Winehole23
09-01-2010, 01:57 PM
The Long Run Authorizes Every King Of Humbug (http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2010/09/01/the-long-run-authorizes-every-king-of-humbug/)
Posted on September 1st, 2010 by Daniel Larison
Since, unlike the present, tomorrow is always imaginary, such idolatry can be manipulated in many ways. On the one hand, of course, the Stalins of the world can demand the death of millions in the name of a future paradise. This is an especial concern of Camus, who complains of those who “glorify a future state of happiness, about which no one knows anything, so that the future authorizes every kind of humbug.”…
Given the ironic character of history, we should, at the very least, make sure that our actions have some value in the present. The future that we imagine is unlikely to come about, if it does come about it will not last, and when it does come about we will probably despise it. ~Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit
It seems perverse to speculate (http://www.frumforum.com/iraq-in-hindsight) on how much worse things might have been in Iraq had the United States not launched an unnecessary and illegal invasion that toppled Hussein’s regime. Much like the demagoguing of Iraq’s potential threat to the U.S. before the war, supporters of the invasion make up for their complete lack of evidence by asking us to imagine the very worst things that might occur if we had done nothing.
One thing we can be fairly sure about is that thousands of Americans who are now dead would still be alive and tens of thousands of Americans who are now wounded, some of them catastrophically, would not have been. We also know that America would not be perceived throughout the region and the world as lawless aggressor, our relations with any number of important allies, including Turkey, would not have been badly damaged, and jihadists would not have been given an open killing field on which they were largely free to murder people by the thousands, nor would jihadists have been given such a powerful boost to their propaganda and recruiting.
We know that American attention and resources would not have been distracted for years from the war in Afghanistan, which might have otherwise been brought to a close by now, and the American military would not be so badly strained and overstretched. If the U.S. had not invaded, Iranian influence in the region would not have grown as much as it has, a refugee crisis in which millions have been displaced and Iraq’s professional classes have been decimated would not have occurred, and the complete dismantling of the Iraqi state and military apparatus would not have happened.
It is actually very difficult to imagine the anarchy and mass violence that we did see if there had not been an international occupier disbanding the Iraqi army and an outside political force causing the collapse of state institutions. If the U.S. did not directly cause the sectarian violence that followed, we made it impossible to contain. Hussein’s regime would probably have been succeeded by another dictatorship, and possibly it would have been one that is no more prone to torture and disappear its enemies than the current Iraqi government.
Last night, Obama referred to the invasion as a “war to disarm a state,” which was the official justification given by his predecessor. If we grant that this was the purpose of the war and not the pretext for regime change, it really makes no difference whether a far-off post-Saddam Iraq would have been better or worse than the one that has emerged now, because it means that the U.S. had no business invading on the Bush administration’s own terms. As Ross wrote (http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/hope_is_not_a_strategy.php) in early 2009:
Strip away Saddam’s (supposed) rearmament and the imminent threat it (supposedly) posed, and the fact that you had nine other “here’s why this might be a good idea” reasons for war did not a strong-enough justification for war make.
Similarly, one cannot summon the specter of possible worse disasters that might have unfolded in the absence of an invasion to get around the responsibility supporters of the invasion have for the consequences of the war. Then again, if the primary purpose of the war was always regime change regardless of whether or not Hussein was already disarmed, an antiwar argument focused on preserving Iraqi and regional stability becomes even stronger.
Yes, the oil boom of the 2000s would have made Hussein’s regime richer, but like all the other petro-states that flourished during the boom Iraq would still have been limited to projecting power in its immediate neighborhood. In other words, Iraq would have continued to be an annoyance in the way that Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela is an annoyance. Meanwhile, if Hussein were still in power, there would still be a fiercely anti-Iranian Iraqi government in Baghdad rather than a fairly pro-Iranian one. I am less concerned about that than most, but it doesn’t make much sense why people who irrationally exaggerate the threat from Iran are so comfortable with this outcome. Once the financial crisis and recession happened, and the price of oil dropped from the stratospheric heights of mid-2008, Iraq would have gone from being an annoyance to being something even less menacing. So instead of having a minor annoyance that represented no meaningful threat to U.S. interests, the U.S. has a dysfunctional sectarian dependency, and the U.S. will continue to have 50,000 soldiers in the country to continue enabling its dysfunction, sectarianism, and abuses of power.
Posted on September 1st, 2010 by Daniel Larison
Since, unlike the present, tomorrow is always imaginary, such idolatry can be manipulated in many ways. On the one hand, of course, the Stalins of the world can demand the death of millions in the name of a future paradise. This is an especial concern of Camus, who complains of those who “glorify a future state of happiness, about which no one knows anything, so that the future authorizes every kind of humbug.”…
Given the ironic character of history, we should, at the very least, make sure that our actions have some value in the present. The future that we imagine is unlikely to come about, if it does come about it will not last, and when it does come about we will probably despise it. ~Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit
It seems perverse to speculate (http://www.frumforum.com/iraq-in-hindsight) on how much worse things might have been in Iraq had the United States not launched an unnecessary and illegal invasion that toppled Hussein’s regime. Much like the demagoguing of Iraq’s potential threat to the U.S. before the war, supporters of the invasion make up for their complete lack of evidence by asking us to imagine the very worst things that might occur if we had done nothing.
One thing we can be fairly sure about is that thousands of Americans who are now dead would still be alive and tens of thousands of Americans who are now wounded, some of them catastrophically, would not have been. We also know that America would not be perceived throughout the region and the world as lawless aggressor, our relations with any number of important allies, including Turkey, would not have been badly damaged, and jihadists would not have been given an open killing field on which they were largely free to murder people by the thousands, nor would jihadists have been given such a powerful boost to their propaganda and recruiting.
We know that American attention and resources would not have been distracted for years from the war in Afghanistan, which might have otherwise been brought to a close by now, and the American military would not be so badly strained and overstretched. If the U.S. had not invaded, Iranian influence in the region would not have grown as much as it has, a refugee crisis in which millions have been displaced and Iraq’s professional classes have been decimated would not have occurred, and the complete dismantling of the Iraqi state and military apparatus would not have happened.
It is actually very difficult to imagine the anarchy and mass violence that we did see if there had not been an international occupier disbanding the Iraqi army and an outside political force causing the collapse of state institutions. If the U.S. did not directly cause the sectarian violence that followed, we made it impossible to contain. Hussein’s regime would probably have been succeeded by another dictatorship, and possibly it would have been one that is no more prone to torture and disappear its enemies than the current Iraqi government.
Last night, Obama referred to the invasion as a “war to disarm a state,” which was the official justification given by his predecessor. If we grant that this was the purpose of the war and not the pretext for regime change, it really makes no difference whether a far-off post-Saddam Iraq would have been better or worse than the one that has emerged now, because it means that the U.S. had no business invading on the Bush administration’s own terms. As Ross wrote (http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/hope_is_not_a_strategy.php) in early 2009:
Strip away Saddam’s (supposed) rearmament and the imminent threat it (supposedly) posed, and the fact that you had nine other “here’s why this might be a good idea” reasons for war did not a strong-enough justification for war make.
Similarly, one cannot summon the specter of possible worse disasters that might have unfolded in the absence of an invasion to get around the responsibility supporters of the invasion have for the consequences of the war. Then again, if the primary purpose of the war was always regime change regardless of whether or not Hussein was already disarmed, an antiwar argument focused on preserving Iraqi and regional stability becomes even stronger.
Yes, the oil boom of the 2000s would have made Hussein’s regime richer, but like all the other petro-states that flourished during the boom Iraq would still have been limited to projecting power in its immediate neighborhood. In other words, Iraq would have continued to be an annoyance in the way that Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela is an annoyance. Meanwhile, if Hussein were still in power, there would still be a fiercely anti-Iranian Iraqi government in Baghdad rather than a fairly pro-Iranian one. I am less concerned about that than most, but it doesn’t make much sense why people who irrationally exaggerate the threat from Iran are so comfortable with this outcome. Once the financial crisis and recession happened, and the price of oil dropped from the stratospheric heights of mid-2008, Iraq would have gone from being an annoyance to being something even less menacing. So instead of having a minor annoyance that represented no meaningful threat to U.S. interests, the U.S. has a dysfunctional sectarian dependency, and the U.S. will continue to have 50,000 soldiers in the country to continue enabling its dysfunction, sectarianism, and abuses of power.