Comments on: Ignoble Lies

By: Jay

Jay — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 19:06:26 +0000

there is also the simple rationality problem – if Bush knew that there were no WMD, then he knew that invading Iraq would reveal this and therefore dispel the public’s fears. So fear mongering would seem like a fairly short sighted strategy. I think Bush knew there were no NUKES, but the phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction” was intended to lump together chemical weapons, biological weapons and nuclear weapons. Nukes scare people in a way the chemical weapons do not. So it wasn’t really lying, though it was misleading. If we had found chemical weapons, Bush would have declared himself vindicated, but the sleight-of-hand fell apart when none of them even showed up. I endorse Mearsheimer’s view. I never thought that 70 percent was a high enough approval rating for a wartime president.

By: JamesW

JamesW — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 16:49:25 +0000

Mearsheimer: “For example, if we replayed the 1930s, most people would probably applaud any lies told to enhance public awareness of the threat posed by Nazi Germany.” The few members of the élite like Churchill who did identify the threat from Nazism based their insight on clear evidence of the character and intentions of the Nazis: their rabidly antisemitic and ultranationalist writings, systematic street violence and intimidation of critics, and extreme political unscrupulousness. Lies of the WWI “Huns bayonet babies” type would have weakened, not strengthened, the difficult case for standing up. Communists did tell lies about Nazis – they were tools of German capitalists, weren’t they? – and surely counterproductively.

By: Eric Rasmusen

Eric Rasmusen — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 00:04:37 +0000

For a cost-benefit analysis of the Iraq War by three top economists that finds it clearly worthwhile (vs. a containment strategy), see the paper by David, Murphy, and Topel at Chicago: http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/steven.davis/research/War%20in%20Iraq%20versus%20Containment,%20Weighing%20the%20Costs%20(March%202003).pdf As to whether being pro-Bush would hurt a scholar’s career, you have to look at it department by department. Every once in a while one sees an actual count of registered Republicans in poli sci departments, often coming up with figures like “1 out of 19” in a department. Just because Bush can staff his Administration with economists from top departments not mean he could do so with poli sci profs from top departments. Are there are any poli sci departments know for, say, having even half as many Republicans as Democrats? Thisis particularly striking since we might imagine it hard for someone in poli sci to get publications nd tenure based on his brilliant methodology even when people hate his policy conclusions and consider them pernicious.

By: steve

steve — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 15:17:09 +0000

Mark & James: The thread has gone cold so it’s probably too late at this point, but: Mark cites HRW’s estimate of casualties of Saddam. You’re probably aware that HRW has explicitly rejected any humanitarian justification for the invasion of Iraq. I won’t go into their argument because I think Ken Roth makes the case far more eloquently and effectively than I could hope to do: http://hrw.org/wr2k4/3.htm#_Toc58744952 It strikes me that both of you are relying on a very straightforward analysis based on numbers killed under Saddam vs. deaths resulting from the invasion. I still haven’t heard how all the other costs of the war get factored in. Is a child who lost an arm in a US bombing half a casualty, for this purpose? Do we consider the marchers gunned down by Iraqi police in the last few days semi-casualties, since they weren’t directly killed by Coalition forces? How do you account for the unintended consequences of the decision to invade? If Iraq falls into a state of all-out civil war such that, say 100,000 people are killed in the next 5 years, will the invasion then be 50% less justified than it otherwise would have been? Or will it no longer be our problem by then? These are the kinds of factors that I think need to be brought into the equation…that’s the point I tried to make with my original post. And neither Mark nor James has yet addressed the topic of the thread: the fact that this act of humanitarian altruism was made possible only because the US and British governments engaged in a deliberate campaign of manipulation, fear-mongering and outright deception. How many “points” for that?

By: vivian

vivian — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 03:01:27 +0000

The problem is that academic right/left doesn’t map well onto the US political right/left scale. Mearscheimer and Huntington and so on have been academic-work-right-wing for a long time now, but if I recall right, take some pride in being centrist-democrats. Some of the academics and recently-privatized academics who supported the war on Iraq did so despite historic ties to Clinton and/or vocal oposition to other Bush policies (pharm, protection, stem cells, ashcroft, etc.). There was some academic support for a leaner and faster-responding army, but not for using the invasion/occupation to push that ideological line. Mearscheimer is academic-right-wing in having a unitary-rational-decision-maker, billiard-ball model of each country’s decisionmaking, doesn’t respond to objections, clarifications and alternative models. (Though he’s always courteous and civil in person.) Actual politicians can’t ignore domestic power-squabbling whichever party they join (yes, even Nader).

By: kevin donoghue

kevin donoghue — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 22:08:33 +0000

“Mearsheimer goes one step further – he seems to be saying that the administration’s foreign policy is not only disastrous in itself, but is having a more general corrupting effect on US politics.” Surely this is not a very radical view? IR realists have always been concerned that an aggressive foreign policy, disregarding whatever type of international law prevails, eventually undermines respect for law at home.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 21:53:14 +0000

“Surely the general rule about lying to people to get them to do thngs is that you are responsible if the people you lie to don’t like it when you get found out.” Maybe, but there’s also the desire to aviod regret. For about 45% of the electorate, admitting that Bush has misled the country repeatedly would involve acknowledging that one’s vote for him was misplaced, as was one’s faith in his ability to lead. Fortunately for those people, the proliferation of pick-your-own-ideology media (and the increasing post-modernism of conservative discourse) means that epiphany need never come.

By: james

james — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 21:49:19 +0000

steve – Amnesty International estimates deaths by Saddams government in the hundreds of thousands. Exactly how many deaths are required before intervention is morally justified? No WMD’s where found. What was found where several hundred mass graves from Saddam’s rule and hundreds of disappearances. If someone supported the war solely on the WMD issue, they where wrong. If someone opposed the war solely on humanitarian concerns, they where wrong.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 21:38:06 +0000

Ok, Steve. Here goes. Using a rough utilitarian moral theory, and basic HRW estimates of slayings under Saddam’s regime, the moral case for the war is as follows (see Norm Geras for a further explication): HRW estimates 290,000 dead under Saddam, with 230,000 confirmed (this is excluding the 1 million killed in the Iran/Iraq war). He ruled for 23 years or thereabouts, so that’s about 10,000 dead per year. In anticipation of your counter-argument, excluding part of Saddam’s rule from this calculation must be reasonably justified. Likewise, arguing that “Saddam was finished killing” should also be reasonably justified, preferrably with reference to case studies of killing rates of other genocidal fascists. Note also that the figure of 230,000 is low, and is thought to be higher by many of those who lived under him. The project to catalogue the victims in his mass graves is ongoing. I dispute your figure of 20,000, but let’s assume it is correct for a moment. Set the aforementioned figures against your figure of 20,000 (unsourced); on a death-rate calculation, the liberation saved more lives than it will have taken in 2 years. You can speculate that more Iraqis will continue to die, but after the passing of the short term, you have to confront the fact that more Iraqis will have been alive now than would have been under Saddam. In addition, you are going to have to set the post-war insecurity, & pre-war slavery, mass torture and genocide under Saddam against the democracy already practiced in Iraq (municipal elections in the South and Kurdish North), and proposed democracy (elections in Jan, 2005 or thereabouts) & the freedom of speech, religion, thought, movement, contract, etc. One should also account for Iraqis’ views in all this – out of a sense of decency if nothing else – who, contrary to your outrageous suggestion, overwhelming favoured an end to Saddam’s rule. A deontological moral theory would favour the pro-war side, in my view. Your turn.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 19:51:30 +0000

Steve, I’ll take on your challenge. You can start: Nice try. If you want to “take on my challenge,” you can do so by responding to the substance of my post, rather than challenging me to name my “sources.” And speaking of “sources,” what precisely do you dispute in what I wrote? Is the estimate of 10 to 20 thousand civilian deaths in Iraq just one more myth promulgated by the “antiwar left”? On a more general level, given that the Iraq war was a war of choice waged against a country that posed no immediate threat to the US, I would contend that the burden of justification is on the prowar side. Tell us by what measure you feel that the benefits of the war outweighed the costs. (I realize that this is an imperfect exercise, given that those costs continue to accumulate as we speak.) And in addition to the costs that I’ve already enumerated, we might as well address the subject of this thread. Somewhere in our cost-benefit calculation, we need to account for the fact that what we’re now told is the greatest benefit of the war is, in fact, not the reason we were given for the war in the first place. Under what “moral theory” is getting rid of Saddam such a moral imperative that it justified a deliberate campaign of outright deception in order to gain the support of American public opinion? In other words, Mark, you start.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 19:30:09 +0000

Which is fine for those of us who don’t live under them I suppose. In much the same way that wars of choice are “fine” for many people who stand no chance of being killed in them.

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 19:11:59 +0000

“Thinking that a particular war against a particular dictatorship is bad policy is not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination as supporting dictatorships (or the idea of dictatorship).” And talking about being against dictatorships while pretending that they tend to go away without the use of force isn’t supporting them either. It just doesn’t tend to get rid of them in less than two or three generations. Which is fine for those of us who don’t live under them I suppose.

By: Redshift

Redshift — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 19:09:49 +0000

I find it highly likely that Bush honestly believed that Iraq had WMDs. People who compulsivly lie even when there appears to be no particular benefit are frequently adept at lying to themselves.

By: Barry

Barry — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 19:01:10 +0000

Posted by Jim Miller: “Here’s a simple question: Can you name a single academic department in which arguing for Bush would be good for one’s career? Or one’s relationships with colleagues? A single department, that’s all I ask. We alll know how important the open discussion of ideas is to academics, so I am sure there must be one such department.” [Note – this is based on publicly available information, since I have little or no access to faculty gossip, in any institution] Here are the academic connections of current Bush admin people. For the obvious reason, I’ve got to work backwards in time, with the exception of Glenn Hubbard: Hubbard – currently dean of the Columbia Business School. Mankiw – Harvard econ department. Kass – University of Chicago Wolfowitz – Dean and Professor of International Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of The Johns Hopkins University. Condoleeza Rice – provost and professor at Stanford University. So that’s Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Chicago and Stanford.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 17:25:50 +0000

Steve, I’ll take on your challenge. You can start: source your evidence and identify the moral theory you are using. Michael, Your assertion is a type of ad hominem tu quoque; prior allegedly immoral conduct is irrelevant to the moral nature of the Iraq war. Even the left-leaning HRW has correctly noted the fallacy of this view. Try again.