GregsOpinion.com

Herein is an article-by-article take on the latest/greatest issue of The New Republic analyzing the status of Iraq as we approach the handoff date. As articles are available online, I'll link to them, but anyone familiar with TNR knows to expect most of these to be available for a price. Naturally, I'll argue that the range of opinion offered in this issue warrants purchase ... and further discussion.

Peter Beinart - TRB | Partisan Review Why I was too bipartisan about Iraq.
I've previously commented on this one, but it warrants repeating that I think Beinart is a bit too cynical in this peice. That comes from one who is often accused of being as cynical as they get. Beinart's case is that he erred in attempting to avoid partisanship in viewing the debate prior to invading Iraq. Without a doubt, there are several good points that Beinart makes:

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also had hidden agendas. In the 1990s, America's NGOs had amassed considerable experience in postwar reconstruction. But that experience had come from Bill Clinton's "social work" wars: Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, East Timor?wars the Bushies had ridiculed. And, thus, these examples were rarely cited or examined. It was as if the only countries America had ever occupied were Germany, Japan, and perhaps South Korea.

In his Atlantic Monthly article "Blind into Baghdad," James Fallows notes that the NGOs requested a meeting with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, in January to discuss postwar planning.They never got one. And, after the war, as Joshua Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Colin Soloway have detailed in The Washington Monthly, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) didn't hire veterans of the reconstruction efforts of the '90s; it hired conservative lobbyists and Hill staffers. As journalists in Baghdad joked about CPA headquarters, "They don't call it the Republican Palace for nothing."

My retort to this is that the failings represent a difference between whether ousting Saddam Hussein was warranted versus how we go about rebuilding Iraq. While the two should not be entirely separate, there's a case to be made that one can rightfully be supportive of the action itself while still remaining critical of the nationbuilding process. George Bush has made many more mistakes than even those that Beinart lists, but those are faults of his, not of Beinarts, nor of anyone who supported intervention despite their reservations of George Bush.

The Editors - Were We Wrong? The case for war, revisited.
One of the notable things about TNR during the Peretz-led era is that any article associated with "The Editors" typically comes closest to that of Editor-in-Chief Martin Peretz nevermind what may in fact be a wide range of dissent.

This take tends to fall somewhat close to one that I subscribe to - Hussein "acted like a guilty man" according to this peice. He got what he should have expected. If he wanted us to believe he was a dangerous threat, there shouldn't be any shock that we took him at his word (and actions).

Beyond that, the article delineates between a strategic rationale and a moral rationale. While the strategic rationale may have lost some credibility due to facts uncovered (or, more appropriately NOT uncovered), the moral rationale has not.

Leon Wieseltier - What Remains Disillusion and its limits.
Perhaps the most dyslexic case of them all. Dizzying, at times, even. Wieseltier begins with "If I had known that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I would not have supported this war." He then goes on to note a reserved, tortured, and painful support for the war. Pointing out that the aim to democratize Iraq is a "[grand] historical experiment" worthy of support. Likewise, there's no argument for a sudden withdrawal of forces "because we would leave behind the greatest gift to theocratic terror since Afghanistan, and because we would betray the democrats and the pluralists and the Kurds." Leave it to TNR's most intellectual editor to paint the most confusing case of them all. Yet, by the time I get to his closing, I'm convinced that this confusion may not be entirely his doing, but perhaps due in larger part to the consequences invited by taking action in Iraq itself:

The rule of Saddam Hussein was uncommonly brutal. Its destruction represents a triumph of the idealistic strain in American foreign policy. Americans may be proud of having rid the world of such a horror. But the Bush administration's mistakes, many of them the consequences of its various theologies, have somewhat disgraced idealism, and this, too, is a disservice to America.The course of the war in Iraq may persuade many Americans to revert to America's inward-looking habits. And the Bush administration is singularly ill-suited to teach those Americans about the glories of internationalism.Though the president and the vice president are acting with force internationally, they are not exactly internationalists. They are not national greatness conservatives, they are national smallness conservatives. But who are the national greatness liberals?

Joseph R. Biden Jr. - Fires Next Time Will my party learn the wrong lessons?
Where I've stated in prior discussions that I had held my own reservations in check hoping beyond hope that they either wouldn't come to fruition or wouldn't be an overwhelming factor to make things go awry, Biden puts his version forth:

A year and a half ago, I voted to give President Bush the authority to use force in Iraq. I still believe my vote was just?but the president's use of that authority was unwise in ways I never imagined.

Perhaps not too ironic that Senator Biden's take sounds a bit like Peter Beinart's in that they both find a tinge of fault in their lack of partisanship leading up to authorizing war. But Biden offers much more insight and closes with a dire warning of Vietnam Syndrome being replaced with what might be deemed an Iraq Syndrome:

Much has been said about the potential consequences of failure in Iraq?how it would provide a new haven for terrorists, deal a blow to reformers and modernizers throughout the region, and encourage radicals in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. But perhaps failure's most pernicious legacy will be a further hardening of the Democratic Party's Vietnam syndrome?its distrust of government and the use of American power.

That syndrome is one reason why, from day one, many of us in Congress pressed the president to level with the American people about what would be required to prevail in Iraq. But he didn't. He didn't tell them that well over 100,000 troops would be needed for well over two years.He didn't tell them the cost would surpass $200 billion?and far exceed Iraq's oil revenue. He didn't tell them that our children and grandchildren would pay the bill because of his refusal to rescind even a small portion of the tax cut he gave to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. He didn't tell them that, even after paying such a heavy price, success was not assured, because no one had ever succeeded at forcibly democratizing a nation in the Middle East, let alone an entire region.

As a result, today those who recognize that we must persevere in Iraq risk losing public support. Americans sense that our policy is adrift and that we do not have a plan for success.Worse, they may conclude that this is what happens when we venture abroad. Someday, probably sooner rather than later, there will be another Slobodan Milosevic or another Saddam, and the profound mistakes in Iraq will make it harder to generate domestic and international political support for the use of force.That is a legacy we can ill afford.

Maybe, as some argue, so many mistakes have been made in Iraq that it is impossible to turn the corner. Anti-American attitudes and a nascent warlordism may already be so deeply entrenched that there is little we can do to succeed. It would be foolhardy to deny that possibility. But it would be even more foolhardy, and dangerous, to accept failure as inevitable and move to cut our losses. Despite the naysayers, it is not too late. But only the president can alter our course in Iraq. As he did when Congress first authorized him to use force, the president has the choice of using his power effectively or squandering it to satisfy ideological predilections. Let us hope he has grown wiser in the past year.

John McCain - Hard Truth Why I have no regrets.
Put John McCain in the same camp as Joe Lieberman when it comes to Iraq ... both supported the 1998 law codifying regime change as official US policy, both have a history of wishing the world rid of Hussein that predates 9/11. This article is pretty much cut of that same cloth. Add in a small dose of introspection that "we have made costly mistakes and encountered serious obstacles" followed shortly by "the decision to invade Iraq was the correct one, on both security and moral grounds." The closing 'graf pretty much says it all for McCain ...

Should we have done things differently? Of course.We should have worked harder before the war to get more European allies on board and offered greater political support to those nations that did join our coalition.We should have invaded with more troops, acted more quickly to stop looting, stabilized key cities, secured arms depots and borders, and established checkpoints in key areas.We should have handed power more rapidly to Iraqis. But were we wrong to invade? No. On the biggest question of all?whether Saddam had to go, by force if necessary?we were right. I would do it again today.

Between McCain and Biden's perspectives, there's something to pay attention to when it comes to the Senate's role in foreign policy. Both suggest improvements that many others made and the two Senators consider self-evident. But it is not uncommon for the Senate to be asked to support action which does not represent a 100% done deal to its liking. Its also not uncommon for the rest of us. For that reason, warts and all, I too would do it again today.

Fouad Ajami - Best Intentions A noble, frustrating war.
One quote Ajami recycles that I have to pass on here because I appreciate the turn of the phrase as well as the appropriateness of it to this debate: "The justice of a cause is not a promise of its success," That parallels a Pat Moynihan quote, which goes something like "Just because I know the problem doesn't mean I know the solution." In Moynihan's case, he used the quip to offer the rational for making Social Security operate on a pay-as-you-go basis - that despite the obvious restrictions it would place on Social Security, it would at least force a more honest debate on the system and hopefully enact a reform to his liking afterwards. In other words ... the basis was used to denote why something should be enacted despite lacking perfect knowledge of what would result when the other shoe dropped. Ajami seems to head in the same direction with his lead-in.

While not entirely dwelling on any recriminations of "should we" or "shouldn't we" over the merits of the war, Ajami takes a rational look at the current status and paints a somewhat hopeful picture of what might happen "when the other shoe drops" so to speak.

"We're due some luck," one of our most astute military leaders in the Iraq theater of operations, Major General Stephen Speakes, wrote me in an e-mail in late May. He was prescient. Our luck came in the most paradoxical of ways. Only days later, the Governing Council selected one of its own, Sheik Ghazi Al Yawar, for the presidency of Iraq.The man hailed from the Shammar, one of the great Arabian tribes, a Sunni tribe with a substantial Shia branch. The Iraqis were done with Bremer's tutelage, and with U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. Bremer and Brahimi had wanted the 81-year-old Adnan Pachachi for president.The Governing Council's rebellion, and the joy in the city of Mosul, where Yawar was born, was the beginning of our redemption in Iraq.

Our writ had been rejected. And, on that very day, the country's designated prime minister, Iyad Allawi, a Shia secularist given to secrecy?and with strong ties to "reformed" Baathists and former Sunni operatives who had broken with the old regime?acknowledged a debt of gratitude owed by Iraqis to the American-led coalition and its soldiers. Our stewardship of Iraq is still loaded with troubles. But our soldiers have made our luck. A measure of success, and hence of our deliverance, is now in the realm of the possible. Iraqis may yet go beyond us and still find their way. If this comes to pass, we could not hope for a better retrospect of our time, and our mission, in Iraq.

Anne Applebaum - Back in the USSR Why Iraq isn't like the cold war.
When Applebaum gets started, she notes how news of plans for attacking Iraq were leaked first by a leak that appeared in the New York Times, leading to the obligatory denial by the administration, I'm also reminded of much of the debate that went on among bloggers ... this one in particular. While I myself was a tad bit insistent that more information needed to be offered during the debate, I was reminded (sometimes politely, sometimes not) that we were at war and therefore secrecy should be afforded, as should a modicum of plausibility that, like him or not, the President deserves some benefit of a doubt when it comes to security. A mere one year after 9/11, I may have been more sympathetic to that argument, but George Bush can only blame himself for that option no longer being available. I suspect I'm nowhere near alone on this one.

Applebaum's point, however, goes to the core of the problem with conservative foreign policy ... they've learned all the wrong lessons from the Cold War and have relied too strongly on those wrong lessons in conducting this war. I refer you back to my Age of Imitation post for how I think this process occurs. Problem numbers one, two, and three for conservatives is, ironically, the very icon we've all mourned: Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War ... but he didn't win it alone. Typically, conservatives dwell on the first point while liberals dwell on the second. But both are needed for complete understanding. Yet when it comes time to translate and update foriegn policy to new threats, it is precisely these forms of caricaturization that make the imitators less effective than the original.

Unfortunately, this article also avoids any debate over "should we" or "shouldn't we" ... rather, it enumerates Bush's failures with European allies in lieu of their previous Cold War inclinations. Its a good argument and a lesson that needs to be remembered, though. Make of it what you will.

Kenneth Pollack - Mourning After How they screwed it up.
Always the most curious read on this topic, Pollack obviously has a little egg on his face for accepting more intelligence data at face value than was warranted and putting it into the well-articulated book: The Threatening Storm. As the leading voice favoring intervention from the left, Pollack's revisits of this issue warrant special attention. He gets a few brownie points in my book for referencing a debate on Iraq with one of my favorite center-left thinkers: Bill Galston (with whom I had the pleasure of meeting while at the Progressive Policy Institute).

Again, this peice also is not dissimilar from Beinart's lead ...

Bill Galston is one helluva debater. In the fall of 2002, well before the invasion of Iraq, I faced Bill?a University of Maryland professor and a former colleague of mine in the Clinton administration ? in a public debate, and he kicked my rhetorical ass. He did it by holding up a copy of my book, The Threatening Storm, and saying to the audience, "If we were going to get Ken Pollack's war, I could be persuaded to support it. But we are not going to get Ken Pollack's war; we are going to get George Bush's war, and that is a war I will not support." Bill's words haunted me throughout the run-up to the invasion. Several months ago, I sent him a note conceding that he had been right.

The primary cause of our current problems in Iraq is the reckless, and often foolish, manner in which this administration has waged the war and the reconstruction. For that reason, when I think back to the prewar debate, the thought that nags at me most is that I, too, should have foreseen what Bill Galston did?that the Bush administration would not fight the war properly. It looms in my thinking as something that probably could have been known before the war and that, had I recognized it, might have led me down a different intellectual path.

For the remainder of the article, Pollack's stance is that while hindsight proves the critics right (the sane ones, not the Kucinich cranks), these issues were not available in realtime. Its that dilemna that tears Pollack apart. But I'd have to conclude that its that dilemna that should force us to realize that decisions cannot be made in hindsight and it would be erroneous to think we would have perfect clarity, intelligence, and other assorted information in all decisions affecting our own security. Its a false standard to hold ourselves to. Pollack is right to be torn by the differences in what was thought and what is now known ... but he would be wrong to try to fit that into any type of guiding principle involving foreign policy.

Fareed Zakaria - Like It's 1999 How not to build a nation.
I'd be remiss to note that Zakaria recycles another quote that parallels the one recylced by Ajami in his article: "[Not] every problem has a solution." This, however, is recyled by Peter Galbraith. Ironic ... perhaps the one we should have listened to all along when it comes to Iraq was Galbraith himself. Back in the late 80s, the renegade loose cannon staffer for Senator Claiborne Pell would clandestinely make his way into Kurdish regions of Iraq to witness the genocide going on. Samantha Power tells Galbraith's tale heroicly in A Problem From Hell. But that's a different point ... although its a shame that it is. If anyone ought to have a case for saying "told ya so" its Galbraith.

That serves as a personal sidenote, though. Zakaria is no slouch at making his own point - that intervention in Iraq was fine and swell ... but that George Bush's execution was flawed, damaging, and potentially counterproductive in terms of long-term policy outlook:

But since we are listing mistakes, the biggest one many opponents of the war are making is to claim that Iraq is a total distraction from the war on terrorism. In fact, Iraq is central to that conflict. I don't mean this in the deceptive and dishonest sense that many in the Bush administration have claimed.There is no connection between Saddam's regime and the terrorists of September 11. But there is a deep connection between his regime and the terrorism of September 11.The root causes of Islamic terrorism lie in the dysfunctional politics of the Middle East, where failure and repression have produced fundamentalism and violence. Political Islam grew in stature as a mystical alternative to the wretched reality ? secular dictatorships ? that have dominated the Arabworld. A new Iraq provides an opportunity to break this perverse cycle. The country is unlikely to become a liberal democracy any time soon. But it might turn out to be a pluralistic state that gives minorities limited protections, allows for some political participation, and has a reasonably open society.That would be a revolution in the Arab world.

The right lesson of Iraq so far is not that nation-building must fail, but rather that President Bush's approach to it, unless corrected, will fail. The right lesson is not that U.S. military intervention always ruptures alliances and creates an enraged international public, but rather that this particular intervention did. Most important, it is not that American power aggressively employed does more harm than good. Rather, the right lesson is that American power, because it is so overweening, must be used with extraordinary care and wisdom. Most of the world's problems?from aids to the Israeli-Palestinian issue?would be better served with more American intervention, not less. But, because of the blunders in Iraq, it is possible that most of the world, and far too many Americans, will draw the wrong lesson on this final point as well.

Martin Peretz - History Lesson Learning from Iraq's awful past.
Peretz begins with a brief history of Iraq in which he concludes the grand lesson of Iraq's history is that "Those who shed the most blood with the least scruples come out on top." But I think he misses the real lesson (and I say that cautiously as I don't pretend to have a fraction of Peretz's intellect). Rather than conclude that unscrupulous power makes Iraq, there's a wider lesson of similarly created geographical artifices. That lesson is that when rival tribes are held together by such unscrupulous power, they more often than not come undone when set free. In short, when strongmen are rid of power, different groups tend to want freedom ... and want it in their own unique way. They don't like to replace one oppressor with another. Its that lesson that bodes poorly for Iraq if one concludes that a Balkanization of Sunni, Shia, and Kurds will indeed be inevitable. Despite the occassional sign of nationalism that eminates from each segment, the pull of loyalty to tribe is typically stronger. And already, the Kurds have made the most noise about not signing a constitution that protects the rights they've had over a decade to get accustomed to. That, obviously affects more than just Iraqi Kurds, too. And yet, we've explored this topic all too briefly, perhaps hoping beyond hope that magic will happen. Still ... the lessons of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia tug a bit more strongly at times.

Peretz goes on to make the case that intervention was justifiable on the grounds that freedom itself is the sacrosanct utility of this action. Indeed, he makes the easy equation of the Czech Charter 77 with Iraq's Charter 91 as declarations of independence. Yet once more, the worry about what happened to Czechoslovakia never seems to cause any consternation with Peretz. I don't begrudge him the point that freedom trumps all other concerns - in fact I'd agree with it wholeheartedly. But without suggesting that any further concerns warrant overturning that principle, it seems a bit incomplete to not worry about the other side of this. Certainly, in 1991, the concern with Bush-41 and Powell-41 and Cheney-41 was that toppling Saddam would create more instability than it was worth. That's not to defend the decision. But obviously there was some thought put into what would happen once freedom rang from the hypothetical desert liberty bells. That Peretz doesn't put at least some thought into that is a bit of a disappointment. Yet, on a completely unrelated note, is anyone surprised that Peretz's case and that of "The Editors" seem to be the two strongest in defense of action in Iraq? Yeah, I didn't think so. Still, its interesting to see that at work sometimes.

Thomas L. Friedman - People Power What we can still achieve.
Friedman takes a third option on "should we" versus "shouldn't we" in noting that the outcome is still too uncertain to state one way or the other. A tad too cute by half, if you ask me. Once more, this slants towards suggesting the merits warranted by what the outcome is rather than what one sees ahead of them in realtime. In his defense, Friedman sticks a little closer to TNR's implied cover question ... "were we right" versus "were we wrong." On that front, his analysis is more intellectually accurate ... so long as one asks the right preceding question: Were we right or wrong ... about WHAT?

Friedman's closer is still worth mulling over ...

Maybe trying to tilt Iraq in a different direction to help tilt the entire region will turn out to be a fool's errand. I would argue that it's still too soon to tell. When will we know? If Iraq collapses into civil war or the new Iraqi government proves incapable of organizing reasonably fair elections, this enterprise will rightly be seen as a failure. By contrast, if Iraqis come together around this new government, enough to produce a reasonably fair election and put Iraq on course for some kind of decent federal system of government, this enterprise will rightly be seen as pivotal and positive. We just have to let it play out and influence it as best we can, where we can.

But there is one thing I am as sure of today as I was a year ago, and it is this:Thinking that there is a war on terrorists that doesn't also involve a war on the roots of terrorism was a dangerous illusion on September 11 and remains a dangerous illusion today.

One good thing to emerge more recently is the debate over what we are, in fact, at war with. Bob Kerrey has made his case that there is no war on terror, but rather the war should be termed a war on radical Islam. While it may seem a debate over semantics, its still instructive and helpful in framing public opinion at what ought to be focused on. The danger of an ill-defined "war on terror" is that terror gets applied wrongly (as some would argue has been done with Iraq) and that the true war we should be focusing on loses credence and public support. Given the pitfalls of getting wobbly on the sources of actual terror themselves, I'm not one willing to take that risk. But this administration has done poorly in defining their rationale for war in Iraq, so I'm not at all optimistic that they buy into the need for this.

Throughout this debate, some writers have pointed out how Iraq is a part of the war on terror and Friedman makes the case most notably how it is not. Perhaps that ought to be another special issue worth debating.

Paul Berman - Learned How to hate Saddam and despise Bush.
A second reading of this article has yet to uncover anything I have to quibble with. All I can really add is to just read the whole damn thing.

Closing Thoughts ...
OK, so I exaggerated when I stated that Peretz's and "The Editors" case were the strongest. The clear winner here goes to McCain, but an asterisk must be applied as that's a bit of an exception. For starters, I think you have to know what you're getting when you ask a McCain or Biden to hold court on this topic. Both are pretty much where they've always been on this issue and a McCain defense of intervention is no surprise, nevermind that it is still a great addition to the debate.

Worth inquiring about on this debate ... where's Spencer Ackerman and/or John Judis? Muzzled? ... or was it concluded that their responses in this debate lacked any clear delineation from any of the other numerous responses? Regardless, one does not crack open a copy of TNR as religiously as I do without a mild curiosity about what two of the more outspoken types on a given topic have to say.

That said, its still a good read, all the way through the various contributions. Quite frankly, I'm a little exhausted for having done this all in one sitting, so any quibbles of my own work, I'm likely to blame on weariness from the endeavor.

For now, let the debate go on, as I'm sure it will as we inch towards 6/30. Now, as then, I find myself in the same situation - that whatever uneasiness I have may prove unwarranted in the end. Unfortunately, history has not been kind in teaching lessons on this approach. And like it or not, we now have a history to guide us.

UPDATE: Apparently another Greg in the world didn't take too well to Pollack's peice, in particular. (Via OxBlog-Adesnik)