WMD: Once More Unto the Breach
By Callimachus | Related entries in History, The War On TerrorismMaybe it’s just as well that this site occasionally refuses to accept my comments. It gives me a chance to expand them into full posts and thereby raise more hell.
It began with this boast by an anti-war poster:
Back before the war I was against it for many reasons, but one big concern of mine is what is happening now. We’d go in there, find no WMDs, Bush would look like an oil-hungry liar, our credibility to fight subsequent wars would fall under serious question in every corner of the globe, we would end up pulling out of Iraq before the country was TRULY ready and the three factions in Iraq would start fighting…ultimately leading to a civil war. THAT is why I opposed The Bush Doctrine. Not because I don’t think people should have the right to be free. I just didn’t believe in the shaky logic of the neo-cons “dream� scenario of being thrown candy and flowers, which completely threw blinders on to the history of that region.
What an astonishingly prescient man! He saw the whole thing in advance. And not only him, apparently. Other anti-war commenters here have his supergenius savant powers:
What is happening now is almost exactly what I was worried about as well.
Wow! And of course they committed these concerns to writing, right? These are people who post on the Internet, after all. So let’s go check the record, since offering proof is only common courtesy for those who boast of Nostradamus’ powers.
So as far as a timestamp goes, well Cal, that I don’t have. But I think this rather lengthy explanation with information that was ALL available pre-war is more than enough to afford me the courtesy of trust.
Ah, I see.
And no, Cal, I can’t prove it either, unless I can get some of my Repub friends to vouch for my complaints at that time.
Uh-huh, OK.
And as a matter of record, I correctly predicted every single first-place finisher in the sulky races at Brandywine in the summer of 1987. I bet on the horses merely to amuse myself, you see. But I knew every single winner. No, of course I didn’t write it down at the time. But trust me.
Let’s take a look at just the single interesting phrase “We’d go in there, find no WMDs …”
Now I was watching that debate, too. And you can go see what I wrote about it at the time, if you’re interested, because I did put it on the record. I was wrong about a lot of things, but probably not the things you will automatically assume based on cartoon caricatures of neo-cons.
WE KNEW THERE WERE NO WMDS
If you can’t show me where you said that, at least show me where someone you admire said it. It can’t be that hard to find if it’s true. If it’s not, you’re just rewriting history.
I went looking once upon a time. Here’s what I found on prominent blogs of anti-war voices.
Josh Marshall on March 18, 2003, described the looming war in these terms:
At this point, obviously I hope this goes quickly and as cleanly as possible. Getting rid of Saddam will be a very good thing as will getting rid of his WMD and ambitions to get more. I was long for something like this. I changed my position because in the course of moving in this direction we incurred an even greater risk to our security than Saddam himself was.
Duncan Black (Atrios), on March 27, 2003, quoted this Josh Marshall passage from Washington Monthly predicting the situation six months after the war:
Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border.
Later (April 4, 2003) Atrios went on the record about Saddam’s weaponry:
For the record, I’ve never doubted that Saddam probably has some sort of chemical weapons.
Same thing at Daily Kos. Skeptical of specific administration claims and evidences, but not of the existence of Iraqi WMD. And willing to invoke them, if they could be used to make the White House look bad.
How does the US know that Iraq has biological weapons? Easy. Because we sent them the equipment and anthrax spores to build them. [Sept. 26, 2002]
On Jan. 17, 2003, he quotes approvingly a “Christian Science Monitor� piece that claims “Iraqi forces defending the cities could try to halt invading troops by shelling them with chemical weapons,� and predicts, “Americans will die � lots of them.�
On Feb. 12, 2003, Markos, who is a military man, laid out his own set of possible Iraq war scenarios. WMD figured in them: “And if Saddam is going to use chemical weapons, this would be a good time � with US troop concentrations exposed in the open desert. … There’s no doubt that Kuwait is sufficient for staging purposes, but having a single supply line is problematic. Not only is it exposed to dehabilitating guerilla attacks, but Saddam could hamper the entire resupply operation by either detonating a nuke (if he has one) or contaminating wide swaths of the logistical lines with chemical and/or biological weapons.�
Here’s Daily Kos from 09/02:
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? Join the line. About a dozen nations have such weapons these days. Only the US has deigned to use them, and that was when it was the sole nuclear power. The threat of annihilation through retaliation has checked any subsequent use of such weapons.
The “where are the WMD?” posters at anti-war rallies began to turn up after the invasion, not before. Here’s Juan Cole on April 1, 2003:
The failure of the British or US troops to turn up any stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons is striking. Perhaps it is the case that they are well hidden or that they are hidden in Baghdad or to the north. It is dangerous to get out on a limb here and say they just don’t exist. But the possibility that they just don’t exist now has to be taken increasingly seriously.
Emphasis added throughout. And so on and so on. I’m not blaming these people; I held about the same estimation of the likelihood that Saddam had WMD of some sort. So Juan Cole was as surprised as the rest of us by the lack of any sort of WMD stockpile? So was every intelligence agency in Europe. But now a whole lot of armchair Mid-East experts want to jump up and say they knew it all along.
Here’s what I think is happening: “WMD” is a deceptive term covering a broad range of weapons, and used in slightly different contexts by different people. Iraq did have prohibited WMD in 2003: the sarin shells have since turned up across the country, dozens of them, with more perhaps to be found.
But Saddam’s nuclear program, unlike what we feared and he led us to believe, was deader than a doornail. Not that he wasn’t looking every day for ways to revive it. But the combination of inspections and the sanctions were keeping that out of his reach. The sanctions also were killing innocent Iraqis in batches, but that’s another story. And Saddam was rapidly undermining them by exploiting the greed of French and Russian leaders, but that’s another story, too.
And while nukes weren’t the only WMD Bush and Blair talked about, and WMD wasn’t the only topic in their brief in favor of overthrowing Saddam, it was the nukes that disturbed people most and produced money lines about “mushroom clouds” and “14-minute warning.”
So people who are obsessed with what Bush said will be fixated on the fact that the administration oversold its case for Iraqi nukes. Never mind that it was never a terribly convincing case, once the administration’s claims were held up to examination, which usually occurred within days of their being made.
Here’s one I can tell you, and I can back it up from the record: I never believed there was solid evidence Saddam had nukes. But I didn’t want to trust the 5 or 10 percent chance that he did, or would soon get them, after having stood at the barricades on Greenwich Street at Rector and stared at the latticework shell of one of the towers, fragile, fused tuning forks. Like lace, like confectionery.
The case for Iraqi nuclear WMD always was the most deadly case, and it always was the most dubious. But I have yet to meet an anti-war person who said positively, before the invasion, “Saddam has no nukes” â€â€? after all, only a prophet or a lunatic could have said that before we overthrew him and found out for sure.
It was a guessing game: Maybe he has them. Maybe he doesn’t. We don’t have the proof. But are you willing to take the chance?
But the anti-war movement that I saw wasn’t capable of thinking rationally at that point. What they were saying, if you added it up was, “Bush has no proof that Saddam has WMD, and if we invade Iraq, Saddam will use WMD on our troops.”
OK, fine, whatever. Lack of a coherent model of reality, and a willingness to believe mutually exclusive propositions, so long as they both make the Chimperor look bad, is a hallmark of that side of things. Come back when you get a coherent model of reality and we’ll talk about voting for you.
And what baffles me is that so many people who thought there was any sort of chance Saddam had such weapons were willing, in the post 9-11 world, to let a man with his track record keep them. That’s not “anti-American, terrorist loving, moonbatish nonsense.â€Â? It is, however, like letting a live rattlesnake nest under your bed because it hasn’t bitten anyone yet.
I’m not obsessed with what Bush said. That’s a domestic political fixation. I’m very interested, however, in what Saddam did. And I’m glad we don’t have to be worrying about it any more except in an abstract past tense.
YOU BROKE OUR CREDIBILITY!
More from our all-seeing and all-knowing commentators (though of course they already know what I’m going to say about it):
So Dems were worried that if no WMDs are found, our credibility would get knocked down quite a few notches.
Ah, of course. The Dems were worried about the credibility of America — Amerikkka — Indian-genociding, hiroshima-incinerating, racist-ruled, Vietnam-War-fighting, Rosenberg-executing, Israel-arming, fag-bashing, imperialist, colonialist, witch-burning, McCarthy-ruled, hypocritical, slave-owning, dissent-crushing America. They were concerned deeply. Not that they ever were concerned by their leftist buddies in academe, who have been undermining that as loudly as they could for generations.
The most disappointing thing for me is that so many of the neo-cons and war hawks were too in love with the ideal of “spreading democracy and freedom through war� that they couldn’t step back to realize that if you gamble with our credibility and then screw it up, it’s going to hurt our long term chances to do it elsewhere in places where it’s really needed, like Sudan, et al. In other words, it hurts our credibility to actually fight the WOT effectively.
Of course. Our “credibility” in the world would have stood so much higher today if Saddam were still on his tyrant’s throne (remember: “we put him there”) and Qusai and Uday in their rape palaces and the U.S. invaded impoverished Sudan instead.
By the way, what’s with the “candy and roses” fixation. U.S. troops were greeted in many places with candy and roses and tea. There are pictures of it. So what? History is full of cases of armies greeted joyously as liberators and quickly resented as occupiers. The French in the Rhineland in 1792, for instance. Everyone likes to be liberated. No one likes to be occupied. But yes, they were greeted with flowers. What’s the point?
CIVIL WAR; TOLD YOU!
With Iraq, everyone knew what failure would look like when we went in there to try to set up a democracy: either the country would revert to strong-arm rule (via a caudillo or a theocracy) or break apart into religious and ethnic enclaves.
That was understood on both sides. And the anti-war voices widely predicted both, but the ones I read leaned toward “another Saddam, backed by the U.S.,� since they assumed that outcome would suit Bush best. So, no points for predicting failure always, everywhere, at every step of the way, in a project you opposed from the start.
HUMANITARIAN JUSTIFICATION
No doubt everyone has stopped reading by this point. So I’ll just add my “ditto” to these remarks from the days of the war itself:
“My own knowledge of the horrors Saddam has perpetrated makes it impossible for me to stand against the coming war, however worried I am about its aftermath. World order is not served by unilateral military action, to which I do object. But world order, human rights and international law are likewise not served by allowing a genocidal monster to remain in power.”
…
“I hold on to the belief that the Baath regime in Iraq has been virtually genocidal (no one talks about the fate of the Marsh Arabs) and that having it removed cannot in the end be a bad thing. That’s what I tell anxious parents of our troops over there; it is a noble enterprise to remove the Baath, even if so many other justifications for the war are crumbling.”
Juan Cole, in case you’re wondering. Before the BDS virus reached his brain.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 and is filed under History, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 15th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
Try to take it apart my points as much as you like, but that’s what I thought back then.
Also, I trust you when you post about your personal life and how ridiculous your fellow coworkers act. I don’t question those things and I never will…even though you could never actually prove it.
I’ll ask again…afford me the same respect.
March 15th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
If I use my personal stories as a tactic in argument, to refute what you say or claim my position was the clear right one from the start, then I expect you to challenge me to prove them. Proof is a courtesy due to one’s opponent in argument.
March 16th, 2006 at 12:31 am
Cal,
If I called up my friends, who knew me in 2003, when I was a registered Republican, and asked them to get on this site to say that I was against the war because of the reasons I gave previously, would you be satisfied? Should I really have to do that?
Are you trying to “prove” that no one had the concerns Justin articulated in his post? If so, it seems to me that you have searched the web for quotes that support your position. Anyone can find “proof” to support any position they wish to “prove.”
Cal, I sincerely respect your right to have your own opinions, even if I don’t agree with most of them. I would appreciate it if you would respect mine by not attacking my credibility or me personally.
March 16th, 2006 at 12:45 am
There’s no point in having you prove your ex-wife was that bad to you, or that your coworkers are actually THAT ridiculous, or that your son’s school is that awful, or that you were nearly fired because of blogging.There’s simply no point. I trust you. End of story.
And by the way, trust is also a courtesy due to one’s opponent when they’re sharing personal thoughts, feelings and experiences. You’re not giving me that, but I have given it to you on multiple posts. That doesn’t mean you have to, but it’s certainly disappointing to find out now that the favor is not being returned.
March 16th, 2006 at 1:07 am
You want to meet my ex? I’ll be happy to procure you an introduction. You want to my co-workers online? I’ll get you some. In fact, there’s at least one posting comments here nowadays. You want the letter threatening my job? I’ll e-mail it to you.
Meredith, you’re as entitled to your opinions as I am to mine. I respect that. You’re not entitled to claim as fact what can’t be proven, whether it’s about you or anyone else, and to use it to advance a political argument, ant more than I can claim God told me what was true.
If you guys knew back in 2003 exactly what was and wasn’t true inside Saddam’s Iraq, and exactly what was going to go wrong in Iraq if we invaded it, and what was not going to go wrong, in exactly this order, as you’ve laid it out, I think we’ve established who should be our presidential candidates in 2008.
Or if it that course of events was so obvious to so many people at that time, why haven’t you been able to show me one example of it?
Of course I searched the Web for evidence! That’s called “researching.” That, not opinion, is how people learn what’s true and what isn’t. You’re invited to do some, too. It doesn’t cost anything.
Oh, all right, I give up. Even Saddam’s own inner circle didn’t know whether he had WMD or not, but a couple of anti-war people on the Internet in the U.S. had it all figured out and knew it was all a lot of hooey cooked up by the Chimperor. I was just a stupid, blind partisan for not seeing what was so bleeding obvious to you all and all those other solons whose predictions have strangely disappeared from the Web. Damn that Cheney! Happy now?
March 16th, 2006 at 1:23 am
Jeezus…yeah, I’d like to meet your ex. Did you completely miss the whole point about me TRUSTING you that those things are true?
I trust you. You don’t trust me. Oh well.
March 16th, 2006 at 1:36 am
You really should meet her. She’s a piece of work. But you’re mising up the stories; it was an ex-live-in girlfriend with whom I had the wrenching abortion experiences. She’s a much more complicated case, but I can give you her AOL e-mail. But see how easy it is to mix up your memories and yet be sure you’re right?
March 16th, 2006 at 7:35 am
Don’t the polls of the time period reflect that many Americans (as well as Europeans) did not support the war ? I believe most Americans who opposed the war made their decision because the total weight of all the arguments was weak (e.g. the argument that aluminum tubes were for nuclear use was attacked before the start of the war.). It may be more accurate to document the entire range of issues from people (i.e. kos, Cole etc.) to see why the positional decision was made.
A powerful reason that made me question this war was “how can we expect to significantly change 3,000+ years of culture without spending shitloads and killing lots of folks, is the end result worth it to America at this time in History ? What about after the war ?” When the administration would’nt (could’nt ?) present accurate expectations for the real cost of this operation. ($1 billion total ..?) Oil production infrastructure itself is too vulnerable and expensive to make that expectation vaild. Some people DID have valid, Cogent, well conceived reasons why we should not go into Iraq. The reason many Conservatives could’nt hear these reasons is because they were too loud yelling “TRAITOR !!!!!!”
March 16th, 2006 at 7:35 am
I thought there were WMD. I thought the likelihood of gas very high, of nukes lower, of biologicals lower still. But I don’t like trusting aggressive thugs with city-busting weapons.
I bought in to the war for the Tom Friedman argument: remake the middle east by establishing a democracy.
I was very quickly concerned about the occupation. And I do have proof, videotape. My concern from early on was that the occupation was far too soft, even negligent. It had never occurred to me that we would show less will and use less decisive force than we had used when occupying Japan. That’s on video and in print.
Since then I’ve been in a downward spiral of despair. Unable to believe the incompetence of this administration. Staggered by their refusal to fix what is broke.
March 16th, 2006 at 9:33 am
I must echo Michael on this one. I find it interesting that so much energy is expended on who said what, when, how pre-war. These points have been bloghogged on a regular basis. For the sake of focusing on the here and now, let’s agree that everyone’s shoes are dirty on the pre-war information and intel. Where are we NOW? How did we get here? How do we fix it?
It is progressively apparent that we executed poorly on a poorly planned invasion. To Michael’s point about going in soft ( an argument I have advanced from the beginning) Japan is the valid comparator for response to an attack on the United States. IF, as Bush constantly argues, the war on terror is homogenous in that the enemy is everywhere …. the insurgencies are everywhere … and we invaded a soveirgn state as part of a strategy …. and it didn’t pan out to our benefit …. WHY can’t we change the strategy?
An analogy can be drawn from Saddam’s behavior that is pretty disturbing. Saddam played the odds with his blustering on WMD, his blustering on power and fortressed himself from the rest of the world with his arrogance. Bush played the odds that he would find WMD(and show the world), his blustering on power, and fortressed himself from the world with his arrogance. That is a done deal for both camps. No amount of blustering for either man will change the facts surrounding that.
The issues that face us all at this point have little to do with who said what, or why, or when, but rather where do we go from here.
Cal, I wish that I could have spoken with you directly about the the particular races you picked at Brandywine … I could have hit big, maybe bought the track … then there would not be a Target store and McMansion development sitting there today. Oh well, that was a different war that we lost.
March 16th, 2006 at 9:45 am
I can honestly say that I didn’t support the war with Iraq because I didn’t believe S.H. had anything to do with 9/11. I really didn’t care about WMD. At that time I thought we needed to take out the Saudi’s for their role in the attacks against us. No, I don’t have proof.
I can honestly say I didn’t give a thought to civil war breaking out. And I didn’t think we’d be there this long, either.
I was happy that we invaded Afghanistan, though, simply from the humanitarian aspect. By taking out the Taliban I think we actually did some good there.
March 16th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Michael, you’re one of the few people I “know” who not only predicts things but documents them and stands by them. If you’re right, you laud it far and wide. If you’re wrong, you admit it, shrug and move on. These are most unusual traits. Most of us have hunches, guesses, “what ifs” on most things (personal, investments, political matters- you name it). Few of us document our WAGs (wild ass guesses) because we don’t want to look foolish if we’re wrong. By and large, we’re all going be wrong on predictions. It’s just the way it is.
What annoys me is the 20-20 hindsight of Monday morning QBs. We all do it- but it’s still annoying. Since Callimachus is in the journalism biz, let’s pick on him. On 9/10, the NYT and WashPo didn’t have sprawling front-page articles on impending terrorist attacks. On 9/12, they act as if they saw it coming. Same with the Berlin Wall in 1989. Same with Pearl Harbor (I would imagine). Same with Brokeback losing to Crash. It’s easy to make predictions after the fact.
This isn’t a matter of trust. It’s a matter of Being Like Mike (Reynolds, not Jordan). Few of us have the stomach for that.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:02 am
The who-knew-what question is slipping out of current relevance and being transferred to the historians. There will be books. Many books. In ten years we’ll have a major revision. Then in ten years it’ll go the other way. Then no one will give a damn for a couple of decades. Then some future Doris Kearns Goodwin will make a pile of money reviving the question.
As GN says, the question is “now what?”
What is obvious to me is that we have lost the strategic initiative. We no longer have the available force, or the political will, to impose a solution. We are left to nudge and cajole and toss in a military raid here or there and hope things work out. Hope. We are now hoping that the Iraqis will do everything right. Last time they did something right? When they let the Hebrew slaves leave Babylon. Unless you want to go with Saladin (a Kurd, I believe, don’t know whether he came from what is now Iraq.)
In any case, we no longer have the ability to simply push through whatever solution we prefer. In terms of raw power in Iraq we are in decline, giving way to Sistani and Sadr and the Iranian ayatollahs. This may still work out for us, but I’m not happy with having lost the ability to impose, and I’m not happy with the suspicion that in the end we will have spent 2,300 American lives, tens of thousands wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars, to turn Iraq over to Iran.
We can set a deadline, or not, but it doesn’t really matter much any more. We can stay for a year or two, but it won’t matter much unless the Iraqis perform. We can’t force the Iraqis to form an inclusive government, and we can’t stop a civil war if they are determined to have one, and we can’t stop the decline of Iraq into Iran-style theocracy if that’s where the Iraqis decide to take things.
We are left with nothing but the hope that the Iraqis will rescue us from the consequences of our own catastrophic incompetence.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:04 am
CaKreiz:
You know, it never occurred to me I could get away with being wrong and then pretending I wasn’t. Now that you mention it, that would be a much better plan.
Kidding. Kind of. Hmmm.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Mike and GN- of course you two are right- it really is about “what now?” But if I’m reading Cal’s gripe correctly, he’s complaining about the tendency of some to go Nostradamus after the fact. The substance of the post, the Iraq War, is just the vehicle to prove this. But I could be wrong.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Great post, Cal.
You know those people who are always the smartest person in the room? And that not being enough for them, they then have to make sure everybody else knows it?
It’s great exposing them every now and again.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Mike- you’ve got that child-like honesty gene. Damn.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:52 am
“Meredith, you’re as entitled to your opinions as I am to mine. I respect that. You’re not entitled to claim as fact what can’t be proven, whether it’s about you or anyone else, and to use it to advance a political argument, ant more than I can claim God told me what was true.”
All I said was that I had those concerns when this “let’s get Saddam” thing started. Therefore, the only “fact” I am claiming is that I had an opinion. Period. I’m not trying to prove that anyone else thought those things, although I’m sure common sense would tell you that some people probably did. I agree with everyone else on here that it doesn’t really matter who thought what and when. I was simply agreeing with Justin’s thoughts and sharing my OPINION. Again, I don’t really understand why you feel the need to jump all over me for that. As far as doing some research to prove the point I wasn’t even trying to prove in the first place, maybe I will, but I would rather not waste my time trying to prove something to you. No matter what I say on this blog, you will always have a beef with it, and you will find some way to ridicule me or try to attack my credibility. I’m growing tired of playing games like this with people like you.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:54 am
cakreiz - You have a point about Cal’s purpose … and think about this. We all like to right (and some insist that al recognize it … human nature and a colateral effect of passion). MMQB’s are always around after the game. Sometimes in our rush to point at them we get caught up in things that just don’t matter to the current landscape because someone else is ploishing the trophy. There comes a time when (usually when we are paying the bills) that requires honest assessment of value for energy expended. It is much like a passion purchase of an item that we truly cannot afford, realizing it at bill time …. and sadly heading to the Home Depot to buy the “For Sale” sign. Like Terell Owens …. or Barry Bonds … Or Mitt Romney ….. or George Bush
March 16th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Other anti-war commenters here have his supergenius savant powers:
Those supergenious savant power pale in comparison to your mind reading abilities.
March 16th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Iraq did have prohibited WMD in 2003: the sarin shells have since turned up across the country, dozens of them, with more perhaps to be found.
Huh?
The only news I have found of a sarin shell turning up in Iraq was in an IED, and even then, the suspicion is that it was a scavenged dud, not a shell in condition to be fired from a gun.
March 16th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/07/02/international1018EDT0516.DTL
March 16th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
I don’t have to read minds. I can read posts and comments.
Look, it would be very easy to shut me up, and it clearly would give some of you great pleasure. All you have to do is produce someone — anyone — from late 2002 or early 2003 who correctly predicted the course of history from the moment of the invasion of Iraq till now. Then I’ll acknowledge that person as a genius. Any takers?
You’ll say I demand too much. But all he or she has to have done is correctly predicted things in rough outline, and stuck with it. Just hit the highlights, touch the bases, you know? Like:
1. invasion will be a spectacular success, Iraqi forces will cave in, no military quagmire, no desperate street-fighting in Baghdad, coalition and civilian casualties will be relatively light for the scale of the operation
2. widespread unchecked looting
3. No WMD at all except stray shells left over from past wars
4. No intervention by Iran or Turkey. No flood of refugees. No destabilization of neighboring regimes. No fresh terrorist attacks in U.S.
5. U.S. will guide Iraq through constitutional and parliamentary elections, which will be successful, but the government formed will be incompetent. U.S. won’t put another “guy with a mustache/bastard but he’s our bastard” in charge.
6. Saddam captured, put on trial in public, in Iraq, by Iraqis, and almost no one cares.
7. Three years down the line, country takes a sudden turn toward civil war.
8. Having been spectacularly creative in military preparation for the campaign, the U.S. proves spectacularly inept at being an occupier and fails to adapt to conditions or learn from mistakes until it is too late.
Eight points, and I’ll let you fudge a few if you need to.
No one foresees the future. When we each made the ethical choice to support the war or oppose the war or take some third position on it, none of us had a clue what was going to happen. It would be just as easy for me to say, “I predicted or foresaw 1,000 things that could turn out well and 16 of them actually did” as it is for you to say “I foresaw 1,000 things going wrong and 16 of them act6ually did.”
That’s not foresight. That doesn’t entitle you to claim other people are uneducated or untrustworthy, compared to you, when it comes to these things.
March 16th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
A lot of people predicted a lot of things. If you were a full-on anti-war person, you likely predicted 150 things to go wrong. Just because 7 of those 150 things came to pass doesn’t mean you “knew it all along.” It just means that with 150 darts, everyone will hit the board a few times.
When anti-war people say “I told you so” all they mean is “I figured it’d go wrong.” In that, they were right to some extent–but since it’s not over, it’s too soon for anyone to be congratulating their foresight. But I don’t think anyone, let alone a casual observer, could have predicted EXACTLY what was going to happen.
God knows I didn’t.
March 16th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
I should add, there is nothing more unpredictable than war. Just about anyone who made a prediction for Iraq ended up being over 50% if not over 90% wrong.
The interesting thing is, should Iraq actually become a democracy, a lot of war supporters will say “I knew it all the time” while leaving out the fact that it took 10 years longer than originally predicted. We all have an easier time remember where we went right rather than where we went wrong.
March 16th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Why is Cal treating Justin’s quote as a claim that he predicted the war exactly as it happened?
It looks to me like Justin is listing some of the many many concerns that were common among anti-war people before the war. The general person against the war thought that it was reckless because there was too much that COULD go wrong.
I don’t think that someone is engaging in hindsight just because they point out that SOME of the things that they said COULD go wrong actually happened.
When someone is about to engage in an activity that is so reckless that the possible negative consequences are nearly innumerable, I don’t think that someone needs to predict exactly how disaster will occur in order to be able to look back and correctly say that they thought it was a bad idea.
March 16th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Is the subtext here that predictive powers in a particular area are supposed to create and/or shore up credibility more generally? I’d question that premise, although it would indeed explain all of the “I told you so-ing.”
For sure, retroactive prescience doesn’t cut it.
March 16th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Well, I found something. It’s a speech Howard Dean gave BEFORE the war and, most importantly, BEFORE he became an internet superstar. At this point, the guy was a nobody. Soon he would capture the imagination of the world. And there’s a good reason why.
Now, in this speech he doesn’t speak to all of the things you mention, nor does he give the detail you may be seeking, but this speech addresses a lot of points you’ve questioned me about. And I would argue, these points represented a lot of Dems sentiments at the time. It’s not that we KNEW, it’s that we were WORRIED. And please, for everybody’s sake, quit using that straw man against me since I never said it.
The fact remains that many of us were worried that Bush could be making a huge mistake. And frankly, that’s why a lot of us supported Dean. He was the only one voicing a version of our opinion.
Gov. Howard Dean “Defending American Values - Protecting America’s Interests”
Some highlights:
On taking the focus off Al Qaeda:
On a plan for peace:
On snubbing the UN:
On hurting our credibility:
On disarming Saddam. And by the way, my thoughts back then were shifting as more information from the weapons inspectors came in and they weren’t finding anything. Eventually it seemed like Bush was going to go in there regardless of the inspectors findings. And to that point…
On Colin Powell’s UN presentation and the need for more time to inspect:
The risk of invasion and failing:
The risk of civil war:
More on fighting a ground war in Iraq:
And that’s where the anti-war worrying ends, with Dean continuing his speech discussing the threat of North Korea as being more imminent.
Say what you will Cal, but we had these worries before the war. A lot of us. If this isn’t proof enough of at least a part of those sentiments, I don’t know what else you’re gonna need.
March 16th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Alan makes a very good point: anti-war people predicted all sorts of things, some of which came to pass, and pro-war people predicted all sorts of things, some of which came to pass. I guess to compare batting averages we’d have to subtract total wrong from total right and see who had the best number, or the best percentage.
But I think as a practical matter it’s we who were pro-war who have the most explaining to do. If this war nets out as a loss the onus falls on the shoulders of those who pushed for war — me included.
It’s a bit unfair because anytime one group prevails in setting policy they set themselves up to be judged, while it’s very hard to judge the “road not taken.” But that goes with the territory.
Going in I said it was a 51/49 thing for me. I thought — and said at the time, and yes I have it on audio files in one of the G-5s at Taproot Productions — that GOP ideologues would do a poor job managing the business of nation-building in Iraq. But I was an optimist despite those doubts so the 51/49 in my mind favored going ahead. Barely.
Republicans, I said snidely, don’t build institutions, they tear them down. And Republicans, I alleged, had only three answers: cut taxes and government, outlaw abortion and beat up gays, and I didn’t see how any of those three would be helpful in Iraq. Hyperbole, obviously, but amazingly enough, right. As much contempt as I had for the Republican mind, and for Mr. Bush’s abilities, I was still overly generous.
At the same time I thought we’d get bogged down in urban warfare, or that Saddam would turn his chemical weapons against civilian populations in order to generate maximum casualties and chaos. Obviously wrong on two counts there. I was surprised the initial military move went as well as it did.
I was stunned early on at the laissez-faire attitude of Don Rumsfeld toward looting. And I felt a cold Shyamalan creeping up my spine when the military said it lacked troops to guard Iraqi weapons depots.
But I thought, and wrote, that Bush and Co. were preparing to declare victory and bail out two years ago, leaving the Iraqis in the lurch: wrong.
Some right, some wrong, none of it terribly important now since we are where we are.
March 16th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Meant to say video files, not audio.
March 16th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Good to see Justin point out what was obvious anyway. Anyone who paid any attention to what anti-war commentors said before the war knows that the concerns that Justin pointed out were raised, as well as many, many others.
I think I understand why Cal is falsely accusing Justin of claiming to have accurately predicated exactly what would happen in the war. Cal supported the war and it isn’t going so great and he’s pissed.
I think this quote is indicative of his anger:
“I was just a stupid, blind partisan for not seeing what was so bleeding obvious to you all and all those other solons whose predictions have strangely disappeared from the Web. Damn that Cheney! Happy now?”
What a dick.
Even after the 6 month long election-style pro-war campaign, only 60% of the public supported the war. The numerous opponents were concerned by the usual extraordinary list of things that could go wrong in war, as well as the fact that Saddam didn’t seem to be much of a threat. Cal knows this.
Cal is acting like Justin’s pre-war concerns weren’t expressed by anyone beforehand because he feels stupid for not paying sufficient attention to them.
March 16th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Yes, me, too, but I’m still seeking the better path. You could have stopped it right them by putting bullets in the first 300 or 500 looters. Which a cold-hearted realist in me says probably should have been done because that sort of violence in the short-term probably saves even more lives in the long-term (perhaps tens of thousands). But if you do that, then, when the flowers are still being dispensed, you’ve suddenly got a very different occupation on your hands. And is that really who we went there to be?
Among my fears before it began was that America, even enraged after 9-11 was not willing to be sufficiently ruthless to really compete in that machiavellian chunk of the world, nor did I especially want it to be.
And then turn back the clock and don’t invade Iraq; don’t overthrow Saddam. Can you see the political hay the Democratic leadership would have made of that in 2004? I can just hear Kerry droning during a debate, “It’s been three years since 9-11, and George W. Bush has alllowed this sworn enemy of America to continue hatching his plots and seeking to even the score,” etc., etc. Sabre-rattling on Iraq then becomes a Democrat’s issue and a sign of administration weakness. All the people who choose their positions for political reasons switch sides. But I still want Saddam out of power and Iraq on the road to freedom.
March 16th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
I pushed for ruthlessness. As a matter of fact, I was tiresomely repetetive, saying things like: “Occupations For Dummies, Chapter One: Place Boot Firmly On Neck.” That or variations on it. It literally never occurred to me that Rumsfeld et al didn’t know this.
In the occupation of Japan the (perhaps) unspoken but omnipresent threat was: Hiroshima. You say you don’t like the constitution we wrote for you, Kanji or Keiko? Hiroshima. Now shut up and do what we tell you. In Germany the threat was Stalin. Gotta problem, Fritz? How about you tell Uncle Joe all about it?
Iraq was a fascist state, with a population that had zero practical experience with self-government. I assumed we knew we’d have to hold them down for a while until it was safe to let them up.
Would Democrats and Europeans have screamed? Yes. But if we weren’t going to do what had to be done we should have stayed home. I was wrong about a lot, right about this.
March 16th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
That’s right, and that’s what I’m trying to say. If you start with a commitment to the belief that “it’s going to fail,” you can come up with a myriad ways in which it will. Including obvious possibilities like civil war. But it doesn’t make you smarter than someone who says “it will succeed.” It only makes you more committed to the failure.
Someone who has staked his honor on the success of the thing, on the other hand, is going to be likely to cling to hopes and a fantasy that all is going well. That’s the trap in that direction, and many blogs today are testimony to the power of that will to believe.
I based my sermon on Justin’s text: “one big concern of mine is what is happening now,” which to me looks an awful lot like a claim of prediction. He says it wasn’t, and I’ll take him at his word on that.
But you’re right; it’s awfully frustrating for someone like me to sit back and watch Iraqis and U.S. volunteers still going through so much hell after all this time. I had hoped for better.
On the other hand, there’s one prediction I made before the war, and haven’t changed since, and still stand by: “It will be 20 years before we know if this is a good idea.” [Source reference available on request] Because wars are rat-holes: you go in one, with one purpose, and you come out someplace totally unexpected.
Well, I don’t have the pleasure of you and your ilk of saying “I told you so” (whether you really did or not). But I can’t say I’m especially bitter over that. It’s a petty sort of vindication, isn’t it? Or does it make you feel good?
And I can’t do much right now to get things going right again. But I can at least call bullshit on people who say they are wiser or more grounded in reality than I am just because they predicted a failure where I hoped for and longed for a success.
For all the lack of good I did, I would take the same stand again. Where is there an ounce of dignity in any other? There was more of human dignity in one of those purple-stained fingers than in all your sneers. Even now, I’d still rather be me and wrong than right and you. I can say I lent my meager strength to the ideal of justice and the right of a people not to be bullied by dictators and a chance for liberty to take root in a nation half a world away. That people I’ll never meet might have the same opportunities that have blessed our parents and our children. What did you do in the decade?
March 16th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
That’s right: Rumsfeld! Of all people! The original Dutch Uncle. Which makes me think he really wasn’t in control of anything at that point. The power flow chart in the White House is impossible to decipher and it’s never the same from week to week.
The degree of censorship and the threat of force in the U.S. occupation of Japan is something I’ll warrant most people don’t remember nowadays. John Dower’s “Embracing Defeat” was an eye-opener for me.
March 16th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
“If you start with a commitment to the belief that “it’s going to fail,â€Â? you can come up with a myriad ways in which it will. Including obvious possibilities like civil war. But it doesn’t make you smarter than someone who says “it will succeed.â€Â? It only makes you more committed to the failure.”
You assume that people who opposed the war opposed it before even thinking about why it might be a bad idea. I was shocked that you would make that assumption, but began to understand why you might assume that when I continued to read your comment.
It seems much of your support for going to war seemed to be based merely on hoping that things go well. From what I can see, you are strongly in favor of any policy as long as the goal is a praiseworthy one. This is an odd basis for policymaking for someone who calls themself a “realist.” It’s an odd basis for policymaking for anyone, really.
Would you support a war against China? Why not? Aren’t there people there half a world away being bullied by a dictator? Don’t you want to give those people a chance at democracy? What other dignified stance could there be than to support a war against China in the hope that a democracy will rise up?
If you opposed such a war, would it automatically be just because you are assuming failure and coming up with rationalizations after the fact?
Opposing a war clearly does not necessarily involve opposition without thinking about why it might fail.
Your comments implying that I take pleasure in being right about the war going poorly are merely Karl Rove-style jingoism and I’m sure you know it. This war sucks. It’s a tragedy and it pisses me off. The only reason that I point out that people opposed the war is because you seem to be claiming that no one could have seen that the war could go badly, which is entirely wrong.
What have I done this decade? I’ve been as involved in plenty. As far as my stances on issues go, like you, I take support the positions that I think that will be beneficial to people. If that includes speaking out against what I feel will be a mistake, then I will do so, even if the goal is a good one.
March 16th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
What a ridiculous post. If you were opposed to the war it doesn’t count unless you a) committed your thoughts to writing and b) laid out a step by step foretelling of the future. Face it Cal, you were wrong about the war, and now you want to blame it all on the fact that we were all just taking wild ass guesses, and yours just by chance proved to be wrong. I call bullshit. I was very opposed to the war. I had no way of knowing if Saddam had WMDs, but I was willing to let sanctions continue and I didn’t consider him a threat to the US. I certainly knew that the prospects of us getting bogged down in a country rife with the potential for sectarian division was a very real possibility. I didn’t trust Powell’s presentation to the UN, and I never saw the logic of us invading a nation because they violated UN regulations. When did we become the self-appointed enforcement arm of the UN? Did I predict everything every step of the way? No. But because I was 75% right and you were dead wrong, you’re saying “let’s just call it even.”
And my primary reason for opposing the war? I have never trusted George Bush to do the right thing, or to do the wrong thing competently. Oops, another lucky guess. The day shock and awe started, and I saw they were calling it “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” I turned to my wife and said “Those bastards know they’re not going to find WMDs, so all of a sudden the emphasis is on freedom. They’re covering their asses.” And no, I won’t call her to testify, because I could care less if you believe it.
I’ll tell you why I’m more than happy to say “I told you so.” Because for mnost of the time I opposed the war, I was called every name under the sun. I was called deranged, a traitor to my country and a lot of other thing. It used to be a serious thing to call someone a traitor; the Republicans made it a parlor game. The level of arrogance displayed by the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney was disgusting. They have been less than honest with the American public the whole time, and it got them a second term that’s allowing them to screw things up even more.
I can’t believe you accuse us of never trying to support the war. Of course I didn’t try to support it. It was wrong from the start. By what logic would I suddenly start supporting it? Because Bush decides to go on an adventure, I’m suddenly supposed to feel that whatever he does is all right with me because he’s the President? It’s called free will, and I was exercising it.
So yeah, I was right and you were wrong. And frankly, I don’t consider you the judge of my veracity. Why can’t you be man enough to just say “Well, I guess I got that one really wrong” and leave it at that?
March 16th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Cal, Justin, Michael, and Voltaire …. Where the hell are you voltaire?
Just to simplify this argument a little
The builldings came down
OBD said “we did it, and fuck you we’re gonna do it again, and by the way we are hanging in Aphganistan.
We put on our red hoodie scarves and went over there to get him. We got alqueda out of power (damn guys, some colateral good stuff)(right thing)
SOMEBODY said “I don’t like this neighborhood … let’s go kick SH’s ass(wrong thing .. maybe we didn’t know it then but we do NOW)
OBD still has a blue scarf, still flips us the bird at every opportunity,
Our Congress STILL has not declared war, and directed the President of the United States to execute the war as follows: fill in the blanks, but do it in accordance with that useless piece of paper that White House keeps stepping on in the name of “I know better thatn you know, Ha Ha”
Stop whining about what happened and DO THE RIGHT THING … IN THE RIGHT WAY!!!!
March 16th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
No, not what I said. But if someone — anyone — wants to now claim he knew all along there would be no WMD, I’d be interested to know how he knew that, and incidentally if he really did know that way back when or just thinks he did. You knew it, evidently, because “Bush always lies” or some such thing, which may be good for you but it’s not passing my genius test. But you’re right, there’s no reason for you to care about that.
So far, in just skimming the archives, the only prominent voice I can find who was steadily saying in 2002, in effect, “Saddam has no WMD” was Ralph Nader. But I don’t think I’m debating Naderites here. At least, no one’s offered him as their spokesman.
March 16th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
If I ever call myself a “realist,” shoot me. No, on second thought, don’t. I read the rest of your comment and I’d rather be shot by someone who can hit what he aims for.
March 17th, 2006 at 10:16 am
Chris writes, “I have never trusted George Bush to do the right thing, or to do the wrong thing competently.” There it is. Cal, you really don’t need to get mired in the niceties of foreign policy or game theory, be it perceptions, misperceptions, intent, intelligence, legalities, realpolitiks or whatever. It’s simply that Chimp Bush can’t do anything right, no matter what it is. In the 90s, some Reps simply substituted Clinton’s name in the same sentence. It’s so tiresome.
August 6th, 2006 at 10:39 am
Good job.
April 20th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
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