Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy recently put some questions to the "hawkish side of the blogosphere" regarding Iraq. Although the comment period has ended, I figured I'd throw up my responses to his questions.
First, assuming that you were in favor of the invasion of Iraq at the time of the invasion, do you believe today that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea? Why/why not?
It's irrelevant what I think about the "good idea" of invading Iraq. Our forces are there, and our national honor has been committed, for better or for worse. The only acceptable scenario is to see this through to completion. That completion will, hopefully, entail the creation of a quasi-democratic Iraq that will stop a) being a Middle Eastern nuisance and b) stop acting like the kid who's hiding girlie mags under his mattress when UN/IAEA weapons inspectors show up.
I wasn't, however, impressed of the immediate urgency in invading Iraq. The months-long run-up to war signaled to me that there wasn't any real importance to doing this. The war, as sold, was about weapons of mass destruction. Instead of falling in with 82nd or 101st Airborne upon various suspect sites in a lightning attack, we gave the Baathist regime months to prepare for any such operation. And no, I'm not surprised that we haven't found anything.
Second, what reaction do you have to the not-very-upbeat news coming of Iraq these days, such as the stories I link to above?
Frankly put, I don't care. The casualties suffered in this entire campaign have been insignificant, and I'm unconcerned about our poll numbers amongst Iraqis. So long as there will be no "Islamic Republic of Iraq", I'm not too concerned about the future of the country. Furthermore, to clean up a mess, you have to make a separate mess, and thus the reports out of Iraq are not unexpected. Are they welcome? Not particularly, but I'd rather hear the whole picture rather than carefully-staged photo ops with smiling Iraqi children who just love the Army guy that they're standing around.
I do not, however, think that we are getting the full story in Iraq. On the one hand, major media outlets seem bent on describing each major attack as something just short of the 1968 Tet Offensive. On the other hand, I hear a lot about blogs posting rosy letters from soldiers and the distinct theme of "this isn't getting out but it's golden over here". To steal words from that German weasel Joschka Fischer, "Excuse me. I am not convinced."
Inasmuch as obtaining an accurate and complete picture of what is going on in Iraq is not something I'm probably able to do---oh, to have a copy of CIA intelligence estimates, NSA intercepts, and DOD information---I generally find myself actively not listening about the latest report of losses and the oh-so-obvious conclusion that it's a "quagmire". I also tune out rosy reports of how great the country is doing and so forth, and just expect good hard-working Americans, British and Iraqis (and the rest of Senator Kerry's grand diversionary coalition of the bribed and the bought...) to muddle through and make something better from the current mess in Mesopotamia.
Third, what specific criteria do you recommend that we should use over the coming months and years to measure whether the Iraq invasion has been a success?
Let me say this about that: I don't expect a carbon copy of the American process to be installed in Iraq. They're operating in a completely different civilizational, cultural and historical environment; put simply, they are not us so it is folly to expect them to be like us. I am also, to say the least, quite skeptical of Middle Eastern democratization.
The grand scheme of things metric that I'm going to use over time is whether we have to go back and do this again in the next 10-15 years. What I'm primarily looking for in terms of Iraqi development is, at best, the development of another Turkey. That is, my understanding of what Turkey is, i.e. a more-or-less democratic republic where the fanatics in the mosques are kept there by force of arms. That, and the two things I outlined earlier about no longer being a Middle Eastern nuisance and not acting like the kid with the mags under the bed.
Another metric I thought of has already been fulfilled in two places. Ostensibly, the war focused on stopping Saddam Hussein's production of/efforts towards atomic, chemical, or biological weapons, a non-proliferative war if you will. Well, we do know that Saddam Hussein'll never reach for nuclear weapons again, and perhaps the Colonel in Libya has sworn off his CBR program as well. If we can put the brakes on a couple of proliferation programs in the region, then perhaps we've already done enough good, and any success in Iraq will be sauce for the goose, Mr. Saavik.
I'm distinctly not going to establish any metrics that have anything to do with Islamist terror. The swamp-draining theory may or may nto work when you've got a potential recruit pool of one billion men, women and children. The reality is that we now live in an age of direct attempts against the several States---no, I'm not going to use that lame term of 'Homeland'---and will be so until radical Islamists either succeed in their jihad or they are snuffed out through a variety of measures.
In any event, my ultimate hope is that our troops are able to return safely, swiftly, and victoriously. I want this whole war thing to be over, dagnabbit.
Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Cold Spring Shops.
Posted by Country Pundit at October 8, 2004 08:25 AM