War Supporters Turn to What-If History

A moment I've been predicting has arrived.

As it became more and more obvious that the current situation in Iraq is more of a threat to our peace and security than the situation that existed prior to March of 2003, eventually the war's supporters were going to have to deal with that unpleasant fact. I figured that instead of admiting we made a strategic error, they'd start playing with 'what-if' history...

Yes, Iraq is on the verge of chaos, but this would have happened anyway!  At least we have troops on the ground to help keep it under some kind of control.  Eventually, Sadaam would have died or been overthrown, and all hell would have broken loose, not just in Iraq, but in the entire region!

So they would no longer even try to make the case that we created a more secure situation than the one we faced in 2003.  Rather, they'll compare the situation we ceated with some hypothetical one that might someday have come into existence when the regime collapsed on its own.

Christopher Hitchens made the leap today in an article in the weekly standard.  Look for the neo-cons to start using it more and more if, as seems likely, things continue to worsen in Iraq.

Money quote: "In logic and morality, one must therefore compare the current state of the country with the likely or probable state of it had Saddam and his sons been allowed to go on ruling. At once, one sees that all the alternatives would have been infinitely worse, and would most likely have led to an implosion--as well as opportunistic invasions from Iran and Turkey and Saudi Arabia, on behalf of their respective interests or confessional clienteles. This would in turn have necessitated a more costly and bloody intervention by some kind of coalition, much too late and on even worse terms and conditions."

Here's the entire article.

(by the way, I'm a big fan of Hitch and always have been)

Of course, its entirely possible that things would have imploded eventually, leading to opportunistic invasions by its neighbors.  Its also entirely possibile that another Baathist general would have taken control (keeping the Shiites under Sunni domination as they had been for two hundred years).  Heck, the new general might have even tried to make peace with the west (this is not pure fancy, its in fact what the first Bush administration was figuring would happen.)

Of course, we'll never know what would have happened had we not invaded. But when the war's supporters start comparing the existing situation with a hypothetical one in order to make their case, you know we've reached a turning point.

Comments

[Jennifer Hagstrom]

Ok, a couple of things. 1) As an aside, I found the most interesting thing in the Hitchens article to be the reason GWB can't make a "true" case for the war with the american people: the inability of DoD and CIA to get along. What does that say about the efforts to coordinate our government better for our own protection -- and the lack of progress made now, 4 years after 9/11? Especially in the face of our recently demonstrated inability to secure either an American city or our strategically most important port under circumstances where we certainly had plenty of warning an "attack" was imminent -- a luxury any terrorist will not give us.

And 2) I also find it interesting that, although I suspect the majority of Americans take pride in their belief that we fought the second world war in the European theatre at least partly on the grounds of rescuing people who were being overrun by an expansionist tyrant -- a point Hitchens also makes about Saddam -- no one in GWB's government believed, if their actions are any indicator, that the American people could ultimately be roused to intervene on those grounds again. (One wonders if they read enough history to realize that FDR had to swear, repeatedly, he wouldn't get us involved in a "foreign" war and got spooked by that.) Instead, they had to trump up a case that Saddam was an imminent threat to the US -- even though Colin Powell himself said on 20/20 a couple of weeks ago that he had never seen any link between Iraq and 9/11, and Iraq hadn't attacked us or given us any indication I'm aware of that they intended to. Many of the grounds mentioned to the American people as reasons Saddam was an imminent threat to us were proved false over time -- hence the "now is more dangerous than then" scenario. What I find interesting is that throughout the paragraph of what-if doom and gloom that appears in Hitchens article, I still see nothing there that necessarily makes Iraq a hypothetical imminent danger to the U.S. So when I read that, I think SSDD.

[Jennifer Hagstrom]

PS: immediately after my last post, I was talking to Scott about this and he quibbled with Hitch's characterization of Saddam as expansionist for two reasons: 1) he terms it an open question as to who started the Iran/Iraq war and 2) Saddam's invasion of Kuwait took place AFTER Saddam asked the American ambassador to Kuwait -- a woman appointed by a Republican -- whether or not the US would object if he invaded. This woman -- clearly a brain surgeon -- assured him the US would have no problem with it. He invaded. Guess what -- she was wrong. Neither of us can think of any time since Kuwait when Saddam has invaded any more of his neighbors -- please correct us if we're wrong.

[Jennifer Hagstrom]

A couple more comments re the Hitchens article, especially re the chasm between DoD and CIA:

1) Hitch's article assumes that where DoD and CIA agree, DoD is correct. Where is the evidence that they're right and CIA is wrong?
2) Assumption #1 overlooks the fact that if DoD can find a reason to support going to war, DoD will get money, projects, limelight, activity, glory, money, new technology, expanded numbers, more possibility for career advancement for its members, money --- you see where I'm headed. Whereas, in the current administration/environment, if CIA comes forward with a reason some foriegn power isn't a big enough threat to go to war over, they become discredited, unpopular and accused of incompetence -- because, obviously, whomever Bush has in his gunsights is clearly a threat, and if those bozos over at CIA haven't found that out, well, they're clearly not the crack spies they're supposed to be and couldn't find their own butts with two hands and a map.