I read his stuff once every.. few months or so, and one thing has always struck me about him: He seems to respect directness, no-nonsense attitudes, practicality, pragmatism, and such.. all good things. The only problem is that he’s completely unable to distinguish between pragmatism, on the one hand, and the occasional symptoms of pragmatism, on the other: The fact that, occasionally, when a pragmatic (or utilitarian) decision is made, some people get hurt, and bombs go off, does not identify pragmatism with people getting hurt. The “tough” decision is not always pragmatic.

And just for fun, here’s another observation: Being “in the center” does not always mean being “more reasonable”. For instance, teaching both ID and evolution in biology class is “centrist”, but not reasonable. Old Drum tends to confuse these two things very often. I love Drum.

Before the war, the US position was that the US forces shouldn’t do peace keeping and nation building, but provide the thing that they are good at, that is fighting capabilities.

Allies, and less competent armies, should be relied on to do peace keeping and if necessary, nation building.

As an example, when before the war the Dutch took the position of supporting the war politically but not militarily, the US didn’t think of that any less than full support.

That caused the Dutch government some discomfort when a Nato observer who happened to be Dutch was called on stage at a press conference in Kuwait. He was referred to as part of the coalition. As the Dutch government sold its position locally as not giving military support for the war, that caused some fuss.

After the war, the US did need coalition forces and asked for them. And in the beginning there was reasonable support. The Dutch did deliver, as did many other countries.

But it all went south anyway and many coalition partners left, leaving the US with the task of peace keeping and nation building.

This unlike Kosovo, where US forces are just a minority, and Afghanistan, where NATO forces fulfill a substantial task.

I think most would agree that the problem of insufficient troops bit hardest not in the destruction of Saddam’s regime (in which one would want to deploy serious battle-ready forces like the French ones you refer to) but in the postwar chaos that followed. Look again at the testimony you hear time and again from people who were actually there: the collapse of law and order that followed the collapse of the regime was a crucial turning point. And America failed that test for two reasons: one, insufficient troops; two, nonexistent orders for those insufficient troops.

Instead of the grim and familiar reality, how’s this for a hypothetical: take a list of strategic sites, outside each put some blue-helmeted soldiers from a third-world country in a couple of armoured cars, and give them some very simple rules of engagement. Would that have made a difference?

I think it might have made all the difference, but who can ever say for sure?
Anyway, you’re gracious to concede that there were some, and possibly a lot, more troops there to be had from other countries. What stopped them from being deployed where they might have done some good? We could talk about a number of reasons. We might blame an instinct for self-preservation on the part of America’s potential allies. Countries that might have taken part stood aloof, either because the far-reaching transformations being so zealously preached by administration insiders posed a threat to comfortable status quos, or because the flaky weirdness of Bushworld – its odd enthusiasms, strident nationalism, internal feuds and moral posturings – deterred closer involvement. Yet the principal reason was internal to Washington, and was very much a real policy issue in 2002-3. Rumsfeld was fighting a bureaucratic war to transform the military, in which he made many enemies among the top professional officers. A crucial strategic battle in this war was fought around the question of the correct troop strength to deploy in Iraq. For Rumsfeld, a small deployment was an article of faith, independent of Iraqi realities. (Packer is good on this, but if you prefer not to take it from a liberal hawk, you’ll remember Sy Hersh’s chapter on “tip-fiddle” in Chain of Command.) Allies were a potentially damaging distraction – it was Rumsfeld who publicly offered to cut Tony Blair loose at his time of maximum prewar discomfort.

So, there is plenty of scope to bemoan the incompetence of policymakers in the Iraq war, and plenty of reason to conclude that significantly greater troop numbers – not all of them necessarily American – could have been deployed to beneficial effect, especially in the crucial days immediately after the fall of the regime.

I certainly disagree with anyone who uses ‘islamofascist’ as a synonym for ‘muslim I wouldn’t vote for’.

soru

Words, we love to hold onto their original definitions, yet like children, they grow up and either leave home, or run away from home. “Concentration camp” I do believe has run away from home. Yes, prior to the constructs of Heinrich Himmler, I think we could all agree with the general definition of CC, but after the gates were thrown open and Eisenhower got his first look, CC took on a whole new meaning. Now the term can be used descriptively or propagandistically. Today we find reference to the American concentration camps, previously called the Internment camps. I’ve know many who were interned in those camps, and as unjust as the internment was, I know not one internee who would compare Manzanar with say, Auschwitz. But here we are, with another word that has run away from home, lost its original meaning, and with nothing to replace it with … expect to cobble a few adjectives onto it.
Bro. Bartleby

My position is that if the Iraqi people vote for an Iranian leaning government in a free and democratic election then I just have to deal with that. That’s what democracy is all about (in the same way that if the Palestinians want to vote in Hamas, the Egyptians want to vote in the Muslim Brotherhood, or even, God help us, if the Americans want to vote in George Bush, then I just have to deal with that, too).

I just think it’s slightly strange that people who were, only a few years ago, running screaming through the streets at midnight, shouting ‘The Islamo-fascists are coming! The Islamo-fascists are coming!’ (metaphorically speaking) now seem to be pretty sanguine about ‘Islamo-fascists’ coming to power in large chunks of Iraq.

But maybe you disagree?

I await your attempts to tie our defeat in Iraq to Clinton’s propensity for extramarital sex. Surely there’s a connection.

Wouldn’t say it was a particularly good or bad thing, just a more or less inevitable one.

Certainly, I see no justification for all the blood and treasure that was expended trying to prevent it.

Maybe you disagree?

soru

And “jon h” seems to think that raw recruits can be turned into soldiers and officers instantly. I urge him to read any good history of our involvement in World War II, or the Civil War, for that matter.

As it happens, I favored a small expansion of the army after 9/11, but have now changed my mind. I think we are faced with a 100 year war and that it is best fought with a small, and very profesional army. (And I think the war will be longer and far more costly if we follow the policies popular at Crooked Timber.)

Perhaps I was too indirect in my argument in the original comment. So let me more direct. Many of the politicians who say the Bush administration should have sent more troops to Iraq also favored cutting the army as Presdent Clinton promised to do in 1992—and then did. I can understand why those politicians would rather forget that inconvenient fact, but I don’t see why honest people should.

Such people have an obvious self-interest to push that view, to make it look somehow worse than the whole ‘send troops into Fallujah to make friends with the locals’ plan they replaced it with.’

Right so are you arguing (along with Christopher Hitchens) that the Chalabi-Neoconservative plan was a good one before it got spoiled by the Communists and Islamo-fascists of the CIA and the armed forces?

And are you going on to argue that Iraqi ‘accommodation’ with Iran is actually a good thing?