ELECTION TIME is just around the corner - I’m an independent, mind you, so it’s not like I have much stake in the primaries - so I think it’s only fair that I consider my own record. I’ve had a blog since back when they were never called weblogs; the first music I mentioned came from IRC because there was no such thing as Napster that far back. Because of this, I have a good record of my own ignorance.
It’s worth looking back because I think many people underestimate the human capacity for self-improvement. Benjamin Franklin, up there with the illegal immigrant Alexander Hamilton and the original George W as the best Founding Father, used to keep a daily record of his virtues and vices. He would give himself tick marks if he’d performed each of the thirteen virtues in a given day. Each week, Franklin turned his attention to a particular virtue, cycling through the order fully every quarter. Certainly Franklin didn’t claim perfection, but “tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”
And part of that endeavor must involve spotting where our mind has let us astray, musn’t it? So I’m going to go back to the start
September 16, 2001
“We have to be the better man, the bigger man. My idea: The US should spend 1 dollar on building schools and hospitals in the 3rd world for every dollar we spend fighting terrorism. Lead by example. Be the shining “beacon of freedom” that Bush talked about.And speaking about Bush talking, he has not done a good job in this tragedy. Guiliani, Pataki and Powell have all showed great leadership strength. Bush’s speech the night of the attack didn’t mention anything that he should have. Where was the “Please remember that Arab-Americans are Americans, too, and think the acts today are just as egregious as non-Muslim Americans think them.” Or “Your Civil Liberties are not in danger: If we let our freedom slip away, the terrorists will have won”. Or “There is no need for panic economically. Our nation is still strong”. Or “We will be cautious and deliberate in finding the enemy. No one is going to be drafted. We will be the better man and try at all costs to avoid killing civilians when we seek out justice on those who killed my fellow Americans today.”
I’d say that holds up generally well. I mean, this essentially calls Bush out for screwing over our civil liberties and tossing military power around in a manner out of proportion to the threat, and only five days after 9/11. Also note that this is the only nice thing I’ve ever said about Guiliani.
Nothing about war was mentioned again until September 2002, when I mentioned that I was convinced that the Iraq talk was only rhetoric designed to pressure Saddam into giving up the ghost on WMD and stopping internal prosecution. At that point, I didn’t think there was any actual chance of war, but:
September 20, 2002
The wording of Bush’s request to Congress to allow him unconditional power in dealing with threats in Iraq is very similar to the text of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that got us in the 10-year disaster called the Vietnam War. Speaking as an American, not even as a citizen of the world, and as a non-liberal, I would rather have 10 World Trade Center bombings than another Vietnam War.
I’d say I definitely still believe that’s true. The same post argued that the US should do three things to prevent terrorism other than invade Iraq: force settlement in Israel by disengaging from both the Arafat and the Israel government, facing up to our past foreign policies mistakes and ending future trade in arms, and working to secularize the Middle East (i.e., the Turkey model). I mean, I really was convinced we wouldn’t actually invade Iraq; witness this from October 2002 (the war didn’t begin until March 2003, so I guess I would’ve won):
And I’m making my “the war tactic is a bluff” into a solid bet: A $20 bet is on the table for anyone who wants to bet that the US will go to war with Iraq before, say, New Years Day, assuming that Saddam doesn’t fire missiles at Israel or something like that. Email me if you’re interested. Prepare to send me the check on January 1st.
In January 2003, I laid it all on the line. After listing Saddam’s litany of crimes (and we oughn’t forget, he was a world-class jackass) and listed three possible denouement:
January 18, 2003
So will we go to war? I still think it’s a last resort. If it is about “blood for oil”, as the hippies will tell you, we would have attacked Iraq in July. The US has waited. They have went through the UN. They have put up with Saddam’s lies and torture, and are prepared to put with more if it means avoiding war, which, it must be mentioned, is very expensive and undesirable for the US. The optimal solutions are either a) Saddam and his regime go into exile and is replaced with a UN-monitored democracy, b) Saddam declares a full list of weapons he has and immediately dismantles them, c) Saddam faces war with not just the US, but the world…Military force doesn’t mean war. The threat of military force is also effective. What needs to happen, in this non-bipolar era, is that the world needs to get on the stick and tell the world’s most horrendous leaders to ship up and shape out. “But what about their soveriegnty?” you say, and rightly so. There are some leaders and situations that are too terrible to simply wait. In the twentienth century, more people died from internal repression than from war, and that counts the two worst wars in human history, World War I and World War II.The world did nothing when Uganda’s Idi Amin killed 300,000, until 5 years after his killing spree started; Tanzania decided it was enough, invaded and removed him.
The world did nothing when Cambodia’s Pol Pot killed 2 million until 4 years after his killing spree started; Vietnam decided it was enough, invaded and removed him.
The world did nothing until too late in Rwanda. They did nothing until too late in Yugoslavia. They did nothing until too late in Timor.
This is not a discussion of US policy. The US has been as guilty of not stopping these regimes (and in some cases, directly supporting the regime, as in the case of Somoza in Nicaragua) as any other nation. This discussion is about what the US, and the world, should do now and in the future.
Put simply, it is morally irresponsible, soveriegnty be damned, for the world to allow dictators to kill thousands upon thousands. It can’t be allowed to continue.
That is why Saddam must change 180 degrees, leave peacefully or be replaced by force. There are no other options. This isn’t about oil. The beachhead we approach is a beach of evil. Its palm trees provide shade only from freedom and human rights. Its grains of sand and the grains of death and suffering on a magnitude that is unimaginable, and that death and suffering shows no signs of slowing.
The coming tide will wipe away that evil. The question, and in this case, the question that Saddam must answer, is how that will happen.
This is really where I laid it all on the line. I’d say I still am much more concerned about internal repression than war between states, since the post-1945 world has been harmed much more by dictators and civil war than by internecine war. I’m a bit embarrassed to have so uncritically accepted the party line on Saddam’s WMD, however, and I should have been more aware of the anti-war sentiments of scholars whose opinions on internal repression I respect (and respected), such as Samantha Power.
Now’s the part where I really look bad, however. You should read the whole thing for yourself. Let’s just say that the following doesn’t hold up well:
April 10, 2003
The call of protesters and the anti-war contingent has been answered. There is peace in Iraq. For the first time in a quarter century. Make no mistake, Iraq was not at peace before the US invaded. Any doubt I had about the rightness of this war has been erased.This war will go down in history as one of the most successful in the history of the world. Less than 150 allied deaths. The most inflated estimates say about 1000 Iraqi civilian casualties; most unbiased sources say less than half that. Children and political prisoners have been freed from jails. The thoughts of a nation have been freed to the air. In 3 weeks, a nation was defeated on its own turf by a relatively small portion of the US military and our friends’ armies. Saddam’s acid baths, his extravagant gold palaces, his hospitals used as army bases, his torture chambers: all are now shown to the world.
In my defense, if we would have just pulled most of our troops from Iraq in April after we’d rolled through Saddam’s army, the insurgency might not have happened. By early 2004, only 10 months after the war started, I listed my preference in the 2004 election as the most plausible candidate pledging to bring the troops home: Wesley Clark.
January 19, 2004
He is a former NATO Commander with a history of diplomatically working with our allies around the world, organizing coalitions, speaking tactfully and deeply understanding security issues. He is hawkish in his liberal internationalism, pressing for using the US Military on humanitarian missions when grave disasters might result, such as in Kosovo and Bosnia. He would follow the Powell Doctrine of using US force only when we can guarantee victory, only when we have the support of the American people and only when we have a clear exit strategy. He understands that the problems the US has with terrorism from the Moslem world are grave, and must be dealt with accordingly.
So there it is.
I’m actually pleasantly surprised - Past Self came off much better than Present Self would have imagined. I guess if I take any lesson out of Iraq, it’s 1) don’t trust the government, 2) military might is often not the most useful solution to internal repression problems (though, admittedly, we should balance the lessons of Iraq with, say, the lessons of Kosovo), and 3) foreign policy is and always will be more important than economic and domestic issues.
I still want to see a US that serves as a “city on a hill”, that welcomes foreign visitors and hardworking immigrants searching for opportunity, that stands up for the oppressed no matter where they live, and that leads on international issues (whether they be trade, the climate or human rights) rather than follows (or worse, obstructs). I don’t think this is too much to ask. To be honest, there are very few candidates in this year’s election who meet those criteria: Richardson, probably Obama, and to a lesser extent Hillary. I’m more amazed by the week that the Republican field, in general, feels that “we need to do what Bush did, only to a greater extreme” is going to win them an election.
Finally, I should note that, knowing what we knew in March 2003, I’m still not sure invading Iraq was necessarily the wrong thing to do, since if we’d be able to get out with similar human toll as in Afghanistan and Kosovo, the human rights ledger would have lied firmly on the side of “remove Saddam”. The projected costs to the US economy were also closer to $50bn than $1 trillion. Knowing what we know in 2007, though, believing that invading Iraq was the right thing to do is essentially lunacy. $1 trillion could have funded, for instance, the oil-free, emissions-free, transport of the future PRT in all of the 100 largest US cities. The death rate in Iraq has been substantially higher since 2003 than during the late years of Saddam’s reign. It is unbelievable that so many politicians (including the entire Republican field, aside from Ron Paul) still thinks the Iraq War was proper in retrospect.
What do you guys think? How have your own feelings on the war changed?
