Powerline adopts VFR-type approach to Iraq

Developing a line of analysis he began a couple of weeks ago, Paul, the most thoughtful of the three contributors at the pro-Bush weblog Powerline, has abandoned the Bush policy and adopted an Iraq policy similar to that which VFR has promoted for several years: Forget about the utopian goals of democratizing and transforming Iraq and focus on those things that are essential to our national security, namely to prevent Iraq or parts of it from becoming a base for anti-U.S. terrorists, to avoid a humiliating, Mogadishu-type withdrawal which would embolden our enemies, and also to prevent southern Iraq from being taken over by Iran.

He writes:

What would this mean in practice? It would mean that we substantially reduce our efforts to police Iraq and focus instead on military missions designed to kill anti-American terrorists and drive them out of territory they are attempting to hold. A friend who served in Iraq (Ramadi and Baghdad) during 2005-06 assures me that there is a clear distinction between these two types of missions. He adds that the second kind—real targeted military operations—tend to be (a) more effective and (b) less deadly for Americans than policing. According to my friend, American losses tend to occur not when we’re striking decisively at the enemy but when we’re rolling predictably down the streets of Baghdad or Ramadi on patrol duty.

On that last point in particular: Well, no kidding! He needed an Iraq veteran to tell him what any reader of the news can readily discern? What Paul is saying was as obvious three years ago as it is now. How many times have I said that most of our men who were being killed and maimed were not involved in meaningful actions to defeat the enemy, but were just riding along Iraqi highways, passive targets for rocket-propelled grenade attacks? How many times have I said that it would be vastly cheaper to have a three-week invasion once every few years to topple an unacceptable regime than to occupy and manage a Muslim country in perpetuity? But Paul couldn’t see—or at least couldn’t say—these obvious things, because he was a committed defender of the Bush/neocon fantasy extravaganza. Only now that Bush himself, by firing Rumsfeld, is moving away from his own previous policy, does Paul feel free to speak truthfully about Iraq. He should have done it three years ago. How many intelligent men have turned off their brains and become carriers of water for Bush’s sake?

Powerline has a follow-up—a letter from an unnamed Republican saying, inter alia:

We should never have been hearing about “Mission Accomplished” or the insurgency being in its “last throes.” It is true that these words were taken out of context and used in a misleading way against the President. But this was absolutely predictable, and the anti-war attacks based on them had SOME basis in truth. The Administration has been too eager to advertise successful mid-point achievements as “victory” [italics added] and too reluctant to warn of the costs that a real long term victory will entail.

On the italicized comment, that is something that to my memory has not been previously said at Powerline. But, as with the other points discussed herein, it has been true all along. It didn’t just become true yesterday.

—end of initial entry—

Larry G. writes:

You write:

“How many times have I said that it would be vastly cheaper to have a three-week invasion once every few years to topple an unacceptable regime than to occupy and manage a Muslim country in perpetuity? But Paul couldn’t see-or at least couldn’t say-these obvious things, because he was a committed defender of the Bush/neocon fantasy extravaganza.”

I think that’s a bit unfair to Paul. We may well be doomed to perpetually intervene militarily in Muslim countries every few years to clean out the terrorists, just as we are doomed to intervene in Haiti every few years to restore order, simply because the natives are constitutionally incapable of forming decent societies that do not threaten us. But don’t you wish there was a better solution? In retrospect, the idea of democratizing Muslim countries was a naive hope born of ignorance of history and reality, but it seems natural to me to want to find a better solution to the problem than the one we faced. And I don’t think Bush intended to occupy the country in perpetuity. I remember the talk at the time before the war being that Iraq was a largely secular, relatively modern society, supposedly unlike the other Muslim countries in the region, and if we only freed them from Saddam they would rapidly reorganize into a democracy under our guidance. Obviously this idea was wrong, but was it an idea cooked up by Bush and the neocons? I think rather it was more the conventional view at the time.

LA replies:

Look, I tried to be fair on this issue. Several times at VFR in ‘02 and ‘03 and ‘04 and maybe even ‘05, I would lay out the three or four strategic options for which I would like to hear reasonable arguments. One of those options was “democratize and modernize the Muslim world.” So, while I was not a supporter of democratization, I was open to the possibility that democratization could be the way to fix the mideast. My main goal, as yours, was to find some way that the Muslim world would not threaten us. As I said over and over, I was open to ANY approach that would work.

But the passage of events, plus learning more and more about Islam, made the impossibility of democratization (or at best the fact that democratization would lead to jihadization) apparent to any thinking person. Not to the neocons. No siree bob. Their support for the Bush democratization policy (and for the notion of a “universal desire for freedom in every human heart” that underlay the Bush policy) remained intact, solid against any evidence to the contrary. So they are responsible for adhering to this view long after it had ceased to be plausible.

You write:

“I remember the talk at the time before the war being that Iraq was a largely secular, relatively modern society, supposedly unlike the other Muslim countries in the region, and if we only freed them from Saddam they would rapidly reorganize into a democracy under our guidance. Obviously this idea was wrong, but was it an idea cooked up by Bush and the neocons? I think rather it was more the conventional view at the time.”

I would say that that view was generated by those who favored democratization, i.e., the neocons. The great, the distinguished, the illustrious Bernard Lewis was key in this. He thought his secular Turkish friends were typical of the whole Muslim world, that there was this vast secular Muslim middle class longing for America to take them over the help them democratize. And with his brilliance he persuaded the adminsitration this was true. If you can get the transcript (or better the tape itself) of Lewis’s remarkable appearance on Charlie Rose in 2003 it’s worth seeing. I saw that show. I was bowled over by Lewis’s brilliance. So was Rose. (So imagine the effect he had on Bush & Co.) In fact, Lewis didn’t know what he was talking about. A person can be very brilliant and still be deluded.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 10, 2006 10:51 AM | Send