Posted by Joel Turnipseed

Jole, the specifics of this article are that it’s a pack of lies and dishonesty from start to finish. He inverts the position of academics on the war almost 180 degrees. He blames academics for being not practical, etc., when this whole mess has been characterized by the administration and its supporters clinging to thinking along the lines of ‘step 2 – a miracle occurs’.

As for the general set of war supporters, we see excuses like administration incompetancy – something that was both apparently considered only years after it mattered, and only admitted years after it was laughable to pretend otherwise.

Joel, you probably know these people, which hinders your judgement about them. It’s hard to admit that people you know blew important questions, and are still not honest about them.

We are under no such contraints, and should not be.

What I found interesting was how Hitchens and Ignatieff have a similar sympathy for the Kurds. Unlike the Washington neo-cons who were swayed by Chalabi and other Iraqi exiles, the pro-war left were captivated by the Kurdish nationalists. They seemed to have ignored rather than mis-estimated the depth of animosity between the Sunni and Shi’ite factional leadership.

A key reason why many security specialist academics (e.g., Art, Betts etc.) was not a principled opposition to the use of force but a more pragmatic belief that the problems created by an invasion would not be worth the gains. For example, “Even if we win easily, we have no plausible exit strategy. Iraq is a deeply divided society that the United States would have to occupy and police for many years to create a viable state.”

What Ignatieff fails to address in his essay is how the Iraq debacle has undermined democracy promotion writ large.

The important thing about that list is it needs to be paired with the list of things not possible:

1. liberal democratic Iraqi government

2. permanent US bases usable for operations elsewhere in region.

3. favourable oil trading arrangements.

4. the discovery of some fact or statistic that would plausibly justify a claim that the number of lives lost in the war was ‘worth it’, in the aggregate.

5. all members of Al Qaeda dead or in custody.

There do seem to be a worrying number of US politicians who have decided their interests lie with failing to achieve the latter set of goals, and then using that failure as a weapon in domestic politics.

Bingo – he is trying to rehabilitate his reputation in Canada. Choosing the NYRB as the location to do so is as idiotic as his support for the invasion.

Saying ‘Oops’ doesn’t really cut it when the result is a million dead Iraqi’s and a shattered country.

His reasons for supporting the invasion indicate that he is a Clevinger like figure – lot’s of brains but no intelligence.

P.S. It was a near run thing in the leadership contest for the Liberal Party in Canada. In a fit of pique Bob Rae refused to endorse Ignatief which killed his chances.

I can’t remember a single person on the left thinking that the Iraqi army had a reasonable chance of resisting an initial American attack. The problem with the war was always going to be with what happened after American won the initial round of fighting—see Spain, 1808.

“Also: please note that I didn’t think the “Saddam’s going to go sooner or later” was a strong argument—just the only plausible one.”

I read this as your only plausible argument not being strong, which means that there were two categories of pro-war arguments: plausible but not strong, or strong but not plausible. Which, for going to war, is not good.