From Unclear To Ridiculous
Posted on March 1st, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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Since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, Mr. Bush has left us confused about what the war really is and what it will take to win it. Mr. McCain can undo the confusion, make clear what our goals must be and draw the American people to him. The fight is to protect America and Americans will not hide from that. ~Jed Babbin
As misguided and unrealistic as they are, at least Mr. Bush’s stated goals have some small connection to reality. That is, establishing a self-sustaining, “democratic” Iraqi government capable of defending itself may be a fool’s errand, but the effort does address the reality of the Iraqi government’s impotence and its dependence on our forces. The current policy is the slapdash, make-shift response to the utterly foreseeable (and foreseen) chaos that was going to follow the invasion, but it does at least concern a problem that exists in the real world.
What Mr. Babbin proposes that McCain say is that perpetuating the war in Iraq has something to do with defending America. But even the initial invasion had nothing in reality to do with defending America, since Iraq was no significant threat to our country and would not have been one even if the claims about its weapons programs had been correct. The two arguments against withdrawal are the humanitarian/guilt argument and a regional stability argument, and neither of these is convincing to a majority of the public. Neither is a very compelling reason, since the possibility of post-withdrawal civil strife and mass bloodletting on the one hand and the possibility of a withdrawal generating regional upheaval will never entirely disappear, which means that either argument implies a mission of indefinite duration on a “just in case” basis.
Rhetoric that speaks of an “existential threat” is simply not credible, and anyone who deploys such an over-the-top argument will rapidly lose credibility with everyone outside an intense core of true believers. There is a security threat from jihadists, but even that is not “existential.” “America’s existence” is not at stake in Iraq, and it is rather amazing that people continue to repeat such things at this late date.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
I don’t think we’d use a “just in case” risk standard to judge whether to prolong a military deployment of this size and type. If we get the country through a next set of elections and the stabilization of relations with its neighbors, we will have met the responsibilities we incurred on invasion. If afterward it reverts to failed state status, it will become a genuine international responsibility, one we help meet but for which we are exclusively responsible.
I think you raise an excellent point re characterizing threats and deciding on responses to them. Had the original strategy been successful in Iraq, we might have gotten by without a discussion of these. We clearly lost the ability to do this effectively in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
Seriously. Could Babbin’s remark be /any less/ “unclear” w/r/t the questions of “what the war really is and [in particular!] what it will take to win it”? How exactly does one “succeed” in protecting America? How can there possibly be an /end/ to that process? Ugghhh …
The overuse of “existential threats” not only leads us to deplete our limited resources, but also distracts us from the TRUE existential threat: the giant, mutated zombie of Jean-Paul Sartre, against which we are woefully undefended.