Comments on: Brooks makes sense

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 02:40:18 +0000

It ought to be possible to do both, but who is doing it? For myself, I’ve found that unless I avoid the blame-game stuff completely, it overwhelms any discussion of the options for the immediate future.

By: Timothy

Timothy — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 22:12:34 +0000

Brooks poses a false dichotomy. We can either fix Iraq or we can focus on the latest relevations that help explain how we got here. I’m not sure why we can’t do both. BusyBusyBusy nailed the vapidity of his arguments quite well.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 16:10:21 +0000

Update: that’s very nice, John, but that’s not what Brooks’s last paragraph is saying (and you have it right there). Your pseudoBrooks however shows real promise, maybe the Times can hire him instead.

By: GMT

GMT — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 15:49:41 +0000

A weird analogy, a series of vague statements like many Americans have decided that it’s time to persevere and win. Who? Time? Persevere in what? What will winning look like? And then he ends with a hypothetical that sounds like he hasn’t been paying attention for two weeks. Has Brooks accounted for those Canadian think tanks that didn’t exist? Has he resolved the quadruple/quintuple issue with Will over the budget change that didn’t happen? There is no point in arguing with those who do so in bad faith. Brooks has shown himself to be a mere meatus.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 15:19:56 +0000

Brooks’s last para was: ‘What’s going to happen when our generals want to take on some insurgents but Brahimi and the sovereign Iraqi appointees say no?’ Couldn’t say for sure- but I would guess that there may not be too much chance that the sovereign Iraqi appointees will say no, given the eerie quiescence of the IGC nominees during the violence so far (yes I know, one guy threatened to resign during Fallujah, and a few others negotiated with the Fallujah rebels- but this hardly adds up to much when viewed in the light of large-scale Iraqi civilian casualties). Brahimi’s another matter. There are plenty of equally relevant questions which Brooks fails to ask. My favourites would be :’Will the US military realise that the use of artillery, mortars and airstrikes in densely populated urban areas is a highly indiscriminate means of force that will lead inevitably to many civilian casualties? If the US military doesn’t realise this, when will the Iraqi backlash against such tactics get really out of hand?’ Barry, meanwhile, would like me to accept that comparing the Iraqi fighting to May 1940 is entirely unacceptable, whereas comparing it to Gettysburg isn’t. Care to give us your reasons for that, Barry, or would that be too much like hard work?

By: jam

jam — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 13:36:02 +0000

Addressing John’s update: The question needs to be addressed to the Administration. Let me repose Brooks question: We hand over power on 30 June. We dissolve the CPA. A month or so later, there is another incident, similar to the Blackwater guys. We want to take reprisals. The new Iraqi government asks us not to. We go ahead anyway. The new Iraqi government resigns en masse. At that point, there’s no government whatsoever in Iraq. What do we do? What puts the Administration in this quandary is it wants to replace the CPA with some sort of indigenous government and it wants to continue to have a free hand militarily within Iraq. And it can’t have both. If it wants to continue to engage in independent combat operations within Iraq, it should not try to set up an indigenous government (other than an obvious puppet). If it wants to set up a nominally independent Iraqi government, then it should forswear independent combat operations. Either it should undertake them only at the request of the new Iraqi government (in which case it makes itself a tool of some Iraqi faction—and since it’s delegated choosing the government, it doesn’t even know which faction) or it should forswear them altogether and start removing combat troops from contact with the civilian population, leaving only lightly armed (but heavily armoured) troops to maintain civil order pending their replacement by Iraqi police/army. Yes. None of these three options looks good. But they’re the options. “None of the above” ain’t available.

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 08:41:51 +0000

On the off chance that anyone wants to consider the question that John posed, I would say that our generals are very likely to go and take on the insurgents. Governments with limited sovereignty are nothing new, certainly nothing foreign to US military experience. Germany was not fully sovereign for more than 40 years. Occupation forces didn’t go around shooting up the place willy-nilly, but they had far more rights than, say, Nato forces stationed in nearby Netherlands. See also Afghanistan today, where US and allied troops move first and discuss it with the Karzai government later. See also Cyprus, where the UK maintains sovereign control of large bases there; Nicosia’s writ does not run on the bases. Local government opposition to a maneuver may change the calculation about a particular operation, but if coalition forces deem something a military necessity, don’t think they won’t do it.

By: marky

marky — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 07:14:59 +0000

In 20 years, no one will be reading Bobo Brooks.

By: jam

jam — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 00:55:08 +0000

If we’re reaching for a Civil War analogy, perhaps a better one is debating the wisdom of firing on Fort Sumter as Lee’s victories occur closer and closer to Richmond. Incidently, as far as I know, the CSA leadership never did indulge in such questioning. I had thought the Civil War over. But once again we see Brooks and Gingrich indulging in what at one time was a familiar Southern theme: revisiting the tragedy of Gettysburg. It’s astonishing how persistent the theme is. Not even Le Pen recalls the Franco-Prussian war. There is within Britain no hankering to refight Inkerman or call back the charge of the Light Brigade. But Pickett’s Charge still stands for something that modern right-wing politicians can use. Faulkner thought such obsession (usefully) nostalgic two or three generations ago. And yet it continues. No. Brooks doesn’t make sense. He knows he has no case, so he picks on an old scab as a diversion.

By: Demosthenes

Demosthenes — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 21:43:08 +0000

Michael Palin, take it away: “This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let’s not get into an argument about who killed who!” Bush doesn’t get a free bye on his past mistakes and misdeeds due to his current ones. History will judge, of course, but history isn’t voting in November.

By: a different chris

a different chris — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 20:40:20 +0000

What Brooks and his defenders here don’t want anybody to realize is that the American public has a test coming up quick in Nov., and it is a comprehensive* one. So we have to hit the books now. Sorry, but life’s complicated like that. I consider myself lucky when I only have two things going on that apparently each require 100% of my attention. You just have to figure out how to not let dealing with one f*ck up the other, but you cannot simply pick one to ignore. The 9/11 commission need have nothing to do with what we should be doing today, tomorrow, and for the near and far future in the War On Eurasia- er, Terrorism. It has everything to do with that firing and hiring “competitive” process that our right-wing friends are always saying we liberals don’t understand. I often shake my head at what the US spends in money and attention on professional sports, but I think our Bush supporters maybe should surf off Instapundit for a while and over to ESPN. The NFL offseason always offers wonderful tales of clear-eyed brutality in the quest to eat that dog before he eats you. You see them draft your replacement – or you simply get cut – without hesitiation purely on the “what have you done for me lately” principle. And even if you have done something wonderful “lately” they then go to the “but has what you’ve done before imply that what you did recently was a fluke?” and even if you can pass those two tests it still could come down to “Thanks and all the work’s appreciated, but we can suddenly get Bill Parcells/Eli Manning so have a nice life.” I know the Presidency isn’t as important as your home-town QB, guys, but rather than nitpicking around to find reasons not to vote for Kerry, it is your duty to evaluate these guys really seriously. Jingoism and RNC talking points don’t get it done. Nobody ever won a football game in the lockeroom, myths notwithstanding. You need players, not theories. Aside 1: It’s funny that neo-lib economists are always bemoaning Europe’s lack of “labor flexibility” and how hard it is to fire somebody. And neo-lib economists are also always decrying what a force government is in the marketplace. Yet, if I understand correctly, most Governments can call elections anytime, therefore giving their citizenry the power, like any business, to fire and replace underperforming people before they drag the entire company/country down. So it’s a paradox of US life that we (of the “West”) have the most labor flexibility in the private sector but the least in the public. Aside 2: Look up the guy who won Gettysburg. General Meade. Did a good job. Wasn’t promoted-Lincoln wanted somebody better. Apparently Lincoln wasn’t as smart as our “Stay The Course” posters, huh? *In case that’s some sort of American college lingo, when a professor says a final is comprehensive it’s shorthand for it “can and will touch everything we’ve looked at from Day 1 of this course so you may begin sweating bullets now.”

By: rea

rea — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 20:38:35 +0000

“The Battle of Baghdad will rival the Battle of Stalingrad springs to mind.” That didn’t happen, but it could have. Saddam’s army lacked the will to fight for Baghdad house-to-house, not necessarily the power. That it didn’t happen doesn’t demonstrate that the risks we took were wise, any more than spending your paycheck on lottery tickets, and winning the lottery, demonstrates that it is wise to spend you paycheck on lottery tickets. If we keep running these risks, one of these days we’ll run into the equivalent of the Vietcong rather than the equivalent of the Republican Guard—whereupon the Neocion crowd will tell us no one could have anticipated that level of resistance. Like Lincoln’s unheeded advice to Hooker before Chancellorsville, “In you next battle, put in all your men.”

By: Zizka

Zizka — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 20:27:23 +0000

If “facts on the ground” was the goal, the war has been a success. We got lots of facts on the ground in Iraq. Brooks’ argument is Step Two of “facts on the ground”. “It may be all very well and good to talk about the fraud that got is in this mess, but that won’t help us solve the problem”. Bush’s goal was to screw things up badly enough that no Democrat could suggest a way to make things any better, thus naking it seem sensible to leave Bush in there. “What would YOU do, smartypants?”

By: Phill

Phill — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 19:46:53 +0000

Surely a much more apposite comparison than Gettysberg would be the WW2 debate in the House of Commons that followed the failure of the Norway campaign? The stakes then were far higher than anyone could claim the US faces today. If the UK lost WWII it would mean the end of Britain as an independent nation and the end of European civilization. Despite the stakes, in fact because of them the House decided that it was time to dispense with the failed leadership of Chamberlin and replace him with Winston Churchill. At the time this move was a major risk, the last time Churchill had directed a military campaign it had led to the Galipoli disaster. Churchill was chosen because all along he had predicted the outcome of Chamberlin’s policies correctly and Chamberlin had not. Compare this to the current situation where the Bush administration has consistently failed to predict the outcome of its policies while with few exceptions opponents have predicted with 20-20 foresight. The only thing that Bush opponents have got wrong is that some opponents (but not all) predicted that the Bush administration was capable of turning the invasion itself into a fiasco in addition to the occupation. Given the choice to start the invasion with an entire division stuck in the Suez canal together with the post invasion fiascos it appears that these opponents were actually raising a valid concern. The Bushies keep on complaining that hindsight is 20-20. Bullshit! Their hindsight appears to be little better than their foresight. They still cling to the myths of Al Qaeda/Iraq collusion on 9/11 and the existence of WMD. This administration is not capable of hindsight, what they mistake for hindsight is in fact revisionism of the Orwellian kind.

By: bull

bull — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 19:46:47 +0000

“most opponents of the war predicted pretty much exactly the current situation” This is reminiscent of the old joke that economists have successfully predicted 10 of the last 5 recessions. Opponents of the war predicted all sorts of things. The Battle of Baghdad will rival the Battle of Stalingrad springs to mind. Famine in Afghanistan was a good one too. In point of fact, opponents of the war predicted various specific disasters. No doubt some opponents made some or many prescient predictions. In general, though, opponents’ track records for predictions have been laughable at best. If you predict a disastrous hurricane and a disastrous blizzard arrives, you were wrong.