I was an ardent supporter of the coalition invasion of Iraq at its outset. Today, I have mixed feelings about the intervention. On the one hand, the neocons that we liberal internationalists trusted to make a sound national security and public policy argument in favour of the Bush policy, to compliment the suit we brought against the Hussein regime for its violations against human rights and international law, lied. On the other, those same neocons– who promised effective oversight of the invasion from the Pentagon, State, and Military Intelligence– botched the management component of the invasion all together and drafted no clear exit strategy.
So yes, I have mixed feelings. I’m not particularly peeved about the falsifications– the lies. I wanted a way into Iraq because the Clinton policy of neo-isolationism simply was not working. UN estimates had half a million children under the age of five dead during the 1990s because of sanctions and an ineffective Oil-for-Food program. If starvation by displacement in the Sudan is a righteous cause for intervention, which it is, then this would have to be, too. I wanted a way in because we had proof of a genocide. We had proof of torture, sex discrimination, violence against women, political executions, child abuse, and the systematic suppression of the human conscience. Any argument suggesting that the right thing to do would have been to continue isolating these problems from the international community’s responsibility to protect citizens whose rights are undermined by rogue states doesn’t hold up. Going into Iraq was the right thing to do, whether your justification for doing so was the neoconservative assumption that the state posed a regional and international security threat or the liberal interventionist bent that saw a robust military policy as the only solution to decades of failures on human rights and democracy. The falsifications about WMD I could care less about. I had my own reasons for wanting the Hussein regime taken out– reasons that hold up to this day. What concerns me, and what will always register in my mind as Bush’s greatest failure, is the management of post-invasion Iraq.
The Bush administration has, thus far, failed to meet any benchmarks for progress in its handling of post-invasion Iraq. The “surge” has allowed for headway in a limited number of provinces and the Iraqi capital. It hasn’t improved the US diplomatic core’s standing in the region and has done nothing to resolve the perpetual stalemate that is the Iraqi parliament. It hasn’t done much of anything.
A year from now, historians will have their chance to begin assembling what will be the Bush legacy. And, for the first time, the former president will have an editorial say on his actions as commander-in-chief from outside the DC beltway and from outside the press-scrum spin. I think we all understand that the execution of the Iraq war has been a complete failure. The authorities President Bush delegated to coordinate the efforts to topple the Hussein regime ignored almost every recommendation from US military leadership and State about deployment levels, length of occupation, and diplomatic strategies to withstand the weight of a potential fallout. At this point, I don’t think there is a practical argument he or his supporters can make in support of the president’s Iraq policy. But I do think there is a theoretical one. And that theoretical argument might be just enough to save face in the pages of history.
Neoconservative foreign policy is always a Trotskyist exercise. It’s ideological, given the consideration that its only aim is to spread or establish a particular form of moral governance. I don’t consider Dick Cheney a neoconservative or, for that matter, any of the war profiteers at the White House who had ties to major financial backers of reconstruction projects in Iraq. But I do think Bush and Paul Wolfowitz can be excepted from this crowd.
Michael Ignatieff used to teach his students at Harvard of the ‘uptopian’ appeal of genocide. That is to say that there is an understanding among those who commit genocide that their actions, although heinous, are intended to create a more homogeneous and, thus, more manageable and, they would argue, ‘better’ society. Of course, this line of thinking is morally outrageous, but it is appealing to the desperate and it is often why genocide happens in the first place. Genocide is irreconcilable with accepted moral systems, but it exists because somewhere someone sees virtue in it.
Okay, what the hell does that have to do with anything?
Well, it’s my way of framing my argument. The neocon principle that liberty and constitutional democracy are the two most essential counterpoints to human oppression is right. And the neoconservative movement’s advocacy for military intervention in cases where humans are oppressed of their freedoms is admirable, if not morally adequate. To those who discount Bush’s morality or his humanity offhand I raise the extreme example above, which Ignatieff was known to use in order to introduce paradigm analysis in political theory. The morals of genocide are simply twisted, but understanding them is essential to preventing philosophies that deem human extermination acceptable from ever gaining mainstream acceptance in any part of the world again.
Understanding Bush’s theoretical argument is important, too. It’s important, not because of a moral failure, but because of a failure to execute.
Next time, we listen to our generals. Next time, we listen to our diplomats. Next time, we listen to our intelligence officers. The idea of preemptive war in the name of constitutional democracy or freedom is never something that should be taken off the table. It is, however, something that should be executed with practical consistency. President Bush failed to make morals translate into success on the ground and that is, in part, because he let those around him that had no morals convince him that an insufficient strategy for helping the people of Iraq grab a hold of their own destiny was the right one. His failure in judgment has led to the suffering of millions, but it isn’t too late to amend some of the damage done. Theoretically, that is.
MUSIC FOR THE DAY
It’s sad rolling into a New Year knowing there will be no more legendary Magnificent Sevens parties at the label’s old warehouse space on Lisgar. In the interest of remembering good times, here are two songs by Toronto’s Disraelis, one of the trendier bands that came off the label. Standard post-punk Joy Division lovefest, but I still like these guys a lot.
“Blackmail” by the Disraelis.
“Planet Earth” by the Disraelis.
Very interesting. I appreciate reading how others see it.