Not a lot of progress on that front.

I was presuming, at that point, that the occupation would go more or less smoothly, for the purposes of talking about post-war settlements.

I’m with Healy: I opposed going to war at the time and in the way the administration chose, but given that it went to war as it did, it should have attempted to build a stable democracy even though the prospects of such a democracy being built were poor.

I don’t think war opponents had to have held that position, but I was and still am curious about what alternatives there would be. If the US withdraws in 2008, what will be left behind and what should countries’ policy toward the new government be? What should the world response be if the Kurdish region declares independence or if Sunni Arab states send troops or ‘volunteers’?

I find the question of “How well do you predict events in 2003” to be a silly game in some respects unless bloggers and others made clear estimates of how likely events were. I expected the war to take take longer than it did, and the post-surrender (I imagined one would occur by some Ba’ath authority) period to be more violent than it was. I anticipated broader fighting between Shi’ite and Kurd militias and US occupiers over who would control their regions and less from the Sunni insurgency.

In late 2003 and 2004, I would get surprised looks from colleagues when I would say that events in Iraq were going better than I had thought. Why? Because I thought the US would have had 1,000 battle casualties by Aug. 2003 at the latest, and would have been fighting Kurdish and Shi’ite militias at several cities.

“Apple’s fear that dropping bombs on civilians wouldn’t “win Afghan ‘hearts and minds’ ” and that the country would prove ungovernable even if the United States won turned out to be unfounded. Two weeks after his comparison of Afghanistan to Vietnam, the allies liberated Kabul, and 16 months later the place is at least as governable as San Francisco.”

Hey, points for the meme comparing war to American crime! Schafer should definitely get royalties for that from Glen Reynolds and all the rest of the Warmonger borg.

The one thing the pro-war people were right about was that the removal of Saddam Hussein is a plus. Problem is, this is not an argument for an invasion. Pre-war, I argued that it was an argument for the radical revision of the sanction regime – the lifting of sanctions on Iran and recognition of that country, plus pouring a lot more aid into Northern Iraq, would sufficiently stir the equilibrium of the elite that supported Saddam as to cause his collapse. I think that was right. As we know now, the Iranian regime, then under a much more moderate president, had the same idea, approached the U.S. for talks in 2002, and was rebuffed. The rest is the disaster of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, the U.S. in endless, shoddy occupation, and the lowering of American power wholesale to do anything, really, in the Middle East. Bad for Iraq, bad for American interests, even imperial ones, bad for the Middle East – wow, a trifecta of disaster.

Weird. I have no doubt that, no matter what happens, the US (well, unless it falls apart completely in the next few years, which seems unlikely) will certainly have permanent military bases in Iraq – in the north and south, where most of the oil fields are. If I had to guess: ordinary bases in the north and autonomous, fortified gitmo-style desert bases in the south.

The most prominent radical critic of the war inside the government, rep. John Murtha, calls: – To immediately redeploy US troops consistent with the safety of US forces. – To create a quick reaction force in the region. – To create an over-the-horizon presence of Marines.
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/pa12_murtha/pr051117iraq.html

“I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will…”
“…must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy”
“To immediately redeploy US troops…”

‘Redeploy’, ‘redeploymen’ – what do you think these words means, soru?

in hindsight, I happened to be right about most of the disastrous developments in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but had, against all odds, things turned out differently, it wouldn’t have been all that hard for me to reexamine my assumptions; and while I would probably still have been opposed to the Iraq war on principle, I would have been happy to see a peaceful and democratic Iraq develop and my principles called into question by reality

it’s perfectly normal and generally productive that one’s predictions and principles are proven partially or even wholly wrong, you readjust and get on with it – what is abnormal and dangerous is this strange tendency to claim infallibility for oneself and expect it from others and the incapability to revisit prior assumptions and adapt to a changing reality

indeed this is in my view one of the reasons, why the foreign policy adventures fo the Bush adminstration have failed so miserably

Excerpt 1:

What leaves me speechless is the widespread notion that Bush’s “success” will depend on the “success” of his unprompted war rather than on whether any unprompted war is a justifiable venture right now.

And, attempting to learn from history rather than from reason, I have to admit that the notion may be right. In such times, rationality can only bow its head before stupidity and try to learn to keep its mouth shut.

(Dan Rather, on the other hand, can keep right on talking. I just heard him disapprove of those who raise the question of civilian casualties: “War is cruel. It shouldn’t need to be said.” That’s right, and it makes me wonder why he says it now when he didn’t a year and a half ago…

Excerpt 2:

If civilians and enlisted personnel (you know, the people who can’t be trusted to think big) could be made to take that same just-a-game outlook towards warfare, perhaps the brilliant boys club could get their entrepreneurial day in the sun.

And so they have.

My own doubts? War is too big a game to be left to athletic scholarships.

The Kuwait example in #10 is just stupid. Kuwait had been invaded by a foreign power, and there was an institutionally-stable status quo ante to which it could return once the invasion was reversed That’s what Iraq hadn’t got. What war proponents can’t avoid is their monstrous naivete, including a characteristic confusion between elections and durable institutions.

Obviously, if you do invade, you’re in the moral position of trying to make the best of it, but soru seems not to have mastered the if-then construction.

Sk

So, like I said, ten years. Like I meant but did not say, 2017.

No response from Soru, of course. I don’t expect him to take this bet, nor to pay up if he did and lost.

If he’s like most of his ilk, he has The Conviction of Ten Thousand Men! but all the courage of an unusually skittish marmot.

Forget it, he’s on a roll.

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor??
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Kinda creepy, really.
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