Narcissism and the pro-war left

by Chris Bertram on October 1, 2005

I’ve been noticing a more and more frequent theme in the writings of the pro-war “left” recently, but no-one, I think, has managed to achieve “the narcissism and self-pity of John Lloyd”:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/63736aa8-2fc4-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8.html in the Financial Times:

bq. The great betrayal of liberalism and of the left was not opposition to the war but the insouciant, opportunist, morally indignant denunciation of those who, for diverse motives to be sure, sought to give force to the rhetoric of liberation. They have been so content to denounce that they think nothing of what they damage. It is the idea, and ideal, of freedom itself.

Good intentions should count for nothing here. You backed a disastrous project, mismanaged by morons, sold by lies, and it has turned into a bloody mess. But those who point this out attack “freedom itself.” Sheesh!

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1

abb1 10.01.05 at 5:24 am

Those who seek to give force to rhetoric are usually called ‘extremists’ and recently more and more ‘terrorists’.

2

Brendan 10.01.05 at 5:43 am

As I’ve said before it is obvious to anyone who has eyes to see that the American ‘project’ in Iraq is in the process of failing. Dimly realising this the pro-warriors are now preparing the grounds for their defence: the ‘stab in the back’ theory, so popular in Germany in the ’20s and the US in the ’70s, in which ‘we could have won’ if the ‘liberal elite’ hadn’t ‘stabbed us in the back’. In the UK of course it is harder to make this argument because the liberal elite actually run the country, but if you listen to the pro-warriors, the REAL power in Britain now lies in the Guardian opinion pages.

I particularly hate it when they pretend that they admire ‘genuine’ opposition to the war, they just can’t stand ‘opportunistic’ or ‘totalitarian’ opposition to the war. You wouldn’t know to read the pro-warriors that almost all the British press backed the war (including the Observer, and, nowadays, my understanding is, the Mirror), and that the Guardian opinion pages (and the Independent) ‘filled up’ with anti-war writing because that was one of the few places these writers could get published.

Given the small number of outlets for anti-war writing, it was clear that when the pro-warriors demanded less anti-war writing that (especially if it wasn’t ‘sensible’), they were really objecting to the existence of anti-war writing in its entirety.

However, one think I think is very dangerous, and very clever in Lloyd’s argument. Like most of the pro-warriors he repeats the word ‘democracy’ so many times that people start to actually believe it. I think it is important to emphasise that the Bush administration is one of the foremost enemies of the democracy in the world today (in Haiti, in Venezuela, in Saudi Arabia, in Equatorial Guinea and many other countries).

Equally, given its record on internal civil liberties (as shown at the recent party conference) we have been asked to believe the risible idea that the Labour party supports democracy abroad but not in the UK.

The canard that the Bush administration’s ‘intervention’ was to spread democracy but that it ‘went wrong’ because of the backwardness of the Iraqi people has to be nipped in the bud, i think.

3

Brendan 10.01.05 at 5:46 am

Incidentally just read Lloyd’s whining little article. It contains this sentence:

‘The interventions of the 1990s and “noughties” in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and in smaller ways in Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, Congo and Sudan, have rarely been without large bloodshed – and not one has been unambiguously successful.’

Er….what? What interventions in the Congo and the Sudan? Am I missing something here?

4

Daniel 10.01.05 at 6:49 am

hmmmm I really think that the Decent Left need to reassess the Vietnam War, which was also carried out in the name of freedom. In particular, how on earth can Christopher Hitchens continue to castigate Henry Kissinger for being the only person on earth with the moral courage to face the fact that totalitarian insurgents with no support from the South Vietnamese population were being supplied by the totalitarian dictatorship of China via supply lines through the failed state of Cambodia? For heaven’s sake, it was freedom we were trying to bring to Indochina!

5

Christian Rakovsky 10.01.05 at 7:06 am

Narcissism? Not in my name.

6

leon 10.01.05 at 8:07 am

I’m begining to think we should just start calling this so called “pro war left” the New Right. The fact that they’ve aligned themselves with a bunch of Neo Cons and endorse the violation of interanational law should give pause to the thought of considering them leftist in any shape or form.

7

Semanticleo 10.01.05 at 9:18 am

New spin?

What difference?

Expect more of the same in greater volume.

This will continue to be a war of words and quantity counts.

There is science behind the principle that it takes seven,(SEVEN) postives to counter ONE negative.

Volume, Volume, Volume.

Is the DLC up for it?

8

david 10.01.05 at 10:50 am

Well, intentions should count for something…

9

roger 10.01.05 at 11:39 am

I think you are understating the function of the pro-war left over the last three years. The pro-war left, by embracing and publicizing such crooks as Chalabi and such murderers as Allawi, actually helped narrow the options for democratic secularism in Iraq. They did it by hanging such scoundrels around the neck of anyone who opposed, on the one hand, the tyranny of Saddam, and on the other hand, the theocratic tendency of Daawa and SCIRI. This effectually crippled the chance for a democratic factor to emerge that would oppose the occupation and offer Iraq a path out of what looks like an inevitability, now: degeneration into a violent, semi-theocracy. The pro-war left contributed, as much as they could, to the machinery that is now slowly destroying women’s rights in Iraq, and that is modeling Southern Iraq on the lines of Khomenei’s Iran, circa 1983. They also contributed to the scurrilous language and attitude exhibited by the Bush regime towards potential allies, ie Old Europe, thus helping the Bush’s attain their real goal in the buildup to war: to create the appearance of a coalition in which the U.S. would have undisputed power. An international undertaking would undoubtedly have hindered the Americans from appointing inverterbrates like Bremer as pro-consul for the Iraq colony.

Being a small group, they couldn’t have done this by themselves. But their alliance with Bush opened doors for them in the media to magnify their views, since the media likes nothing better than a conversion story from left to right.

10

constablesavage 10.01.05 at 12:41 pm

Er, if they have diverse motives for supporting the war, why is it “opportunist” to criticise the motives you don’t like?

Don’t bad intentions count for anything here?

11

WhichFerdinand 10.01.05 at 2:42 pm

Lloyd isa bit whiny and self-centred, but this

But those who point this out attack “freedom itself.” Sheesh!

seems wrong to me. What Lloyd actually says is

They have been so content to denounce that they think nothing of what they damage. It is the idea, and ideal, of freedom itself.

Which is different. He doesn’t really concede that the Iraq war was a bad idea in retrospect: he says that, to his mind, what freedom has been gained by the Iraqis due to the invasion outweighs the loss of life(on average, presumably).

People who disagree damage the ideal of freedom. People who agree damage the ideal of life. Makes perfect sense to me.

12

Brendan 10.01.05 at 2:55 pm

‘Being a small group, they couldn’t have done this by themselves. But their alliance with Bush opened doors for them in the media to magnify their views, since the media likes nothing better than a conversion story from left to right.’

I think that’s true…in the short term. But in the long term (and I mean the really long term, 20 or 30 years) as it becomes increasingly clear that the invasion of Iraq is up there (or down there) with Napoleon and Hitler’s invasions of Russia as one of the biggest military disasters ever, then those who are associated with this catastrophe will become…well…laughing stocks.

After all, who supported Vietnam? Despite the fact that you would be hard pushed to see it now, in fact, until about 1968 (even later in some circles) the Vietnam war was incredibly popular (far more so than Iraq ever was). Bernard Levin (the Hitchens of his day) amongst others vigorously supported the Vietnam war even when it was obvious it was lost. Who remembers these people now? Levin in particular took the logical next step and backed Nixon, loudly proclaiming his innocence almost to the point of his resignation.

Now. A ‘Watergate’ type scandal could yet engulf Bush. But even if it doesn’t all anyone is going to remember of Hitchens, Cohen et al in 30 years time is that they supported the Iraqi catastrophe. They wil be laughing stocks (Hitchens is half way there already). Americans hate a loser, and they will despise someone who reminds them of one of their most catastrophic defeats.

13

Ben Alpers 10.01.05 at 4:27 pm

After all, who supported Vietnam?…Who remembers these people now?

Well, some of them are running our country. A lot of Democrats who favored the Vietnam war, became Scoop Jackson Democrats and/or Democrats for Nixon in the early 1970s, and then neoconservative Republicans in the ’80s. This group includes Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.

My guess is that there will always be a rooting section, complete with political and financial patronage, for the Hitchens of the world. Whether we take up leon’s suggestion (in comment #7) or not, members of the “decent left” with political ambitions will indeed be with us as yet another New Right for decades to come. The only question will be how publicly they will attempt to wear their support for this disastrous war as a badge of honor.

14

Dan Kervick 10.01.05 at 6:51 pm

Many on the “pro-war left” cling stubbornly to the illusion that the conflict between their own camp and that of their opponents in the various “left-wing” parties of the West is simply a conflict about words and deeds, or a dispute over wise means among people who all hold the same ideals or ends, and employ the same “rhetoric”.

So they frequently demean war critics as people who pay lip service to the same ideals they themselves espouse, but who through cowardice are unwilling to act on them. It never seems to occur to them that most of their opponents really do not share the same ideals. Or perhaps more accurately, of the various sometime conflicting ideals we all hold, there is tremendous variation in the levels of relative importance we attach to those ideals.

The pro-war folks often flatter themselves that they are the real “idealists” in this debate. Now, I think of myself as a rather idealistic person. Still, it has become increasingly clear to me that most of the major figures of the pro-war left are not animated by the same ideals that move me, or are at least not animated by them to the same degree. And it is also true that some of the ideals that make the strongest appeal to the pro-war mind, are not quite as important to me. The world these people seem to want to bring into existence appears to be very different from the world I want to see come into existence.

The debate now is not very different from the debates that took place during the Cold War. Surely the “pro-war leftists” must remember those debates! So how is it they could think the contemporary debate is only a debate between those who say certain things and act on them, and those who agree with them, and say those same things, but are not willing to back up their speech with action?

I find it depressing that so many smart people continue to insist that “left” and “right” make even rough sense as labels for two conflicting camps that are broadly united by some common ideological outlook that distinguishes the members of each camp from the members of the other. These terms are simply an artifact of our bipolar political institutions, which have a tendency to produce very large coalitions or political teams, with the coalition that is in power arrayed against the opposition coalition. But the labels “left” and “right”, or “liberal” and “conservative” are beyond crude.

The only thing that keeps a person bound to one team rather than the other is that they find the outcomes that would be produced by their own team, taken as a whole, to be preferable to the outcomes that would be produced by the other team, taken as a whole. But when one turns to detailed political outlooks, we find that for every outlook represented in any one of the teams, it is probably the case that there is some outlook represented in the other team which has more affinity with the first outlook than some of the outlooks represented in the first team.

15

chris y 10.01.05 at 7:24 pm

The problem (for the “decent left”) is that the overwhelming majority of opponents of the Iraq adventure fall into one of three categories: honest pacifists; “small c” conservatives who judge international policy by its probable impact on the welfare of their own country, be it the UK or the USA; and those whom Daniel Davies in this forum has dubbed the “Not this war now” faction.

But the “decent left” have become obsessed with a numerically trivial, if journalistically sophisticated minority about whom, I judge, most of the anti-war left could scarcely care less. Groupuscules like the SWP in Britain and ANSWER in the States have always been experts at headline grabbing, but they’ve never had more than a couple of thousand dedicated adherents.

The pro-war ex-left have fallen into the trap that all too many people have fallen into in the last fifty odd years, by being sucked into a local factional dispute which is irrelevant to most people who care about the issues involved, and therefore judging those people who take a position distinct from their own on criteria which are entirely inapplicable.

Most of these people (probably even Hitchens if you’d caught him before breakfast) would have recoiled four years ago from the idea that they would give the assent of silence to the outrages, domestic and international, recently perpetrated by their governments, let alone attempt to defend them. But they have allowed themselves to become so caught up in the futile sectarian discourse they have accepted that they can’t see beyond the columns of their favourite enemies.

“Narcissism” is an excellent characterisation of those whose ability to engage remains constrained by the prejudices of the the 1970s.

16

lemuel pitkin 10.01.05 at 11:51 pm

Good intentions should count for nothing here.

Now this is a very interesting question. Should intentions count?

If the subject is the Iraq war, then I agree with Chris B., but if — say — we were discussing Hitler’s Germany versus Stalin’s Russia, I’d be arguing the other side. Hypocrisy, or is there some real distinction here?

17

Gray 10.02.05 at 12:03 am

You still don’t get it.

You can pick the flyshit out of the pepper about specific policy decisions all you like, but the issue is whether or not you are going to support a course of action that results in the chance for a better government and chance for a better future, albiet with the potential for loss of civilian life or choose a course that maintains the status quo of a fascist dictator who conducts genocide on elements of his own population. I don’t understand how democratic socialists can choose the latter. Wrap yourself in the shroud of anti-imperialism if you like, I can’t stomach what you are prepared to .

Look how this issue turns to a partisan review of US foriegn policy. The USA does good things and bad things. Reagan was bad in Latin America, Clinton did the right thing in the Balkans. How hard is it to make the distinction? The intervention in Afghanistan is utterly justified morally and legally and I think it will l mean a better Afghanistan, if not modern liberal democracy, although every day won’t be a step forward. And the occupying forces will do some ‘bad things” that I regret. But it doesn’t draw the whole issue into question. Iraq is more complex I concede, but still the right decision morally, even if the outcome is in doubt. The forces of reaction might prevail. But is that the side democratic socialists want to be on ?

18

John Quiggin 10.02.05 at 12:23 am

I think the “rhetoric of liberation” is at the core of the problem. A lot of those on the “decent left” have never abandoned the idea that violence is inevitable, effective and (if exercised on the right side) desirable.

This I think is why they focus so much attention on the SWP and similar groups who agree with them on the fundamental issue but see (some subset of) the insurgency, rather than the Americans and their allies, as being the representatives of liberation.

The idea that both/all sides are wrong and that resort to war is almost invariably a mistake and a crime is one they are unwilling even to consider.

19

Gray 10.02.05 at 1:14 am

Mr Quiggan,

Is there an example of war since the end of WW2 that you feel is justified ?

20

Backword Dave 10.02.05 at 2:05 am

Mr Grey,

Are you deliberately rude, or what ?

21

Matt Daws 10.02.05 at 4:13 am

Gray, I do think you’re being rude, but I can’t help but challenge this point:

the issue is whether or not you are going to support a course of action that results in the chance for a better government and chance for a better future

This is either a willful misuse of words, or it ignores completely the D^2 “Not this war now” argument, as surely “results in the chance” has to mean “results in a reasonable chance”. Many people (myself included) did not think that “this war now” would have given a reasonable chance, which is why I didn’t support it. Furthermore, isn’t it then our duty to argue against bad decisions about how the war is being run now? Some on the “pro-war left” write as if the UK and USA policy was, is, and will be perfect, which is just laughable. Why is this not a valid complaint about the war? You are using the same old trick of insisting that to not support the war, one is implicitly supporting Saddam, as if the only two possible outcomes were Saddam in power forever, or rosy secular democracy straight away. And, even if one believes this, why cannot we criticise aspects of how the war is being run now?

Having re-read your second paragraph, I really don’t understand your idea of “morality”. You seem to be suggesting that a course of action with vanishingly small chance of success is still morally correct, even if the probable result is worse than the status quo? For example, while I support the Afghanistan war, I think we pretty much dropped the ball, and it really remains to be seen if things won’t get much worse pretty quickly. I certainly don’t think the massive increase in poppy production is a good thing, and I do wonder if your average Afghani’s life has got better or not, outside of Kabul.

22

Matt Daws 10.02.05 at 4:16 am

Perhaps my “for example” wasn’t a good example to the point I was trying to make. Sorry. However, you do write as if the Afghan war is over, which is rubbish. Your whole comment seems to suggest that starting a war is just a point action with no ramifications into the future. But what we do after the main war is at least as important as the war itself, if in modern conflicts, almost certainly a lot more important, surely?

23

bad Jim 10.02.05 at 4:37 am

Shorter John Lloyd: if we term it “liberation,” anyone would be wrong to oppose it, even when the rational expectation was of yet another incompetently executed exercise in imperialism.

Alternatively: it doesn’t matter how many people are killed so long as some of the survivors are in some sense less encumbered by their present than by their previous governance, no matter how straitened their circumstances.

If the United States had simply decided that anything would be better than Saddam, it should have just nuked the joint. It would at least have saved certain lives.

24

Jack 10.02.05 at 4:54 am

I also do not understand why gray is not calling for immediate invasions of North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Myanmar and Zimbabwe, and presumably Iran, Sudan and Venzuela, and probably China. If invading Iraq is the morally correct thing to do, surely it is in those places too?

25

abb1 10.02.05 at 5:09 am

If the subject is the Iraq war, then I agree with Chris B., but if—say—we were discussing Hitler’s Germany versus Stalin’s Russia, I’d be arguing the other side. Hypocrisy, or is there some real distinction here?

I think professed good intentions do matter and that’s why we feel compelled to discuss decent left’s claims.

The ‘decent left’ to Stalin is what the ‘nuke Mecca’ folk is to Hitler and we certainly do make a distinction.

26

Daniel 10.02.05 at 8:30 am

North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Myanmar and Zimbabwe, and presumably Iran, Sudan and Venzuela, and probably China.

hey don’t forget Vietnam, the communists are still in charge there. And Cuba as well, there’s a convenient Bay you can use to land the boats.

27

Keith M Ellis 10.02.05 at 9:03 am

I really cannot understand the point of view that claims that being an militarist interventionist in any context is antithetical to leftism/liberalism. But I hear that claim all the time and the conclusion which follows it is that an interventionist is necessarily equivalent to a rightist or neocon.

I’m an interventionist when intervention serves liberal goals. With regard to those goals, I can think of twenty other military actions which are more sympathetic than was the invasion of Iraq. That said, I do think the elimination of Hussein’s reign is marginally a liberal goal. (In contrast, I felt very, very strongly that ending the Taliban’s reign was very much a liberal goal.) I also am of the opinion that the US had a blanket UN authorization to re-invade IRaq under the terms of the first Gulf War resolutions. That being the case, the invasion of Iraq never seemed to me to be particularly illiberal. It did seem to me to be unwise. But as Bush was clearly determined to invade come Hell or high water, I couldn’t get myself that worked up to oppose it. If I had realized how disastrously incompetent and badly-intentioned the Bush adminstration really would be with this invasion, I would have strongly opposed it. It just seemed to me that if there was anything the GOP and this admin would manage to do reasonably well it would be to wage war. Nevertheless, I should have known better because in all other respects, I’ve never had any illusions as to how truly evil and incompetent this administration really is.

I think the anti-war crowd has been proven right on every point about this invasion. The only thing I disagree with is this contention that to have supported this war is necessarily and strongly illiberal.

28

Tom Doyle 10.02.05 at 9:23 am

“The great betrayal of liberalism and of the left was not opposition to the war but the insouciant, opportunist, morally indignant denunciation of those who, for diverse motives to be sure, sought to give force to the rhetoric of liberation.

WHAT I HEARD ABOUT IRAQ

Eliot Weinberger, LONDON REVIEW of BOOKS (3 February 2005)

[…]
In February 2001, I heard Colin Powell say that Saddam Hussein ‘has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.’

That same month, I heard that a CIA report stated: ‘We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programmes.’
[…]
On 11 September 2001, six hours after the attacks, I heard that Donald Rumsfeld said that it might be an opportunity to ‘hit’ Iraq. I heard that he said: ‘Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.’

I heard the president say that Iraq is ‘a threat of unique urgency’, and that there is ‘no doubt the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised’.

I heard the vice president say: ‘Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.’

I heard the president tell Congress: ‘The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing. The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.’

I heard him say: ‘The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year. To ignore these threats is to encourage them. Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX nerve gas or, some day, a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally.’
[…]
I heard the president say: ‘Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.’
[…]
I heard the president say: ‘America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof – the smoking gun – that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.’
[…]
I heard the American ambassador to the European Union tell the Europeans: ‘You had Hitler in Europe and no one really did anything about him. The same type of person is in Baghdad.’
[…]
I heard Tony Blair say: ‘We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.’
[…]
heard the vice president say: ‘There’s overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al-Qaida and the Iraqi government. I am very confident there was an established relationship there.’
[…]
I heard the president say: ‘You can’t distinguish between al-Qaida and Saddam.’
[…]
I heard the president, ‘bristling with irritation’, say: ‘This business about more time, how much time do we need to see clearly that he’s not disarming? He is delaying. He is deceiving. He is asking for time. He’s playing hide-and-seek with inspectors. One thing is for certain: he’s not disarming. Surely our friends have learned lessons from the past. This looks like a rerun of a bad movie and I’m not interested in watching it.’

FULL TEXT

29

mythago 10.02.05 at 9:55 am

Now, keith, you’re just talking sense. Cut that out.

What interventions in the Congo and the Sudan?

You didn’t read carefully; he said “in smaller ways”. By his lights, telling the Sudanese government to knock it off or we’ll think about some kind of economic punishment is an “intervention”.

30

Brendan 10.02.05 at 10:25 am

‘You didn’t read carefully; he said “in smaller ways”. By his lights, telling the Sudanese government to knock it off or we’ll think about some kind of economic punishment is an “intervention”.’

Well then he is completely nuts. If Mr Lloyd doesn’t see the difference between the international community joining forces and using legal methods to influence policy, and the United States unilaterally invading, conquering, and then attempting to run a country which posed no threat to it, then he is frankly mad.

As for Mr Gray’s contribution: Christ spare us the self-righteous bullshit! I would have more sympathy for the pro-invasion position if it didn’t seem to entail its proponents telling us over and over again how moral and wonderful they are, and how evil and vicious anyone who opposes them is. Are you aware you sound like a born-again Christian? No wonder you all like Bush so much.

The fact is there was never any chance of any sort whatsoever that the American plan and American tactics could have led to a pluralist, secular, democratic Iraq. None. Zip. Nada.

It’s like Swift’s idea of obtaining energy from extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. The intentions were good, but the plan is insane. You don’t get browny points for good intentions (even bending over backwards to be fair and making the rather major assumption that the motives of Paul “Friend of Suharto” Wolfowitz and Donald “Friend of Saddam” Rumsfeld were actually good).

In any case, it is not at all clear to me that (as you seem to think) people are easily divided into black hats and white hats (or cowboys and indians) with ourselves, coincidentally, always ending up on the side of the ‘goodies’. The fact is, that as opinion polls show, the vast majority of the American people and the Iraqi people and the British people and the people of the world want a withdrawal from Iraq. It is only a self-appointed (no one voted for you, did they, mr gray?) group of messianic ‘idealists’ who believe, like the early Christians, they they have a mission to save the world, who ever wanted this war.

But. Surprise! Our wonderful plans and wonderful intentions are on the point of dragging the Iraqis into a Holocaust the likes of which the Middle East has never seen. Hooray for us! Aren’t we all clever.

Of course it won’t be the likes of Mr Gray who pay the price for his irresponsible fantasising.

31

abb1 10.02.05 at 10:27 am

I also am of the opinion that the US had a blanket UN authorization to re-invade Iraq under the terms of the first Gulf War resolutions.

U.S., Allies Dispute Annan on Iraq War

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 16 — The United States and its military allies Thursday challenged U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s statement that last year’s invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that violated the U.N. charter, and they defended their decision to topple Saddam Hussein’s government.

Annan made his comments Wednesday when a reporter for the BBC questioned him about the war’s legality, saying, “From our point of view and the U.N. charter point of view, it was illegal.” The U.N. chief previously voiced his opposition to the invasion on the grounds that it lacked Security Council approval, which he says is required by the U.N. charter, and has challenged White House claims that the war has made the world safer from international terrorists.

The legality of the war has been the subject of debate among governments and international-law experts. At the outset of the war, the United States, Britain and Australia maintained in letters to the Security Council that the legal basis for the invasion lay in Iraq’s violation of the terms of cease-fire agreements that ended the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But critics of the war, including Annan’s top legal advisers, argued that only the Security Council possessed the authority to authorize a military invasion of a U.N. member state.

Now, is it your assertion that any UN member had a right to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003 (Iran, for example, or Turkey) or was it a special prerogative of the US and UK?

32

MQ 10.02.05 at 10:56 am

“Is there an example of war since the end of WW2 that you feel is justified ?”

Yeah, the invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S. in 2001.

33

Keith M Ellis 10.02.05 at 1:09 pm

“Now, is it your assertion that any UN member had a right to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003 (Iran, for example, or Turkey) or was it a special prerogative of the US and UK?”

The US, if I recall correctly. However, it’s been so long since I formed that opinion I do not recall the facts upon which it was based. It seems to me that those cease-fire agreements allowed the US to re-engage without specific security council authorization if it believed that Iraq was in violation of the terms of the agreement. I do recall that it wasn’t a conclusion that I wanted to come to, but rather I was convinced of it and in fairness conceded the point.

34

Gray 10.02.05 at 1:10 pm

Brendan,
I don’t care for Mr Bush all that much myself and willingly concede he lied about the ostensible reasons for invading Iraq. I consider him liberal democracy or liberations useful idiot if you prefer. I simply believe Iraq has a better chance for a better future with Saddam Hussein gone and there is no bloodless scenario for that. As a strategy in the “War on Terror” I also think invading Iraq was a poor choice.

Matt

Building a civil society in Afghanistan will be diffcult and it may well turn out that all that can be achieved is that Kabul is a lifeboat of modernity in a sea of medieval warlords, but even that is preferable to what was in place before. Also given the Taliban’s aid and succor to Al Qaeda the US has a legitimate security interest in the governance of Afghanistan. For what it is worth a number of friends of mine have served with NATO forces in Afghanistan and they are more upbeat about the chance for success.

Backward Dave

If I was rude to Mr Quiggan then I apologize. However after reading many his posts for the last or year so where he argues passionately againt the use of force in international affairs I’ve come to suspect that he is pacifist and there is no situation where he would countenance force.

35

roger 10.02.05 at 1:31 pm

If black plague had killed Saddam and his two homicidal boys, that would have been a good thing. But it wouldn’t make black plague a good thing.

Similarly, Saddam’s former co-conspirators in the Iran-Iraq war knocking him out in this one was a good thing. But the occupation of Iraq by those co-conspirators was a bad thing, a very bad thing, a thing that gets worse by the day. The result of the occupation is that American troops and Islamicist paramilitaries are battling to maintain a theocracy in the making, headed by the leader of Daawa, a group that blew up the American embassy in Kuwait in 1983 and definitely supported blowing up the embassy in Beirut in 1983. The nonsense about “support [for]a course of action that results in the chance for a better government and chance for a better future” is a characteristic flight from the real to the fantastic shaping the way the pro-war left argues. Facts are stupid things — much better to fight the war of ideas with phrases. That phrase is a joke. Better future for women in Basra? I don’t think so. Better future for the people of Iraq to maintain their control over their oil? I don’t think so. I would be wrong to say that nobody is better off because of the occupation. But my list of the better off doesn’t include Iraqis. It includes the stockholders in Haliburton, the stockholders in Blackwater, the stockholders in Stevedoring Services, and the many other companies that have sponsored this disaster. These people must feel very liberated and very grateful to the heirs of Marx on the ‘decent left.”

In every way, the Iraqis would be much better off if, after the Americans had taken Baghdad, they had set up a timetable of three months to turn the government of Iraq back to the Iraqis. All Iraq basically needed, at that point, was a reduction in its foreign debt. It needed that so it could borrow on its prospects and rebuild its infrastructure itself. The army was intact at that point. The system had already proven that it could rebuild, as it did in a very short time after the end of the Gulf War I. In fact, the American occupation was inimical in every way to Iraq as a nation – there is the condition sine qua of any political form, democracy, monarchy, dictatorship, period. Stripping Iraq of the ability to defend itself, imposing American contractors on the country, taking over the oil revenue, and exposing the people to high security risks in their everyday life, installing paramilitaries, spreading mercenary forces throughout the country, allowing the country’s archeological treasures to be looted – all of these things condemn the occupation as evil, and not really an unfamiliar evil. This is the list of things that happen under imperialism — no different, really, than any of the innumerable invasions that characterize the history of the West over the past three hundred, four hundred years. The left generated in Europe and the U.S. partly to oppose that system. The pro-war left stands for reinstating it. Which is why it isn’t a pro-war left – it is just pro-war, a propaganda adjunct of Bush’s Hobbesian conservatism.

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John Quiggin 10.02.05 at 3:17 pm

Mr Grey,

I’m not a pacifist, just convinced by experience that the use of force is usually counterproductive, and even more usually inefficient compared to non-violent methods (no-one much seems willing to argue against this position, BTW).

But there are exceptions to general rules and out of the hundreds of wars and violent conflicts since WWII I can certainly nominate some examples. The most recent was the Afghanistan intervention. If it had been done properly, it would certainly have been justified. Even as bungled by the Bush Administration it seems probable that the benefits of intervention will exceed the costs.

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Gray 10.02.05 at 4:47 pm

Mr. Quiggan

Thanks for your response. I take it as offered and will reflect on it the next time I read your posts here.

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Ben P 10.02.05 at 10:49 pm

Interesting discussion. I’m perfectly willing to grant the pro-war left (basically – or at least many of them – the next generation’s neo-cons in training) the benefit of their argument.

But I still think they totally missed the boat in a number of ways pointed out above:

1) The obsession with George Galloway, the SWP, whatever other irrelevant fringe leftist strawman they want to focus on. Dan Kevrick does a nice job at 15 on this phenomenon. I mean come on, do you really think the vast majority of the world’s pop. and, now, a strong majority in Britain and over 50% of Americans really think like these groups do? Why, really, does HP spend about 1/3 of its posts (and this is probably a conservative estimate) on these fringe lunatics who have zero influence on politics in the US and Britain?

2) The complete unwillingness to engage the invasion’s larger context or to deal in any way with global politics, economics, the way politics actually function in third world countries (indeed in any countries), etc.. The invasion can’t and doesn’t exist in a kind of moral vacuum of your choosing and simply cannot be reduced to the conflict you want it reduced to.

I hate to say it, but really, when all is said and done, historians are going to view this invasion as an example of a warmed over 19th century liberal imperialism that doesn’t use racial epithets. The only just war from a perspective that is not interested in the larger US hegemonic project would have been calling for a complete troop withdrawal within 6 months after Saddam was toppled – what? The Iraqis couldn’t have done it themselves? I hardly think at this point they could have done any worse.

Ben P

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Ben P 10.02.05 at 11:01 pm

John Quiggin: I think the “rhetoric of liberation” is at the core of the problem. A lot of those on the “decent left” have never abandoned the idea that violence is inevitable, effective and (if exercised on the right side) desirable.

This I think is why they focus so much attention on the SWP and similar groups who agree with them on the fundamental issue but see (some subset of) the insurgency, rather than the Americans and their allies, as being the representatives of liberation.

This is very interesting. I think it is also why so many Trots became neocons in the 1960s (“so many” being a relative term here) and why “Hitch” has become one in the 21st c.. They can’t give up what psychologically appealed to them about revolutionary Marxism even when they decide revolutionary Marxism is bankrupt intellectually. The “American century” will have to do if the “Communist Manifesto” no longer works.

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Brendan 10.03.05 at 4:01 am

I think the salient point is no longer about the war itself but about an exit strategy. The current ‘plan’ (if you can glorify it by such a word) was to ‘stay’ until the Iraqi security forces were ‘up and running’ and then we can ‘leave’. This plan was just barely plausible until last week, when we were told that the number of Iraq units capable of fighting had gone down from 3 to 1. Our spineless and comformist press failed to pick up on the significance of this, which is a pity, as this indicates ‘game over’ for the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Bush project. It is now clear that Iraqi forces will not be able to take over from the US/British any time soon.

They may never be able to take over .

Why is this important?

It is important because the British and the Americans have stated over and over again that they will only leave when the Iraqi security forces are capable of taking over.

Therefore: stalemate and quagmire. The plan: to bring democracy, build up the security forces, defeat the insurgency and then leave, is now over. It cannot possibly work.

It is very clear that the man responsible for all this, Donald Rumsfeld, should now resign. His plan has been a failure, Iraq is a catastrophe, and there is now no possibility of success.

Incidentally, despite those of the pro-war right, sorry, left, continually stating that this is ‘nothing like’ Vietnam, the comparisons with the latter years of Nixon are now becoming eerie. Bush appears (so gossip has it) to be back on the bottle. In any case, his mood swings and weird behaviour are now attracting attention outside the White House. Moreover, don’t discount the possibility of a Watergate scenario. Bush has swum in a sea of corruption and venality since the day he was born, and it looks the sharks are now starting to surface. See Juan Cole’s column today (Monday 3rd October) for more details .

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Backword Dave 10.03.05 at 4:04 am

Mr Grey,

having read only two of your comments I’ve come to the conclusion that you don’t read anything carefully enough to make a judgement.

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soru 10.03.05 at 7:17 am

The thing that I do tend to object to in dishonest anti-war commentary like this is that it simply assumes its conclusion, takes it as read that the future will turn out the way it predicts, and then snarks at those who lack such perfect foreknowledge.

To my mind, this judgement of the likely future has rather more to commend it as a prediction:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1807088,00.html

I have no doubt that, providing we can keep the training and the security sector reform going, and providing some of the reconstruction will continue at the present rate, we’ll reach a point where we can see an Iraq that is self-governing, providing its own security and has a democracy of the form that the Iraqis want

Now there’s some caveats and weasel-words in there, but not as many outright lies as would have to be used by anyone who tried to say that, if things did work out that way, the war was an unmitigated disaster completely without justification or value.

soru

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Brendan 10.03.05 at 7:26 am

Yeah but the war won’t turn out that way. You know (in your heart of hearts), I know it, everyone knows it. Everyone who has eyes to see can see the war has been an almost unparalleled (in the Middle East) catastrophe, and the situation in Iraq will get worse before it gets even more worse. Therefore the war was and is an unmitigated disaster without justification or value.

Incidentally, I do not have to tell any lies to make this point. I just have to turn on the news.

However, a few weeks ago you were foolish enough to give your own idea of how Iraq will turn out by 2009, so we will all be able to check back then and find out whose predictions were correct, won’t we?

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soru 10.03.05 at 8:22 am

Everyone who has eyes to see can see the war has been an almost unparalleled (in the Middle East) catastrophe

Is it ok if I freely translate that as ‘I know nothing about the history of the middle east, and could not find, say, Algeria, Lebanon, Iran, Syria or Oman on a map’?

Predictions, especially when expressed as certanties, from those so profoundly ignorant of what they are talking about do have a certain tendency to make me think the opposite.

soru

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Brendan 10.03.05 at 8:32 am

What a strange thing to say. What makes you think I am ignorant of Middle East history? Does this come from the same school of thought (as enunciated by Christopher Hitchens, for example) that argues that Juan Cole is ignorant of the Middle East because he writes the ‘wrong’ thing about the area, whereas that great middle eastern scholar of our time George W. Bush says the ‘right’ thing?

And are you seriously arguing that George Bush, given a blank map of the world, would have been able to identify where Iraq was in, say, 2002? (Here’s a clue: the answer is ‘no’). Are you going on to argue that George Bush (“But Iraq has — have got people there that are willing to kill, and they’re hard-nosed killers. And we will work with the Iraqis to secure their future.” —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005) has or had a profound knowledge of Middle Eastern history? Does his obvious ignorance of these matters give you ‘a certain tendency to think the opposite’ when he argues that ‘we’ are ‘winning’ in Iraq? If not, why not?

In any case, I really don’t care what you think. That’s the great thing about science: issues of IQ, gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, etc. are all irrelevant.

Either your predictions are correct, or else they aren’t. Either things will get better in Iraq.

Or else they won’t. After all: “Who could have possibly envisioned an erection — an election in Iraq at this point in history?” —George W. Bush, at the white House, Washington, D.C., Jan. 10, 2005.

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Dave D 10.03.05 at 10:21 am

“I mean come on, do you really think the vast majority of the world’s pop. and, now, a strong majority in Britain and over 50% of Americans really think like these groups do?”

Ben P: they already seem to have spun their magic on you:

“historians are going to view this invasion as an example of a warmed over 19th century liberal imperialism” + “the larger US hegemonic project”

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soru 10.03.05 at 10:23 am

Let me see, here are three propositions:

1. Bush is rather remarkably lacking in basic managerial competence when compared to almost all other recent US presidents.

2. Hitchens sometimes gets rather carried away with himself and talks a bunch of crap.

3. The people of Iraq are irredeemably violent nihilists or something, and so cannot possibly ever come to any political settlement that can be traced back to the invasion.

You can argue 1 and 2 as strongly as you like, and I won’t dissent, but I don’t see how from them you can deduce 3.

The sayings of political commentators in the USA are unrelated to facts on the ground in Iraq in much the same way that tea-leaves are unrelated to whether you will meet a tall dark handsome stranger.

soru

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Brendan 10.03.05 at 12:36 pm

I understand your wishful thinking but George Bush, alas, is not merely a political commentator. Unbelievable as it might sound, he actually runs the country. He actually planned the Iraqi adventure. So I think his ‘managerial incompetence’ (a very polite way of putting it) is very much the issue. If you are implying that a direct causal link cannot be drawn between the ongoing disaster that is Iraq, and George Bush’s actions and beliefs, you are very much mistaken.

I have no idea where point 3 comes from (in fact I don’t really understand it) but my argument about Iraq is very similar to John Pilger’s argument about Cambodia. Are the Iraqis all evil armed nihilists? Hardly. BUT, with the psychological, sociological and political pressures brought about by the American installed and run Saddamite regime, then the first war, then the sanctions, then the second war, invasion, and occupation, and now the three (or is it four?) way civil war currently raging (in which the US is an active participant, and is not in any way ‘above’ the conflict), the political situation may disintegrate to the extent that extremists may be able to seize power: in the same way that the Khmer Rouge were able to seize power as a direct result of the American invasion of Cambodia.

Over excitable pro-warriors might have tempered their enthusiasm for invasion if they had spent a little less time frothing at the mouth about ‘Islamists’ and a bit more time taking a long hard look at what happened to the last three (major) countries the US invaded: Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

If you want to learn about the ‘facts on the ground in Iraq’, why don’t you go there and find out, incidentally?

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abb1 10.03.05 at 12:55 pm

Good one by Paul Craig Roberts, former US Treasury Secretary under St. Ronald.

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roger 10.03.05 at 1:05 pm

Actually, although I am totally opposed to the war, and so usually agree with Brendan, I think Soru is right about Iraq — once delivered from the occupying forces, I don’t think Iraq will necessarily go through the experience of Lebanon. The disgusting thing in the Western press is how the Iraqis are treated like children, as if the U.S. has to train these little savages up into soldiers and explain democracy to them in babytalk. Predictions on such a large scale are silly — since the larger the scale, we can predict, the larger the number and effect of unforeseeable contingencies — but Iraq could well hang together, and form a junior partner in a Shi’ite block with Iran. Democratic socialism — a combination of the Ba’athist ideal of popular ownership of Iraq’s source of wealth plus the rights that found a civil society — will be a harder slog, especially as the violence turned against the Sunnis — the religio-ethnic cleansing – has the malign effect of deteriorating secularist forces, or making secularists join alliances with murderers, like Allawi.
But the best analogy might well be what happened in Northern Iraq in the 1990s. Nobody would have predicted, in 1996, that the two warring warlords would do anything but create another Somalia in Northern Iraq. Surprisingly, however, this didn’t happen. Out of that civil war arose something that is actually slouching towards democracy.

All of which provides reasons for wanting the occupying forces out as soon as possible – zero American military in Iraq in six months would be cool – but to remember that America will be engaged in this area as long as American cars are run on gasoline. The goal of the antiwar movement, in my opinion, has to be integrated into thinking about American relevance in the region. And that means thinking about how America, Iran and Syria can achieve détente.

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soru 10.03.05 at 2:27 pm

the American installed and run Saddamite regime

Ok, not so much ignorant as out and out delusional.

If you want to learn about the ‘facts on the ground in Iraq’, why don’t you go there and find out, incidentally?

I am impressed with your ability to trace my ip address, and cross-reference that to passport records. Impressive work, how long did it take you to do all that?

Or, could it be, you are talking with certainty about something that you have no way of knowing, and somehow confusing your delusions with fact?

If so, I rather see a pattern.

soru

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Brendan 10.03.05 at 2:42 pm

Ah…so these are insults, are they? I have heard they can be terribly effective in the right hands.

The CIA’s links with Saddam are well known and I simply can’t be bothered linking to them. They are well known to everyone who knows anything about the region…er…except you. Please read a book. Any book will do.

Incidentally, so you actually are claiming to have visited Iraq? Sorry in the depths of my ignorance, I can’t penetrate the awesome layers of your irony.

(Why are the pro-warriors so keen to impress on everyone how brilliantly intelligent and knowledgeable they are, in the face of much contrary evidence? Do you have to have have your self-deprecatory faculties (not to mention your sense of humour and basic sense of intelligence), surgically removed before you can join this tiny (and rapidly shrinking) club?)

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Ben P 10.04.05 at 2:32 am

“I mean come on, do you really think the vast majority of the world’s pop. and, now, a strong majority in Britain and over 50% of Americans really think like these groups do?”

Ben P: they already seem to have spun their magic on you:

“historians are going to view this invasion as an example of a warmed over 19th century liberal imperialism” + “the larger US hegemonic project”

I might be going a bit far here. What I am certain of is that this will not be viewed as a “good conflict.” As it happens, I also don’t believe it is the “complete disaster” that many, strangely, on the anti-war side already see it as well as much of the American pro-war punditocracy (Friedman, Ignatius, etc.. – “losing in Iraq would be unthinkable!”) if the US doesn’t somehow “stay the course” and “turn things around.” Indeed, Iraq will muddle through as a poor, corrupt, illiberal, but at least somewhat democratic society for the time to come, with the center of the country essentially remaining a war zone. What you see right now is what you get: and I don’t really see – from a completely amoral perspective – how that is a “disaster” for the US.

Indeed, maybe it is reading Friedman that makes me think of the 19th c.. Tom Friedman embarasses himself every time he talks about Iraq: the guy basically treats the people there as juvenile savages who have to be “taught democracy.”

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Ben P 10.04.05 at 2:42 am

Dave D:

It took me a bit to realize you were needling me. But seriously, though, your very post gets to my 2) point above:

I’ll quote it again:

he complete unwillingness to engage the invasion’s larger context or to deal in any way with global politics, economics, the way politics actually function in third world countries (indeed in any countries), etc.. The invasion can’t and doesn’t exist in a kind of moral vacuum of your choosing and simply cannot be reduced to the conflict you want it reduced to.

Now there’s this group in Washington called the Project for the New American Century. Google them. They’re really quite explicit about their aims. Oh, and a good chunk of them are high ranking Bush administration officials. Kinda diff’t than the SWP. Indeed, I don’t think I need to tell you what nation in the world has upwards of 40 military bases in the region. Now an argument, a good argument even, can be made that US hegemony in the Middle East is a postive good for the world. People like the PNAC folks, Niall Ferguson, Tom Friedman, and others have made this argument quite clearly. I don’t necessarily buy it – indeed, at best, I see US hegemony as a kind of least bad option (from an American point of view). But lets be a bit more realistic from now on.

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Brendan 10.04.05 at 2:57 am

“Indeed, Iraq will muddle through as a poor, corrupt, illiberal, but at least somewhat democratic society for the time to come, with the center of the country essentially remaining a war zone. What you see right now is what you get: and I don’t really see – from a completely amoral perspective – how that is a “disaster” for the US.”

It can hardly be stressed too much that this argument (which a few years back I would probably have agreed with) only holds if there is no civil war.

It should also be stressed that comparisons with the British and American civil wars are misleading. Geographically, there was no question but that the US and the UK would actually stick together as countries. But Iraq might well break in three, in the same way that India broke into Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. A quick look at the death tollls this process involved (and how long it took) might be instructive.

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