Questions about Obama’s judgment

David C. noted that he had “questions about Obama’s judgment.”

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Two thunderous blasts set off by suicide bombers ripped through a crowded shopping street in the town of Balad Ruz in Diyala Province on Thursday, killing at least 35 people and wounding at least 62 others, many of them seriously. An American soldier secured an area of Baghdad on Thursday after a car bombing killed a soldier and nine Iraqis. An American patrol seemed to be the target. The first bomb was aimed at a wedding caravan that was driving through the neighborhood, said a security official in Balad Ruz, known for its restaurants and stores. The second bomb went off after the police and medical teams arrived.

Most of us accepted uncritically Bush’s statements about WMDs and how easy it would be, etc, etc.

Some had the “judgment” not to fall for it.

No question that it is going to be difficult to extract ourselves from Iraq. I’d rather have someone in charge who had the “judgment” to make the call correctly at the beginning.

Comments

  1. Pigilito wrote:

    I don’t recall Obama voting “no” based on his conviction that there were no WMDs in Iraq.

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 12:41 pm

  2. Stephen wrote:

    He wasn’t in the Senate at the time.

    And, without claiming to have better intel than the Pres offered, he opposed the war for remarkably prescient reasons.

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 1:01 pm

  3. John the Marine wrote:

    I wasn’t in the Senate either but is it possible, considering Obama’s very Liberal idealogy, he would have opposed any conflict no matter what and therefore just happen to luck into being on the right side of this one? (Not to mention the fact that he had the extra luck of this conflict being horribly mismanaged by W & Rummy)

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 1:29 pm

  4. David C. wrote:

    Most of us accepted uncritically Bush’s statements about WMDs and how easy it would be, etc, etc.

    Most of us thought Iraq had WMDs because they had them before, and because most major intelligence services thought they still did, including our own — not because Bush said so. And anyone that thought it would be easy, given that our goals included building a new rebuilt democratic state in Iraq, wasn’t paying attention.

    Some had the “judgment” not to fall for it.

    No, some opposed it despite all the evidence at the time showing that it might be necessary. That indicates bad judgment, not good.

    I’d rather have someone in charge who had the “judgment” to make the call correctly at the beginning.

    Then you should be supporting McCain or Hillary. They looked at the situation with Iraq based on the evidence that was then available, and made the decision that in the post-9/11 world, the festering Saddam situation had to be dealt with. That showed the judgment necessary to make a tough decision in order to protect the U.S.

    is it possible, considering Obama’s very Liberal idealogy, he would have opposed any conflict no matter what

    Exactly. Unless it had been a war where there was no indication that any actual U.S. interests were involved. Liberals sometimes support those.

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 1:43 pm

  5. Grim wrote:

    As I recall Obama’s objection, it was that he didn’t want to give “carte blanche” to the White House. That’s not quite the same thing as saying, “This will be a tremendously difficult war, and I feel the administration’s plan is flawed in X-Z ways.” That’s more, “I don’t trust the Presdient to perform his duties as commander in chief.”

    In any event, this focus on occasional bombs is exactly the kind of bad judgment that ought to be called into question. Guerrilla campaigns foster an illusion of power by occasional strikes. They leave people observing from afar with the impression that the guerrilla controls everything that the government isn’t sitting right on top of right now.

    In fact, the most important news from Iraq in 2008 was the Arba’een pilgrimage. Six million people walked across Iraq, starting from Baghdad and points north, or al Kut in Wasit and points east; to Iskandariyah, in the Sunni triangle; and then down to Najaf and Karbala; and then back home. One bombing attack against all those pilgrims was all AQIZ could manage. The ISF did all the protective work; we just provided them with surveillence from the air.

    Which is to say, a random bombing is all the enemy can do. Increase the number of easy targets, and they can still only pull of one here and there. Unlike in 2006, when Iraq was suffering severe internal tensions, the broad space is clean — the violence you see in the press is now the illusion of power, not actual power.

    I spoke with the Wasit ePRT economics guy the other day, and I asked him what impact the dangerous roads — IEDs and all that — were having on native Iraqi trade in Wasit. He said that shipments were traveling without difficulty. Unlike in Africa, where armed caravans are necessary for basic trade, what we have now in Iraq is a case where yes, US military and ISF come under attack — but the bulk of society is going about its business normally. IEDs don’t litter the road. Commerce is flowing.

    Tractors built in the Iskandariyah factory complex are being sold to farmers in al Kut, using micro-loans to buy them, so that Iraqi agriculture in the fertile Tigris river valley is being reborn. When I got to Iraq, our missions were all combat related. When I left, a very great number of them were about building chicken farms or fish hatcheries.

    That’s not the mark of unrecoverable chaos. It’s the mark of a system that has improved tremendously since 2006 and early 2007. Iraq’s economy is taking off, her army is finally able to take ground from the militias, the Sunnis have found the confidence to rejoin the government, and the provinical elections are on for October. The devolution of power and money to the less-politically-divided provinces will start to solve a large number of problems that have been intractable at the central-government level.

    We’re not going to extract ourselves from Iraq. We’re going to finish what we started in Iraq. There is increasing peace, increasing prosperity, and increasing capacity. There are those who want to break that, and throw Iraq’s people back into chaos, for selfish goals of their own: but unless we decide to let them, it will not happen.

    You say you made up your mind who to vote for a long time ago. OK. But just remember, you don’t have to actually vote until November. See what the Iraqi elections look like to you, and then see whether you really want to leave them to the wolves. We’ve come a long way, invested a lot, and there is every reason to hope that they may finally see an end to the terror and the tyranny that has dominated their lives for so long.

    But not if we walk away before it is finished.

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 2:55 pm

  6. Stephen wrote:

    The war has been an unmitigated fiasco, but, IYHO, those who opposed it showed poor judgment. That’s really ‘thru the looking glass kind of thinking.’

    You’ve claimed a number of times “I knew it wasnt gonna be easy.” Oh? Dick Cheney was talking about being welcomed as liberators. Unless you can point me to some contemporaneous quote of yours suggesting more caution, it’s reasonable to presume that you, as a war supporter, agreed with Cheney. Fair enough?

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 3:03 pm

  7. David C. wrote:

    The war has been an unmitigated fiasco

    Not unmitigated and it’s still in progress. But I’ll concede the overall point.

    but, IYHO, those who opposed it showed poor judgment. That’s really ‘thru the looking glass kind of thinking.’

    No, it’s basing my opinion on what people knew at the time instead of conveniently employing hindsight.

    You’ve claimed a number of times “I knew it wasnt gonna be easy.”

    Yes, because it was obvious to anyone with a grasp of military/diplomatic/political history, given the stated goals of the U.S.

    Oh? Dick Cheney was talking about being welcomed as liberators.

    We were welcomed as liberators in plenty of areas — at first. And so what? Cheney’s statements were just propaganda anyway. There were plenty of other statements from Bush saying that it wouldn’t be easy.

    Unless you can point me to some contemporaneous quote of yours suggesting more caution

    Well, since I dont’ have a blog and I tend not to tape myself talking, that would be kind of difficult.

    it’s reasonable to presume that you, as a war supporter, agreed with Cheney. Fair enough?

    Of course not. Anyone with a basic grasp of history knew that creating a democratic state in a place like Iraq would be a long-term effort. And my reasons for supporting the war didn’t revolve around the adminstration’s propaganda anyway. I’m not a humanitarian and I was highly skeptical whether or not democracy would work in Iraq. My reasons were very simple, as I’ve stated here on numerous occasions. Saddam was an open enemy of the U.S. with whom we were already in a quasi state of war. In my opinion, after 9/11, his continued existence in power posed a threat that could no longer be tolerated. I thought then and think now that a preemptive strike on Iraq was entirely justified.

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 3:35 pm

  8. canuckistani wrote:

    Most of us thought Iraq had WMDs because they had them before, and because most major intelligence services thought they still did, including our own — not because Bush said so.

    What do you mean “us”, kemo sabe? A lot of us smelled a rat when we saw Powell’s evidence before the UN, or when Bush wasn’t allowing the UN to finish their weapons inspections, or when Hans Blix stood up to say there was no evidence of WMD’s. You are the one who was fooled, not me. And there were a lot of cynical leftists who discounted what the spies were publicly telling us.

    Here is the lesson the hippies have taught us. Don’t trust what your government tells you, especially if what they tell you is in their own interest.

    Because no matter how you twist and turn about who knew what or said what, the point is that I was right and you were wrong, and I’m tired of being told that I was a fool who was only accidently right. I saw this clusterfuck from a mile off, and I said before the first tank rolled that I didn’t trust Bush not to bungle the job right even if it was worth doing.

    Grim - I’m glad you’re building chicken coops instead of getting the **** shot out of you, but you’re still propping up what is essentially an Iranian puppet government that can’t cope with the militias in its back yard without your intervention. It isn’t a win.

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 4:22 pm

  9. Stephen wrote:

    It’s kinda hopeless, but you all might actually read what Obama said in 2002.

    Somehow or other, David ignores that, and says that those who disagree with his views are using “hindsight.”

    And the really scary part is that David is reasonable compared to plenty of right-wing blog commenters.

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 4:46 pm

  10. Grim wrote:

    I believe this got eaten the first time. :)

    What I said was that the focus on the fact that a bomb went off somewhere is a bad way to judge the situation. That’s buyinig the guerrilla’s message at its full retail value — which, in an Arab souk, is a good way to get cheated. If you want to show that you have superior judgment, show me that you understand what’s going on.

    What I thought in 2003 was that the “war” phase of the war would be hard fought but quick — which it was — because Saddam’s Army was immobilized by our uncontested control of the air. I expected the fight for Baghdad to take longer, but he didn’t choose to defend it.

    At that point, we were in fact greeted as liberators — that much was right.

    At that point, I believed we would be rotating in large numbers of non-frontline troops to secure the cities, and oversee the reconstruction work. I expected us to move units from Germany and other garrison areas, which had a lot of experience in dealing with civilian populations, as we were able to set up places for them — what the Army calls “Life Support Areas.”

    For example, I wrote this on April 7, 2003:

    “Well, that really depends on what you are ready to consider “the war.” If you include terrorist actions and fights against terrorist groups–probably a long time yet, likely years. I won’t be surprised if we end up moving a large number of our troops who have been garrisoning Germany to garrison Iraq in the postwar period–really, it would be wise to do so, to provide stability to the new government during the first years.”I also wrote about the importance of giving even fairly radical elements a stake in the system, as we are now doing with the Sons of Iraq program. From April 23, 2003:

    I will reiterate my thoughts, which are that a stable state will require giving these clerics a stake in the power…. For the United States, there are just two concerns in Iraq: 1) to provide a stable framework for the gradual transformation and liberalization. This requires giving everyone a stake, provided only that they will forswear terrorism as a method of getting their way. 2) Ending the support of terror groups from within Iraq. This requires keeping friendly ties open with the Islamic leaders, rather than driving a wedge between ourselves and them….It’s a long haul, but I think it can be done, and done well.

    Emphasis added. That post followed another one on protests in Iraq demanding shariah law, in which I wrote:

    “This is going to be a lasting problem, and a problem for the long term…. If [the birth of a KKK like insurgency] is not to happen in Iraq, we will have to be careful in our handling of the place. First, we have to avoid the temptation to shut down these Islamic protests. We have to find a way to bring them into the fold and give them a stake in making the government work.”

    Now, I’m not claiming that I have been consistently right on every single question, every time, throughout history. But you see here that, in 2003, I viewed this as a long process; warned of the danger of developing KKK-type insurgent groups if we didn’t take steps to prevent it; and expected to see us move in large numbers of stabilizing forces. I think that, had we done those things then, Iraq would be much closer to where it should be today.

    Now, if you’re willing to take something from as recently as September 2003, I can show you where I suggested working with the tribes to stabilize their areas — a precursor to the “Sons of Iraq” program.

    Canuk: I don’t worry about Iraq being Iran’s puppet. Believe me, there’s no one lever of power you can just push and pull. Half the time, Iraq’s government hasn’t been able to do things it wanted to do for itself. There’s no doubt Iran wants to establish a puppet state, but they have had less than success.

    The Iraqi government is improving its efficiency, but at the cost (for Iran) of integrating Sunni and other factions. As a result, the odds of a puppet state are lower than previously.

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 4:53 pm

  11. David C. wrote:

    canuckistani,

    What do you mean “us”, kemo sabe? A lot of us smelled a rat when we saw Powell’s evidence before the UN, or when Bush wasn’t allowing the UN to finish their weapons inspections, or when Hans Blix stood up to say there was no evidence of WMD’s. You are the one who was fooled, not me. And there were a lot of cynical leftists who discounted what the spies were publicly telling us.

    Ok, i retract that. I should have said “those of us who were in favor of the war. ”

    Here is the lesson the hippies have taught us. Don’t trust what your government tells you, especially if what they tell you is in their own interest.

    I don’t. Again, it had nothing to do, at least from my perspective, with anything the government was telling us. Saddam’s possession of WMD was widely assumed by intelligence services in countries other than just the U.S. It was a big surprise when he turned out not to have them. If you didn’t think he did, then good for you — you guessed something most intelligence services didn’t.

    Stephen,

    Somehow or other, David ignores that, and says that those who disagree with his views are using “hindsight.”

    Yeah, that would be because you are using hindsight. Obama said “I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors.”

    He didn’t know that. Nobody knew that, and nobody knows to this day what Saddam might have done had he stayed in power. Your argument about Obama’s wonderous judgment is based purely on hindsight — the hindsight that Saddam turned out not to have WMD, and that the the war was horribly bungled.

    Intelligence is guesswork. I prefer having a president that is going to err on the side of eliminating a potential threat rather than sitting around and waiting to see what will happen.

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 6:25 pm

  12. John the Marine wrote:

    Here is the lesson the hippies have taught us. Don’t trust what your government tells you, especially if what they tell you is in their own interest.

    Perhaps, the hippies are on to something here. I didn’t learn this lesson from college age unwashed stoners and sixties relic profs but from common sense. I don’t trust the government to: run my health care, my retirement, the housing market, the education of my children, protect the border, and so on. now, I have to give the devils their due because the government hasn’t done a bang up job with international diplomacy, protecting U.S. interest, intelligence gathering and yes, managing the present war. It just didn’t start with Bush either.

    Now here is something you can learn from a conservative; stop trying to ram Big Government Liberalism down the rest of our throats on the back of a one trick pony like Obama. Besides the war what else has the golden boy gotten right? If he got that right. I remain unconvinced that invading Iraq was the wrong thing to do, what I am convinced of is replaying the failed strategies of Vietnam coupled with dometic defeatism is a one way ticket to loosing.

    Maybe Obama thinks playing footsie with Iran is a good idea. Didn’t he say he wants to sit down and talk with the Mullahs? I’m sure they’re quaking in their boots just thinking about that. Maybe he’ll continue the two adminastration disaster that is N. Korea with more feckless appeasement. After all Clinton and Bush sure did get far with a gifts for despots approach and I’m sure we’ll get more of the same from blood & guts Obama. A better looking Jimmy Carter isn’t going to be an improvement unless you’re rooting for the Destruction of the U.S. Long story short replacing the current fool with a Liberal fool is only going to make things worse. I think it was mentioned that the U.S. will be a “Brazil” with nukes which is fitting because we’re getting ready to elect a Socialist and Neophyte Politician.

    Posted 02 May 2008 at 7:20 pm

  13. Dan Kauffman wrote:

    The war has been an unmitigated fiasco,

    Compared to which Wars we have been in previously?

    I mean I figure Baatan was a disaster, mybe Bul Run, when the British burned Washington, might not have been a good example of shining sucess, so when you say

    The war has been an unmitigated fiasco,

    Just what guage are you using to measure fiasco?

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 12:44 am

  14. Redhand wrote:

    Most of us accepted uncritically Bush’s statements about WMDs and how easy it would be, etc, etc.

    Some had the “judgment” not to fall for it.

    Being old enough to remember the Tonkin Gulf lies that got us into Vietnam in a big way (but hey, we had to fight Communism, so lies in a good cause are OK, right?) I was skeptical of the rhetoric coming out of the Bush Administration in the run-up to the Iraq war. My feeling at the time, after hearing Cheney’s “There is no doubt that Saddam possesses [WMDs]” whoppers and Condi Rice’s “mushrooms over America” fear mongering was, You better be right about this.

    We know now, of course, that the Bush Administration was absolutely reckless in making these claims and rushing us into this quagmire, in the same way that LBJ exaggerated and lied to get us into Vietnam. (Hey, the Commies attacked US warships minding their own business in international waters.)

    The way Shinsecki’s cautions about occupation force levels were ridiculed by Rummy and Wolfowitz was another clear sign to me that there was something really rotten about this whole enterprise. Again, my feeling way, “You better be right about this,” whereas we know now that these two civilian dilitantes were pulling the occupation numbers out of their asses and betting American lives that they’d get away with it.

    Five years into this unmitigated fiasco (and yes, Dan Kauffman, this is what it looks like) I’m about ready for “Obama’s very Liberal idealogy” [sic] A “liberal” couldn’t possibly do worse than what we’s seen out of this ‘conservative” Administration.

    McCain as an alternative is a joke. See McCain and the Art of War from one of our conservativecolumnists here in New Jersey at the Newark Star Ledger.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 6:11 am

  15. David C. wrote:

    absolutely reckless in making these claims and rushing us into this quagmire

    That’s funny. In my opinion, Bush acted far too slowly and wasted all sorts of time at the U.N., and with diplomatic measures trying to get countries like France on board. It was the slowest “rush to war” ever.

    Five years into this unmitigated fiasco (and yes, Dan Kauffman, this is what it looks like)

    Yes, if you have a purely short-term view. We won’t know the ultimate result of the whole Iraq project for years.

    A “liberal” couldn’t possibly do worse than what we’s seen out of this ‘conservative” Administration.

    Nonsense. You can always go from bad to worse. And not just worse on Iraq: worse on taxes, worse on judges, worse on spending, and worse on big government in general. No thanks, even big government Republicans like John McCain, with all his known weaknesses, are still far better than Democrats like Obama and Clinton on the vast majority of the issues.

    John McCain: for Lesser of Two Evils.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 9:43 am

  16. BloodSpite wrote:

    Unless you can point me to some contemporaneous quote of yours suggesting more caution

    I’ve said from the begining, more troops, more troops, hell at one point I even argued a black flag like policy as being legitimate option.

    But given our historical issues with Iraq, both militarily, and politically, when your SNIE says “Iraq has WMD’s” then really has a person in charge with the safe keeping of 170 Million people supposed to do?

    Roll over, go back to sleep and say “Oh its all hogwash”?

    Attempt to be diplomatic with a man who gassed 3,000* people because he doesn’t like their race? Worked real well in World war 2 didn’t it?

    I think we are playing way, way too much hindsight here.

    In this instant microwave burrito world of ours we have folks who actually think you can topple, rebuild, and expect an entire country to be fully operations in 4 years or less?

    This isn’t SIMCITY. Its reality. And even historically it took Rome thousands of years to do what we are doing.

    (*The exact number escapes me of the Kurds he gassed and we excavated their bodies)

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 10:59 am

  17. canuckistani wrote:

    Oy, you Bush apologists really have to work to earn your pay, don’t you? :-)

    Permit me to offer an alternative view here. Sources, credible or less credible are out there for those who care to google.
    Bush, when elected, had a raging hard-on for war with Iraq. Psychologists will wonder why for centuries to come. When 9-11 hit, he had his excuse. In spite of the flimsiest evidence of any connection with 9-11 or WMD creation, Iraq was cast as the villain and a case for war was publicly made using intelligence cherry picked from the number of possible alternatives. The start of the war was pushed up in order to prevent Blix’s final UN report from contradicting the preferred narrative and undermining international support. At this point, a lot of potential allies sensed the rush, wavered and pulled back. So the war was fought anyway, and the hollowness of the administrations claims were made clear.
    The result was, frankly a catastrophe. The 4000 US dead and the tens of thousands of maimed and brain-damaged survivors are only part of it. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed. Millions more have fled the country as refugees, including most of the educated classes necessary to recreate a modern state. What is left is a failed state teetering on the brink of all-out civil war, in which the major players are Iran-tied clerics and former insurgents bribed into compliance.
    That is a heavy price to be paid for sloppy intelligence and glib claims that “we couldn’t take the risk”.

    I don’t trust the government to: run my health care, my retirement, the housing market,

    Just as an aside here, John, I will respect your comments on all these as legitimate conservative choices, but the housing crisis is due to deregulation, not regulation. The sub-prime mortgage mess is due to unrestricted loans to people who couldn’t hope to repay if they lost equity. Up here in the GWN, banks are regulated and not allowed to loan money to people without the means to repay - ergo, no sub-prime crisis. The meltdown is just part of capitalism - all those bankers took risks, and have to pay for it. Tough patootie for the all the homeowners they’re taking with them.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 1:20 pm

  18. David C. wrote:

    Permit me to offer an alternative view here. Sources, credible or less credible are out there for those who care to google.
    Bush, when elected, had a raging hard-on for war with Iraq.

    Believe conspiracy theories if you want, but there were plenty of good reasons at the time to attack Iraq.

    Iraq was cast as the villain

    No, Iraq was a villain, and had been recognized as such by previous administrations. That’s why we were enforcing harsh sanctions on it and bombing it every other day. And that’s also why there was so much support for the war. It wasn’t because Bush somehow tricked the public. Most people knew Iraq was our enemy and after 9/11, many people felt that Saddam’s continued existence in power was too great a risk — especially given that he was widely thought to have WMD. And that wasn’t a perception created by the Bush administration. You can look at any number of Clinton era speeches about the dangers of Iraq’s WMD.

    a case for war was publicly made using intelligence cherry picked from the number of possible alternatives.

    Yes, that’s what you do when you build a case, you emphasize everything that supports your case and deemphasize that which doesn’t. The whole “cherry picking” argument is pretty silly, and also ignores the fact that intelligence is largely guesswork, not a matter of sorting facts.

    sensed the rush

    Again, there was nothing that remotely qualifies as a “rush.” It was a long slow process. In many ways it began when the first President Bush decided to leave Saddam in power.

    The result was, frankly a catastrophe.

    It’s still in progress. The final result is not yet known. Getting involved in the Korean War was a horrible catastrophe orders of magnitude beyond anything in the Iraq War. We got involved in a country that we had explictly stated was outside our strategic interest, at a time when our military was woefully unprepared for war, nearly suffered a crushing defeat, risked war with the Soviet Union, imperiled the security of Western Europe & Japan, and had a massive intelligence failure that got us embroiled in a direct war with China. The government we were supporting was corrupt, shaky and had minimal popular support. But things don’t quite look the same today, do they? How many people in 1953 thought South Korea would become a prosperous, stable democratic state?

    What is left is a failed state teetering on the brink of all-out civil war

    You could just as easily describe it as a state in formation with a lot of internal conflict. It all depends how you look at it and what your time frame is.

    in which the major players are Iran-tied clerics and former insurgents bribed into compliance.

    Gross oversimplification. What about the government of Iraq, which just happens to control the only conventional military force in the state (other than arguably the Kurdish peshmerga)? Yes I know, they have ties to Iran too. Is it so difficult to understand that members of the Iraqi government and even Shiite clerics may be using Iran for their own internal purposes? The fact that they have ties to Iran and get support from Iran does not equal being Iranian puppets.

    but the housing crisis is due to deregulation, not regulation

    I’m guessing his point was that the government should just let the market work, and not be using taxpayer-funded bailouts to rescue people & corporations from their own stupidity and greed.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 2:15 pm

  19. Davebo wrote:

    I’m curious, are the the “dead enders” Rumsfeld was telling us about?

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 2:53 pm

  20. libarbarian wrote:

    Nonsense. You can always go from bad to worse. And not just worse on Iraq: worse on taxes, worse on judges, worse on spending, and worse on big government in general

    5 years ago I would have been with you that almost any republican is better than any democrat. Now, I’m not so sure.

    Yes, if you have a purely short-term view. We won’t know the ultimate result of the whole Iraq project for years.

    What if the predicted costs of winning outweigh the payoff?

    What are our realistic chances of achieving success before the total costs overtake the expected gains?

    I don’t support immediate withdrawl but without an appraisal of the total costs - in blood, treasure, etc. - all this talk of staying “however long” we need to makes me wince. The anti-war side simply dwells on the costs of staying. The pro-war side only talks about the costs of leaving. We need to consider both and also consider that we are dealing in probabilities and not absolutes. There is a big difference between a 90%, 50%, and 10% chance of achieving success in the next 10 years.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 4:13 pm

  21. canuckistani wrote:

    Believe conspiracy theories if you want, but there were plenty of good reasons at the time to attack Iraq.

    I like this. If I disagree, I get to be an idiot who was accidently right, or a conspiracy theorist. Sorry, DC, but I am the one who was right, not you. You are the one who failed to see what was clear to people all over the world, and was justified by the facts. I’m the one who gets to call you an idiot if I want, or a conspiracy-fondling sucker for believing that the post-GW1 wreckage that was Iraq was behind 9-11, or that they had a fraction of the capability needed to create atomic weapons, or that Saddam was going to launch anthrax attacks across the Atlantic Ocean with glorified model airplanes. You’re the one who believes that anything the CIA and MI6 publicly agree on is worth starting a war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

    The WMD’s were bogus and the evidence was clearly questionable, anyone who knew anything about the Middle East could see that the idea of Hussein and Al Qaeda desiring anything but a horrible death for the other was ridiculous, and while Hussein was clearly an evil tyrant, I don’t think you did the Iraqi people any favours by destroying their country, killing hundreds of thousands of them, expelling millions from their homes and setting up a future religious tyranny. There were no compelling reasons, at that time or later to go to war. Unless one really wanted that war and was looking for an excuse, however weak it may be.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 5:22 pm

  22. canuckistani wrote:

    Btw, David C., you keep claiming that WMD intelligence was supported by most of the world’s intelligence agencies. I’ve googled like mad and found nothing other than the US and the UK. Do you have links?
    This isn’t an intentional gotcha, I really am curious.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 5:24 pm

  23. David C. wrote:

    canuckistani,

    I like this. If I disagree, I get to be an idiot who was accidently right, or a conspiracy theorist

    Who said you were an idiot? All I said is that there were plenty of obvious reasons to attack Iraq, even if you disagreed with them and didn’t think they justified such a decision. There’s no need to look for reasons based largely on speculation — ie. conspiracy theories.

    Sorry, DC, but I am the one who was right, not you.

    I already conceded that if you thought Iraq didn’t have WMDs that you were right and I was wrong.

    You are the one who failed to see what was clear to people all over the world

    Really? And what was that? There was nothing clear at all about the whole situation before we got into it.

    I’m the one who gets to call you an idiot if I want, or a conspiracy-fondling sucker for believing that the post-GW1 wreckage that was Iraq was behind 9-11

    No you don’t. I never once said anything remotely like that. Try arguing against what I’m actually saying instead of just making stuff up.

    or that they had a fraction of the capability needed to create atomic weapons

    I never thought Iraq had nuclear weapons, only that they were working toward eventually getting them — with the timeframe unknown.

    or that Saddam was going to launch anthrax attacks across the Atlantic Ocean with glorified model airplanes

    Huh? Making up more stuff?

    You’re the one who believes that anything the CIA and MI6 publicly agree on is worth starting a war

    Really, is that what I said? Your reading comprehension seems to be failing. I think I already went over why I supported the war.

    anyone who knew anything about the Middle East could see that the idea of Hussein and Al Qaeda desiring anything but a horrible death for the other was ridiculous

    What’s ridiculous is someone not being able to understand that two groups
    which are diametrically opposed to each other can still cooperate against a third group which is opposed to both. There are numerous examples of this throughout history, the Nazi-Soviet pact being a prime example. And I’m not claiming Iraq was working with Al Qaeda, I’m just pointing out that your claim is clearly illogical and not supported by historical evidence.

    I don’t think you did the Iraqi people any favours

    As I already mentioned, my reasons for supporting the war had nothing to do with the Iraqi people.

    There were no compelling reasons

    Yes, there were. See how that works? You have an opinion, I don’t share it.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 5:44 pm

  24. Grim wrote:

    I would put the chance of achieving success “in the next ten years” as closer to 90% than 50%, if we maintain support and engagement — not necessarily at current levels, even, but at levels appropriate to the developing situation.

    When determining costs, we have pretty good figures to go on; but when determining profit, we can only estimate, which may be causing us to undervalue what there is to be gained in Iraq.

    For example, the list of potential material gains includes:

    1) Increased trade with another booming economy — Iraq’s growth for this year is estimated by the UN at 7%. Once foreign investment begins to feel comfortable joining that economy, there will be massive profits to be made, just as there have been in China, India, the Philippines, and other emerging markets.

    2) Benefits from increasing the supply of readily available oil on the world market.

    3) The addition to the world of an Arabic-speaking army allied to the West, deployable and interoperable with US and other Coalition forces, that is both Muslim and extremely experienced in counterinsurgency warfare and combined operations. (This benefit alone may outweigh the costs of the project, given what it could mean for preventing future insurgencies from developing, and easing peacekeeping and COIN missions in sensitive parts of the world).

    4) At a time when biofuels are starting to raise food prices, reclaiming the fertile Mesopotamia crescent as a source of high-productivity for agriculture.

    Etc.

    Those are merely the material benefits, which is to say, side benefits — the point of the project is nothing to do with those. The point of the project is to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of the past and the terror of the present, which is a moral benefit; and to secure the nation as a future ally, which is a strategic benefit in a region that has a very high strategic value.

    (On another topic: I will agree that I think “ties to Iran” is not at all the same as “puppets of Iran.” Iran seems quite divided internally, and since we are talking about probabilities, there is a not inconsiderable probability of its internal revolution at some point — at which time an ally with “ties to Iran,” an army that can interoperate with ours and knows COIN, and understands Iran’s power structure and culture, might easily pay for the Iraq venture at one blow.)

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 5:44 pm

  25. David C. wrote:

    “French intelligence services were convinced WMD remained in Iraq,” (although Chirac himself was not). German intelligence was the source of a defector who claimed the existence of the so-called “biolabs.” Israeli intelligence definitely thought Saddam had WMD and the article I linked questions their own intelligence failure. I couldn’t find anything directly about Spanish intelligence, but apparently the Spanish government at the time was convinced Iraq had WMD.

    The Israeli article linked above has some interesting things. The author says:

    On the eve of the war, Israeli intelligence on Iraqi capabilities resembled its counterparts in the United States and other Western countries. It had not received any information regarding weapons of mass destruction and surface-to-surface missiles for nearly eight years, since the defection of Kamel Hussein led to the discovery of the Iraqi biological program, other than the informed suspicion that Iraq was deceiving the international community regarding its program for developing longer range Sumud surface-to-surface missiles in claiming that they were permitted by UN resolutions.

    And this:

    The intelligence community had to choose between two alternative assessments. The first was that Iraq still had SSM and WMD capability and continued to maintain related projects, but had succeeded very adeptly at concealing them…. The second explanation was that the…(IAEA) and …(UNSCOM) succeeded through great efforts in disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

    Given those two choices:

    Israeli intelligence adopted the first explanation without any signs of doubt regarding its validity.

    Me too.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 6:16 pm

  26. David C. wrote:

    Italian intelligence was also involved in pushing the “yellowcake” story, which would tend to indicate that they too believed Saddam was actively working on WMD.

    There is probably more out there but it is difficult to find exactly what certain agencies thought.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 6:25 pm

  27. Alon Levy wrote:

    Increased trade with another booming economy — Iraq’s growth for this year is estimated by the UN at 7%.

    This growth rate has to be considered against two things. First, areas recover after disasters: New Orleans was one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the US in 2007. And second, Iraq’s growth comes from a single natural resource.

    Natural resources rarely create permanent affluence. Uruguay’s leather turned it into the Switzerland of South America; as soon as demand for leather came down, it entered a permanent depression, so that now it’s far behind Argentina. Saudi Arabia was among the richest countries in the world in 1979, but turned into a third world country by 1999, as oil prices came down. In contrast, countries that based their growth on making things, like Israel or South Korea, manage to keep growing.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 9:00 pm

  28. Grim wrote:

    “And second, Iraq’s growth comes from a single natural resource.”

    Respectfully, that is not so. Iraq has a number of natural resources — including, as mentioned, its agriculture. But the growth has so far mostly come from agriculture, trade and services as I understand it — for example, the Iskandariyah tractor factory I mentioned, which is producing tractors for the farmers in Wasit along the Tigris river, who are growing various crops for sale to the public.

    Unlike Saudi Arabia, which really does base its wealth on oil only, Iraq has a fairly diverse economic base. It just needs investment, continued security, and time for the various factions to sort out how to trust and live with each other. Our being there as a guarantor is the main element in making that work, right now — but as they experience success in working together, it will be easier over time for them to continue to do so without us.

    Posted 03 May 2008 at 9:27 pm

  29. Redhand wrote:

    I’ve been pretty amazed by the diehard, disaster-denying “it’s still not over, maybe we’ll ultimately ‘win’” tenor of some of the comments here.

    Does anyone really think this war wasn’t one of choice by the Bush Administration, and that it’s worth the 4000+ dead and 30,000+ American maimed, not to mention the Iraqi cauualties and the unbelievable financial cost?

    If you do, you’re one of the solid 30% of Americans who still approve of Bush’s overall performance. But I guess, “When you’re right, you’re right.”

    The containment policy was working before we invaded, and its continuance, however frustrating, would have been infinitely preferable to the price we’ve paid for this fiasco.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 7:25 am

  30. John the Marine wrote:

    McCain as an alternative is a joke. See McCain and the Art of War from one of our conservativecolumnists here in New Jersey at the Newark Star Ledger.

    Now, that is funny. The Starledger doesn’t have anything remotely resembling a conservative on its staff. They run a few syndicated columnist who are conservative but lets face it the Ledger is a third rate version of the NY Times (I lived in NJ for 30 years and no that worthless rag well).

    John, I will respect your comments on all these as legitimate conservative choices, but the housing crisis is due to deregulation, not regulation.

    Thanks Canuckistani, I must of caught you in a good mood.

    The meltdown is just part of capitalism - all those bankers took risks, and have to pay for it. Tough patootie for the all the homeowners they’re taking with them.

    I agree the bankers do indeed deserve to pay the price but so do the home owners. We are all personally responsible for our finacial obligations. People who over extended themselves are idiots and the tax payer shouldn’t be on the hook for 1 cent of their irresponsible behaviour.

    You know I don’t think that the war has gone well but then again disaster isn’t correct either. Many of us like Bloodspite and myself argued for a much larger and aggressive campaign in the beginning (I’m still waiting for shock & awe). We went with too few men, fooled around with the UN far too long, worried about worthless type allies such as France, and so on. Also, Gen. Petraues (sp) has proven that if you use your assets to attack the enemy and deny him areas of operation his destruction can be obtained. Recent causalties in my estimation have alot to do with the fact that we are confronting the Shiite militias. Offensives cause causalities. I’m not crazy, those who argued against the war from the beginning have alot of grist for their mill right now. However, I think that grist has been supplied by a largerly bungling Bush and won’t be corrected by a dovish Liberal promising hope and change.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 9:19 am

  31. David C. wrote:

    I’ve been pretty amazed by the diehard, disaster-denying

    And I’m amazed by the amount of people with zero historical perspective who can’t understand that you don’t make final judgments on wars when they are still in progress.

    it’s still not over

    That’s because it isn’t over — not even close.

    Does anyone really think this war wasn’t one of choice by the Bush Administration

    Utterly meaningless left-wing talking point. Of course the U.S. made a “choice” to attack Iraq. That’s what you do when you launch a preemptive strike.

    and that it’s worth the 4000+ dead and 30,000+ American maimed, not to mention the Iraqi cauualties and the unbelievable financial cost?

    Again, that’s unknown at the present time. Was the Korean War worth 169,000 U.S. and nearly a million South Korean casualties in four years?

    If you do, you’re one of the solid 30% of Americans who still approve of Bush’s overall performance

    Complete nonsense. I don’t approve of Bush’s performance and have said so many times. The fact that the war has been badly screwed up is a different issue than whether it was a good idea at the time, or how we should proceed now that we are already in it.

    The containment policy was working before we invaded

    Except we didn’t know that then (yes, I know some people thought it was working then), and we still don’t have any idea what Saddam might have done had he been left in power. The whole idea of preemption is to remove a threat before it can go from a potential threat to one that actuallly damages you. Why is that so difficult for people to grasp?

    And just to be clear, I’m not trying to argue that the case for war was overwhelming and that anyone who opposed it was some sort of idiot — since that seems to be what canuckistani read into my arguments. There were plenty of legitimate arguments against war from all across the political spectrum. Obviously if you thought Saddam didn’t actually have WMDs, and thought that containment was working, the war looked like a bad idea. But what I am arguing is that there were also strong reasons to favor war, especially when you remove the hindsight knowledge that Saddam didn’t actually still have the WMD stockpile we thought he had.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 9:40 am

  32. Grim wrote:

    I’ve been pretty amazed by the diehard, disaster-denying “it’s still not over, maybe we’ll ultimately ‘win’” tenor of some of the comments here.

    Well, I’ve spent six months of the last year in Iraq. If it were a disaster, I’d have seen it up close. If I think we’re likely to win, that is at least not a judgment based on ignorance, but on sustained, direct observation.

    As for whether or not it is “worth it,” see above.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 11:01 am

  33. BloodSpite wrote:

    When you buy a new car it devalues 20% as soon as you drive it off the lot.

    Was it worth it?

    What war can you name is worth the sacrifice of American lives? Based on what many folks are saying here the answer would be “None”

    But imagine this for a moment. When one enlists, one realizes one may perish in the line of duty. Now I am not saying lets blow all of our troops to kingdom come, heaven forbid, as I was once one of them.

    But as the Commander in Chief such is the weight that must be placed on the preemptive strike.

    In the entire history of our country name a single conflict that has lasted as long as this one with as few casuaulties as this one.

    You can’t. There isn’t one. Thats because militarily, insofar as training, and protection based advancements go, our military has been successful in this operation.

    The numbers speak for themselves.

    But is it worth it?

    You can’t make that decesion yet. Just as with your car, you just drove off the lot.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 2:05 pm

  34. canuckistani wrote:

    In the entire history of our country name a single conflict that has lasted as long as this one with as few casuaulties as this one.

    Are you counting Iraqi civilian casualties, or do they matter?

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 4:11 pm

  35. Alon Levy wrote:

    Was the Korean War worth 169,000 U.S. and nearly a million South Korean casualties in four years?

    Well, the Korean War was only this long and bloody because MacArthur decided to march on North Korea and try to attack China if possible, in contravention of orders from Truman. If MacArthur had stayed at the 38th parallel, or chased the North Korean army minimally to secure a defendable border, it would’ve been over in two months.

    And that was in a war where the other side attacked first. The 2003 invasion wasn’t like the first Gulf War or Korea, but like Vietnam.

    Also, in the Korean War there were clear belligerents. When the US wanted out, it compromised on repatriation of prisoners and negotiated, and finally the war ended. With Iraq, there’s nobody to negotiate with. The government the US is blaming the quagmire on, Iran, is supporting the Iraqi government. The insurgents come in many different flavors, and often giving in to the demands of one group (e.g. the Mahdi Army) will only enrage another (e.g. the Sunnis).

    And finally, it’s not clear in this case which government is the better one. Rhee was corrupt and brutal, but he was still clearly better than Kim both on human rights and on which bloc he’d be in; besides, being a US ally, he’d be easier to replace. In Iraq none of the above remains true: Maliki is pro-Iranian, the Iraqi government isn’t clearly less corrupt or murderous than Al-Sadr or even Saddam, and if the US tries to kick out the elected leaders it’ll piss off more people than it can afford to.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 4:48 pm

  36. Alon Levy wrote:

    Thats because militarily, insofar as training, and protection based advancements go, our military has been successful in this operation.

    The criticism of the way the US handles itself in Iraq isn’t military. Even the critics of the Iraq War generally agreed that invading the country would be easy. The problem is that the US has been running the reconstruction exceptionally poorly.

    Some of the populist anger at the war involves American military deaths, but as far as I can tell this has a subtext of, “It’s all pointless, so why are they dying?” In particular, the reasons why I’m against the whole thing (an insane civilian death rate) and why Stephen is against the whole thing (the American management of the occupation has been a disaster) aren’t about the military, but about the Bush administration’s priorities.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 5:23 pm

  37. Grim wrote:

    As far as I know, there aren’t reliable figures on what the civilian death rate has actually been; we can approximate trends, but there is a significant delta between the Lancet’s numbers, say, and other studies.

    Whatever it has been, it has been highest when we have not remained engaged, and left the Iraqis to the tender mercies of whoever filled the power vacuum. If your chief concern is increasing the prospects for Iraqi civilians, urging a US pullout is directly counterproductive to the goal. The very worst possible option for them would be for us to pack up and go home, leaving the Sons of Iraq with little option but to resume guerilla fighting, the Shi’ite militias back in a relatively symmetric battle for control of the Shi’ite population, and Iran, Turkey, Syria and Saudia Arabia freer to wage their proxy contests.

    The primary reason to stay is to give the Iraqi people a chance to rise out of this. They need us, for a while longer, to serve as guarantors.

    As for Maliki being pro-Iranian, he is not anti-Iranian; and he is pro-engagement on Iran. So, however, is Barack Obama; and with fewer prerequisites. I’m not sure you get to tar Maliki as “pro-Iranian” unless you’re ready to accept that label yourselves.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 5:43 pm

  38. David C. wrote:

    Well, the Korean War was only this long and bloody because MacArthur decided to march on North Korea and try to attack China if possible, in contravention of orders from Truman.

    No, that’s not true. First of all it was plenty bloody before we went North, and McArthur had permission to cross the 38th parallel. He had no intention of attacking China, and in fact insisted repeatedly that China would not intervene in Korea, despite many indications that they might. Failure to anticipate Chinese intervention was a huge intelligence blunder and also a major miscalculation by McArthur. McArthur’s ideas about widening the war to include strikes on Chinese bases happened after China’s intervention.

    it would’ve been over in two months.

    Two months in we were still in the Pusan perimeter. We came very close to being uncerimoniously ejected from Korea. There was also significant discussion of evacuation, that’s how bad it was early on.

    At any rate, I know the situation in Korea was very different than Iraq. But my point was that in 1953, after all those casualties, did it look like a victory — or more like a massive waste of life? There were certainly plenty of people at the time who viewed the whole thing as unnecessary and the outcome as totally unsatisfactory.

    the Iraqi government isn’t clearly less corrupt or murderous than Al-Sadr or even Saddam

    Really? You think the current Iraqi government is as murderous as Saddam? What evidence do you have for that?

    The criticism of the way the US handles itself in Iraq isn’t military.

    It’s both. Military analysts have plenty of criticism for the military. Just for starters try reading what Ralph Peters (who was pro-war) or William Lind (anti-war), had/have to say about the U.S. military in Iraq.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 6:21 pm

  39. Alon Levy wrote:

    But my point was that in 1953, after all those casualties, did it look like a victory — or more like a massive waste of life? There were certainly plenty of people at the time who viewed the whole thing as unnecessary and the outcome as totally unsatisfactory.

    It looked like a stalemate, which led to peace negotiations.

    Really? You think the current Iraqi government is as murderous as Saddam? What evidence do you have for that?

    The Lancet study asked not only about deaths, but also about the mode of death and the responsible group. It turns out the split was 31% coalition, 24% insurgent, 45% unknown. That’s 180,000 deaths caused by the coalition in a little over three years. In thirty-five, Saddam killed about 400,000.

    (Of course, most of Saddam’s death toll was intentional, whereas I presume most of the coalition’s is not. However, beyond a certain point, recklessness isn’t any better than premeditated murder.)

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 7:08 pm

  40. Grim wrote:

    As I said, there is a tremendous delta between the Lancet and any other study. Like hundreds of thousands of extra deaths that they report, versus anyone else who has considered the question.

    Of course, maybe they’re just way better at it than everyone else who’s tried. It seems to me, however, that those who adopt those numbers without taking on board the extreme differences between Lancet and all other studies are arguing tendentiously.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 7:46 pm

  41. Alon Levy wrote:

    The main reason to adopt the Lancet’s numbers is that they’re less susceptible to underreporting. In most conflicts as well as epidemic zones, the accepted numbers are those gotten from similar methodologies. The few surveys that were done in 2003 by groups in Iraq have similar death tolls to what the Lancet reports for the period.

    The lower numbers I see tend to come from what the Lancet study calls passive surveillance - that is, looking at news reports of deaths. This results in severe underreporting, especially when the death toll is high. To put it brutally, when that many people die, it’s no longer news.

    A good intra-American analogy would be crime rates. If you read all the major national and regional papers and tally all the crime incidents reported, you’ll be very likely to get a homicide figure close to the true one. However, your rape figure will probably be far lower than the number of reported rapes, and your assault figure yet lower. Even the local papers will miss many rapes and assaults; and in Iraq, those local papers are typically very partisan and biased.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 8:00 pm

  42. Grim wrote:

    Yes, but when an official group goes and ask Iraqis if there have been deaths in their families, culturally they expect that this will lead to compensation. It is the norm in Iraqi culture for this to be so. Even Saddam paid compensation in many cases (and so do we — except that, unlike the Lancet, we require some proof that compensation is due. But paying it when it is in fact due is a major policy of ours).

    An additional cultural observation: Iraqis value the good of the family unit higher than the personal virtue of telling-the-truth-no-matter-the-consequences. As a result, when they realize that no evidence is required, they are apt to report that yes, of course we’ve suffered deaths.

    And a further observation: of the several groups acting in Iraq, no one pays more generous compensation than the coalition.

    So, the Lancet’s survey methods are highly likely to produce overreporting of coalition-induced casualties.

    Now, we can check that by surveys using other methodologies, to see if the Lancet methods are achieving something close to what any other method produces.

    However, it does not: it is off by as much as half a million other deaths versus any other means of counting. Furthermore, its own confidence interval runs over a spread of about six hundred thousand deaths — which means that, taken on its face, the other methods of counting are within the confidence interval.

    That is to say, those methods are far more likely to be close to accurate than the Lancet’s estimate.

    Posted 04 May 2008 at 8:37 pm

  43. Alon Levy wrote:

    First, 92% of the Lancet’s deaths came with a death certificate, even though in some places the authorities had stopped issuing death certificates. Is there a known problem of forged death certificates in Iraq?

    Of course, the Lancet has a very large confidence interval. Cluster sampling has this inherent problem. However, even the lower limit of the number of excess violent deaths, 420,000, is far beyond what passive surveillance says.

    This point about the methodology of the Lancet isn’t necessarily that it agrees with other methodologies. The discussion is about whether the methodology is correct where it disagrees with passive surveillance. The study itself gives evidence from Guatemala and the Congo to argue that passive surveillance results in severe underestimates. I haven’t read these references, but I have read what some epidemiologists have said about the study, and all of them believe its methodology is sound.

    Posted 05 May 2008 at 5:56 am

  44. Redhand wrote:

    At any rate, I know the situation in Korea was very different than Iraq.

    Ah, yes, beginning with the facts that the North Koreans started the war and that it was conventional in every sense of the word.

    Iraq was a war of choice srarted by the Bush Administration. After the capture of Baghdad it has devolved into a bloody sectarian conflict with no front lines and no definable goals, other than “creating a democratic ally” out of factions who have been at each others’ throats for centuries.

    Aside from that, the Korean War analogy is perfect. I’m surprised that others haven’t picked up on it.

    Posted 05 May 2008 at 8:54 am

  45. David C. wrote:

    Redhand,

    Iraq was a war of choice srarted by the Bush Administration.

    Why are you repeating this meaningless talking point? As I mentioned above, of course we chose to attack Iraq. So what? Have I claimed that we didn’t? I don’t recall anyone claiming that Iraq attacked us. We launched a preemptive/preventative war against Iraq. We looked at the evidence available at the time, made a decision, and invaded Iraq.

    Aside from that, the Korean War analogy is perfect. I’m surprised that others haven’t picked up on it.

    Apparently you didn’t read what I wrote, so why even comment on it? My analogy was clearly aimed at one thing: that you can’t judge the final results of a war while it is still in progress. Obviously I was not claiming that the situation in Korea was in any way equivalent to Iraq. That’s why I said “I know the situation in Korea was very different than Iraq.” I guess you must have missed all that. But nice attempt to completely distort what I was saying.

    Posted 05 May 2008 at 10:33 am

  46. Grim wrote:

    “Is there a known problem of forged death certificates in Iraq?”

    There is a known problem with forged documents of every kind in Iraq, and the earlier in the war you’re speaking, the bigger the problem was.

    In addition to which, Saddam’s government wasn’t consistent in how it issued its forms, so even relatively simple official documents — like identification cards — take widely varied forms. This complicates the problem of knowing whether you’re looking at a real record or a forgery.

    “Of course, the Lancet has a very large confidence interval. ”

    I didn’t complain about the size of the CI — I merely noted that it is an interval of six hundred thousand plus.

    “This point about the methodology of the Lancet isn’t necessarily that it agrees with other methodologies. The discussion is about whether the methodology is correct where it disagrees with passive surveillance.”

    I concur. The point is, is it correct? Does the death toll like somewhere between three hundred thousand and nine hundred thousand, as the CI of the Lancet suggests, or is it smaller, as the other studies suggest?

    I think Lancet’s methodology is subject to severe overestimations of coalition-generated casualties, as I said above. I suggested checking it against other methods to see if the rates were similar, not the numbers. Lancet says 30% of deaths are caused by the Coalition — do the other methods produce similar numbers? Worse, because the media only reports the deaths if Americans cause them? Better, because the main source of death was the sectarian militias between 2005-7?

    In addition, I mentioned the compensation payments as another, non-passive source of at least getting a handle on the scale of the problem. One thing we definitely do is pay compensation, generous by Iraqi standards, whenever a just claim is forwarded to us; so if there had been 100,000 to 300,000 such claims (that is, 30% of the CI, given Lancet claimed the Coalition was responsible for 30% of deaths), we would know it.

    Some families might not have asked or accepted the money, of course, preferring the grievance to the payment — in Iraqi honor culture, refusing to take compensation money preserves your right to retaliate.

    Also, I realize the Lancet is looking not at killed-in-action but at ‘extra deaths,’ e.g., those caused by absence of medical care due to war. Insofar as that is the case, however, the Coalition ought to get the benefit of a “sink” in the death rate brought about by our improvements of medical care, particularly in rural areas where often Saddam had made no such attempts. We run medical operations for the populace regularly throughout our area of responsibility, and it is frequently the first care they have ever received. In addition to that, we have helped to build clinics and hospitals throughout Iraq, and to provide money to hire doctors (esp. to bring female doctors out of Baghdad and into the rural areas, where cultural restrictions on women seeing male doctors are stronger — the benefit of this practice to womens’ and childrens’ medical welfare ought to be estimated for the purpose of a study of the effects of war).

    That suggestion is simple fairness, to me: if you’re going to study “how the Iraq war has affected mortality among Iraqi civilians,” you should recognize that also quite a few extra lives have been saved.

    Posted 05 May 2008 at 10:56 am

  47. Redhand wrote:

    Iraq was a war of choice started by the Bush Administration.

    Why are you repeating this meaningless talking point?

    Far from being a “meaningless talking point,” it underscores something — 4000 plus American dead and 30,000 plus American maimed — you are all too willing to minimize with all your grandiose discussion about U.S. national interests and how we should maintain, for want of a better word, “perspective” on the “American interests” in play here.

    Unlike Korea, these losses can be laid directly at the doorstep of the incumbent President who started this. Whenever our leaders start a war, it’s more than fair that the reason we are suffering these casualties be emphasized, again and again.

    Posted 05 May 2008 at 12:21 pm

  48. David C. wrote:

    Far from being a “meaningless talking point,” it underscores something — 4000 plus American dead and 30,000 plus American maimed

    Is anyone unaware of our casualties?

    you are all too willing to minimize

    How am I minimizing them? I don’t think I said a single thing in this thread about our casualty levels.

    how we should maintain, for want of a better word, “perspective” on the “American interests” in play here.

    No, I said we shouldn’t be making historical judgments on something that is still in progress. And I was talking about the lack of “historical perspective” shown by those speaking about the Iraq War as if it were finished, and as if they somehow know what the eventual result will be.

    Unlike Korea, these losses can be laid directly at the doorstep of the incumbent President who started this.

    Not really. You could just as easily blame Truman for the losses incurred during the Korean War if you wanted to. After all, if he hadn’t decided to intervene, we wouldn’t have been in the war. U.S. troops were withdrawn from Korea in 1949. We weren’t attacked by North Korea. The administration made the decision for war. In 1950, Sec. State Acheson explicitly stated that Korea was not an area that involved U.S. security. That was about 2 weeks befor the NK attack. But we decided in favor of entering the war. It was every bit a “war of choice” too — you just seem to like his reasons better than you do Bush’s. The term is utterly meaningless. Any war that doesn’t involve being forced into it by a direct attack is a war that we choose — whether we choose to start it or we choose to get involved in one already raging.

    it’s more than fair that the reason we are suffering these casualties be emphasized, again and again.

    Well, it’s certainly fair to emphasize that the adminstration fouled it up horribly and that’s why things are in the state that they are.

    Posted 05 May 2008 at 12:47 pm

  49. Alon Levy wrote:

    The Lancet seems to be under the impression there’s been no significant change in the nonviolent mortality rate. This makes sense, since the Iraqi infrastructure was badly damaged in the war, which at least in the short term should increase mortality.

    What you say about bad documentation earlier in the war would be more damning if most deaths the study reports occurred early in the war. But on the contrary, the death rate consistently went up between 2003 and 2006, an observation that matched passive surveillance results. If document forging had inflated the study’s numbers, we should have seen the greatest inflation in 2003, instead of 2006.

    Posted 05 May 2008 at 3:16 pm

  50. Alon Levy wrote:

    David, there’s still the issue of who shot first. In Korea and the Gulf War, it wasn’t the US. The US wasn’t directly attacked, but an ally of it was.

    Posted 05 May 2008 at 3:22 pm

  51. David C. wrote:

    Alon,

    David, there’s still the issue of who shot first. In Korea and the Gulf War, it wasn’t the US. The US wasn’t directly attacked, but an ally of it was.

    Yes, I know. The Iraq War is different in that we started it by invading Iraq. But that’s exactly why I am saying “war of choice” is meaningless, because wars as different as Korea & Iraq are still both “wars of choice.”

    Posted 05 May 2008 at 4:59 pm

  52. Alon Levy wrote:

    That’s not entirely true. In Korea, the US had only made the choice to defend allies, based on which it was compelled to intervene. In contrast, there was nothing that said the US had to attack Iraq (rather than another hostile country) or do so in 2003 (rather than e.g. after the UN inspectors had completed their investigation).

    Posted 05 May 2008 at 7:47 pm

  53. a former european wrote:

    Much of the criticism against the HANDLING of the Iraq War by the Bush Administration is entirely valid. As I have said repeatedly on this blog, counterinsurgency strategy and tactics are not new. There is no excuse for Bush/Rumsfeld’s lack of any initial plan to deal with the insurgents once conventional warfare ceased. I believe that Bush must take the blame for this inexcusable failure.

    The reason I must disagree with the anti-war proponents here is that the criticisms go far beyond the US blunders. Instead, those criticisms can be raised against nearly ANY war, and thus are more of a general criticism on war itself. I am not a pacifist, and therefore take issue with these charges.

    In hindsight, one can criticize the conduct or decision to enter into any war. Given the cost and lives lost of both world wars, I could argue that neither justified US intervention or served US interests. Likewise for Korea, Gulf War One, or our long-term commitments to NATO.

    In the long run, were any of our erstwhile allies worth the cost of even a single american life? Didn’t we have more pressing healthcare/welfare/housing/social security issues at home we could have spent that money on? We should have told the Europeans to go screw themselves and their endless bickering and wars in WWI and WWII. The wars would have probably both resulted in long, bloody stalemates turning Europe into a wasteland and at a far greater cost in military and civilian lives, but why should we care. After Europe exhausted itself in blood and ruin, we would have still become the global superpower by default.

    A similar argument could be made for Korea. Who cares if the South got overrun? At a cost in lives and dollars that make Iraq look like another Grenada, we got an economic rival who likes to hold anti-american rallies and force our troops to leave. We should have left them to the tender mercies of an enlightened regime like North Korea. After the civilian bloodbath and purges associated with communist regimes, they could now all be starving to death instead of taking jobs away from american companies.

    In short, the anti-Iraq arguments have become too much like the anti-war arguments in general. If someone wants to take a pacifist stand against all war, then that’s fine. That position, however, should be made clear from the outset rather than camouflaging it with an overbroad critique of Iraq.

    Posted 05 May 2008 at 9:22 pm

  54. Alon Levy wrote:

    I can’t think of any scenario under which American involvement in either World War Two or Korea increased the death rate. In Iraq, it did. The rate of violent death in Iraq is unseen anywhere else in the civilized world, aside from holocausts and some of the most notorious totalitarian mass murderers. Saddam never even came close to this; by the time he was executed, Iraq had seen almost twice as many deaths from both the coalition and the insurgency as he had managed to cause in decades of iron-fisted rule.

    When you compare this record to World War Two (which America’s liberals were aching to get into while the conservatives mooted isolationism), the difference becomes clear.

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 4:16 am

  55. John the Marine wrote:

    I think there is something that has been overlooked in regards to initiation of hostilities in Iraq 2003. Gulf I resulted in the U.S. signing a conditional cease fire with Saddam not a peace treaty. This is important because it left the option of force open to the U.S. if Saddam’s Regime violated the conditions of the cease fire, which he did over and over again.

    Also, those who have been mentioning the UN Ispectors; have you considered the fact that Mr. Blix had 10 years to complete his job prior to 2003? Has it also been considered that Saddam did a great deal to obstruct inspections which might have lead both the Clinton and Bush Administrations to be somewhat suspicious that the Bathist Regime was up to no good? Has everyone forgotten the things that people like John Kerry said about Iraq posing a threat circa 2002? There are valid arguements against the war but a willful neglect of recent history does not help make the case.

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 7:01 am

  56. Redhand wrote:

    The reason I must disagree with the anti-war proponents here is that the criticisms go far beyond the US blunders. Instead, those criticisms can be raised against nearly ANY war, and thus are more of a general criticism on war itself.

    Ah, you certainly didn’t hear any criticism of our invading Afghanistan from me.

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 7:35 am

  57. a former european wrote:

    Alon: I’m not quite sure what you are arguing. Is your position that tyrants or other miscreants should never be removed from power if the resultant loss of life in the removal exceeds the loss of life from the daily oppression in existence? If so, you make the case for never opposing a dictator or tyrant. So, the Hitlers, Pol Pots, Idi Amins, Noriegas, etc. of the world should feel utterly safe under your policy. The cost to act is almost always more than the non-cost of doing nothing. You therefore make my case that the true criticism is one against ANY sort of war or use of military force.

    Taken to its fullest extent, the “cost” of pursuing and apprehending criminals often exceeds the value of what they stole or perhaps might lead to the endangerment of innocent lives. For this reason, we should be morally opposed to the police or any manner of law enforcement (other than calmly trying to reason with the criminal and urging him to voluntarily forego his lawbreaking ways).

    Finally, WWI, WWII, and Korea all did increase the loss of lives — at least american ones. Tens of thousands of americans needlessly perished when all we had to do was say “Non!”, and let the others fend for themselves. In Korea, particularly, american intervention vastly increased the overall loss of life. The North Koreans had pretty much overrun most of Korea outside of Pusan when the US heavily reinforced and began the Inchon counteroffensive. Had the US abandoned the South instead, the North’s blitzkrieg would have succeeded like in France, 1940. By your “loss of life” calculus, the US was wrong to intervene and thus prolong the war. Defeat and surrender to the aggressor should be preferable.

    Once again, this argument is a critique of war in general, rather than specifically about Iraq, and thus proves my initial point that opponents of the Iraq war seem to be the same types who would oppose ANY war into which the US entered or any use of US military force.

    I’m not saying someone can’t hold that position if they want, but it is a bit disingenuous to single out Iraq for special criticism when such criticism is your general rule as to war itself.

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 7:46 am

  58. canuckistani wrote:

    I am not, actually, a pacifist. The point is not that war is bad - of course it is, every sane person knows that. The point is that it is wrong to fight a war when it is not absolutely necessary.
    Stopping Nazi Germany, or overthrowing the Taliban or living up to treaty obligations with foreign allies are all justifiable as acts of necessity. I’m not sure what the final rationalization for the invasion of Iraq was - destroying Iraq’s non-existant WMD’s, or preventing Hussein from cooperating with his sworn enemies in Al Qaeda, or bringing democracy to Iraq, or securing oil supplies and a base in the Middle East, or driving up oil prices and securing massive profits for oil industry executives - but none of these are enough to justify the massive carnage done to the Iraqi people. Whether the Lancet report is specifically accurate or not is irrelevant - there’s no doubt that casualties are several hundred thousand at least, if not the million some are claiming.

    Thanks to David C., btw, for the references to WMD’s. I would respectfully remind him that the Yellowcake allegations were publicly questioned by the IAEA some days before the war, and that it turns out the US government secretly knew the yellowcake allegations were bogus long before the war started.

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 10:07 am

  59. David C. wrote:

    canuckistani,

    I agree that the all the intelligence about Iraq’s supposed nuclear weapons program was very shaky, even at the time. I don’t remember any really hard evidence being offered. I’m not sure about other war supporters, but speaking only for myself, the only WMD I was convinced Saddam had were chemical weapons. I thought it was likely that he was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, but I never saw any real evidence that he was anywhere close to getting them. Bioweapons i would say fell into the same category as nuclear. I wasn’t convinced that he had them, although it wouldn’t have suprised me if he had.

    But among the military analyst-type community that I like to read and pay attention to, pretty much everyone was convinced that Saddam had a chemical weapons stockpile. There was even significant discussion about whether or not Saddam would use them on our troops when we attacked. I was amazed when we didn’t find those weapons, and when it turned out Saddam was basically pretending to have WMD, when in fact he didn’t. And I don’t count the few caches of rusty old chemical artillery shells, that some on the right like to claim prove Saddam did have WMD. Maybe that’s technically true, but some left-over shells were not the significant chemical weapon stockpile I, and others, thought Saddam possessed.

    Many people were so sure that Saddam had those chemical weapons that to this day they insist that the weapons must have been moved out of the country before the attack. I don’t accept that argument because there is no evidence of it — it seems like nothing more than conspiracy theory thinking, and an inability to accept being completely mistaken. But I do think it is indicative of just how strongly many of us were convinced that Iraq had chemical weapons. And it really had nothing to do with Bush administration propaganda leading up to the war. Most of us thought that that since we didn’t occupy Iraq during Gulf War I, that we didn’t get anywhere near all of his weapons — and that he was constructing more. And we summarily dismissed the U.N. inspection efforts as obviously ineffective — when it appears they were the exact opposite.

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 11:35 am

  60. a former european wrote:

    Canuckistani: I agree with you that war is terrible, but that is its very nature. In war, utter violence is inflicted upon others , and they attempt to do the same to our troops. In an unconventional war like Iraq has become, civilians are far more likely to be caught in the crossfire.

    Yet, rather than say “Here is war, see how terrible it is”, the media and the implication of some posters here, is that this is something uniquely attributable to Iraq when it is not.

    For example, one argument is that we must immediately get out of Iraq because civilians are getting killed in the fighting. Because civilians get killed in every war, this would mean we can never go to war or, if in one, we must surrender immediately.

    A second example is that we must leave Iraq immediately because of the horrific 4,000+ US soldier body count. Because US troops will likely die in any war, then you get the same result in example one above. Indeed, because by historical standards 4,000 dead would barely comprise a respectable battle, much less a war, this idea would cause us to raise the white flag before ever really coming to grips with an enemy.

    Another example is the assertion that we must leave because the Iraqis hate us. Even if broadly true, as opposed to only several factions, anti-american sentiment as a criterion for surrender would mean we could never meet our treaty obligations to NATO. Europe is rife with knee-jerk anti-americanism, so this would have prevented our participation in both world wars and, in particular, the Normandy invasions (I can just see a young Jacques Chirac spitting on the hated “Anglo-saxon” troops as they waded ashore”.).

    There are many more examples, but I hope you get the point.

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 11:47 am

  61. Grim wrote:

    Look, just read this. This is the point I’m trying to make: the reason to wait before making your choice. This is what matters.

    These people are real. I’ve met some of them. They are brave, but they are not able to stand alone yet. We must finish what we began. There is no other moral thing.

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 7:21 pm

  62. Michael wrote:

    I’m just lurking, but thought I should pop up to thank all of you for an entertaining, civil, and informative thread.

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 8:08 pm

  63. Alon Levy wrote:

    AFE, did you just say that Hitler killed fewer people than the Allies did, or that Kim Il Sung killed fewer people than the UN forces did?

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 10:59 pm

  64. Alon Levy wrote:

    Also, are you saying that most French people would have rather the Nazis continued to rule France?

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 11:00 pm

  65. a former european wrote:

    Alon: I’m saying the French pretty much hate all non-french people. The particular hatred against one peoples or another is simply a matter of degree.

    Perhaps the french prefered to let the hated Anglo-saxons pollute the sacred soil of La Patrie temporarily in order to remove the even more hated Nazis, just like the Iraqis might prefer the american presence in their land over annexation by Iran or Al-quaeda. Even if not, however, I was arguing that whether or not we are loved in a place is not a reason to criticize a war.

    The french solution is to always do nothing when possible, unless they see an opportunity to destroy unarmed Greenpeace vessels like in the 80s. The french covered themselves in honor and glory at Munich in 1938, when they decided to, you guessed it, do nothing rather than support their allies the Czechs against Hitler.

    The french are at least consistent in their do-nothing policy, since they applied it against Saddam as well. The fact that the french had secret deals with the dictator and were taking bribes might have something to do with their stance. The french were even willing to rob the UN Oil-for-food program designed to feed the hungry civilian population of Iraq in order to line their own pockets.

    Yes, it is true that their are many things in which the US handling of Iraq can be justly criticized, but from the french, I accept no criticism at all.

    Finally, I reject your “lives lost” calculus as a reason for or against going to war. There is no way to make such a determination except through hindsight.

    Posted 07 May 2008 at 5:07 am

  66. Alon Levy wrote:

    Drop the French-bashing. It gets even more tiring than the America-bashing people in France and Germany like to do. France was a spent power by 1940. As early as 1871, the Germans could occupy Paris. And Germany was a rising power right up until the war. France had Britain for an ally, but Britain had few divisions on the ground in France; water barriers make allies less useful than they’d otherwise be.

    The French didn’t temporarily put some ingrained hatred on hold. They actually liked Britain and the US at the time. There were celebrations when Paris was liberated, compared with silence when it was conquered. The same pattern happened everywhere: in Iceland the people and the government welcomed an Allied invasion in open arms. When one side sends people to the gas chambers and pillages its conquests while the other doesn’t, people tend to be surprisingly accommodating. Even after the war, Western Europe stayed with the US against the USSR, against what foreign policy realism dictated.

    Posted 07 May 2008 at 12:33 pm

  67. John the Marine wrote:

    Stop sticking up for the Frogs. They deserve every bit of bashing dished out to them.

    Posted 07 May 2008 at 2:17 pm

  68. canuckistani wrote:

    You know, protect people from the Soviet Union by stationing tanks and troops on their land and you’ll earn some gratitude. Protect people from the Soviet Union by threatening to destroy the world and the gratitude dries up pretty fast.

    But I’m a foreigner, and I like the French. Food, wine, art, literature, and a some of the hottest women I’ve ever met. Sorry guys, the French bashing just makes you look like a bunch of insecure, uncultured rubes. And the Freedom Fries thing was beyond pathetic.

    Posted 07 May 2008 at 6:18 pm

  69. Pigilito wrote:

    From Alon:

    …The French didn’t temporarily put some ingrained hatred on hold. They actually liked Britain and the US at the time. There were celebrations when Paris was liberated, compared with silence when it was conquered….

    I’ll go farther: most French like America and Americans. Especially the older ones who remember the sacrifices made on their behalf. Take a trip out to Normandy and see how Americans are treated.

    The foreign policy of Chirac was another thing altogether, but the French are a pretty good group. (Dislcosure: France is my favorite nation to visit)

    Posted 07 May 2008 at 6:21 pm

  70. Alon Levy wrote:

    Yeah, I think it’s just Chirac who hates America more than most Frenchmen, in the same manner Sarkozy likes America more than most Frenchmen.

    Posted 07 May 2008 at 8:46 pm

  71. a former european wrote:

    If you recall my initial post on this topic, I specifically targetted Chirac. If Chirac was not an accurate reflection of the french position vis-a-vis the US, then it is surprising he stayed in power so long. Whether Chirac, de Villepin, or others of like mind, the official french position was to morally challenge the US on Iraq. Given what we know now re the corruption and scandals of french politicians at that time, taking the moral high tone was pure hypocrisy on the french govts part.

    I also disagree about the notion that France was spent or helpless in 1938. The German General Staff was openly skeptical about Germany’s chances to win a two-front war against both France and Czechoslovakia. They even went so far as to plan Hitler’s ouster or assassination if he went through with it. Adolph’s Munich triumph silenced this opposition and made Hitler politically untouchable inside Germany.

    The Czechs were behind a fortified mountain line, with a modern armored force. When Germany absorbed Czechoslovakia, they took the Czech tanks and renamed them as the Pz-35s and Pz-38s. These were superior to the existing Pz-IIIs fielded by Germany, and they captured enough to equip 2 additional Panzer divisions. The Czech planes were also the equal of the early Me-109s, while the french D.520s and MS-405s were superior.

    It was the analysis and consensus of the German generals then, and most military analysts now, that Hitler would have been defeated in 1938 had the french not capitulated at Munich. Call it “french-bashing” if you will, but it is the simple truth that France preferred the route of do-nothing appeasement rather than take a proactive stance against Hitler. They did the same with Saddam. They are now doing the same with the Iranian nuclear program. Given these examples, it would seem fair to draw the conclusion that France generally prefers a do-nothing policy of appeasement in these types of situations. I fail to see the reason for outrage at this suggestion.

    Posted 08 May 2008 at 12:42 am

  72. Alon Levy wrote:

    It’s not outrage; it’s just wrong. Even the German Generals at the time were likely to be wrong, since the notion that wars are decided based on peacetime economic or industrial power is very recent. My analysis here comes mostly from Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, published in 1987, when these Generals were long dead.

    Countries often have a considerable time lag in their view of the world. The US still views itself as an up-and-coming power challenging the established aristocracy. Thus, Americans tend to view non-Americans who criticize the US as arrogant foreigners, rather than as jesters poking fun at the king. (The same applies within the US to the South, which still has an outdated notion of itself as unfairly dominated by the North). Europeans tend to realize that in the global hierarchy of regions they’re second only to the US, and so accept more criticism, especially from people who aren’t American or pro-American.

    The same applies to France. Frenchmen like to think of their country as a world power, rather than as a second-rate country that only has a permanent seat on the Security Council because giving it one was convenient for the US and Britain. In 1940, it was even worse. France really did think that it was invulnerable to German attack. It was only when Germany invaded that it discovered that it had no reserves to defend itself with.

    Munich is another question. But at Munich, two countries gave in to Hitler’s demands. Both tried to redeem themselves from 1939 on, but one was conquered before it got the chance to.

    On another note, you ask why Chirac won two elections. I have no idea why he won the first time, but the second, it was by accident. Jospin was supposed to beat him in the runoff. However, the left split its vote, so his first round vote was third, with Le Pen coming in second. Similarly, last year Sarkozy won because he looked like a better economic reformer than Royal. The pro- or anti-Americanism was secondary in either case. It wasn’t important to the voters, just like regardless of who wins in the US in 2008, it won’t be because of his position on abortion.

    Posted 08 May 2008 at 2:26 am

  73. canuckistani wrote:

    I’m going to perform a small bit of history fantasization here. I’m going to imagine a world in which Tom Clancy and John Milius were not crypto-fascist blowhards, and that the years 1984-1988 were consumed by a massive war between the US and the USSR. During this war, which only ended 20 years ago, the entire southwest US was occupied by Cuban and Nicaraguan forces, so the war had to be fought without all those Pacific coast resources. After 5 years, Soviet forces were finally expelled from the US, but before the Soviet Union itself could be invaded, the Soviet economy collapsed and an armistice was signed - not an unconditional surrender by any means.
    The costs to the US were catastrophic, in spite of the fact that no strategic WMD’s were used on either side. 13,000,000 American soldiers died, 3,000,000 American civilians, and another 40,000,000 American soldiers were wounded. An exhausted and economically ruined America builds a fortress line along the Mexican border and sinks into an economic malaise. Every household in the US has lost a family member, or is supporting a permanently disabled veteran.
    Twenty years later, the American economy is still struggling. The Russian economy, under Vladimir Putin, has staged a remarkable resurgence and has rearmed at a rate the Americans cannot hope to emulate. Rumours are swirling that the Russians have perfected terrifying new military tactics that will render the Mexico Line obsolete.
    At this juncture, Putin demands that historic Soviet lands in recently independant Poland be returned to the Soviet sphere. He is willing to guarantee the new borders and ensure peace for the next generation. Without the benefit of hindsight, would America go to war and risk another 50,000,000 casualties to protect a country they couldn’t hope to help if they wanted to?
    I think it’s easy for America to sneer at Britain and France for capitulating at Munich when they didn’t suffer from the effects of WW1 in the way the European powers did. Given that you guys were 3 years late for WWI, and didn’t show up for WWII until you were attacked, and even then had to wait for Hitler to declare war before you went to war with him, a bit less arrogance wrt the French might be in order.

    Posted 08 May 2008 at 10:06 am

  74. John the Marine wrote:

    Lets not fantisize, lets be real. Many Americans, like me, don’t like France because she has been working against the U.S. since right after WWII. As far back as I can remember France has always been a Friend rooting for the other side. France has earned her reputation and that is all there is to it. Neither you or Clancy can write psuedo histories to change it.

    OK, Ok, We get it you love France. Consider this though France hasn’t been undermining your country’s interests for the past 40 years, just ours.

    P.S. Besides, their Arab population is going to put burkas on those pretty French girls anyway because the gutless Gauls won’t even defend themselves in their own home. Se la Vie, Monsieur Canuckistani.

    Posted 08 May 2008 at 1:13 pm

  75. canuckistani wrote:

    . Many Americans, like me, don’t like France because she has been working against the U.S. since right after WWII. As far back as I can remember France has always been a Friend rooting for the other side.

    That’s funny, I seem to recall France fighting communists in Indochina or some such place for a good decade after WWII. In fact, I could make a good case that France was pro-US until the Suez Crisis of 1957, when the US pulled the rug out from under France, the UK and Israel in order to curry favour with Saudi Arabia. I think that’s a pretty good reason for the French to resent the US, don’t you?

    Posted 08 May 2008 at 1:27 pm

  76. Pigilito wrote:

    The Suez crisis (which I remember as an anti-imperialist move on the US’s part. The rug was pulled out from under Britain, France and Israel before they attacked Egy