« King Kong! | Main | Grassroots tastemakers » The cost of warJust saw Republican party chairman Ken Mehlman on this morning's "Meet the Press" defending the war in Iraq, and neither Tim Russert nor Howard Dean, who was on later, addressed my issues with Mehlman's argument, which is the Republican argument. Mehlman was explaining why Bush would have invaded Iraq and taken Saddam Hussein down even if he knew there were no "weapons of mass destruction." He says terrorist bombings had gone on for years, and we would often react, but we had never taken proactive measures against terrorists. It was time to be proactive. I have several issues with this argument. First, it's unclear that Saddam Hussein had a significant link with terrorists. He was certainly no friend to the Taliban or Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, people with strong fundamentalist beliefs. Hussein's only religion was Hussein, and it's no way clear that he would get beyond his self-interest to work with terrorist groups, even if they were willing to work with him. (Now, if Mehlman said "we thought we needed a establish a base of operations in the Middle East and were pretty sure we could knock Saddam off and occupy Iraq," I might at least credit his honesty, but he knows, and all the Bush group know, that the American people and the rest of the world wouldn't go for invasion and long-term occupation of Iraq, even if they could argue national interest. Better to stick to the simplistic arguments, however false. Mehlman says it was time to be proactive because of 9/11, and I should mention what most people know by now: Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. If you want to hang that one on a nation, consider that the organizer was Egyptian and his team was mostly Saudi and Egyptian. However you can't really blame those nations, or Iraq, or any other national entity for an action that was orchestrated by Al Qaeda, which is another kind of "Second Superpower," but dedicated to terrorist war rather than peace. You don't destroy Al Qaeda by taking out Saddam Hussein, though you might position yourself as a presence in the region if you want to gamble that you can bring stabilization and undermine terrorist influence. What's more likely (and we can see it in the insurgency) is that you'll feed rather than starve the beast. Another point about asserting ourselves proactively: just to do so in Iraq is burning billions of dollars and hundreds (possibly thousands, ultimately) of American lives. Could it be that we avoided proactive measures before because the cost was unacceptable given uncertaintly about the benefit? The thinking behind the war was evidently born within the neoconservative think tank called New American Century, and I admit that I haven't read their publications, but I'm guessing the underestimated the costs of the war and occupation, and overestimated the "return on investment." I don't think it's smart to take on the monetary costs when the American economy is vulnerable. The human costs I don't even know how to address – what's the "value" of a single life? How is it measured? Suffice to say that it's a great tragedy that we've lost so many in Iraq, and we can only hope it won't be another Vietnam (where we lost 58,000 troops and gained nothing in return). Mehlman says "you can't wait until after the fact" of attack to respond, but what of other threats? Consider the canonical example, North Korea. Kim Jong-Il is arguably worse than Saddam and probably does have WMD, yet we haven't attacked North Korea. In fact, we don't have the assets to handle both North Korea and Iraq. To me it seems disingenous to argue that our policy is to proactively take out potential threats when it's really not something we can or would do. We've done it in Iraq primarily because, through conceptual sleight of hand, the administration managed to convince Americans that our invasion was reactive, that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, and was building an arsenal to do more. Most Americans, engaged in their own lives, heard only enough bits and pieces to be convinced that they were hearing adequate moral argument for war. Out of all this, I think the most serious omission is that of cost. We can't argue that we're going to take out all the bad guys in the world, because we can't afford to take them out. It's better to work with our allies (though we have fewer of those now than we did before this war started) and take action through coalitions working together and sharing cost. And lower cost solutions, like embargoes, make sense. I've been trying to avoid political rants, but I couldn't leave Mehlman's simplistic Rove-driven argument to stand unchallenged, of only by some web consultant who should be working the Sunday morning instead of blogging.... UPDATE: Joshua Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo has more on Mehlman's appearance, saying "I honestly found it hard to keep up with the full number of lies and half-truths that rolled out of his mouth." jon posted this at 11:28 AM |
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