17 Responses to “My Pre-War Concerns”

1. Callimachus Says:
   March 16th, 2006 at 6:11 pm

   “… simply proof that we saw something that they didn’t.” And that is where I call bullshit and say, “No, you didn’t.”

   It’s not like Dean was speaking in a private meeting of “liberals.” We all weighed the same risks. Risks in action, risks in inaction. We all saw the same potentials. Potentials for good or bad results.

   We all had the same crappy choices. Do we trust Colin Powell or Hans Blix when it comes to deciding how safe we are from nuclear incineration or an anthrax attack? Do we risk killing innocent Iraqis in the process of trying to liberate them, or do we choose to do nothing in the certainty that Saddam WILL continue killing innocent Iraqis by the thousands each year.

   None of us knew at the time what Saddam had up his sleeve. Probably not even Saddam knew. We all chose — overthrow him or leave him alone — based not on your wisdom and my ignorance but on mutual uncertainty.

   By the same token, none of us knew at the time how corrupted the sanctions regime was or that France and Russia were in Saddam’s pocket, literally. Nothing in me changed more rapidly in the three months before the war than my opinon of the U.N. But I don’t claim anyone bow down to my wisdom over that, because the reality of the corruption wasn’t a factor in my decision, because I didn’t know the depth of it till after I had made my choice.

   It doesn’t make me more visionary than you because I didn’t trust the U.N. to the degree that you (or Howard Dean) did.

   To me, the whole thing is like looking at a baby in a cradle. One says, “I bet he grows up to be a drunk and a crook.” Another says, “I want him to grow up to be a benefit to the world and an honor to himself.” But you don’t know till it happens. Or maybe you see something I don’t.

2. Alan Stewart Carl Says:
   March 16th, 2006 at 6:14 pm

   War sure can stir up passions. It’s amazing how much time we all still spend debating the lead up to the war.

   Here’s what I’m seeing. Anti-war people had some valid concerns and felt shut out of the debate from the outset. Back in 2003, it seemed very few people were willing to admit that things might turn out poorly–or at least willing to debate how we’d handle turns for the worse. Now that we’ve had a much tougher time in Iraq than many pro-war people predicted, the anti-war crowd is taking this moment to say “you should have listened to us back then.” And, frankly, they’re right. There simply wasn’t enough debate before the war about how to handle negative consequences.

   BUT, I completely understand the pro-war people’s irritation with the anti-war crowd. Let’s face it, two days into the conflict and many of the anti-war people were screaming “it’s another Vietnam!” Most anti-war people never even tried to support this war. In fact, many made a concerted effort to hype up the negatives and ignore the positives. So now that the anti-war crowd is saying “I told you so” the pro-war crowd is replying “yeah, but y’all have been gloom and doom even when things went right, so you’re credibility is pretty much shot.”

   This isn’t to say either Justin or Cal feel this way–just that I think both are venting their side’s general frustrations with the other side.

   As for my side? I have been steadfastly wary of this war since it started and while I have adamently supported a “no-withdrawal until the mission is complete” policy, I still haven’t been able to decide whether this was a good or bad venture. Right now, it seems to be a little of both. But I sure as hell hope it ends up being good (even as I worry that it’ll end up being bad).

3. Alan Stewart Carl Says:
   March 16th, 2006 at 6:24 pm

   By the way, I did not initially support the war. I was about 60/40 against it. My main concern? Iraq was not a top threat and we’d be expending resources there that we could end up needing elsewhere.

   I’m actually rather hawkish, I just didn’t think Iraq was the #1 target we should be going after. Of course, given it’s current state, it is now the #1 most important place for our military to be. Hence, most people consider me rather pro-war and are shocked to learn I actually was against the invasion. There’s a hell of a lot more than 2 sides to this thing.

4. Kilroy Says:
   March 16th, 2006 at 7:21 pm

   Great post Alan. I agree with just about all you have said, with the exception of when “our mission is complete.” I realize we cannot withdraw now. My problem is with understanding what the current metric is for a “complete mission.” I say this with all honesty. A few questions … Exactly what kind of Democracy is acceptable, a theocratic one ?

   When is a country - whose citizens kill each other - in a civil war ? 10 deaths a day ? 20 ? 100?

   How many of our troops must be killed or maimed.?

   Wmd’s. Stopping a butcher. Stabilizing the Mideast. Freedom. All honorable reasons for war.

   Is “mission accomplished” only When all reasons (more than are listed here) are satisfied ? if not, which ones are secondary.

   My problem with this war is not that I had the answers, but that so many questions were, and still not being asked.

   Although it sounds brutal, What is the Cost/Profit ratio ?

5. Justin Gardner Says:
   March 16th, 2006 at 8:04 pm

   It’s not like Dean was speaking in a private meeting of “liberals.� We all weighed the same risks. Risks in action, risks in inaction. We all saw the same potentials. Potentials for good or bad results.

   Exactly. So if we all had the same info why then do you not trust that’s how I felt? You could have imagined the same scenario I did and went with that gut instinct instead too. But ultimately, we’re both losers.

   Listen, you call me out on this, ask for proof and suggest I’m lying. Well, I gave you a speech from Dean (of all people) voicing these concerns before the war. So overall, yes, I think this suggests that there’s enough info out there to connect the dots in the way I said I did.

   And yet, you still don’t trust. Oh well, not my cross to bear anymore. I’ve done all I can.

6. Callimachus Says:
   March 16th, 2006 at 8:17 pm

   Alan, great ideas. It was you or Michael or perhaps someone else, on the other thread, who noted we’re at the point far enough from 2003 where the journalism is becoming history; the rough draft is becoming a first edition. So perhaps it’s natural that the old wars flare again.

   What I’m seeing is a little bit of history creep, where people who said the things I’ve quoted elsewhere, in 2002 and 2003, now wish to be known as having said all along they had serious doubts about WMD. [It seemed to me Justin was saying that, but he says he wasn't, and he holds up Dean as an example of what he was saying then, and Dean doesn't voice any doubts about WMD, so I guess he's right.]

   And this isn’t just a matter of pique. It’s important to know what people thought when they made a decision. I find it interesting that some people who fully believed there was a good chance Saddam had chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons, still chose to oppose his ouster. I am sure there are reasons to explain that, but I’d rather have the real reasons in the record than the false story that war opponents all knew there would be no WMD.

   It seems to me it’s possible to break down the topics regarding the decision to go to war into three large subsets:

   1. The Humanitarian Justification
   2. Broad Strategy in the War on Terrorism
   3. Saddam as a Direct Threat to the U.S.

   That leaves out fringey things like, “To steal their oil, and, y’know, corporations. Halliburton. And stuff.” Or, “to enforce the U.N.’s authority via its resolutions,” which seems a pretty cynical stretch by the administration’s fans.

   There’s two aspects to each of the three big questions: How important is it to you, individually, in deciding whether to support the war, and how likely is the war to make that situation better or worse?

   Of the three, it seems to me the first was the strongest case — that is, the one most likely to be improved by the overthrow of Saddam. And for me, personally, it happened to be the most important consideration. My decision to support was as much ethical as geo-political.

   And, as an aside, it still holds up, even amid the chaos. Bad things are happening at Abu Ghraib? Yes, and much worse things happened there under the previous ownership and still would be happening if we had done nothing but no-fly zones and sanctions. To respond “but at least it wasn’t us doing them” is to raise an important point, but it doesn’t really fit into the “humanitarian justification” category. It suggests you care who gets tortured less than you care that your hands are clean.

   The third category, however, the “direct threat,” was where the administration in the White House chose to pitch its case loudest and longest. They had their reason, I’m sure. The U.N. resolutions, the perception of popular opinion in America. And that was where the case always was weakest, and has grown weaker since the revelation of the true state of Iraq in March 2003.

   But the second category is an interesting one. It’s often overlooked, by people who focus on the military aspect, and dismissed as a canard by the anti-war people. But I think it was sincere, and I hope future historians won’t ignore it.

   After all, it was the enlightened world opinion that told America, after 9/11, to not just go out and kill terrorists, but to “address the root causes of Muslim rage,” and to “pay attention to the legitimate grievances brought up by Osama.”

   And that is what Iraq was supposed to do, in part, and has done, in part. The fact that it’s George W. Bush, written off as a strutting, smirking, cowboy-chimp moron, who is actually doing this makes it difficult for people to see. But Osama listed U.S. troop bases in SA and the sanctions in Iraq as major grievances. Well, the U.S. troop bases are out of SA, and the Iraqi sanctions are gone.

   No longer can the Arab street say America only supports convenient dictators in the Middle East and never gives the people a chance to govern.

   And at least one country has had the chance, and maybe still has it, to rise up and give its people good cause to live and strive and work for something and enjoy the fruits of labor. Something to aspire to besides plowing an airliner into a skyscraper and collecting the virgins.

7. alice Says:
   March 16th, 2006 at 9:00 pm

   Well you know around 3 years ago we were all hopeful and supportive when Baghdad fell and there wasn’t that dirty urban war. Then the looting started and we hoped for the best and the SOD and the right said it wasn’t billions and billions of infrastructure, but one vase from one museum. And it was nice to believe him.

   But now it’s turning into a mess, so bad that the right is now saying anyone who talks about a civil war is engaged in treason and there is a big long record of military people who warned these problems could develop, so people like Callimachu are going to look like fools especially if unlike Hillary and Kristol they weren’t criticizing Rumsfeld and calling for more troops by the summer of 2003.

   And this “no one could have known” is so damn typical of rightists. They never ever take responsibility. One of theirs gets caught taking bribes they say, “how about Clinton.” They are the perpetual victims of victims, it’s always someone elses fault. Losers.

8. Callimachus Says:
   March 16th, 2006 at 9:41 pm

   Whee, this is fun. Blogger’s down all evening, so I can’t rant at home, so I have nothing to do with my spare time but play mental dodgeball with moonbats. Maybe someday they’ll learn to aim for the person, not the shadow.

9. Rick Says:
   March 16th, 2006 at 10:05 pm

   My brother and I had a lengthy email debate about the invasion just before it happened. He was gung-ho for it. I was against it. I saved our correspondence, but not in any kind of inalterable form. He has them too, though. But I’m sure he wouldn’t cooperate. So I should be accused of bullshit, too. But really, who cares? Anyway, here’s the short version.

   I was against the war primarily because of the timing as well as the extant conditions involved at the moment. I felt that we had to do something decisive about Saddam eventually, because otherwise he’d continue to be a dangerous threat. But at the same time I felt we had Saddam in a box and could afford to wait. To my mind, waiting had many advantages and very few disadvantages. In fact, no one I’ve ever asked has come up with one really solid disadvantage. My brother certainly didn’t — not then or since.

   Others have tried though: we can’t invade in the summer (so wait till fall — Saddam will still be in a box); keeping a substantial force on the border in Kuwait would be costly (okay, point taken); it will give Saddam time to build up his defenses (yeah, right — his distrust of his own forces severely hampered his capabilities, and besides, military strategy wasn’t really his strong suit).

   But weigh those against the advantages. Perhaps the most obvious one is that it would have given us time to concentrate on rounding up Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Omar, and the rest of them in Afghanistan. The capture of those individuals would have been exceedingly important symbolically, if not strategically. There were others as well. But the most important (at least in my mind) was the fact that it would have given us more time to build a truly international coalition. I truly believe that was possible. And I do so for the following reasons.

   First, I didn’t think it was possible for Saddam to fully cooperate with the demands of the UN even if he wanted to. Of course, nowadays we know with certainty that he didn’t have any WMD, nor the documentation necessary to adequately demonstrate they were destroyed. So just on that score alone there was no way he could have complied. But we didn’t know that with certainty at the time, and that’s not the thrust of my argument. What we did know that he had abiding concerns about Iran. Thus, even if there WAS some way he could have satisfied the UN, doing so would have tipped off Iran as to how weak he really was. It would have tipped off disaffected segments of his own population as well. That was a mix he couldn’t allow. So it stands to reason that he would have continued to evade and obfuscate until the whole world got fed up with the guy. And if not the whole world, then at least NATO. Who the hell cares about the UN, right? But NATO’s backing sure would have been nice. In fact, in my mind, NATO’s backing was essential. After all, to the extent that one assumed Saddam was a threat to the US, one would also have to assume that he was as big a threat to the entire Western world. Turning our backs on NATO was a big mistake in my mind. And it wasn’t just about the added military strength (although that would have helped, too), it was about the added legitimacy. How much it would have helped is hard to say. We’ll never know. How long it would have taken to get them into line is another good question. Look back at the situations in Bosnia and Kosovo. In both those situations it took a while to stoke the fires under NATO’s butt. Only after they got royally pissed off at Milosevic’s constant bullshit did they finally act. But they did act, and they acted decicively. It just took a while. Much longer than 3 months. I figured it might take a year.

   For the life of me, I do not understand why the Bush administration didn’t appreciate that. I can only assume he didn’t because he really thought Iraq was going to be such a cakewalk that there was no need. Considering the composition of the population of the country and its past history, that seemed to me like a hopeless pipe dream as well. It should have been obvious that Iraq was going to be haaard werk even under the best of circumstances.

10. Callimachus Says:
    March 16th, 2006 at 10:53 pm

    See how easily history gets rewritten? I only call bullshit on people who claim they predicted, in advance, the actual course of events in Iraq after the war began, including and especially the absence of any WMD worth counting.

11. reader_iam Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 12:57 am

    … But they did act, and they acted decicively. It just took a while. Much longer than 3 months. I figured it might take a year.

    For the life of me, I do not understand why the Bush administration didn’t appreciate that. I can only assume he didn’t because he really thought Iraq was going to be such a cakewalk that there was no need. [Emphasis added.]

    Apart from what I did and did not think about staging war in Iraq or the larger picture or how they fit together, the “bolded” (by me) part strikes me as just a little bit too innocent. Just off the top of my head, the proximity of that time to 9/11 as opposed to now might have had just a bit to do with it. Remember that there was quite a consituency for “doing something (anything?)” Let’s not pretend that there weren’t arguments (right or wrong or gray) for going in to Iraq, or a constituency (right or wrong, nuanced or confused) behind that impulse.

    And I’m NOT just referring to the great masses of the American people (on either side); I’m also referring to the reasonably large subgroups of pundits, think-tankers, academics, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

    To say you don’t agree with something is one thing. To say that you don’t understand it is something else. To phrase it in a way that implicitly–if not explicity–states that “cluelessness” is the obvious analysis rather than “disagreement” is just too damn easy. And not just because it reduces things to a ridiculously “black and white” vision/version of reality–ironically, precisely the charge leveled (and I’m not saying there’s no merit there) against “the wrong side.”

    I can only hope that people will at some point STOP tripping over all the black-and-white “or’s” on their way to the reality of life as an irritating complexity of “and’s”.

12. Elrod Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 1:38 am

    Very few people predicted there would be no WMD before the inspectors went in. But a lot of people had serious doubts about Saddam’s WMD after the inspectors found nothing. For me, the doubts started in December 2002 when Blix complained about the CIA sending him to various sites that turned up empty. Then there was the aluminum tube discovery that El Baradei discounted within a day. It seemed that the Administration was really stretching it, and that was in December/January. Then came Powell’s speech, which I admit seemed persuasive at first. After all, Powell gave that speech to the UN precisely because many people had doubts about Saddam’s WMD after months of fruitless inspections. Many liberals bought the Powell presentation hook, line and sinker. I remember Mary McGrory issuing a famous statement to that effect in a Washington Post editorial. But then, within a week, El Baradei, Blix and other WMD experts started casting doubts on Powell’s presentation. The evidence of mobile biolabs looked strong on first glance - if you wanted to see them there. But more dispassionate observers raised serious doubts. Within a couple weeks, Powell’s UN presentation was in tatters, with the Administration largely dropping any reference to it. To me, it seemed the Powell presentation was not a presentation of an accurate assessment of Saddam’s WMD hiding, but a half-baked attempt to scare the UN Security Council into believing something the Administration wasn’t sure of itself.

    And then there was Bush himself. I will freely admit that I had doubts about WMD before the war because I distrusted Bush on everything. I started with a bias against him, and was never going to give him the benefit of the doubt. In a battle of honesty between Powell (working on behalf of Bush) and Hans Blix, there was no doubt who I trusted: Blix. While I recognized - and still recognize - the humanitarian benefits of removing the sanctions regime and Saddam’s brutal tyranny, I had grave doubts about the national security case made by Bush. The War on Terror case was even less persuasive what with Osama still on the loose in Afghanistan. But by the time the war started, I voiced my doubts about WMD to friends of mine - some who shared my doubts and others who thought the prospect of not finding WMD so outrageous that Bush would have to be impeached for such a massive campaign of dishonesty. Either way, I was far from alone in doubting the Bush WMD case. I would never claim that I “knew” there were no WMD. But I definitely felt like I was unpersuaded.

13. Callimachus Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 2:25 am

    Huh. In all that, nobody asked me what I wrote about it way back when. A fine lot of citizen-journalists you turned out to be.

    Well now that everyone dropped the thread, here’s the turning-point post (minus some now-forgotten current events material). I see it’s dated Nov. 7, 2002:

    There’s a lot to dislike about this. The Bush administration’s Saddam obsession clearly carries some psychological baggage left over from the last movie. The Saddam-Osama connection is unproven. Control of Israel is a tug-of-war between two ultra-hawks, while Pakistan teeters on the edge of Islamist control, and the head of the American FBI warns of a resurgent al-Qaida. An Iraq attack looks like a sideshow distraction from a War on Terror getting longer and harder by the day.

    But what if Bush is right?

    What if it’s a tragic mistake to let a vicious tyrant in the middle of the Middle East acquire weapons of mass destruction? What if the cost of pulling the world along on another Iraq war is less than the cost of doing nothing?

    Even if it’s a matter of a few years, not a few months, Iraq is undoubtedly racing to make a nuclear bomb. Well, so what? Other countries who have been America’s enemies have held such weapons. But Iraq isn’t the old Soviet Union, from whom, even in the depths of the Cold War, the U.S. could count on more or less conservative, self-interested decision-making. Saddam is no Khrushchev. He won’t do something that will get himself killed, true, but he’ll go as far as he can before he swerves. And that’s sure to be farther than anyone else wants to go. According to Khidhir Hamza, one of Iraq’s defecting nuclear scientists, soon after invading Kuwait Saddam ordered a crash program to build at least one nuclear weapon to fling at Israel if the coalition attacked him.

    And he’s not very good at understanding where that point is, when his own survival is at risk. Saddam’s cabinet is a pack of sycophants as ignorant as he is about the outside world. As Kenneth Pollack recently noted, “For more than 30 years, Saddam’s pattern has been to coldly miscalculate the odds, with disastrous results for Iraq and its neighbours.” Having an A-bomb up his sleeve is not likely to sharpen his gambling skill.

    I sort of look at things in a neighborhood context. Maybe you don’t like your beat cop. Maybe you even suspect he’s on the take. But when a crack dealer moves into the house next door to you and your family, flashing handguns, is your fear of the cop a reason to do nothing? Maybe he’s a rich crack dealer and you think the cop will steal his stuff. Is that a reason to do nothing? Maybe you can talk yourself out of it if you say, “Well there’s a lot of crack dealers out there, and if I get the authorities to chase this one out, another will just move in and maybe shoot my family.”

    Many in the Arab world hate Saddam, but they hate America more. Think of the yearning to claim revenge, to deal out punishment, to feel validation. And Saddam personally may be a secularist, despised by Islamic clerics, but he knows how to play to the faithful. When you think of a nuclear-armed Iraq, think of the “Mother of all Battles” mosque, built outside Baghdad to celebrate Saddam’s birthday in 2001. Each of the minarets is 43 meters high — for the 43 days of the 1991 war in Kuwait — and is designed to represent the Scud missiles fired at Israel. A copy of the Koran displayed inside is said to have been written entirely in Saddam’s blood, which he is said to have donated to the tune of 24 liters over three years.

    I don’t understand the view that the U.S. pressure on Iraq is killing internationalism. The pressure on Iraq is coming via the United Nation. Bush didn’t call the U.N. the League of Nations. He dared it to not be the League, by doing something about Iraq. The odd thing is, many of the ideologues who typically line up behind Bush want nothing more than for the U.N. to be an effete, 21st-century League of Nations. If anything, after the past weeks of U.S. negotiations with France, Russia, Syria, and China, the framework of international law is stronger. Tommorow’s another day. But pressuring the U.N. to pressure Iraq to disarm seems to me the perfect sort of internationalist involvement that Bush pere once stood as the heir to, before Reagan ate his brain. [ed. -- I still had a ways to go on the U.N. at this point. That took place over the succeeding weeks of actually watching it in action.]

    But the Bush Administration is muddling its message about Iraq. Its aggressive bid to re-write the basic rights of Americans frightens many at home, and its first-strike military policy angers our old allies as well as neutral nations. The Iraq pressure from the White House looks like bullying, and at times it is. It will make us even more of a magnet for attacks than we already are.

    America might as well accept that we are the new Rome. Illusions of our essential innocence ought to end. Being the world’s sole hyperpower is a job that can be done well, or it can be done poorly. But it’s too late to decide not to do it. We can be Republican Rome, with its self-conscious virtues, or imperial Rome. (Hint: which Roman, Cato or Nero, would have driven an SUV and Supersized his meals?)

    We should, however, take this job on behalf of civilization and of human rights. And that will take a lot of change. We need to take a closer interest in being part of the world, and to willingly share the wealth we’ve hoarded. We also need to exercise a muscular commitment to the values we talk about. One small step toward that would be for the administration to admit that American leaders, including some still in power, backed the bad guy in Iraq for too long.

    As for the American voices now gathering to protest the coming war, they have choices, too. They can claim a role in the new Rome, if they seek it. The just-ended election dashed their hope of turning aside the attack. But they can still take up the cause of the Iraqi people after it comes. Iraqis are in hell now, and it will only get worse after their government is wrecked again and stray U.S. bombs have found their neighborhoods and markets. Post-war Iraq may offer Americans the chance to prove their oft-boasted munificence, which was lacking in Afghanistan. Where was “Trick-or-Treat for Afghan Kids” this year?

    It’s not a pretty business, sweeping up after a war. But the world’s a better place for every effort of those who do it. The choice is to see the coming conflict as a chance for liberation in Iraq, or to blindly oppose it just because it comes from George W. Bush, which runs the risk of seeming to back Saddam, just as many seemed to prefer the Taliban in Afghanistan.

    Meanwhile, until I see more than “no war for oil” on the banners, and war opponents at least make an effort to convince me that Saddam is something we can ignore and it will go away, I’m going to stay clear of the protests.

14. Callimachus Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 2:37 am

    Elrod, that’s a good distinction and one worth making:

    “Did you believe the Bush administration’s various presentations of its case for proof that Saddam had or was actively developing WMD stockpiles were convincing”

    is a different question than

    “Did you believe Saddam in fact had or was developing WMD stockpiles in March 2003.”

    Like a lot of the people who have been commenting throughout this debate, I answer “no” to the first and “yes” to the second.

    And yet we still seem to split on the question of going to war. Some of us said yes to it; some who answer those two questions the same way said no. So I begin to suspect some other qualifying factor comes into play.

    Perhaps it is the balance, in individual hearts, between realpolitik and a willingness to undertake a crusade for the sake of setting the world right.

    But that still leaves me with the impression that, in the political center, which we seem to occupy here, the war’s supporters (taking about the pre-war choices; many have modified their answers since) were essentially more liberal than the war’s opponent’s.

15. Blue Neponset Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 11:27 am

    Although, it isn’t fun to be called a liar by anyone, it is especially upsetting to be called a liar by someone who doesn’t even know you. I thought Callimachus’ earlier post was nothing more than a thinly veiled accusation that you were lying about your pre-Iraq War opinions, and I didn’t appreciate it.

    IMO, his earlier post is a good example of one thing that is bad about blogging. Anyone can call you or me a liar or unpatriotic, or even imply those things and it doesn’t seem to matter to them or many of the blog readers that the accusations being thown about are highly offensive and very insulting. If someone I didn’t know called me a liar or anyone called me unpatriotic in real life that person would, at least, be told by me to do the physically impossible. In the Blogoshere, however, those same accusations are treated as legitimate commentary.

    Anyway, I am certainly not going to take anything Callimachus says serious again I hope you do the same.

16. Rick Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 12:32 pm

    Okay, if the issue is what we thought would happen post-invasion back prior to it, these were my thoughts. You can believe them or not.

    But first a little bit of preamble…

    I thought Bush was doing a marvelous job through the end of 2002. He managed to convince congress that we had to get tough on Saddam. Then he managed to convince the UN that they did, too. They got inspectors in there in short order under more intrusive conditions than ever before. I thought at the time W was a chip off the old block. Then as 2002 dragged on to early 2003 it became more and more clear that he wasn’t serious about letting the UN inspectors do their job. Perhaps he didn’t trust them. Or perhaps he simply didn’t care.

    Attitudes of the American public regarding the UN around that time were telling. The more liberal minded were inclined to downplay its faults and thus tend to trust the UN. The more conservative minded were inclined to downplay its positive aspects and thus tend to distrust the UN. I think the latter group was helped along by the Bush administration’s rhetoric at the time. Personally, I thought it was a ploy to put more and more pressure on the UN. It seemed to work, too. I thought he understood that international community always needs time and goading to get their butts in gear, and it seemed to me that the momentum was definitely going in that direction. They were ready to beef up the inspections with more personnel and more equipment to make them more intrusive. I didn’t believe the UN was a bunch of saints, but I didn’t believe they were a hopelessly corrupt, useless bunch of dilletantes either. They were providing useful pressure in a meaningful way. And it seemed to me that one of three outcomes were possible: (a) Saddam would eventually leave (unlikely); (b) he would stop stonewalling (unlikely); (c) the international community would get fed up with him and be more willing to join us.

    All three of those outcomes seemed to me to be in our favor. But the third seemed to be the most likely one. And that was a major issue for me — if we were going to go in, it should be with broad international backing. Otherwise there would be hell to pay. Iraq was a polyglot nation, whose various factions had never gotten along very well. Worse, they had been viciously ruled by a minority faction for many years. It seemed to me obvious that a great deal of pressure would be necessary in order to keep the lid on the place. I didn’t foresee the insurgency against Americans, but I did presume that civil war would eventually break out if the opportunity presented itself. A great deal of careful pressure would be needed in order to prevent it. I also assumed that if we went in there unilaterally our job would be greatly complicated. We would be seen all the more as occupiers rather than liberators, not only by the Iraqis, but much of the Arab world. That would have obvious consequences in terms of heightened resentment towards America, making it easier for the extremists to recruit new personnel.

    I’m trying to be brief, and perhaps I’m not explaining myself very well. But the bottom line for me was that if we decided to go into Iraq we would have to do it decisively, overwhelmingly, and with an international face. The invasion phase didn’t seem to me to be the real issue. As I told my brother back then, “you know and I know that if we decide to invade, Saddam will be toast in very short order.” The real issue was to quickly and effectively stabilize the aftermath. And for that phase an international face would not only be welcome, but necessary.

    My brother’s contention was that we DID have an international face. The “coalition of the willing” included over 30 nations. I countered by pointing out that the contributions of most of them were window dressing at best, and suggested that they really weren’t all that “willing”. Moreover, the populations of virtually every country within the coalition was heavily against the invasion. In fact, the amount of international resistance at the time was amazing. In less than a year Bush managed to turn international opinion around from overwhelming support to overwhelming condemnation because of what was perceived as our rush to war. I didn’t think it had to be that way. Saddam didn’t exactly have many friends. Everyone knew (I’m generalizing) he was a dangerous brute. But he wasn’t an immediate threat. All we had to do was convince more of the skeptics that although he wasn’t an immediate one, he was always going to be a dangerous one if something decisive wasn’t done about him. I honestly and sincerely believe that could have happened. Three months of letting the inspectors run around in Iraq just wasn’t enough time to convince the world that Saddam was never going to change.

    Instead, Bush not only largely ignored the international community, he did his best to paint them to the American public as feckless, spineless weaklings. Among the list of mistakes that I think Bush has made throughout his tenure, that one is very close to the top. It will have repurcussions for years into the future. I don’t doubt that he wants to do the right thing. But I do doubt his ability to do it right. Doing the right thing doesn’t count for much if you don’t do it smart. It’s a competence issue.

    P.S.: Don’t take it so hard, Blue. Blogging will always be full of vitriol. What I like about it is that every once in a while someone says something that makes you think. And that’s always a good thing.

17. Callimachus Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 4:22 pm

    Anyway, I am certainly not going to take anything Callimachus says serious again I hope you do the same.

    Thank you. You can’t imagine the pleasure I take in looking forward to being ignored by you.

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