Lumpencommentariat

(Technical Note): I think your last link is broken, points to the same as the first link…

My largest objection to the fly-paper theory was its open attempt to bring our war to Iraq. The whole rationale reminds me of the recent obsession with “Are We Safer?” rhetoric, when the point of these wars (coming from a pro-war lunatic like myself) should be to drain swamps (a better cliche than fly-paper), not make ourselves safer or divert the enemy into fighting us on foreign lands.

Unlike you and the majority of CT commenters, I don’t even remotely claim to be expert on military matters or precisely how the situation in Iraq has changed over the past months, but I’ve got to say there’s something odd about the Brookings chart your link to Mr. Yglesias relies upon. From April 2004 to July 2004, it shows insurgents growing from 5,000 to 20,000, U.S. troop fatalities falling from 131 to 55, and insurgents detained/killed falling from 2,000 to 1,000. Did all of the active insurgents get killed (the best and the bravest die first, you know)? Or are the new insurgents adherents of Mahatma Gandhi (that would be good news)?

I would note the chart also shows 80% of Iraqis Expect That Life Will Improve Under New Government and electric capacity as fully 20% higher than pre-war.

Ken, from where are you getting your electric stats from? USAID reports that on October 6, 2003 Iraqi electric production reached 4518 MW, surpassing the 4400 MW pre-war level. Is this statistic skewered or out of date?

Perusing the USAID reports also gives you a feel for the wide scope of this reconstruction — it’s unparalleled, and keep in mind the coalition is working to fix infrastructure damaged not just by one war, but by 24 years of Saddam’s rule.

Rajeev:

I don’t know if you intended to mislead, or if you are just lazy. But the USAID numbers you cite are from July 2003. What follows is from an article three months ago. (If the war’s supporters would just stop lying about the state of affairs, we would all be better off.)

Baghdad , May 14 – Contrary to US President George Bush’s recent statement that electricity in Iraq “is now more widely available than before the war,” Iraqi officials say the power supply in their country has not yet been repaired to pre-war levels. Bush made the claim in his May 1, 2004 speech commemorating the one-year anniversary of the “mission accomplished” address he delivered from aboard the USS Lincoln.

Twelve months later, it appears as though the majority of Iraqis have seen little improvement in their power supply.

At the Al-Dora power station in Baghdad on May 3, the deputy manager of the plant, Bashir Khalaf Omair, said that electricity output in Iraq prior to the March, 2003 invasion was around 5,000 Megawatts (MW) a day.

Iraq’s Acting Minister of Electricity, Ra’ad Al-Haris, said in an interview Thursday that the current supply of electricity produced in Iraq measures between 3,600-4,000 MW.

From April 2004 to July 2004, it shows insurgents growing from 5,000 to 20,000, U.S. troop fatalities falling from 131 to 55, and insurgents detained/killed falling from 2,000 to 1,000.

Note: this is because April 2004 marked the start of the first Sadr insurrection, which ended in May.

Thanks for the information Mklutra. To answer your question, I was being lazy — I was just looking at USAID’s most recent numbers. (If I intended to mislead, I probably wouldn’t have asked: “Is this statistic skewered or out of date?”) Anyway, let’s not pollute this thread with personal attacks and silly defenses.

What’s more interesting is, like the quandary with casualty counts, why is the USAID report wrong on electricity production? Regarding the date of the report, their server shows it was posted on July 2003, but it’s quoting the levels, as I noted in my post above, as they were on October 2003. So either the levels have dropped since then, or the USAID report had exagerrated.

Flypaper was the idea of neither of the good folks you mention. It was David Warren.

I almost tire of mentioning how the media — specifically, the “liberal” mainstream media that determine how 60 per cent of Canadians and 40 per cent of Americans think — get everything backwards. So that by the time one has unwrangled their reflexive views, one is stupefied by the doublings, quadruplings, and sextuplings of negatives.

And

This is exactly what President Bush wants. To engage them, away from Israel, in mortal combat. To have an excuse for wiping them out — a good, solid, American excuse, from which Israel has been extracted. The good news is, Hizbullah’s taking the bait.

Read the whole thing as they say. As the right are fond of quoting, “it takes an intellectual to be so stupid.”

Look at the footnotes (23 and 24; 24 can be accessed at http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4290373,00.html) to the Brookings’ study (http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf). The sources do not stand for the proposition that there has been an upsurge in the number of insurgents. Instead, the earlier figure is based on a military briefing and the later figure is based on an AP story that says the number of insurgents has been underestimated all along. What has surged is the estimate, not the actual; and the sources have changed.

I think the inference of empirical support for a mushrooming insurgency should be withdrawn.

Bull – you could be right, in which case the Brookings figures are quite misleading on their face (you’ll notice that the post was predicated on their accuracy). Still contend that the Flypaper theory is nonsense though.

Barry you’re adding to my argument not rejecting it: the infrastructure has been damaged by Saddam and the sanctions, both. Going back to fix the damage wrought by sanctions is hardly a “shirking of responsibility.” And I’m not sure why you refer to this as a Republican talking point. It’s more general than that: it’s a pro-war talking point, and your sanctions formulation is used often by the liberal interventionists who opposed sanctions throughout the 90s.

another important point is that electricity is no longer hoarded in Baghdad and favored areas, but spread throughout the country. Some are better off; some worse.

Flypaper’s the wrong word, it’s more like a loop – terrorists justify war on terror, war on terror creates more terrorists, more terrorists justify more war on terror, etc. etc. etc. Of course it’s entirely unintentional!, god forbid I suggest otherwise, it’s just a fortunate coincidence for both parties to keep justifying their policies. Less fortunate for those caught in the middle, but what do they count anyway.

Wouldn’t pre-Gulf War I levels of electricity production be a better comparison?

the infrastructure has been damaged by Saddam and the sanctions, both

As barry pointed out, Iraq, pre-Gulf War I, had fairly modern infrastructure (and low infant mortality, high literacy relative to the region). Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say the infrastructure had been damaged by US targeting of electricity grids (remember silicon-fiber spewing bombs?) and water treatment plants (Geneva?)?

Most of the damage from the sanctions then came about as hundreds of thousands of civilians (children) died of cholera from impure water. IIRC prohibitions on the importation of dual-use technology prevented the repair of many water treatment facilities.

No points for responding that it’s still Saddam’s fault since the sanctions would have been lifted if he hadn’t “thwarted the will of the United Nations for 12 years”.

If you want a truly magnificently cock-eyed attempt to explain why the situation in Iraq is absolutely fine, check out Crooked Timber favorite Steven den Beste’s post of 07/31/2004 – the most recent one, at the moment(www.denbeste.nu).

The flypaper theory also forms a part of den Beste’s cosily precise and complex “Strategic Overview” – an attempt at defending and excusing every aspect of the American campaign in Iraq.

See: http://denbeste.nu/essays/strategic_overview.shtml

In fairness to den Bastard, he does actually put the flypaper theory low down on his list, call it “not confirmed” and cite David Warren as the ultimate source.

But then, he’s not above using the fly-paper theory’s brand of ex post fuck-up logic, when he argues that more violence and more resistance actually signify that “our” enemies are heading for a fall. Check out his splendidly mad entry “Enemy mistakes” –

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/04/Enemymistakes.shtml.

(In the light of that post’s glorying in America bringing Iraq free speech, I wonder what he makes of the recent banning of Al-Jazeera?)

Some of the most astute, and acerbic, commentary on the “flypaper” theory, around the time it was first aired, came from Paleo-Con writer Steve Sailer (www.isteve.com). Here’s one example:

“nk: Sep. 4, 2003 23:00:05 E-mail me iSteve home

“Jumbo shrimp,” “military intelligence,” and now … “blog wisdom!” — Since midsummer, the big blog boys, including Tin Pencil-Sharpener nominees Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, and James Taranto of the WSJ, have been promoting the “flypaper” or “draining the swamp” theory to explain why our getting into a guerilla war in Iraq is really a good thing. See, now we’ve got all the bad guys right where we want them — all the anti-American Muslims in the world are flocking to Iraq where we will kill them all and then there will be no more of them anywhere ever again. As Greg Cochran points out, the Soviets tried out the flypaper theory in Afghanistan from 1979-1988, killing a million or more Muslims, which is why there hasn’t been a single Islamist extremist in Afghanistan ever since.”

In another of his posts, Sailer pointed out that the Iraqis might be less than happy with a strategy that treated their country as bait for terrorists.

I’m not a Paleo-Con myself (far from it), but I highly recommend Sailer but when foreign policy is at issue. I should add that for Paleo-Con positions I don’t care for, he’s at the least an intelligent and sober champion of those positions. And he has a hearty contempt for Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds that never fails to endear him to me.