Thursday, April 08, 2004
The most maddening part of the Iraq War
is how little effort the Bushies put into planning the aftermath. Beyond all the lies aimed at the American people, beyond the damage done to our security and the hunt for al-Qaeda, beyond the shredding of our alliances and the international order, this is the greatest tragedy.
For the Bushies have no justification for the war left, save that of bringing liberty, democracy, and prosperity to Iraq, and then (somehow) to the rest of the Middle East.
I am all for these goals, as are most war critics. Fact is, we on the left are usually the ones standing up for them! But that doesn't make invasion the best strategy for accomplishing them. Defenders of Bush often accuse critics of opposing freedom and democracy, as if these things were synonymous with invasion and occupation. I think pundits reading these talking points usually know this is a dastardly smear.
Creating democracy, liberty, prosperity is not a job for presidential diktat. It takes a complex brew of institutions to support these goals, the cooperation of many groups in a society, and basic social understandings of what democracy means, how fair play works, and how minority rights deserve protection even if that's unpopular. This set of conditions has evolved naturally in some countries, and even then has not always survived; it has seldom been successfully imposed from outside, and then only after the entire structure of the previous society has been wiped away. For a foreign invader to create democracy, liberty, and modern economic systems in a ethnically divided, economically underdeveloped, distant, hostile, and large nation, by force, without the figleaf of international support or the cooperation of neighboring states is folly on a grand scale. But the Bushies have gone further---they went in without any plan at all. No effort to build the Iraqi economy beyond Halliburton contracts. No effort to devise new institutions beyond a rubber-stamp council and an imposed constitution. And no pretense of real liberties---just try to run an independent newspaper in Iraq. And things are going to get much, much worse. Can the gang that thought democracy would be a snap prevent civil war? Can they do it without resorting to dictatorship?
The biggest irony is that conservatives in the US have been saying for decades that changing society through public policy is hard, and usually goes astray or has minimal impact. They aren't always right on this argument, but they have a point, and its the very best public policy argument made by conservatives in the last thirty years. If someone in the White House had read James Q. Wilson, Aaron Wildavsky, or, heaven help us, even Charles Murray, could they have really imagined that they could go remake Iraq before breakfast, then come back and party on an aircraft carrier?
The neo-cons are an embarrassment not just to the nation, but to anyone else who calls themselves conservatives. They have made a huge mess through reckless, radical policies, and it is clear they have no clue how to deal with it. All they know is how to blow stuff up and scare people. It's time to leave this childish bunch of foreign policy fools behind.
For the Bushies have no justification for the war left, save that of bringing liberty, democracy, and prosperity to Iraq, and then (somehow) to the rest of the Middle East.
I am all for these goals, as are most war critics. Fact is, we on the left are usually the ones standing up for them! But that doesn't make invasion the best strategy for accomplishing them. Defenders of Bush often accuse critics of opposing freedom and democracy, as if these things were synonymous with invasion and occupation. I think pundits reading these talking points usually know this is a dastardly smear.
Creating democracy, liberty, prosperity is not a job for presidential diktat. It takes a complex brew of institutions to support these goals, the cooperation of many groups in a society, and basic social understandings of what democracy means, how fair play works, and how minority rights deserve protection even if that's unpopular. This set of conditions has evolved naturally in some countries, and even then has not always survived; it has seldom been successfully imposed from outside, and then only after the entire structure of the previous society has been wiped away. For a foreign invader to create democracy, liberty, and modern economic systems in a ethnically divided, economically underdeveloped, distant, hostile, and large nation, by force, without the figleaf of international support or the cooperation of neighboring states is folly on a grand scale. But the Bushies have gone further---they went in without any plan at all. No effort to build the Iraqi economy beyond Halliburton contracts. No effort to devise new institutions beyond a rubber-stamp council and an imposed constitution. And no pretense of real liberties---just try to run an independent newspaper in Iraq. And things are going to get much, much worse. Can the gang that thought democracy would be a snap prevent civil war? Can they do it without resorting to dictatorship?
The biggest irony is that conservatives in the US have been saying for decades that changing society through public policy is hard, and usually goes astray or has minimal impact. They aren't always right on this argument, but they have a point, and its the very best public policy argument made by conservatives in the last thirty years. If someone in the White House had read James Q. Wilson, Aaron Wildavsky, or, heaven help us, even Charles Murray, could they have really imagined that they could go remake Iraq before breakfast, then come back and party on an aircraft carrier?
The neo-cons are an embarrassment not just to the nation, but to anyone else who calls themselves conservatives. They have made a huge mess through reckless, radical policies, and it is clear they have no clue how to deal with it. All they know is how to blow stuff up and scare people. It's time to leave this childish bunch of foreign policy fools behind.
