Ezra Klein Is Not Making Sense
Unfortunately for him, Good Klein sometimes gets too caught up in hyperbole. He is a smart and (usually) reasonable man, but he has written a horrible blog post:
#4 hasn't proven to be "entirely false" either, since there has never been democracy in Iraq. The system of government put in place by the Iraqi constitution is consociational, not at all a true democracy. Consociational arrangements can sometimes work (although the point is arguable), but it can also exacerbate pre-existing ethnic/sectarian divisions. In this case, it seems to have done so, and a more democratic system (like single-member districting, for example, which could force representatives to gain approval from segments of all ethnic/sectarian groups, thus fostering a moderate government) may have led to a better result.
Anyway, I don't think that anyone could debate that a functioning democracy which includes strong and lawful institutions would benefit Iraqis. The fact that this state of affairs hasn't occurred yet doesn't disprove this idea. This same rationale rebuts Klein's criticism of #s 5, 6, & 7. They could all be true in an alternate world where Iraq has a functioning, democratic, stable government. But since that prerequisite doesn't exist, you can't disprove the hypothesis.
As to #8... I have no idea what Klein is talking about. Does he have any reason to believe that if we had never invaded Iraq that al-Qaeda would've just rolled over and left us alone in perpetuity? I've never heard anyone even attempt to make that case, much less prove it. It's a ridiculous assumption on the face, and Klein doesn't even bother presenting a single piece of evidence in support. Or even an intellectual argument without evidence. Perhaps he has something well-thought in mind, but he doesn't mention it, and I've not seen or heard it.
Finally, this was not the entire pro-war case. Packer was a moderate supporter of the war in the run-up, but he is certainly not an apologist for neoconservatism. And he left out a central point: Saddam's direct support and approval of international terrorism, gangsterism, war crimes, and direct acts of war against the U.S.
To the first point: Saddam sheltered Ramzi Yousef, the bomber of the WTC in 1993. Yousef entered the U.S. on an Iraqi visa to conduct that attack, and was given safe haven in Iraq (with Saddam's direct knowledge) after the fact. His uncle, who advised him in planning that attack and gave him funding for that end, is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. This point, also, is not under debate. But Saddam's direct ties to terrorism don't end there, since al-Zarqawi, the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and former lieutenant to bin Laden, was granted entrance to Iraq after the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan (where he had previously operated) but before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In other words, even if Saddam were not affiliated with al-Qaeda before 9/11, he most certainly was after that event. His public cheering of the 9/11 attacks immediately after the fact is likewise despiscable.
To the second: Saddam attempted to assassinate a former President of the United States -- George H.W. Bush -- in April 1993. This alone was justification for Saddam's removal.
To the third: Saddam's war crimes and genocidal attempts are well documented, and I won't rehash them here.
To the fourth: Saddam fired on U.S. airplanes patrolling the Iraqi no-fly zone nearly every day for nearly a decade. This prompted the Clinton administration to engage in many small-scale interventions and retaliations, and to eventually conclude that regime-change in Iraq through American intervention was necessary and inevitable.
Also, yes... Iraqis were suffering under sanctions. But these were not "our sanctions". They were sanctions agreed upon by the U.N., and levied by that body. They were, in other words, the result of the sort of non-interventionary diplomacy that Mr. Klein supposedly prefers. And that resulted in an estimated 1 million+ Iraqis dead from lack of proper food, water, and medical supplies; the corrupted Oil-for-Food program, and the continuing presence of Saddam and brutalization of his people.
Now, Klein says that "literally every element of the anti-war case has been proven correct." This is patently false. For example, anti-war claim #1: I guess it depends on what Mr. Klein means when he says that containment "worked". If he means that it prevented Saddam from expressly invading another country *again*, then I suppose he is correct. But by nearly any other metric, the policy of "containment-via-sanctions-and-continuous-military-patrols" failed miserably.
As I mentioned before, #2 is likewise invalid. The U.S. had been directly provoked by Saddam, when he attempted to assassinate a former president, when he fired upon U.S. military planes patrolling no-fly zones on a daily basis, and when he harbored international terrorists who directly attacked the United States. All of these are clear incitements to war. And as to the "international support" argument: some 40-odd countries contributed troops to our cause. Others offered monetary support, and others offered verbal support. There was substantial international support for intervention. I don't know what the official standard is for the exact appropriate level of international support, or which countries get the most-heavily weighted vote in the matter. But to say that this war was unilateral is simply untrue.
#3, I guess, is true. Casualties were inevitable. But casualties were also inevitable if we didn't intervene. After all, Saddam wasn't known for his kindness to his fellow Iraqis. Neither were his sadistic sons, who were slated to obtain absolute power after Saddam died. Indeed, Saddam had to reign them in. It's probably true that if we hadn't invaded Iraq that civilian casualties would be lower. But the same would have been true if al-Zarqawi -- who single-handedly escalated the sectarian violence to its most obscene levels, and whose barbarities were even shunned by bin Laden -- were not in the country, and of course he was permitted to enter by Saddam's government. So who has done the most damage? The answer isn't so obvious.
#4 is demonstrably false, at least to this point in time.
#5 is unfalsifiable at this point, and may still be unproven in time. In any case, the argument stings of xenophobia. As in, "those savages couldn't manage a democracy. Too uncivilized."
I suppose that #6 is arguable. I think Pres. Bush's policy aims were obvious -- i.e. to remake the MidEast in such a way as to attack international terrorism and promote global stability. To that end, he became the first U.S. president to call for a Palestinian state, and he worked to bring Arab/Muslim allies into the the fold (e.g. Pakistan, Turkey, Bahrain, U.A.B., etc.). In addition, Libya was persuaded to give up its nuclear program, and rallied the international community in opposition to Iran's efforts to develop one. These are no small movements, but they've been almost universally ignored.
#7 is probably true, but that's as much of an indictment against anti-war proponents as it is against the decision to invade Iraq.
#8 is a question of semantics. After all, al-Qaeda's largest presence in the world now is in Iraq. The largest incidences of global terrorism all occur in Iraq. After the invasion of Afghanistan during which most of the senior al-Qaeda leaders fled, what were we to do? Just let them run to Pakistan? To Iraq? To Syria? To Saudi Arabia? Major terrorist operations exist and existed in all of those places. If we withdraw, then we are refusing to fight terrorism where it is most endemic. Anyway, the same rationale presented in #8 would preclude invading Afghanistan.
I'm sorry for the length of this, but Klein's sort of shoddy thinking demands a full rebuttal.
Before America invaded Iraq, George Packer wrote an article for The New York Times Magazine on the liberal hawks that sought to categorize the pro- and anti-war arguments. Given that you often hear war supporters say that the doves opposed this war for the wrong reasons, it's interesting to see what Packer considered the arguments of the two sides:For War
1. Saddam is cruel and dangerous.
2. Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction and has never stopped trying to develop them.
3. Iraqis are suffering under tyranny and sanctions.
4. Democracy would benefit Iraqis.
5. A democratic Iraq could drain influence from repressive Saudi Arabia.
6. A democratic Iraq could unlock the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate.
7. A democratic Iraq could begin to liberalize the Arab world.
8. Al Qaeda will be at war with us regardless of what we do in Iraq.
Against War
1. Containment has worked for 10 years, and inspections could still work.
2. We shouldn't start wars without immediate provocation and international support.
3. We could inflict terrible casualties, and so could Saddam.
4. A regional war could break out, and anti-Americanism could build to a more dangerous level.
5. Democracy can't be imposed on a country like Iraq.
6. Bush's political aims are unknown, and his record is not reassuring.
7. America's will and capacity for nation building are too limited.
8. War in Iraq will distract from the war on terrorism and swell Al Qaeda's ranks.So far as I can tell, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 on the pro-war case proved to be entirely wrong. The remaining rationales were that Saddam is a tyrant -- true, but not nearly reason enough to go to war -- and that Iraqis were suffering under sanctions. Our sanctions.
Meanwhile, literally every element of the anti-war case has been proven correct, save for four, which has proven accurate in a low-grade way as Iran has sought to increase its control over its destabilized neighbor.
These were the two cases. They existed -- both of them -- before the conflict. They had, as Packer details, high profile adherents. The anti-war case was internally coherent, rigorous, and in the final analysis, utterly correct. Not accidentally correct, but accurate in its particulars and predictions. No wonder those who got it wrong are so anxious to argue that nobody truly got it right.
A few problems with this. First, numbers 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8 of the pro-war case are not "entirely false". As example, take #2: "Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction and has never stopped trying to develop them." Obviously, this is not entirely false, since Saddam had used weapons of mass destruction on his own citizens and on Kuwaitis. This is not a point of debate. In addition, there is still strong evidence that Saddam was still pursuing WMD (from his own nuclear scientists, who handed over centrifuges to U.S. troops) and other conventional weapons which he was not permitted to have according to U.N. resolutions (e.g. attempting to purchase cruise missiles off the shelf from A.Q. Khan in Pakistan). Saddam had routinely thrown out or harassed U.N. weapons inspectors. This second point might be debatable, but it's certainly not "entirely false".
#4 hasn't proven to be "entirely false" either, since there has never been democracy in Iraq. The system of government put in place by the Iraqi constitution is consociational, not at all a true democracy. Consociational arrangements can sometimes work (although the point is arguable), but it can also exacerbate pre-existing ethnic/sectarian divisions. In this case, it seems to have done so, and a more democratic system (like single-member districting, for example, which could force representatives to gain approval from segments of all ethnic/sectarian groups, thus fostering a moderate government) may have led to a better result.
Anyway, I don't think that anyone could debate that a functioning democracy which includes strong and lawful institutions would benefit Iraqis. The fact that this state of affairs hasn't occurred yet doesn't disprove this idea. This same rationale rebuts Klein's criticism of #s 5, 6, & 7. They could all be true in an alternate world where Iraq has a functioning, democratic, stable government. But since that prerequisite doesn't exist, you can't disprove the hypothesis.
As to #8... I have no idea what Klein is talking about. Does he have any reason to believe that if we had never invaded Iraq that al-Qaeda would've just rolled over and left us alone in perpetuity? I've never heard anyone even attempt to make that case, much less prove it. It's a ridiculous assumption on the face, and Klein doesn't even bother presenting a single piece of evidence in support. Or even an intellectual argument without evidence. Perhaps he has something well-thought in mind, but he doesn't mention it, and I've not seen or heard it.
Finally, this was not the entire pro-war case. Packer was a moderate supporter of the war in the run-up, but he is certainly not an apologist for neoconservatism. And he left out a central point: Saddam's direct support and approval of international terrorism, gangsterism, war crimes, and direct acts of war against the U.S.
To the first point: Saddam sheltered Ramzi Yousef, the bomber of the WTC in 1993. Yousef entered the U.S. on an Iraqi visa to conduct that attack, and was given safe haven in Iraq (with Saddam's direct knowledge) after the fact. His uncle, who advised him in planning that attack and gave him funding for that end, is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. This point, also, is not under debate. But Saddam's direct ties to terrorism don't end there, since al-Zarqawi, the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and former lieutenant to bin Laden, was granted entrance to Iraq after the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan (where he had previously operated) but before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In other words, even if Saddam were not affiliated with al-Qaeda before 9/11, he most certainly was after that event. His public cheering of the 9/11 attacks immediately after the fact is likewise despiscable.
To the second: Saddam attempted to assassinate a former President of the United States -- George H.W. Bush -- in April 1993. This alone was justification for Saddam's removal.
To the third: Saddam's war crimes and genocidal attempts are well documented, and I won't rehash them here.
To the fourth: Saddam fired on U.S. airplanes patrolling the Iraqi no-fly zone nearly every day for nearly a decade. This prompted the Clinton administration to engage in many small-scale interventions and retaliations, and to eventually conclude that regime-change in Iraq through American intervention was necessary and inevitable.
Also, yes... Iraqis were suffering under sanctions. But these were not "our sanctions". They were sanctions agreed upon by the U.N., and levied by that body. They were, in other words, the result of the sort of non-interventionary diplomacy that Mr. Klein supposedly prefers. And that resulted in an estimated 1 million+ Iraqis dead from lack of proper food, water, and medical supplies; the corrupted Oil-for-Food program, and the continuing presence of Saddam and brutalization of his people.
Now, Klein says that "literally every element of the anti-war case has been proven correct." This is patently false. For example, anti-war claim #1: I guess it depends on what Mr. Klein means when he says that containment "worked". If he means that it prevented Saddam from expressly invading another country *again*, then I suppose he is correct. But by nearly any other metric, the policy of "containment-via-sanctions-and-continuous-military-patrols" failed miserably.
As I mentioned before, #2 is likewise invalid. The U.S. had been directly provoked by Saddam, when he attempted to assassinate a former president, when he fired upon U.S. military planes patrolling no-fly zones on a daily basis, and when he harbored international terrorists who directly attacked the United States. All of these are clear incitements to war. And as to the "international support" argument: some 40-odd countries contributed troops to our cause. Others offered monetary support, and others offered verbal support. There was substantial international support for intervention. I don't know what the official standard is for the exact appropriate level of international support, or which countries get the most-heavily weighted vote in the matter. But to say that this war was unilateral is simply untrue.
#3, I guess, is true. Casualties were inevitable. But casualties were also inevitable if we didn't intervene. After all, Saddam wasn't known for his kindness to his fellow Iraqis. Neither were his sadistic sons, who were slated to obtain absolute power after Saddam died. Indeed, Saddam had to reign them in. It's probably true that if we hadn't invaded Iraq that civilian casualties would be lower. But the same would have been true if al-Zarqawi -- who single-handedly escalated the sectarian violence to its most obscene levels, and whose barbarities were even shunned by bin Laden -- were not in the country, and of course he was permitted to enter by Saddam's government. So who has done the most damage? The answer isn't so obvious.
#4 is demonstrably false, at least to this point in time.
#5 is unfalsifiable at this point, and may still be unproven in time. In any case, the argument stings of xenophobia. As in, "those savages couldn't manage a democracy. Too uncivilized."
I suppose that #6 is arguable. I think Pres. Bush's policy aims were obvious -- i.e. to remake the MidEast in such a way as to attack international terrorism and promote global stability. To that end, he became the first U.S. president to call for a Palestinian state, and he worked to bring Arab/Muslim allies into the the fold (e.g. Pakistan, Turkey, Bahrain, U.A.B., etc.). In addition, Libya was persuaded to give up its nuclear program, and rallied the international community in opposition to Iran's efforts to develop one. These are no small movements, but they've been almost universally ignored.
#7 is probably true, but that's as much of an indictment against anti-war proponents as it is against the decision to invade Iraq.
#8 is a question of semantics. After all, al-Qaeda's largest presence in the world now is in Iraq. The largest incidences of global terrorism all occur in Iraq. After the invasion of Afghanistan during which most of the senior al-Qaeda leaders fled, what were we to do? Just let them run to Pakistan? To Iraq? To Syria? To Saudi Arabia? Major terrorist operations exist and existed in all of those places. If we withdraw, then we are refusing to fight terrorism where it is most endemic. Anyway, the same rationale presented in #8 would preclude invading Afghanistan.
I'm sorry for the length of this, but Klein's sort of shoddy thinking demands a full rebuttal.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Kindred Winecoff at
12:51 AM
8 Comments:
What the f*#k are you talking about? Al Qaeda is on the frontier of Afgan. and Pak. Not in Iraq. How gullible are you? They can call themselves anything they want. This is a war for oil, for stuff that comes out of the ground. Ask Cheney--in 1994 it was foolhardy and not worth American lives. Now it is apparently.
i never said that al-Qaeda isn't present in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Obviously, it is. But it is also present in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, and in Iraq. As I explained, al-Zarqawi was in Iraq before the U.S. invasion. He had come from Afghanistan, and he swore allegiance to bin Laden. bin Laden allowed him to franchise the name "al-Qaeda" in Iraq. The two groups corresponded regularly, and al-Zawahiri (bin Laden's chief lieutenant) publicly praised al-Zarqawi after he was killed by U.S. forces. These are all undisputed facts, so no gullibility is required to accept them.
To the oil accusation: If this war is all about oil, then why haven't we taken any of it yet? I hear this mantra bandied about all the time from those who oppose the war, but I've never seen one piece of documentation in support. Not one. The fact is that we don't really need Iraqi oil. We did without it from 1991-2003. We get plenty from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Bahrain and etc. But really, we get most of our oil from countries outside the MidEast. In 2005, we import the most oil from Canada, then Mexico, then Saudi Arabia, then Nigeria, then Venezuela, then Angola, then Iraq (which is just ahead of Columbia). (The source will be linked at the bottom of this reply, but two seconds on google will confirm this.) This war was not about oil; it was about geopolitical stability. Oil factors into the equation, but with much, much less weight than most people imagine.
I couldn't care less what Cheney said 13 years ago. Obviously, circumstances changed quite a bit in between 1994 and 2003. Who would've been in favor of invading Afghanistan in 1994? Nobody. Who opposed it in 2001? Nearly nobody. It's perfectly reasonable to adjust your viewpoints when situations change. Obviously, that's what Cheney did.
link to the source showing the countries from which America imports oil:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/popup?id=1566549
Interesting post though I think it was Abdul Rahman Yasin who was in Saddam's Iraq, not Yousef.
You are right about al Qaeda's prewar presence in Iraq as well and it wasn't just the north. I write on this topic at www.regimeofterror.com if you are interested.
Kindred, you use some very slippery arguments. I was talking about Cheney's reasoning for not entering Bagdad in 1991. Bringing up Afghanistan in reference to 1994 is a "straw man" (google it). It's also silly, since we supported Afhan. through the 80's and helped strengthen bin Laden's hand there. Of course nearly everyone supported invading Afghan. in 2001. But "nearly nobody" (except Cheney et. al.) favored invading Iraq for obvious reasons too shop-worn to go into.
Your reasoning vis-a-vis oil is circular. Because we don't pressently (in the midst of a brutal civil war) get more oil from Iraq doesn't mean we don't plan to. The "oil law"--the key benchmark Bush and Congress are demanding Iraq meet was drafted in secret (yes I know that is just a coincidence) because it gives foreign companies control over exploration and development in one of world's LARGEST oil reserves (maybe this all has to do with future energy needs, you think?). As has been reported, these "production-sharing" contracts are so disadvantageous to the host country that they have been rejected by most oil-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela among other "friends" of ours. It's really not that hard to add 2+2.
Mark -
I stand corrected. It was Yasin, not Yousef, who was in Iraq. Your site is very well done; a great resource. i'm glad you pointed it out to me.
Anon -
I wasn't setting up a straw man. My argument was that circumstances were much different in 2003 than they were in 1994. I think that the case of Afghanistan is a fine example of that fact. Cheney's reasoning in 1994 was that it wasn't worth it to depose Saddam in 1991. He thought that we could contain him with sanctions and the no-fly zone. Cheney's reasoning in 2003 was that sanctions hadn't worked, that Saddam was in violation of U.N. resolutions regarding weapons, and that he posed a threat to the U.S. and our allies. therefore, Cheney reasoned, it was worth it to depose Saddam in 2003. Yeah, he probably knew things would be bad. Yeah, he wasn't upfront with the American people about what the true costs of the occupation would be. But his calculus changed after 9/11: he now thought it was worth it.
There's no real point in discussing oil. I see no evidence to believe that oil was the motivating factor in the decision to invade. Working to remove Saddam was an official American foreign policy since the Clinton administration. This policy gained steam after 9/11 for all the reasons I've mentioned. To say that it's about oil is the mother of all straw men. I say that we haven't taken any Iraqi oil yet. You say that that doesn't preclude us from taking some in the future. Well, true, it doesn't. But a "future maybe" isn't any kind of positive argument. You're prior is that seizing oil was a primary motivation for the war, and you're response to my rebuttal is: "well, we still might!" That's true, but economic costs of the war are far greater than the benefits we could ever possibly have gotten from Iraqi oil. That, and we don't need Iraqi oil. China needs it much more than we do, and they'll get much more of it than we will.
Re the "oil law": the reason why foreign companies will be used to find and pump the oil is because... there are no Iraqi oil companies! Under the Saddam regime, there was one, state-owned, oil company, and it was in a state of complete disrepair. Since state-owned industries were disbanded, there isn't yet a mechanism for Iraqi-owned companies to profit from oil. The only way for Iraqis to see any profits from their oil fields in the short term is to let foreign companies come in and develop the industry.
KW I have some advice for you: If you want to be taken seriously with regard to Iraq don't start any discussion with "There's no real point in discussing oil." That's like saying there's no point in discussing venality in relation to Bush/Cheney. It is not credible. You see no evidence of it because you're not looking for any evidence of it. Was it one of the motivating factors? Not a factor at all? On the other hand it's also probably best not to say as you did earlier that the reason for the invasion was "Geopolitical Stability"--it would be hard to find a more vague, generic, boiler-plate sounding non-reason to pre-emptively invade another country.
China will get more Iraqi oil than we will? How? Aren't we the ones with 250,000 men under arms there (US Army and private contractors)?
"Working to remove Saddam was an official American foreign policy since the Clinton administration." True, but working to gain greater and greater access to Iraqi oil was official policy since the Reagan administration. The effort back then was spearheaded by James Baker, which is why the Iraq Study Group Report chaired by James Baker reminds us of the importance of Iraqi oil on the FIRST page of the report proper (under "I: Assessment") and later on recommends opening up the oil industry to privatization. Link below:
http://www.bakerinstitute.org/Pubs/ iraqstudygroup_findings.pdf
Of course there were already plans underway to oust Saddam BEFORE 9/11--when you say Cheney underwent his conversion. The question wasn't "if" but "how and when." There is plenty of evidence that oil was the motivating factor in the invasion but very little that "geopolitical stability" was.
well, what i really meant to say was "there's no point in discussing oil *with you*" since you are clearly arguing from your priors. I never said that the oil industry isn't of vital interest to Iraq. Of course it is, but that doesn't mean that we invaded Iraq in order to steal their oil. Those are two very different things. As I've mentioned, we simply don't need their oil enough to invade them. (China does need the oil, desperately, which is why they're going to end up with most of it, regardless of how many troops we have in Iraq.)
In any case, I did go on to discuss the issue of oil, and you didn't bother addressing a single one of my points.
And when I say that there is "no evidence" to support that the U.S. invaded Iraq to snatch their oil, a proper response isn't "well, that's only because you aren't looking for it." A proper response would be to point me to some of that evidence. Since you didn't bother doing that, I'm forced to continue to maintain that the U.S. did not invade Iraq to take their oil, as you said it was.
Also, it is unfair to say that my argument is nothing more than a "vague, generic, boiler-plate sounding non-reason to pre-emptively invade another country". Obviously, this is a false characterization, since my original post was dedicated to discussing 16 different points, and I've spent a fair bit of time responding to each of your criticisms.
Also: working to gain greater access to Iraqi oil was not official U.S. policy since the Reagan admin. Remember the sanctions from 1991-2003? It's kind of hard to gain greater access to oil when you are preventing any and all access to oil. If you were speaking in truth, we never would have stopped in 1991; we would've overthrown Saddam then, and taken Iraq's oil reserves for ourselves. But we didn't do that then, and we haven't done it since then. Hence, my contention that the war is not about oil, and never was.
by the way, Anon., it's hard for me to take seriously a lecture on "how to be taken seriously" from an anonymous berater whose third word to me was "f*#k". stick to the points of debate, and refrain from insults.
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