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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Friday, July 18, 2003
What's Going on in Iran?
Excellent Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg on Iran this week, with guests Shaul Bakhash and Mahnaz Afkhami. If you don't get a chance to see it, the transcript is worth a read. Some encouraging things there, but also some things that will disappoint those of us who hope to see the end of the Mullahcracy real soon. Also, watching it really struck home the tragedy that the Islamic Republic is, and the opportunities that the people of Iran have lost under it.
But here's one section, with emphasis added, that had a message for those of us sitting here, that is worth giving grave weight to:
BAKHASH: Well theoretically you could if there was an internal upheaval. But I – I must confess, I think people who talk blithely of regime change - I’m certainly not suggesting you’re doing that. But who don’t you know, think about the consequences of another huge political upheaval in Iran. And I recall during the Islamic revolution there were people who believed that uh, if the Shah was overthrown nothing else could change. And – and would say, perfectly sensible people, who would say, “Anything is better than the Shah”. Well it turned out that things could be much worse than the Shah. Uh, and again I think you know, to talk about putting the Iranian people through another revolution [pause] uh, you know, one must be a bit more cautious about the price and the consequences of violent change as against a more gradual transformation.
It may be that we think counter-Revolution is the only way that the Mullahcracy will be toppled. But this really is a serious point; a lot of us conservatives, myself included, should be a bit more cautious and a bit less enthusiastic about the wonders of revolution, and remember the costs and potential downside. We're supposed to be the ones who know that these things do not always work out well and that indeed the track record of revolutions isn't all that great (though the American one was pretty successful as these things go, and the recent history of change in Eastern Europe have made people more optimistic about the idea - often forgetting the costs and compromise that came even with the "bloodless" revolutions and the difficult transitions that followed). A lot of time when people talk of revolution in Iran I think that they are seeing it through what they remember of revolution in Eastern Europe at the end of the '80s: the people go out into the streets and the regime collapses and is (mostly) bloodlessly overthrown. But that's not the only way things can go (I mean, contemporaneously there was something in China folks might vaguely remember, which as one might recall did not work out as well).
I admit that I have, myself, been guilty of rather blithe and over-exuberance at the thought of counter-revolution in Iran against the theocratic despotism. It's important to stay on the right side of supporting the pro-liberty movement in Iran, and remembering that we're talking about people's lives and that they want to undo the dark consequences of the Iranian revolution more than they want to live through another round of revolution, with all that can come with it.
Similarly, some of us were disappointed when some of the prominent figures in the pro-liberty movement seemed to back down in the face of a threat of violence by the regime. Well, easy for us to be - and I'm sure that the Iranians were disappointed, too - but it's not our lives on the line. Given the sorts of things that the Mullah's have already proven themselves capable of, it's hard for us to blame 'em if we're not going to share the risks.
I'm going to, of course, continue to support and encourage, in my own small way, the pro-liberty, pro-democracy movement in Iran. I hope to avoid being blithe about revolution though, or even seeming to be.
One Personal Note: Wow, Ben is sounding old lately. I know it happens to everyone. But when he dies he will take with him something that he is perhaps the last prominent living representative of (and which he has remained true to throughout) - unless it undergoes a renewal in a new generation. I pray I'm wrong but it's not sounding like it'll be much longer.
Well, I've been debating with myself whether to say anything on the latest antics of the NAACP myself. It may come as a surprise to some, but I was a member of the NAACP for awhile. I let my membership lapse when they were in a period of loony leadership, but I periodically think about re-joining. But then they do and say stuff like they've been saying and I remember that it's a rather exclusionary group at this point, and an extreme one at that.
In unrelated but not all that dissimilar news, how very lame. Why not just try faking sincerity while you're at it?
In Europe, the French have struck another telling blow against American hyperpussiance.
English is such a rich language because we don't try and do crap like that (and if the government did, people would a) be outraged and laugh at it and b) it would have the effect of making people use the word more often rather than less. I wonder if French people will react the same way to this stuff, which is at best roll-your-eyes garbage, or if this will prove to be yet another sign of how different Anglo-Americans are from Franks).
We'll close with a concession to the power of the people I've been posting about for a week now, and the triumph of their scorched earth strategy. It worked.
I remember a month or so ago when they started to tear down Tony Blair; I'm sure I mentioned that for a variety of reasons (mainly having to deal with political philosophy and the EU) I'd prefer a Tory PM (not sure I'd prefer IDS, though) in Britain, but that I certainly wouldn't want to see Tory taken down over the sorts of things he was being savaged for. (And when Blair speaks like he spoke yesterday, it makes me want him to stay in office regardless).
If only more Liberals thought that way regarding Bush. But, clearly, bipartisan foreign policy on major issues of American security is a one-way concept for the vast majority of them. If it wasn't, we wouldn't see so much of this and it wouldn't have worked so well.
But a hat tip to the strategy of destruction and discrediting that the Left has engaged in, using tactics that I deplore (selective misquoting, deceptive presentation of the facts, and distortion of the record) but which are proving, none the less, to be effective.
Update: Since it's been awhile since I actually linked to any of these things (not that they haven't been out there), lest people think I'm just inventing the problems I write about in some of my posts, here's an editorial from a major New York newspaper claiming that America is a totalitarian country.
This post will set up Part IV of my "21st Century American Foreign Policy" series (which I hope to write up this weekend) and is part of what is amounting to an ongoing exchange of views with Armed Liberal, as it is a reply to a post by him on what he thinks our international strategy should be. He writes:
The difference between the two hierarchies is that one is a hierarchy of national interest and the other a hierarchy of human interest...i.e. by definition transcending national interests. Clearly, there are intersections; there are connections between catastrophes of possibility and threats to our national well-being.
I don't disagree with him, but I do think that the category of what constitutes "that which is in human interest" is more controversial than his post lets on. The content of that will naturally be determined by what we value (and thus some, especially our critics, will say is not separable from our national interest, that the distinction he makes is hypocritical, or make other criticisms).
Note that by raising the points I'm making in this post, I'm not disagreeing with him on substance - these are just things we need to recognize. Also, people shouldn't think I'm making a "relativistic" argument that "other views of what is in human interest that differ from ours are equally valid and who are we to judge?" - I resolutely believe that the kinds of things that we see as in human interest, are. I also don't forget that he, in effect, qualified this by saying "I won't support - in any way - any cause that believes it can advance the interests of any group or the moral perfection of the world on the bodies of dead Americans." (However, what is of human interest is, by nature, a moral question - the fact, for example, that we will not abide, say, standing by while mass killing goes on is a moral stance (likewise things like the suppression of the large-scale international slave trade, an endeavor which was driven more by the growing moral consensus in Britain rather than a growing global consensus). The distinction is clearly that we would not strive for moral perfection, that is, intervening everywhere that our sense of humanity is offended but I take it he means only in egregious cases, and using other actions short of military intervention to express our antipathy to other violations).
But this post mainly means to point out that our foes in the "War on Bad Philosophy" also think that they are serving humanity's interest. If one talks to a sincerely committed radical Islamist, they believe that they are working not just for the interest of their own nation, or even just for Moslems, but that all of humanity will be better off when the world follows their doctrines. They will also say that they would be happy to use other means if they thought that would work but that they are "compelled" to resort to the methods we (in effect) have backed them into since (the fall of the Caliphate, the tragedy of Andalusia, whatever; fill in the blank).
Likewise, as Ramsey Clark said in his speech at the National Press Club, he represents a viewpoint that believes that the U.S. threatens - not protects or advances - "humanity's destiny". A lot of things were done in the name of advancing the interest of humanity in the last century.
The content of what we believe is in humanity's destiny is the important thing. As I said, I'm not a relativist who believes that Osama and Ramsey Clark have "equally valid" arguments about what is of human interest. But we will get an argument over it and it is important to win that argument.
I'll flesh this out a bit more when I post Part IV itself.
Welcome to the Democratic Party in the 21st century. Actually, the Democratic Party, as understood by most people who think of themselves as Democrats, no longer exists. It has evolved into the political version of a shell corporation. Money flows in and out of something called "the Democratic Party," but most of the politicking is now done by literally dozens of largely independent political groups, of which the NAACP is but one. In fact, left-of-center politics has become one of the most crowded, Darwinian marketplaces in America, and within that market, the NAACP's share-price has fallen.
Now, the fact is that this points at something that is the result of changes that started in the '70s. One was the movement of the New Left into control of these organizations (and they have a natural, philosophical affinity for Corporatism), but the other affected both political Parties: it was the campaign finance laws ("reforms") of the '70s, which had the (possibly intended) effect of weakening the role of the Parties and strengthening the role of both individual candidates and of "independent political groups".
Speaking of Kerry, though, since he's making candor and "lies" a theme of his campaign, it's clearly fair to hold him to the same standard he invokes for others (and, so far, incorrectly and deceptively on his part, actually). Well, what's good for the goose is good for the John "F" Kerry. Kerry was on CNN's Late Edition this Sunday, and Wolf Blitzer asked him, among other things:
BLITZER: One final question. I want to put up on the screen a picture that was released -- that your campaign released this week, of you and John Lennon. Tell us about this picture. When was it taken? What does it mean?
To which Kerry responded:
KERRY: Wolf, we didn't release that. I don't know where that came from. Some -- apparently -- a piece of campaign literature that thought it was relatively private, I guess, I am told, somewhere in New York or something. It came out of an archive. I think may have run in "Boston Globe" series or somewhere. I am not sure.
But it was in 1971. We were together speaking at an anti-war rally. He had asked me personally to introduce him at that particularly rally, and we were just chatting before we talked.
Actually, I love the photograph. I cherish the moment. I was a huge fan and remain a great fan of The Beatles, and I enjoyed my moment with John Lennon. It was a great privilege.
Yah, that's a bit of a shot on my part, but if Kerry wants to run with the bulls he's gotta expect to get gored - I'm a firm believer in reciprocal treatment and the way he is behaving then applies to himself. Yes, also, this is a relatively minor thing (so why B.S. about it?), we could, I suppose, instead talk more about the things Kerry has said in the past about Iraq's weapons programs (in '98, for example) that he's slipping down the memory hole. We'll save that for another time though. It's friday.
Louis Wheeler writes, via e-mail, in response to this post:
It might be worth your time to read Alfred Toynbee's "A study of history." He says that civilizations are born, mature, and die. A civilization dies when it stops growing, changing and adapting to new conditions, and instead, becomes a tyranny. In death, a civilization can last far longer than its birth and growth put together. A civilization can have in it many cultures with different languages as long as they share the same values. Take western Europe for instance, even with all the differences between the various countries they are less foreign to us than Russia, China or India. The people in a civilization think the same way.
I'm familiar with Toynbee's thesis but I'm not sold on it. I think it holds about as much water as Marx's. This doesn't mean I think Toynbee is a bad historian. But I disagree with his theory. Yogi Berra was a better theoretician - "it ain't over till it's over".
I think all too often the historical record is massaged and presented in such a way as to fit the theory rather than having the theory be shaped by the actual historical record. This becomes even more apparent when one gets into more detailed study of specific civilizations and notices the ways in which they buck Toynbee's theory of history. One then has to concoct all sorts of rationalizations to try and prove that it "really" still fits the theory.
Since we're recommending books, I'll recommend the works of Warren Treadgold to you, starting with The Byzantine Revival (this book by Paul Magdalino is also worth a read; also, if you didn't read this webarticle on "Roman decadence" et al when I linked to it earlier, I recommend it - don't skip the notes at the end! They're good. Point of fact, if you're interested in this sort of thing, I recommend the entire Friesian site, which covers a lot of philosophical and historical ground. It's not like I agree with Kelly Ross on everything, but it's all very interesting; the section near the beginning of Zoe Oldenbourg's book on the Crusades describing the difference, at the time, between the Westerners and the warriors and nobles of Constantinople is also worth a read).
Western Civilization is the daughter civilization of the Greeks and Romans from whom we borrowed much. But, since we coalesced around the Catholic Church in the Eighth Century we don't share the same values with Rome. We are much less violent and exploitive than the Romans. Slavery, usury and infanticide were frowned upon by the church. Our sense of justice, nobility, equality, responsibility and self government is uniquely Christian.
That's all well and true but the fact is that those things have their origins in the Eastern Roman Empire. It is important to remember that well into the 8th Century Rome was ruled by Constantinople and the Papacy was under the legal codes of the Empire, and then transmitted them to the rest of Western Europe.
Those legal codes are the origins of the things you speak of; starting with Justinian and continuing with the legal revisions promulgated by various succeeding Emperors, the codes progressively frowned upon slavery, usury (though the degree to which frowning upon usury was an advance is dubious at best, at least when it got confused with loaning money at interest at all), and infanticide (this trend actually pre-dated Justinian considerably, as well, and was expressed in such things as the elimination of gladiatorial contests). The role of women in the Eastern Empire, while no great shakes by our standards, was somewhat freer in some ways than it would be in the West for a few centuries (the idea of a woman ruling was controversial at best in Constantinople at the end of the 8th Century, but it was absolutely incomprehensible in both Rome and the Frankish Empire, leading to the coronation of a successful Frankish warlord - who was busily expressing his less violent and exploitative sense of justice and self-government by emulating the Arabs in forcibly converting the Pagan Saxons and putting many to the sword - as Emperor, on the grounds that the office was vacant because a woman couldn't hold it).
As for less violent, unlike the Roman Church, Orthodoxy never emulated the Islamic idea of "Holy War" - the Orthodox Church recognized that war was a necessity to secure the Christian community against outside attack (wars of conquest were rarer in the East - not that they didn't exist, but it wasn't seen as a priority for long stretches, when Western feudal states would be quicker to seize every opportunity) - but, despite the efforts of a couple Emperors (notably Nikephoros II Phokas and John Tzimicies) to try and persuade the Orthodox Church otherwise, they never gave holy sanction to war.
Sure, Toynbee and yourself can point to Eastern Emperors who were brutal tyrants; they usually reigned for a handful of years and it shouldn't be forgotten that the chronicle of the reigns of Lords in Western Europe often makes for harrowing reading as well (Popes and anti-Popes in the 10th Century prior to the elevation of Sylverster to the Pontifate, for example).
Toynbee was conflicted about whether our own civilization was dead; if you look at the EU you can see why. They are quite hidebound economically, culturally and politically, yet they want the push the United States around. It think it more likely that Europe is going through a phase; they must change in order to compete with the US. If they don't change then they become irrelevant.
See, I think that illustrates the ways in which the theory is bogus; I also don't think that any Civilization that has people cleaving to it is "dead" (see later in Louis' mail) - see the Survival Margin post. There is always a shot at revival and revitalization - it's up to those people, living and breathing and making decisions and choices - I mean, if you believe those Western values you cited are real - of self-government, responsibility, equality, our sense of justice - what comes down to human agency (and respect for the capacity of individual people), then the deterministic theory of Toynbee cannot be true.
There is a distinction between my current pessimism and Toynbee's theory. For one, I think it's risible to describe us as a tyranny (so that is a check minus for Toynbee on that score). For another thing, I do not think it is the inevitable turning of the wheel of history that means we are faced with death. I think that could (rather easily, really) be avoided but that it depends on the actions and choices we make. This blog isn't about marking our passing but fighting against it (and waves of pessimism and relative optimism alternate in me).
Nor do I think that the other civilizations that exist in the world are "dead", which brings me to your concluding paragraph:
What I think is happening is that Western civilization is under assault by the six dead civilization in the world. It is a monumental task for us consume their civilizations, and while doing so, they temporarily distort us. We can forget what our values are under their onslaught. The value of the "War on terror" is that it forces us to define what is most valuable about our own civilization while we borrow the best from the other civilizations. The fact that we change, grow and adapt to these trying times says that our civilization is not dead.
I suppose that if these six other civilizations change then, since they are dead, they will be declared "absorbed" by the West (or in the alternative "a new civilization really, built on the dead X, rising up").
Again, I think that's bogus. I think that for all the things we might say about the state that Arab Civilization (to name one example) has fallen into (and heck, "we" wouldn't have to say it - we could just quote members of the Arab world), that doesn't mean their Civilization is "dead"; it retains the capacity to "grow, change, and adapt" - indeed, some of the problems within Arab Civilization can be traced to adaptations adopted that seemed promising to the people at the time but have produced disaster (just as some things seemed like progress in the West at the time but produced catastrophe). As for the fact that the things adopted (and some of those we hope to encourage to be adopted) may have Western roots (and otoh others may give an argument that some of the ideas we want to promote are not alien to Islam at all, the only problem is they've been minimized recently - often by regimes adopting Western models of tyranny like State Socialism and National Socialism - and the hope is to recover these ideals and put them in a democratic context, showing that yes, Arab civilization still can adapt, change, and grow. Then it wouldn't be dead at all, would it? Or would it be "Western" now? Which brings me back to the sentence interrupted by this parenthetical aside), the West itself in its growth and change absorbed many ideas from adapted them for its own use and strength.
Is Indian Civilization no longer Indian because they have a Parliamentary structure, laws derived in part from English Common Law, and use English as a Lingua Franca? Those examples highlight the ways that India has changed based on her historical experience, but there are still a very many things that set India apart from the West (not against the West, but not the same as the West) - I'd call this adaptation, change, and growth rather than the death of Indian Civilization and its replacement.
(By the way, not that it's popular to point this out, which is possibly why it isn't pointed out too often, but simply because one is a tyranny does not mean one lacks these capacities; also, though throughout this text it is assumed that these are positive forces, the reality is that "change" and "adaptation" and even "growth" are really more neutral than commonly understood - changes and adaptations can be for good or ill and a growth can be a boil or a cyst or cancerous. The capacity for these things are certainly good, but the expression of them isn't always a positive force for the advancement of humanity. But I also differ from Toynbee in that I think any Civilization that still has members, living, breathing individual human beings with, as such, their own capacity for decisions and choices and change, can introduce these things into their Civilization and such a Civilization cannot be considered dead - some of my recent more pessimistic remarks that seem to contradict that notwithstanding - I say that stuff and I feel it when I do but I keep buggering on. Indeed, some would say that no great Civilization is ever truly dead because its legacy influences us still; but I think that's a different sense of the meaning than we're using here).
For the things we hope to see happen in the Middle East, in Arab and Persian Civilization, we've got to hope that they retain the capacity for these things and even those Arabs and Persians who do not want to be Borged by Western Civilization hope that they retain the ability to change, adapt, and grow, and most of them hope to throw off rather than persist in tyranny. I think the Chinese would give you a hard argument about whether their Civilization has been dead or not - even (perhaps especially) those who are staunchly pro-Democracy and pro-Rule-of-Law and anti-Despot. Earlier this week Tom Donelson had a post at Winds of Change on the work of George Ayittey, who wants Africa to recover what he sees as Africa's own internal traditions of decentralized governance and Liberty, which were cut short (in his account) by Western colonization and then by African governments following the pied-piper of Socialism and Statism (which reminds me, the era of the Absolute Monarchy in Europe, from roughly the 17th to early 19th centuries, came at a time of significant European "growth, adaptation, and change" - and itself represented a change, and then was followed by more liberal (small "L") governance). Now I think that this is quite likely a generalization on his part that downplays some of the more negative aspects of pre-colonial Africa, but what it does do is highlight the traditions in African civilizations (there are, IMO, really several African civilizations rather than a unitary one; or at least there have been and one of the legacies of colonization and mass communication may be they will merge more) that are vital and will produce societies that are better for Africans in the modern world (and which will also learn from and adopt some of the better features of the West and meld them in and adapt them to African conditions, and be an improvement on adapting what turned out to be some of the worst ideas from the West - the aforementioned Socialism and Statism that seemed to everyone like the "progressive" idea of the New and Better Future at the time and still seems like that to too many).
So I don't consider any of these Civilizations dead and they won't be as long as there are people who carry within them the ability to make choices. I don't consider ours dead or dying as such - I fear that we will let that happen through our actions and inactions. But it is a choice we'll make. One can be a "mature" society and undergo new growth and revitalization. One can even be an "old" one and do that.
We have a guest blog today by one Anthony Blair, a Liberal (and former Socialist) who I often disagree with on policy matters. But these words are eloquent, even where they differ (as on matters of, for example, EUrope) from my own position. He even uses the word liberty:
Mr Speaker, Mr Vice President, Honourable Members of Congress. Thank you most sincerely for voting to award me the Congressional Gold Medal. But you, like me, know who the real heroes are: those brave servicemen and women, yours and ours, who fought the war, and risk their lives still.
Our tribute to them should be measured in this way: by showing them and their families that they did not strive or die in vain but that through their sacrifice, future generations can live in greater peace, prosperity and hope.
Let me also express my gratitude to President Bush. Through the troubled times since September 11th changed the world, we have been allies and friends. Thank you, Mr President, for your leadership.
I feel a most urgent sense of mission about today's world. September 11th was not an isolated event, but a tragic prologue. Iraq; another Act; and many further struggles will be set upon this stage before it's over.
There never has been a time when the power of America was so necessary; or so misunderstood; or when, except in the most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day.
We were all reared on battles between great warriors, between great nations, between powerful forces and ideologies that dominated entire continents. These were struggles for conquest, for land or money. The wars were fought by massed armies. The leaders were openly acknowledged: the outcomes decisive. Today, none of us expect our soldiers to fight a war on our territory. The immediate threat is not war between the world's powerful nations. Why? Because we all have too much to lose.
Because technology, communication, trade and travel are bringing us ever closer. Because in the last 50 years countries like yours and mine have trebled their growth and standard of living. Because even those powers like Russia, China or India, can see the horizon of future wealth clearly and know they are on a steady road toward it. And because all nations that are free, value that freedom, will defend it absolutely but have no wish to trample on the freedom of others.
We are bound together as never before.
This coming together provides us with unprecedented opportunity but also makes us uniquely vulnerable.
The threat comes because, in another part of the globe, there is shadow and darkness where not all the world is free, where many millions suffer under brutal dictatorship; where a third of our planet lives in a poverty beyond anything even the poorest in our societies can imagine; and where a fanatical strain of religious extremism has arisen, that is a mutation of the true and peaceful faith of Islam and because in the combination of these afflictions, a new and deadly virus has emerged.
The virus is terrorism, whose intent to inflict destruction is unconstrained by human feeling; and whose capacity to inflict it is enlarged by technology.
This is a battle that can't be fought or won only by armies. We are so much more powerful in all conventional ways than the terrorist. Yet even in all our might, we are taught humility. In the end, it is not our power alone that will defeat this evil. Our ultimate weapon is not our guns but our beliefs.
There is a myth. That though we love freedom, others don't, that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture. That freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values. That Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban. That Saddam was beloved by his people. That Milosevic was Serbia's saviour.
Ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit and anywhere, any time, ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same. Freedom not tyranny. Democracy not dictatorship. The rule of law not the rule of the secret police.
The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defence and our first line of attack.
Just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea and that that idea is liberty.
We must find the strength to fight for this idea; and the compassion to make it universal.
Abraham Lincoln said: those that deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.
It is a sense of justice that makes moral the love of liberty.
In some cases, where our security is under direct threat, we will have recourse to arms. In others, it will be by force of reason. But in all cases to the same end: that the liberty we seek is not for some but for all.
For that is the only true path to victory.
But first, we must explain the danger. Our new world rests on order. The danger is disorder and in today's world it now spreads like contagion.
Terrorist and the states that support them don't have large armies or precision weapons. They don't need them. The weapon is chaos.
The purpose of terrorism is not the single act of wanton destruction. It is the reaction it seeks to provoke: economic collapse; the backlash; the hatred; the division; the elimination of tolerance; until societies cease to reconcile their differences but become defined by them. Kashmir, the Middle East, Chechyna, Indonesia, Africa. Barely a continent or nation is unscathed.
The risk is that terrorism and states developing WMD come together. When people say that risk is fanciful, I say:
We know the Taliban supported Al Qaida; we know Iraq under Saddam gave haven to and supported terrorists; we know there are states in the Middle East now actively funding and helping people who regard it as God's will, in the act of suicide to take as many innocent lives with them on their way to God's judgement. Some of these states are desperately trying to acquire nuclear weapons. We know that companies and individuals with expertise sell it to the highest bidder and we know at least one state, North Korea, that lets its people starve whilst spending billions of dollars on developing nuclear weapons and exporting the technology abroad. This isn't fantasy. It is 21st Century reality and it confronts us now.
Can we be sure that terrorism and WMD will join together? Let us say one thing. If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive.
But if our critics are wrong, if we are right as I believe with every fibre of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in face of this menace, when we should have given leadership. That is something history will not forgive.
But precisely because the threat is new, it is not obvious. It turns upside down our concepts of how we should act and when. And it crosses the frontiers of many nations. So just as it redefines our notions of security, so it must refine our notions of diplomacy.
There is no more dangerous theory in international politics today than that we need to balance the power of America with other competitor powers, different poles around which nations gather. Such a theory made sense in 19th Century Europe. It was perforce the position in the Cold War. Today it is an anachronism to be discarded like traditional theories of security.
It is dangerous because it is not rivalry but partnership we need; a common will and a shared purpose in the face of a common threat.
Any alliance must start with America and Europe. Believe me if Europe and America are together, the others will work with us. But if we split, all the rest will play around, play us off and nothing but mischief will be the result of it.
You may think after recent disagreements it can't be done. But the debate in Europe is open. Iraq showed that, when, never forget, many European nations supported our action and it shows it still, when those that didn't, agreed Resolution 1483 in the UN for Iraq's reconstruction. Today German soldiers lead in Afghanistan. French soldiers lead in the Congo where they stand between peace and a return to genocide.
We should not minimise the differences. But we should not let them confound us either.
People ask me, after the past months when let us say things were a trifle strained in Europe, why do you persist in wanting Britain at the centre of Europe?
I say: maybe if the UK were a group of islands 20 miles off Manhattan I might feel differently; but we're 20 miles off Calais and joined by a Tunnel. We are part of Europe - and want to be.
But we also want to be part of changing Europe. Europe has one potential for weakness. For reasons that are obvious - we spent roughly 1000 years killing each other in large numbers - the political culture of Europe is inevitably based on compromise. Compromise is a fine thing except when based on an illusion. And I don't believe you can compromise with this new form of terrorism.
But Europe has a strength. It is a formidable political achievement. Think of its past and think of its unity today. Think of it preparing to reach out even to Turkey, a nation of vastly different culture, tradition and religion, and welcome it in.
Now it is at a point of transformation. Next year ten new countries will join. Romania and Bulgaria will follow. Why will these new European members transform Europe?
Because their scars are recent. Their memories strong. Their relationship with freedom still one of passion not comfortable familiarity.
They believe in the transatlantic alliance.
They support economic reform.
They want a Europe of nations not a super-state.
They are our allies. And yours.
So don't give up on Europe. Work with it.
To be a serious partner, Europe must take on and defeat the crass anti-Americanism that sometimes passes for its political discourse.
What America must do is to show that this is a partnership built on persuasion not command.
Then the other great nations of our world and the small will gather around in one place not many. And our understanding of this threat will become theirs.
The United Nations can then become what it should be: an instrument of action as well as debate. The Security Council should be reformed. We need a new international regime on the non-proliferation. And we need to say clearly to UN members: if you engage in the systematic and gross abuse of human rights, in defiance of the UN charter, you can expect the same privileges as those that conform to it.
It is not the coalition that determines the mission but the mission, the coalition. I agree. But let us start preferring a coalition and acting alone if we have to; not the other way round.
True, winning wars is not easier that way.
But winning the peace is.
And we have to win both. You have an extraordinary record of doing so. Who helped Japan renew or Germany reconstruct or Europe get back on its feet after World War II? America.
So when we invade Afghanistan or Iraq, our responsibility does not end with military victory. Finishing the fighting is not finishing the job.
If Afghanistan needs more troops from the international community to police outside Kabul, our duty is to get them. Let us help them eradicate their dependency on the poppy, the crop whose wicked residue turns up on the streets of Britain as heroin to destroy young British lives as much as their harvest warps the lives of Afghans.
We promised Iraq democratic government. We will deliver it.
We promised them the chance to use their oil wealth to build prosperity for all their citizens not a corrupt elite. We will do so.
We will stay with these people, so in need of our help, until the job is done.
And then reflect on this.
How hollow would the charges of American imperialism be when these failed countries are and are seen to be transformed from states of terror to nations of prosperity;
from governments of dictatorship to examples of democracy;
from sources of instability to beacons of calm.
And how risible would be the claims that these were wars on Muslims, if the world could see these Muslim nations still Muslim but Muslims with some hope for the future not shackled by brutal regimes whose principal victims were the very Muslims they pretended to protect?
It would be the most richly observed advertisement for the values of freedom we can imagine.
When we removed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, this was not imperialism. For those oppressed people, it was their liberation.
And why can the terrorists even mount an argument in the Muslim world that it isn't? Because there is one cause terrorism rides upon. A cause they have no belief in; but can manipulate.
I want to be very plain. This terrorism will not be defeated without peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Here it is that the poison is incubated. Here it is that the extremist is able to confuse in the mind of a frighteningly large number of people, the case for a Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel; and to translate this moreover into a battle between East and West; Muslim, Jew and Christian.
We must never compromise the security of the state of Israel.
The state of Israel should be recognised by the entire Arab world.
The vile propaganda used to indoctrinate children not just against Israel but against Jews must cease.
You cannot teach people hate and then ask them to practice peace.
But neither can you teach people peace except by according them dignity and granting them hope.
Innocent Israelis suffer.
So do innocent Palestinians.
The ending of Saddam's regime in Iraq must be the starting point of a new dispensation for the Middle East.
Iraq: free and stable.
Iran and Syria, who give a haven to the rejectionist men of violence, made to realise that the world will no longer countenance it; that the hand of friendship can only be offered them if they resile completely from this malice; but that if they do, that hand will be there for them and their people.
The whole of the region helped towards democracy.
And to symbolise it all, the creation of an independent, viable and democratic Palestinian state side by side with the state of Israel.
What the President is doing in the Middle East is tough but right.
And I thank the President for his support and that of President Clinton before him, and members of this Congress, for our attempts to bring peace to Northern Ireland. One thing I've learnt about peace processes. They're always frustrating, often agonising and occasionally seem hopeless. But for all that, having a peace process is better than not having one.
And why has a resolution of Palestine such a powerful appeal across the world?
Because it embodies an even-handed approach to justice.
Just as when this President recommended and this Congress supported a $15 billion increase in spending on the world's poorest nations to combat HIV/AIDS it was a statement of concern that echoed rightly round the world.
There can be no freedom for Africa without justice; and no justice without declaring war on Africa's poverty, disease and famine with as much vehemence as we remove the tyrant and the terrorist.
In Mexico in September the world should unite and give us a trade round that opens up our markets. I'm for free trade and I'll tell you why. Because we can't say to the poorest people in the world: we want you to be free but just don't try to sell your goods in our market. And because ever since the world started to open up, it has prospered.
That prosperity has to be sustainable too.
I remember at one of our earliest international meetings a European Prime Minister telling President Bush that the solution was simple: just double the tax on American gasoline. He wasn't exactly enthusiastic.
But frankly, we need to go beyond Kyoto. Science and technology is the way. Climate change, deforestation and the voracious drain on natural resources cannot be ignored. Unchecked, these forces will hinder the economic development of the most vulnerable nations first, and ultimately, all nations. We must show the world that we are willing to step up to these challenges around the world and in our own backyard.
If this seems a long way from the threat of terror and WMD it is only to say again that the world's security cannot be protected without the world's heart being won.
So: America must listen as well as lead. But don't ever apologise for your values.
Tell the world why you're proud of America. Tell them that when the star-spangled banner starts, Americans get to their feet: Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Central Americans, Eastern Europeans, Jews; white, Asian, black, those who go back to the early settlers and those whose English is the same as some New York cabbies I've dealt with, but whose sons and daughters could run for this Congress.
Tell them why they stand upright and respectful.
Not because some state official told them to. But because whatever race, colour, class or creed they are, being American means being free. That's what makes them proud.
As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible; but in fact it is transient. The question is what do you leave behind?
What you can bequeath to this anxious world is the light of liberty.
That is what this struggle against terrorist groups or states is about.
We're not fighting for domination.
We're not fighting for an American world, though we want a world in which America is at ease.
We're not fighting for Christianity but against religious fanaticism of all kinds.
This is not a war of civilisations because each civilisation has a unique capacity to enrich the stock of human heritage.
We are fighting for the inalienable right of human kind, black or white, Christian or not, left, right or merely indifferent,
to be free.
Free to raise a family in love and hope.
Free to earn a living and be rewarded by your own efforts.
Free not to bend your knee to any man in fear.
Free to be you so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others.
That's what we're fighting for. And that's a battle worth fighting.
I know its hard on America. And in some small corner of this vast country in Nevada or Idaho, these places I've never been but always wanted to go, there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you the political leaders of this nation: why me? Why us? Why America?
And the only answer is: because destiny put you in this place in history, in this moment in time and the task is yours to do.
And our job, my nation that watched you grow, that you've fought alongside and now fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and great affection in our common bond, our job is to be there with you.
You're not going to be alone.
We'll be with you in this fight for liberty.
And if our spirit is right, and our courage firm, the world will be with us.
Note that Tony Blair has been under the very same pressures at home that Armed Liberal pointed out as affecting Democratic politicians (clearly not Democratic statesmen). Other foreign leaders, such as Chretien, chose the path that catered to these elements. Blair has chosen another path and I respect him immensely for it.
He also clearly understands deeply what Armed Liberal termed the "War on Bad Philosophy".
Note that he doesn't simply "parrot" what we might call the Bush line, too; there are several sections in the speech that are a challenge to the Bush Administration and/or to people like me. It demonstrates the sort of position a convinced Liberal can take and still be strong on this conflict.
Three years ago my opinion of Blair was not very high. His speech today had me cheering and tearing up. I can only end this post one way:
Dear Land of Hope, thy hope is crowned.
God make thee mightier yet!
On Sov'ran brows, beloved, renowned,
Once more thy crown is set.
Thine equal laws, by Freedom gained,
Have ruled thee well and long;
By Freedom gained, by Truth maintained,
Thine Empire shall be strong.
Land of Hope and Glory,
Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee,
Who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider
Shall thy bounds be set;
|: God, who made thee mighty,
Make thee mightier yet. :|
Thy fame is ancient as the days,
As Ocean large and wide:
A pride that dares, and heeds not praise,
A stern and silent pride:
Not that false joy that dreams content
With what our sires have won;
The blood a hero sire hath spent
Still nerves a hero son.
Well, that's a huge overstatement. But Armed Liberal asked what I would suggest be done to offset the negative forces tugging at the Democratic party. I told this, sort of, in the comments section over there but here's the fleshed out version:
In '92 I was a Democrat. Staunch, but not extreme. During the Wisconsin Primary I worked on the Brown campaign as a volunteer (nothing really major, hand out fliers and man the local Brown literature office a couple times, that sort of thing. The coolest thing I participated in was when Brown came to Madison and gave a speech atop the Humanities Building on Campus, some semi crowd control and then afterwords helping escort him across the bridge to the NPR station where he gave an interview. But nothing huge, my role was small).
Early in summer there was the State Democratic Convention in the Capital Building to select delegates for the National Convention, and I went to that as a Brown supporter. Turned out that because of the Democratic Party rules, the State Convention didn't really get to vote on many of the Delegates (there were gender and ethnic quotas that had to be filled first, you see; and given the composition of the slates of candidates to be Delegates at the National Democratic Convention, slots got filled up automatically, without a vote, in many cases).
But for the last National Delegate we got to select, it came down to a choice between two guys. One was someone I knew from campus - he was something of a political chameleon (he had for a time been one of the main Campus Harken Campaign dudes, and excoriated Brown; when Harken dropped out, this guy became the biggest Brown supporter one ever saw and expected to be rewarded with a trip to the National Convention. This actually worked with a big number of people). But that wasn't the reason I didn't like him.
See, I knew him a bit from around Uni. The previous Semester we had shared a course in American Political Philosophy. In it, his comments clearly indicated that he was a radical Socialist more than a Liberal or Democrat. He was, in my mind, an extremist and an opportunist.
Up against him was a young union guy; blue collar Democrat, not a member of the radical Left but what I'd call a true blue Democrat and Liberal (I think I'm being fair here, even though I'm no longer a Democrat). The vote was close. Me and a friend of mine (who had also worked on the campaign and to a greater degree than I did) supported the union guy. Our votes ended up being the deciding votes. (Now, poor Ed Garvey, a major wheel in state Democrat politics, also wanted to be elected as a Delegate to the National Convention. But he got hosed down early on and I have to admit that I didn't support his candidacy).
The union guy became a Delegate to the National Convention, the other guy went off to plot and scheme his next move (I think he got an internship or something; I donno if he gave anyone hummers in exchange for career opportunities). But at least he didn't get that prize.
What if my friend and I had stayed home that day? Would it have changed history? No. Like I said, the title of this post is a huge overstatement. But this is one of those things where if enough people do things like this, little things add up (that is one reason things got to where they are, actually; a few highly active people doing enough little things that they end up wagging the Liberal, Democratic dog in many ways. That's not inevitable). If we had stayed home, the poser who wasn't a Liberal and I don't think was really a Democrat (not in his heart, but going to the convention and hooking himself into Democratic party politics was a good opportunistic tactic on his part and clearly he intended a career as a political operative of some stripe or another). Like I said, he was a radical Socialist, a Leftist rather than a Democrat and a Liberal.
Equally important to this story is the fact that, at least in Wisconsin in '92, State Conventions are really rather open (it's not hard to be a delegate to the State Convention) and the election of National Delegates are often decided by relatively small numbers of people (given that most people don't know how easy it is for them to go and have their say. I know that in a huge state like California there are other obstacles that one doesn't face in a smaller State like Wisconsin, but still one has to start somewhere) - thus the Delegate slates are typically controlled by a relatively small number of activists (disproportionately more extreme than the Party as a whole; almost a new mini-Primary or Caucus) because your average person just doesn't know that they could go and have input, that their role doesn't necessarily end on the day of the Primary (but the staff of activist groups, often on the fringe, they do know and they arrange to show up and thus weight the voting disproportionately, as a result having influence beyond their true numbers).
(Btw, my friend and I didn't go to the State Convention with the intention of "changing" anything. We went mainly because we thought it would be cool to participate in it.)
This is really a microcosm of a pattern that repeats in a variety of contexts and institutions, and the means of combating it can be similar. But it means being more pro-active and less passively accepting of "this is the way things are". (For a slightly different example, but somewhat akin though not identica,, see the Student! post; again, activism on one's own part rather than passivity and a willing to be confrontational rather than knuckle under to "accept the consensus, don't be divisive, we need to remain united" claims go a long way).
FUCK CONSENSUS
When "consensus" (and its obverse, "you're being divisive") is used as a whip to make you concede principle to the demands of others (and it's a one way street), Fuck Consensus. Fuck Consensus right in the ear.
Yes, I swore in my post. Sometimes - rarely but sometimes - there is no better way of saying it. Fuck Consensus right up the ass.
(Oh, shoot; now I'm going to be singing "follow the yellowcake road" in my head. Since I've gotta suffer, you've gotta suffer, too; that's the price of reading this post I guess. That's why I include the fact that now I'm singing "follow the yellowcake road" in my head, and all because of the play on "lions and tigers and bears. Oh my!")
Where was I before I so rudely distracted myself and inflicted my personal problems on you all? Oh, yah: Armed Liberal has a response to this post and indirectly this one as well. I have some meandering, half-thought out (really thinking-out-loud) replies to his post in the comments to it, and then another post here to which my response for now will be the below.
Also, read in the comments over there my response to the "Nancy Pelosi said we coulda done it with 25 guys" comment made by one roublen vesseau (my comment in reply to this is down quite a ways). I find that ironic considering A.L.'s most recent post. As I've been saying, the problem with the Democrats is most of the time they are making the precise opposite critiques from the ones they should be; invalid ones rather than serious ones. This is because their ideological mindset is all wrong when it comes to things like this. They are dysfunctional/malfunctional. They are at this point an example of a malfunctioning institution in our society that, because of that fact, is hampering our ability to successfully deal with the conflict we face (and thus leads to bizarre civic debate that misses the point; Tom Friedman would have us argue on point but misses the reason why the debate is conducted on grounds that he considers specious and I agree are not the central reasons. The terms of the debate are skewed and distorted because of multiple malfunctioning institutions, ones that are infused with people opposed to grappling seriously with the kinds of matters he would have preferred the debate center around, for reasons discussed in those earlier posts (the two which A.L. is responding to). So, having gone full circle in this post, I conclude it.
Joe Molinar writes, via e-mail, in response to the Ten Lies(?) post:
After catching up with your article "Ten Real Lies (?) We Were Told About Iraq" linked from InstaPundit.com, I would like to make one point about the article. I think your points were very clearly made, and you articulated many of the incorrect statements made before the war.
However, one critical point remains that distinguishes these "lies" from the "lie" about the uranium. (Note that I quote both to indicate that I think neither were lies.) The 10 items you quote were all [mistaken] predictions, and thus cannot be lies. They could be bad, even horribly incorrect, predictions, but as they occurred before the outcome was known, they cannot be lies.
The statement about the uranium was closer to a lie, in that it referenced a previous act that had apparently not occurred. Of course, even so, the statement only claimed that the British government had learned that Saddam had _attempted_ to obtain uranium, and so was actually a pretty weak claim.
My point about your blog article, however, is so obvious that I must question whether or not you knew that those weren't lies. I would even suggest that at the time those statements were made, there was a fair chance of them coming true. Many (myself among them) believed there was a reasonable chance that there would be house-to-house fighting in Baghdad.
I'm not sure how to close this email, except to ask you to retract your claim that the 10 statements are lies. But you seem pretty smart, and so I suspect you knew that the 10 points weren't lies; in that case, I guess you'd make a pretty good editorial columnist.
Thanks for that last, I guess. As for the rest, my response is as follows:
Most of those ten items weren't reasonable predictions.
To the degree that they were, they were based on the same sort of things that the uranium claim was - an evaluation of intelligence and estimate of the probability of it being valid or not. Claiming that the Iraqis would involve Israel and claims of how hard they would fight to defend the regime are evaluations of capabilities and motivations. If they weren't based on an evaluation of intelligence (information), then they were even more exceptionally bogus (just making stuff up and throwing darts at a board to try and dissuade and delude people, but not based on any knowledge or insight into the situation. That is called "inventing stuff out of whole cloth" and would be tantamount to lying).
Similarly, especially once one gets to the broad claim "Bush hyped intelligence and lied!" (which is the obverse of "Bush Knew 9/11 was gonna happen! They had intelligence but it happened anyhow!"), it becomes the same thing - it really isn't as different in category as you claim; it's a matter of making evaluations and judgement calls based on available information (limited, murky, not all-seeing) and the types of risks one is willing to accept or not (the people "hyping" the possibility of huge U.S. casualties and the potential for a huge humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq as a result of war were saying the risks were too grave to go forward). On the other hand, the intelligence evaluations Bush outlined in the State of the Union speech - I also recommend re-reading it, as many people are deceptively claiming that in that speech Bush claimed "the threat is imminent" when he actually said that we shouldn't take the risks that go with waiting till the treat is imminent, because by then - by the time Iraq posed the sort of danger North Korea now poses, it would be much trickier and more deadly to proceed and too late. The evaluation he made, based on intelligence dating back to the Clinton administration and before - and by the way, this is what Rumsfeld meant when he said that it wasn't "dramatic new evidence" - a quote often distorted, frequently with "dramatic" left out) that led them to decide to move on Iraq, but a re-appraisal of what the existing evidence meant, the dangers it posed, in the light of 9/11.
So one looks at things like the Uranium intel, which some don't see as conclusive (a much fairer way of putting things than "lie", by the way, but the Propaganda Model is driven by things that will whip people into a frenzy, and "it wasn't conclusive but they decided to put it in anyhow and they took it seriously in light of the other information they had" simply isn't as melodramatic as "BUSH LIED! BUSH OFFICIALS ADMITTED THEY LIED!! LIES EXPOSED!!!" to paraphrase Tim Noah's Slate article.)
Recall what I wrote, tongue in cheek, at the end of that post (well, the original end; it's now got Updates and Additionals that extend it); my point is that these ten things aren't lies - I'm not saying they are (the post is a satire); though when Left groups went out claiming things like there was a Israeli plot to uproot and expel all the Palestinians, that IMO counts as a lie - that was invented out of whole cloth and spread around the network of Leftist media like a rash (there were a number of other things of that type, such as what we were plotting to do in Iraq with respect to killing people, seizing the oil, and the like. I could have counted those as lies, but since those were actual lies rather than things that were not lies but simply intelligence failures, they wouldn't have contributed to the satirical point of the piece. Believe me, if I wanted to list Ten Common Leftist Lies on Iraq, serious ones rather than ones that are akin to this "Uranium Lie" - that is, things that are more boners than lies, I could, and it wouldn't be hard).
The point I was making is that intelligence is imperfect and even wrong intel does not amount to a lie. It could even be asserted, fairly (I'm not sure if it would be true, but it would be fairer accusation than the "Bush Lied" meme) that the Bush administration really wanted to believe this was true and so were inclined to accept at face value something that was more dubious than should have been given credence; groupthink happens. But that, too, would not serve the Propaganda Model as well (it's harder to whip people into a frenzy over an administration that's prepared to think the worst of a man like Saddam Hussein. IMO it's more deplorable for people to be prepared to give a man like Saddam Hussein the benefit of every doubt and cast everything done by Bush and Blair in the most malevolent light possible).
What you're saying proves that you saw one side of the point I'm making but haven't quite broken through to see the other side (which I think I was pretty explicit about towards the end of the "additional" in that post; SNAFU's happen in wars even more than in regular life. "Lives are at stake so such mistakes should be rarer!" is easy for us to say. But in the real world of such things, it's easier to say than do). I suppose it boils down to a disagreement: some of us would rather that we err, if we err, on the side of our lives and well being, others would have preferred if we erred on the other side (but then they could get all bitter over Bush "not acting on intelligence we had dating back to the '90s of what Saddam was up to and how he had these terrorist guys who unleashed ricin in the New York Subway in his country, why their leader was even in Baghdad itself at one point and we knew that. Bush knew! and did nothing! and now people are dead!"); intelligence is rarely perfect (the same people screaming at Bush now are oh so willing to forgive and forget Mohammed Baradei's failings in North Korea; he, after all, was in charge of insuring that North Korea didn't violate the "agreed framework" and was completely surprised when North Korea revealed that they had slipped the restarting of their nuclear program by him. He then segued straight from that failure-to-achieve-full-success right into being the Gold Standard for people who, prior to the war, wanted to say Bush was full of it because Mohammed says everything is A-OK and whatever Mohammed reports is good enough for us; after all, look what a bang-up job he did in North Korea. Surely we should trust the inspectors to do the job - they have such a good track record with North Korea and all - and Bush is just blowing this all out of proportion and should Give Peace a Chance.
Well, maybe it will turn out in the end that Mohammed was right this time (somehow I doubt it, not with Iraqi scientists revealing that they were told to stash stuff in their houses, and turning over evidence of said stashing, and the like). But it's a long stretch from "Bush may have been wrong on this Uranium thing" to "BUSH LIED! SADDAM HAD NO WMD PROGRAMS!!!"
That's the point of the post in question. These very same folks may have been wrong (C'mon, though, the mythical Arab Street boogieman and these other predictions that are repeatedly recycled by the same people who are wrong each time but never change their views, simply repeating the same predictions almost unchanged the next time in any context and are treated as credible again, well I may be forgiven if I doubt their sincerity or their intelligence), but I don't say they lied on those ten things (they lied about other things, though, as I mentioned above, that I didn't put on the List of Ten "Real" lies, and the vast majority of them are being so deceptive and selective with the facts over, say, this Uranium story, and hyping it, that they are doing the very thing they are accusing the Bush Administration of having done - hyping something and deceptively manipulating the facts to suit their purposes and deceive people about what really happened).
Also, as I mentioned in that post at point #5, since you bring it up, I, too, was concerned about the potential for street-to-street fighting in Baghdad (and also the possible consequences of a long siege as the alternative to such). I was also concerned about the looting that occurred, for the reasons mentioned at the end of that post (talk about a "hyped" story though with massive deception of the American - and international public, when it came to such things as the museum looting. But, again, not by the Bush Administration but by the critics who are now pointing fingers at Bush. Yep, whole lotta projectin' goin' on hea').
As for a retraction, there is nothing to retract; I never said those ten things were lies. What I said was:
Is it proper to characterize these as "lies"? Or were they just, *ahem* "intelligence" failures on the part of those who issued these pre-war warnings?
Again, as with Bush, it's unfair to put your words in my mouth and then demand I retract them. I didn't say what you accuse me of saying. I do hope that you are, though, writing all of the various people who are claiming that Bush Lied and asking that they retract that claim, since it is false (at least given what we, and they, know now; yes, I know that they "know a lot of stuff that just isn't so", but that kind of thing doesn't count). I'm sure that as a fair and even-handed person you are doing just that.
Here are the whoppers they want you to forget while they focus your attention elsewhere. All of these were frequently bandied about by huge numbers of people and were the conventional wisdom of many:
1) The Iraqi Army would fight much harder to defend its country than it did in Kuwait.
Most Iraqi soldiers deserted at the first opportunity, having no desire to defend the Ba'ath National Socialist regime.
2) Iraq is not Afghanistan - it will take half a million American troops and at least six months to capture Baghdad, resulting in 50,000 American casualties (of which approximately 10,000 would be deaths).
As with the earlier "Afghanistan is not Iraq" prediction, this one likewise failed to materialize. It took half that number of American troops, less than a third as much time, and a tiny fraction of that casualty estimate.
3) Iraq will draw Israel into the war, leading to a larger Middle East conflagration.
Didn't happen.
4) There would be massive resistance from the Iraqi population defending their country from invasion.
Hardly anyone lifted a finger to defend the Ba'ath National Socialist Regime. Aside from the Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard, Ba'athist thugs, and foreign volunteers, the bulk of the population simply stayed out of the way.
Even now, if one looks at the pattern of attacks, they are by and large restricted to a region north and west of Baghdad, where Saddam drew his greatest support, and carried out by Ba'athist death squads (typically the same sort of people who were used to terrorize the Iraqi population) and foreign auxiliaries from other Arab states. The vast majority of the Iraqi population, rather than supporting these attacks, are mainly concerned that we end them and produce security.
5) There would be street by street, house to house fighting in Baghdad that would destroy the city, cost thousands of American casualties, and drag on for six weeks or more.
Didn't happen that way. (Full disclosure: I thought this was a distinct possibility and it was something I worried most about).
6) A war would create a huge humanitarian crisis as millions of refugees fled Iraq, overwhelming neighboring countries ability to deal with it.
Didn't happen. Indeed, the UN set up a facility for predicted refugee flows in Jordan, and it remained a ghost camp throughout the conflict. As with Afghanistan, people have been flowing into, not out of, Iraq since the war - pre-war refugees returning home rather than people being forced to flee their homes.
7) A war would create such disruption in the food distribution system and so destroy the water infrastructure that it would result in hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Iraqis dying of starvation and disease.
Again, as with near-identical predictions made with respect to hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dead Afghanis, this did not happen.
8) That mythological boogieman, the "Arab Street", would rise up against us and destabilize friendly, pro-Western regimes in the region.
The only street to rise up has been Persian, not Arab, against the anti-Western Mullahcracy (I know it's hard for the Left to get too excited about the current pro-Democracy movement in Iran, though, because it's not anti-Western enough for their tastes).
This prediction was always odd anyhow since it was often raised by those who in other contexts deplore precisely those Arab regimes that are friendly to us and are unlikely to shed any tears if they fell. So this warning was often insincere. In any case, for many of us who look at the status quo in the region, destabilization is a feature, not a bug.
9) Saddam Hussein has no ties to terrorism, but if we attack him then he will launch terror attacks in the U.S. and we will thus produce the very thing we're trying to avoid. (Throw into the pot with this the various warnings that Saddam would use the bioweapons against us if we provoked him in this way - that he was harmless if left alone but if we attacked we'd suffer dire consequences, &tc &tc).
Again, didn't happen. Also, information keeps coming out regarding Saddam's support of and harboring of terrorists such as Abu Abbas (more here) and even ties with Osama Bin Laden.
10) War with Iraq would distract from the war on terrorism and it would derail any chances for the Middle East Peace Process.
The Middle East "peace process", such as it is, has restarted with somewhat better prospects now that suicide bombers aren't getting payoffs from Saddam. The war in Iraq has helped advance the cause of the war on terror by eliminating a source of funding, support, and safe harbor, and served to divert young Arab men who otherwise might be forming terrorist cells ploting ricin attacks in Europe or the U.S.
Is it proper to characterize these as "lies"? Or were they just, *ahem* "intelligence" failures on the part of those who issued these pre-war warnings?
Update: Johnathan writes, via e-mail, to suggest "the number one lie about Iraq":
Remember Professors of Conscience and their group statement denouncing Israel's alleged plans to expel all the Palestinians during the war?
Remember how that was a staple of anti-Israel groups for a few months? If
anyone has apologized for it, or even acknowledged it, I sure missed it.
He adds, however:
Curiously, the one thing the anti-war groups may have gotten right is the
one I thought was particularly foolish -- that whatever WMD Saddam had
could wind up in the hands of real terrorist groups. _That_ strikes me as quite
possible, especially by way of Syria or Iran, in the absence of any other
explanation about where these supposed munitions have gone.
I didn't think that was foolish so much as a danger either way (remember the terrorist cells arrested in various parts of Europe with Ricin right before the war? I think it's still an open question whether WMD materiels were shifted to Syria or elsewhere. But it was time to stop that from being a running sore. If others follow that path, not heeding the warning (Syria might be getting the message), then the worse for them.
Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi is suspected to be behind the Ricin plot. Not coincidentally he was in Baghdad; to me, it strains credulity that he was given medical care there but they aren't "friendly". It takes tremendous amount of doublethink on the Left's part to complain about how short of medical supplies Iraq was but that they would devote their (State-controlled, not private - and thus anyone like al-Zarqawi who was treated at such a hospital would have done so with the knowledge and approval of the government) limited medical facilities to someone we are supposed to believe is at odds with them. (More here and here; also things like this and this and this and this).
There was a tremendous amount of destruction and moving of things immediately and during the war. And some of this actually continued after the war. We’ve seen targeted looting in which you’ll go into a building and the only thing that’s destroyed are the documents in the file cabinets that are ashes. That’s why these documents right here are so important to us. . . .
That's why securing some of these buildings should have been a higher priority than it was. Do I call that a deliberate act of malfeasance on the part of the Administration, though?
No. In war, in particular in war, there are screw-ups. That's why so many sayings we invoke (such as SNAFU) in messed up situations have military origins. A screw up like this should, IMO, have been avoided. But that's easy to say when sitting at a computer keyboard here in a peaceful corner of Southwest Colorado. Or in an an air-conditioned newsroom (my peaceful corner is un-airconditioned, btw).
I have to clarify some things that I was perhaps not clear on in what I admit was a frustration-venting diatribe (I stand by everything I wrote, though).
Firstly, it is not that I expect the Democrats to simply roll over and not try to win next year's election. But there are, in these things, an etiquette and going over the line. Distinctions can be made; after all, there are ways the "outs" (the Democrats) could, IMO legitimately, go after Bush in ways that demonstrate that they are criticizing him not for being a warmonger, but in not doing enough and/or allowing things to go on under his watch that undermine rather than advance our ability to win. Glenn Reynolds points out such things all the time (here's one from yesterday). Now it's also true that in any organization, "imperfections" like this are bound to exist to some degree and thus criticising them is somewhat like blaming (or crediting) whoever is in the White House for whatever happens to the economy (something that is only partially under his influence, and not at all under his control. There is, yes, a distinction between "influence" and "control". Hell, even in places that tried Command Economies, they found out that the leader couldn't get it to work like he wanted. But I digress).
In a Republic, all those things are fair game. Indeed, the way the Democrats are behaving now is fair - it's not, IMO, illegitimate. But it's also legitimate to then draw conclusions about what this says regarding their attitudes not just towards their political opponents but the country as a whole - and what their priorities are.
Sure, the out Party is going to go after the in Party. But how they do it is not mechanistic - they decide how they're going to go about it.
I do also recommend watching them speak (C-SPAN regularly airs these confabs), especially at campaign forums; listen to the tone of the voice. I really mean it when I say that our external enemies do not get as much of a rise out of them as George Bush does. The extreme vitriol is reserved not for the Saddam Husseins and Osama Bin Ladens, but for the Dick Cheneys and John Ashcrofts.
It's one thing to have a policy disagreement (I have written several times over the last couple weeks regarding my policy disagreements with the Bush Administration, so clearly I don't consider that illegitimate), but the substance of those and how they are carried out conveys, to me, a message all its own.
That's all fine and well, but it reminds me of the more deterministic PoliSci/International Relations theories, such as "a great power or hegemon will always generate a countervailing, opposing alliance". That's all well and good, but says nothing about who joins such an alliance or why, and who instead aligns with the great power as an ally.
Sure, France, Germany, Russia, China, various Arab countries, and others are all, to some degree, inclined to drift into opposition to America (though it's interesting the degree to which a number of them are torn or internally conflicted about whether to, broadly oppose or ally with America, some people in those countries - aggressively - wanting to create a alliance among them to counterbalance America but others asserting that it would be best to keep, maintain, or forge strong bonds with America), but Britain, Australia, Japan, and others are not. We've explored the reasons for various choices, and those reasons in the end, ultimately, are based on ideas and visions of the world, either shared or divergent philosophical viewpoints - not determinism.
Similarly, that "Why the Empire Always Falls" says nothing about the timing or, really, the why, or whether it's a hard fall or a soft one. Likewise, I (and M. Simon, judging by his mail) am more concerned with the endurance of the civilization. Empires come and go, but the civilization can endure.
The British Empire is no more (ok, ok; technically one could say it still exists in the form of the Commonwealth and the fact that the Queen is Head of State of a variety of countries around the world, but lets be real), it had a "soft" fall (and yes, I know that those who lived through it felt it was a hard enough period, thank you very much, but by hard I mean your cities get sacked by the invading Hun). Chinese Empires have come and gone, but Chinese civilization goes on. Dittoes Persia.
The Eastern Roman Empire had a "hard" fall and unarguably its civilization is gone (various civilizations that have been influenced, sometimes strongly, by the civilization of Constantinople endure, but not that civilization itself; the Eastern Roman nation was the last nation in Europe to simply cease to exist, by which I mean its people have vanished; others have had empires come and go - Spanish, Austrian, French, German - but the nation remains; nations subsumed into others, such as Scotland, still exist in the form of the Scottish people. Today's Hellenes in Greece are not Rhômaioi; the last traces of that nation vanished by 1922).
When I get to Part IV of the "America's 21st Century Foreign Policy" series, one thing I plan on addressing is the fact that I know full well that America will not remain the dominant power forever. But we gotta hope for a "soft" landing and transition rather than a "hard" one (and work to insure that happens).
It's not that I dismiss evolutionary psychology (I have read, for example, Robert Wright's book The Moral Animal and a lot of it was interesting and persuasive), but ideas do matter; patterns repeat but how they express themselves, when, under what conditions and methods - these are things people fill in based on their outlook and world view.
I mean, to take a more extreme example of how this can get played out, just because these things are sometimes expressed in the form of a coup
