The Whole Thing

...faellt mir nichts ein.

Regarding Saddam, now in custody, nothing occurs to me at all - at least nothing that won't already have been said or posted or shouted - or messaged from the barrel of an AK-47 aimed into the air. I'm happy to let the Iraqis, the CPA, the US military, President Bush, the anchors, the correspondents, the experts, and whoever else have the floor while I sit back and soak up the details that emerge about this long-awaited event.

A Moving Announcement

Norman Geras's blog manages to be warmly congenial when not absolutely essential. Having recently joined the vast Typepad conspiracy, Norm is moving normblog to a new address.

While you're updating your links, consider taking another look through normblog's archives. There may have been no more eloquent and thoughtful statement of the moral case for action against Saddam Hussein, and against the anti-war movement's presumptions, than Norm's essay "The War in Iraq": If you have an intelligent Leftist or Left-leaning friend who cannot understand why you would not join the peace marchers or attend your local Howard Dean "meet-up," consider any means necessary to force him or her to read and absorb Norm's arguments.

Ahlan wa Sahlan to Visitors from Hammorabi!

When I noticed on my stats page that I was getting a rush of visitors from Sam's Hammorabi blog, I at first wondered why a single comment I left under one of his posts might have attracted so much attention. I attributed the new traffic to the popularity of the Iraqi bloggers, whom many of us consider the most welcome new additions to the blogosphere since the blogosphere was born, but last night, when I returned to Hammorabi, I was surprised and a little disbelieving when I saw my own blog enrolled near the top of the page. I immediately clicked on the link, just to be sure that there wasn't some other "The Whole Thing" out there that Sam had picked up.

It's hard for us who supported the liberation of Iraq not to see the emergence of these vital new voices as unambiguous proof that we were on the right side: If bloggers like Sam, Omar, Alaa, and Zeyad represented only 1% of the Iraqi population - indeed, if they were the only Iraqis exulting in their new freedoms - it would arguably be moral justification for America's best efforts on their behalf, especially in light of the moral debt that America and its allies owe Iraq after decades of compromises with Saddam, countless billions of petrodollars to his regime, more than a decade of economic sanctions that hurt average Iraqis before they came close to touching the supposed targets, and multiple betrayals of Iraqis who fought Saddam at least partly at our urging. I don't mean to suggest that any nation can base its policies on the fates of a handful of individuals - that would obviously be naive - but I strongly believe that these men stand for a better future, not just for Iraq but for all of us. I'm sure that, after getting to know Sam and his colleagues, most Americans would, like me, find the idea of abandoning them unbearable even to contemplate.

For these reasons and others, I have to say that I feel honored to have my blog listed so prominently at Hammorabi. (Even if it's some kind of mistake, then I still thank Sam for the new traffic accidentally sent my way!) For those of you who came here hoping to find another unique and invigorating Iraqi voice, and are perhaps disappointed, I hope you will look around a little anyway, get something out of whatever you find, and feel free to leave any comments, questions, or suggestions.

Salaam, Shalom, and Seeyalater

Better to Blog Nothing Than Not Blog At All

Sorry I haven't had more to say here lately: I've been doing a lot of reading, struggling with a market that wants to sell off a bit but keeps on running up against good news (I trade index futures, mainly the S&P 500 "e-mini"), and leaving a lot of comments on other people's blogs - including a couple that I haven't even added to my blogroll yet - here, for instance, reacting to criticisms of Bush's "forward strategy" speech at Daniel Drezner's blog, and responding on other issues at Michael Totten's. I've also been hanging at Roger Simon's place a lot (see the roll). The good thing about "militant liberal" blogs (using Oliver Kamm's designation) is that a neoconical guy like me can run into some productive opposition from the not-yet-persuaded as well as the unpersuadable. It wasn't really so long ago that I was in the same position as Roger, Michael, and Daniel - struggling to find a reason to support Democrats.

Two Iraqi blogs I've been enjoying immensely - mainly because the Iraqi bloggers are so heartbreakingly sympathetic - are Healing Iraq and The Messopotamian. Also some good discussion, as well as opportunity for Americans to express their support, in the comments sections there.

I've been thinking about a new piece on the apparent hopelessness of the Democratic Party's position, perhaps beginning with Nietzsche's famous saying sometimes translated as "Man would rather will nothing, than not will at all." I've always associated this statement - which I believe is as much about the desperation of any individual facing helplessness and impotence as it is about the contradictions inherent in asceticism - with Pascal's statement: "The heart has reasons that reason hardly knows." Either would be an appropriate motto for Democratic partisans in the current period - though if my point isn't clear to you, you may have to wait a while for me to explain. There's been so much discussion of the Democrats and their problems lately, and the subject inevitably touches on the plight of the European left and the radical left as well as on critical policy questions: I'm still looking for the right piece of the story to chew on.

Talk to you soon...

Not In Ourselves, But In Our Polls

In a post entitled AMERICAN ATTITUDES? INCOHERENT,
Professor Dauber over at Ranting Profs takes a rant on Fox News' latest opinion polling on Iraq. She congratulates Fox for asking some new questions, but wonders whether the responses make any sense.

Whatever one thinks about polls and polling methods in general, there are few subjects, it seems to me, more vulnerable to bad polling than questions dealing with attitudes towards war casualties. The question that's been asked since at least the end of major combat in Iraq has been whether whatever current casualty rates among American soldiers are "acceptable." To answer the question affirmatively requires respondents to associate themselves with a perspective that, if voiced publically by a politician or pundit, would result in bitter criticism along familiar "well, that's certainly easy for you to say" lines. Mark Shields would be all over President Bush if the latter was caught saying anything even suggesting a blithe "acceptance" of casualty rates. On the other hand, to reply in the negative seems to suggest opposition to current policy: Saying that the casualty rates are "unacceptable" would seem to imply either that one feels the troops are being badly led and deployed, or that they should never have been deployed in the first place. The respondents' three choices - "acceptable," "unacceptable," "don't know/no opinion/not sure" - come down to confessing to Eichmann-like inhmanity, peace activist naivete, or stupid passivity toward the most pressing issue of the moment.

I suspect that many respondents answer the question they guess is really being asked, but that different respondents guess differently, and that, in this specific instance, a human reluctance to call any casualty "acceptable" skews results toward the negative. If the question is asked alongside other questions - regarding overall support for the war, longer-term expectations, etc. - then the respondent is also given a chance to "split the ballot," using one answer to provide his or her main response, and the other, less encompassing question to express whatever reservations. The overall statement is not unreasonable at all: "Every casualty is one casualty too many, but we must stay the course."

The Fox questions seem to offer a similar split ballot opportunity, and it may therefore not be surprising that they appear to give contradictory results. Prof. Dauber wonders how it's possible for majorities to believe both that "supporting the troops" means "bringing them home," but that their mission is "part of the war on terror":

[T]he results are -- well, essentially incoherent. A majority of Americans (but just barely) agree with the Bush administration's argument that conceptually the war in Iraq is a part of the overall War on Terror. A majority believe that "support the troops" means -- bring them home. This is staggering. It means the leftist rhetoric that essentially portrays the soldier, the armed US combat soldier, the strongest, most competent, best trained, best equipped, most professional soldier in the history of the world, as an infantilized victim, needing us to protect them, by fighting for them in the political arena where they are presumably helpless, so we can bring them "home" -- in other words, protect them by returning them from danger to saftey is persuasive to a majority of the Americans those soldiers protect. It is a rhetoric that portrays us as the only ones who can protect them since they cannot maneuver in the political realm. Yet a sizeable majority also believes that the right thing to do is to see things through in Iraq, which is obviously only possible if the soldiers stay in danger.

Though Prof. Dauber might be right about how leftist rhetoric depicts soldiers as victims, I believe she may be overinterpreting the apparent contradictions in the poll results. If you add the three responses together, they make for an entirely reasonable statement: "I'd sure like to see those boys and girls home and safe as soon as possible, but first they've got an important job to finish." Saying they've got an important job to finish doesn't mean that won't ever come home - or won't come home soon enough, all things considered.

Read this way, what's surprising is that as large a number of people answer in favor of acceptability of casualties in the usual question and against bringing the soldiers home as soon as possible in the other question. As a strong supporter of the war, I could still honestly join the majorities for "unacceptability" and "bring 'em home," though I would not do so - not because I consider casualties easy to accept or because I wish to see our soldiers in Iraq a second longer than necessary, but because I'm aware that the first set of answers would be interpreted as "anti-war."

Asking the Wrong Question

In a post entitled "Teaching the wrong lesson," Deacon at Power Line reviews another "let's make it simple" piece on the Iraq war, this one by Jonah Goldberg at the National Review OnLine. Though both Goldberg and Deacon recognize that, as Goldberg puts it, "there were lots of good reasons to topple Saddam," each associates himself most strongly with a single simple idea - that the U.S. needed to make an "example" of some country in addition to Afghanistan.

Goldberg enunciates a series of variations on the idea of the new sheriff/new convict/new kid smacking down the worst bad guy/biggest meanest cat/worst bully in order to send a message. For further authority he cites a typically loose formulation from Tom Friedman of the New York Times:

The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world...Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world.

Notice how Friedman's one "real reason" quickly turns into three reasons - "could," "deserved," "right in the heart of that world." Suddenly, the one simple idea turns into the outlines of a complex strategy. It's this kind of messy self-contradiction that has led some observers to accuse Friedman of disingenuousness.

Deacon puts his own position somewhat differently, and more cleanly:

One of the main reasons I advocated going to war was to send a message to other Middle Eastern regimes. The message was something like this: "if you even dabble in terrorism or weapons of mass destruction, we will come after you, and we will do so regardless of what the EU and the U.N. have to say."

To Deacon's credit, he is able to take this line of reasoning another step, and at least face the possibility that he was wrong:

But how does this rationale look now? While perhaps sound in theory, it doesn't seem to have worked out in practice. The unexpected failure to find WMD, coupled with exaggerated but real post-war difficulties, have caused enough erosion of public domestic support for our efforts to "unteach" the lessons of our victory. That is, Middle Eastern regimes now have little reason to believe that we will be coming after them any time soon, at least in the absence of the approval and participation of the EU and the U.N.

As for the "lessons of our victory," these were undoubtedly an aspect of the U.S. interest, though in foreign policy discussion they are usually offered in the language of "credibility" rather than, say, Goldberg's image of "smacking the stuffing" out of a bully. On this score, I'm not so sure the message hasn't been delivered, even if there's little credible threat of follow-on invasions: There never was any likelihood that an Iraqi expedition would be succeeded by a march west, south, or east. The message was one of U.S. committment. A collapse of will could return the message to sender, but that's another issue.

If things are "simple" in Iraq, then they are simple in a different, more general way. There is one truly simple explanation available, but it doesn't tell us much in itself: The U.S. invaded Iraq because U.S. leaders perceived that doing so would be in the U.S. interest. That's the problem with the "let's make it simple" exercise: If your simplism is narrow enough to be meaningful, then you put yourself in danger of simple contradiction. If your simplism is general enough to avoid this danger, then it probably won't be very meaningful.

More important, the key question is almost never Deacon's "how does this rationale look now?" "Now" is trivial. Focusing on "now" leaves you open to one trap after another - overwrought concerns over the post-war state of the military, the belief that a failure to locate battlefield deployable WMDs would exhaust the WMD issue, failure to consider the potential costs of whatever real alternatives to the actions taken, and so on. Even settling the narrowest questions will take a bit more time than has passed at this point - a few more months, or years, or decades.

New Visitors

Welcome to anyone who's come by via links from Normblog and Natalie Solent. I hope that you will find material here of interest, will feel free to leave comments or send criticisms, and will check back again sometime.

I intend to to expand further on the themes in the post that Norm linked, taking into account both Norm's thoughts as well as recent speculation about the state of the left at The Belmont Club and elsewhere.

Natalie linked TWT while responding to a question I posed to her regarding science fiction. I haven't yet gotten to that subject here, but may soon. In the meantime, here's a list that I put together for Amazon of some of my favorite recent SF novels.

Left At A Loss

Norman Geras, one of the most articulate pro-war leftists in the blogosphere (among other spheres) wrote recently of exchanges with anti-war leftists whose responses to him frequently have been crass and insulting, but have rarely engaged his views directly. The whole thing (TWT, hereinafter) seems to have left him somewhat at a loss, for clearly, from any rationally identifiable "left" point of view, removing the Baathist regime has to be a good thing in itself, and could well have been seized by internationalists as their own cause.

Actually, the motivations and underlying position of his comrades may be quite simple, if rarely stated explicitly.

It appears to me that the implicit, usually unstated difference between Geras and his comrades is that they hold their "anti-imperialist" project, which they conceive to be crucially an anti-American project, to be of greater importance than the fate of the Iraqi people. Geras would appear, on the other hand, either not to share their commitments or definitions regarding said project, or not to consider opposing US war policy to be of high relevance to it.

If the issues are not often described in this way, it may be because most anti-war leftists remain unwilling to admit - at least in public discourse, perhaps even to themselves - that they hold the fates of almost any number of Iraqi or other victims to be secondary in importance, at best. Many seem to have convinced themselves that their intellectual or emotional opposition to Saddam, or the occasional wishful fantasies of some alternative to war for having removed his regime, somehow means they have not acted as his objective allies, and the emotionalism of their reactions to the charge tends to support the idea that mechanisms of denial and displacement are at work. Some seem to be acting mainly out of parochial hostility to the parties in power in Washington and London. Some lack the maturity or ability to consider larger contexts, strategic concerns, or matters of any complexity at all. Many of the rest, representing the committed and politically self-conscious left, avoid stating their positions clearly, mainly because doing so would put their political alliances and public profiles at risk.

Though I am no longer a Marxist socialist, haven't been in years, and don't even consider myself on the left anymore, I very much appreciate the views of pro-war leftists such as Geras and Hitchens. I remain curious, however: If they could be persuaded that weakening the US was critical to bringing about socialism or some other great advance for their cause (revolution, if they are revolutionaries), and that, specifically, frustrating US policy in Iraq might hasten the adoption of socialism worldwide by a generation at least, would they then find themselves able to set aside the plight of the Iraqis and whatever immediate harms and uncertainties a US failure would imply?

My guess is that many of Geras' opponents within the left have accepted some calculus along these lines, and clearly have answered affirmatively. In short, Iraq is and was simply a pretext and a side-issue for them. It appears that, in their view, defeating America/ capitalism/ globalization/ militarism/ whatever was and remains more important than deposing some individual despot could be under almost any circumstances. Among other things, this approach is at least as "strategic" as any advanced by American neoconservatives, and, understood as such, would at least be rationally debatable.