iraq? That would be the message of a successful Muslim insurgency in Iraq: that the US may always win on the conventional battlefield--but the Islamists will always win in the unconventional battle that follows.

...

Surrender in Iraq would validate the terrorist insurgency as an infallible winning tactic. It would validate that tactic far more thoroughly than our previous retreats from Somalia and Beirut, and losing this time would make it ten times harder to demonstrate our ability to win a counter-insurgency war in the future.

First response: Why worry so much about what will make it possible to invade Iran, when, as I emphasized in my last post, nothing can save the fact that such a war has been invalidated in the public mind already?

OK, maybe there's finite chance that we would still do something about Iran. In that case, my biggest objection to this point is that Tracinski is begging the question. He is assuming the very point in need of proof: that the best way to confront our enemies abroad is through conventional ground tactics. He assumes that if we should go into Iran, we should do so with the purpose of occuping that country and "nation-building"—just as he assumes with regard to Iraq, of course. I agree that if we were to go into Iran, we would face the exact same problems we currently face in Iraq. Which is why I would never support a war on Iran, not under the present leadership, not using the same tactics.

Tracinski neglects an approach to opposing foreign enemies that is different in-principle. As he observes, it is rather ridiculous to topple a regime only to see different hostile elements take control of the country. So instead of doing that, our approach should be as follows: Suppose that a nation state poses a genuine threat to the United States. The way to prevent the contemporary threat and its possible return is to bring such devastation to that state and its citizens that future wars will not be necessary. This may be consistent with setting up a puppet state of our own after the war, but it is not necessary. Using modern weapons, the cost of a devastating war would be small from our perspective, and still small in the case that upstart governments need reminding.

If you think it would have been ridiculous to apply a strategy like this to Iraq, then that probably reflects your conviction that Iraq did not pose a genuine threat to us. Your conviction may be different for a state like Iran which, unlike Iraq, is an openly theocratic regime, and actively developing nuclear weapons.

Posted by admin at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

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 01:46 AM | Comments (2)