Truth, relevance, and Iraq
I would like to demonstrate the technique and the difficulty of using the visualization introduced in the last two posts (groups and truth/relevance framework) with respect to Iraq by listing common arguments from both sides (pro-invasion and con-invasion) that I heard and how they could be analyzed in the framework (in no particular order):
Empires fall: true, but irrelevant. Non-empires fall, too. Frequently to empires.
Bush wants the oil: true, not relevant. We could have "had the oil" anytime we wanted simply by lifting the trade ban. F-u-n-g-i-b-l-e.
Saddam is a brutal dictator: True, but irrelevant. We don't invade countries because their leaders are brutal dictators. It so happens that there is a high correlation, and normally this would be merely an interesting and beneficial side-benefit, but it isn't a good enough reason. For one thing, we don't have the resources. For another thing, our choice is rarely between a dictator and a peaceful democracy; it is frequently between an existing dictator and a potentially worse dictator, who may rise in the country in question or who may be the dictator held in check by the dictator in question.
Bush lied about WMDs: Neither true, nor relevant. A lie isn't just a false statement: the statement must be false, the speaker must know it to be false at the time he is speaking it, and the speaker must intend to deceive. At the time Bush made those statements, the National Intelligence Estimate (which is now considered by the anti-war crowd to be sacrosanct) was that Saddam had WMD. Bush, who is accused of not being very bright, believed that it was true. And he wanted not to deceive the public but to convince them that they should believe what he believes in this as in all matters. As to it's irrelevance, ...
... There were no weapons of mass destruction: True, not relevant. If they had found WMD, would the war have been justified? No?! Then it's not really relevant is it?
We are in a war with violent radicals who want to kill us for our freedoms [sic]: Maybe, but probably not relevant. Mostly, we're in a war with people who want us to leave the Middle East. We should oblige them. In 50 years, oil is going to be worthless, and then they can look at the desolation around them in full realization that they have got what they desired. Meanwhile, oil is still fungible, and they can only make money by selling it to someone. Most of our oil does not come directly from the Middle East, it comes from here in the US (yes, about 1/4-1/3 of our consumption is still domestically produced), Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and various other sources. 8% comes from Saudi Arabia, and 7.2% comes from other OPEC nations, not all of which are theocratic kleptocracies (or kleptocratic theocracies?). In other words, we are only dependent on them for about 15%, which we could easily buy from them indirectly by such means as buying finished gasoline from India.
* Oddly, the EIA stats don't add up. In this chart, imports are 10,126 thousand bbls per day, but in this chart, imports add to 13,714. In either case, Saudi Arabia is not the bogeyman the Buchanan Right would have them be.
Saddam was supporting terrorism: True, possibly relevant. Saddam was harboring terrorists, though not al Qaeda. Saddam was training terrorists to hijack planes, but thanks to 9/11, no plane load of tourists is going to go down quietly anymore. Saddam was paying families of terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank, but now the way is paved for the theocracy in Iran to take over that racket. Saddam was waiting to rid himself of the UN inspectors so he could resume production of WMD, but at the time of invasion, he was in check. Saddam was a rival to al Qaeda, and we could have played them against one another, though they may have tried to play that rivalry out by attacking Western targets. In any case, this point is something the anti-war crowd would be wise to consider; they should grow up, stop trying to play gotcha by arguing that the president tried to tie Saddam to 9/11, and stop ignoring the fact that Saddam was indisputably supporting terrorism in the Middle East. At best we can say that we don't have proof that Saddam helped the 9/11 plot. After all the accusations that Bush didn't "connect the dots", the calls for his resignation by reason of incompetence in the wake of 9/11, and the subsequent decision to strike pre-emptively, how culpable are they for the invasion? I'm enough of a student of history to know that President's sometimes make such decisions to quell criticism rather than because it is part of their innate belief, and that because they downplay that reason, it isn't recognized until well after the events have unfolded. Further, the burden here is on the anti-war crowd who also complained about the 9/11 intel failure: you can't simultaneously complain that someone is not doing enough and that they have gone too far without describing the middle path between the two -- what would they propose to have done to prevent Saddam, who had already attacked Iran, Kuwait, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, from following al Qaeda's lead and striking the US? What in the history of Muammar al-Gaddafi's aggression and turnabout is relevant and useful?
Saddam was irrational: Not true, but it would be relevant if it were. It's fun to think of him as "So Damn Insane", but his actions reveal him to be a coldly calculating self-preservationist. He attacked Iran for personal and national gain and received American backing. He sought and thought he had American approval before invading Kuwait. He turned to the jihadis when that went awry, and then used the profits from oil-for-food to keep French, Russian, and UN diplomats on his side. He got rid of his WMD materials while keeping the scientists under his thumb so that he could revive those programs after the UN declared him to be free of WMDs. The only thing he didn't count on was that W would decide to invade on the basis of faulty intel rather than the reports coming back from Muhammad al Baradei. Otherwise, everything he did was the action of a man who set goals and adjusted his tactics to achieve them. Brutal, sociopathic, evil, yes, but irrational? No more so than the tinpot dictators that run Saudi Arabia, Iran, most of Asia, and half of South America. When irrational people get their hands on nukes, that is a concern.
Would you send your son to Iraq? Definitely not relevant, and hypotheticals are neither true nor false. In fact, this has to be one of the most juvenile "arguments" yet offered. The armed forces of this country are voluntary. Nobody is making anyone else go. At first, the accusation was leveled that the Bush Administration is racist on the basis that minorities are more likely to get killed, but that was a Viet Nam era statistic. In the modern, volunteer army, minorities are more likely to be medics and serve in other support roles, while white men are more heavily represented in the front lines. And once this is pointed out, some Left Wingers dismiss those soldiers as right wing religious rednecks. Apparently it's okay to be callous about human life if they happen to listen to different music or hold different beliefs which you can dismiss as irrational. Well, unless those happen to be non-Christian irrational beliefs. The theory appears to be, "It's okay to kill anyone not considered PC, e.g. white male Christians. They're all known to be evil." This is the de facto position of the self-proclaimed Reality Based Community.
The quagmire is creating flies, not just drawing them: True, but so was the status quo ex ante. Prior to the invasion, al Jazeera was nightly showing images of children suffering from the trade embargo. Oil for Food wasn't working, and it was all the fault of America and England. That is how the al Khobar towers, USS Cole, and 9/11 bombers were recruited. Still, this seems relevant since they are probably recruiting at a higher rate than if Oil for Food was still running.
Oil for Food was a corrupt program that enriched Saddam as well as several French, British, Russian, and UN officials: Yes, but is that grounds for invading a country? US Agriculture subsidies have been a scandal for generations, but we aren't even jailing anyone for them. On the other hand, would we have ever had proof about the scandal without invading the country?
X People are dying every year because of the violence: It seems likely that more people are dying now (how can I really know?), but I'm still unsure whether this is true with respect to how things might have been. I am also uncertain how relevant it is. The opposing view is that we should have let Saddam stay in power because, while some people were dying, at least it wasn't as many. I'm not comfortable with sentencing those people to live miserable lives under Saddam (the case had we not invaded). Is that any different than being happy that Saddam is out of power even if I oppose the means by which he was deposed? Can you love the sin (overthrow) and hate the sinner (invasion)? Furthermore, even if you did believe that fewer people would have died with Saddam still in power, that rests on two assumptions: that Saddam would have continued in the same fashion as before (his killing rate would have been steady), and that civil war in Iraq was not likely if Saddam had been left alone. The first is possible, though we know that he planned on resuming WMD development after getting the clean bill of health from al Baradei, a frightening thought in light of the A. Q. Khan revelations. The second is naive - a naivete which apparently infected the Administration before the invasion, and which infects the anti-warriors today.
There was no plan to win the peace: True, entirely relevant. A related argument is that Bush rushed to war. If they had negotiated at length with the Turks, and brought the 4th ID from the north, the initial looting and insurgency might never have happened, or would at least have been controlled faster. If they had gone in with a plan to prevent the lawlessness, the economy might have bounced back faster and fewer people would now be willing to put up with the insurgents. Had the transition been cleaner on these accounts, we could have pulled out sooner and without as many negative aspects including confirmation of Osama's thesis that the US doesn't have the stomach to fight.
Without Saddam, Iran will have a free hand to dominate the region: Oops. True and relevant. What were they thinking? It's a little cynical, but we would have been better off, and quite possibly everyone in the region would have been better off, had we left Saddam in power to oppose Iran's designs on hegemony.
Rumsfeld and the Republicans supported Saddam in the 1980s: Another one from the kids. True, and relevant, but not the way intended. Yes, we provided support to Saddam. It seems unlikely that Rumsfeld knew the Kurds were being gassed at the time he was in Iraq since it wasn't exactly an open country and the stories didn't come out for months afterwards. Yet we probably knew or should have known what they were doing with "dual use technology" agricultural chemicals. Still, does the fact that you made a mistake (if it was that) mean that you can never try to fix it? I think this is one of the better examples that true arguments may only be argumentative without providing any real illumination. At the same time, it is worth contemplating why they were supporting Saddam. He was fighting Iran; it's called realpolitik. Cynical? Yes. Unethical? Definitely. The best solution? No, but possibly the least bad solution. Children shouldn't play geopolitics; someone could get hurt. Unfortunately, the adults now in charge haven't shown themselves to be much better.
If we cut and run now, it will only encourage the jihadis: Possibly true, probably relevant. It may only encourage them to expend lots of resources fighting each other for control in the wake of the power vacuum (Wahabists vs. other Sunnis vs. Shiites). It may also encourage them to attack us here to obtain further pullouts; however, by pulling out and using the Department of Defense for defense, we may be doing ourselves a number of favors.
So the list of relevant true arguments (of varying strengths, and not all working in the direction hoped by the arguers) consists of:
I think this frame of reference is useful for analyzing complex problems. The only points worth contemplating are those that are both true and relevant. Unfortunately, in most public discourse, so few of the resonating points meet both tests.
Empires fall: true, but irrelevant. Non-empires fall, too. Frequently to empires.
Bush wants the oil: true, not relevant. We could have "had the oil" anytime we wanted simply by lifting the trade ban. F-u-n-g-i-b-l-e.
Saddam is a brutal dictator: True, but irrelevant. We don't invade countries because their leaders are brutal dictators. It so happens that there is a high correlation, and normally this would be merely an interesting and beneficial side-benefit, but it isn't a good enough reason. For one thing, we don't have the resources. For another thing, our choice is rarely between a dictator and a peaceful democracy; it is frequently between an existing dictator and a potentially worse dictator, who may rise in the country in question or who may be the dictator held in check by the dictator in question.
Bush lied about WMDs: Neither true, nor relevant. A lie isn't just a false statement: the statement must be false, the speaker must know it to be false at the time he is speaking it, and the speaker must intend to deceive. At the time Bush made those statements, the National Intelligence Estimate (which is now considered by the anti-war crowd to be sacrosanct) was that Saddam had WMD. Bush, who is accused of not being very bright, believed that it was true. And he wanted not to deceive the public but to convince them that they should believe what he believes in this as in all matters. As to it's irrelevance, ...
... There were no weapons of mass destruction: True, not relevant. If they had found WMD, would the war have been justified? No?! Then it's not really relevant is it?
We are in a war with violent radicals who want to kill us for our freedoms [sic]: Maybe, but probably not relevant. Mostly, we're in a war with people who want us to leave the Middle East. We should oblige them. In 50 years, oil is going to be worthless, and then they can look at the desolation around them in full realization that they have got what they desired. Meanwhile, oil is still fungible, and they can only make money by selling it to someone. Most of our oil does not come directly from the Middle East, it comes from here in the US (yes, about 1/4-1/3 of our consumption is still domestically produced), Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and various other sources. 8% comes from Saudi Arabia, and 7.2% comes from other OPEC nations, not all of which are theocratic kleptocracies (or kleptocratic theocracies?). In other words, we are only dependent on them for about 15%, which we could easily buy from them indirectly by such means as buying finished gasoline from India.
| Country | Annual production consumed in the US, thousand barrels per day (2005, EIA stats) | Percentage |
| US | 5178 | 27.4 |
| Canada | 2181 | 11.5 |
| Mexico | 1662 | 8.8 |
| Saudi Arabia (OPEC) | 1537 | 8.1 |
| Venezuela (OPEC) | 1529 | 8.1 |
| Nigeria (OPEC) | 1166 | 6.2 |
| Other OPEC | 1355 | 7.2 |
| Other Non-OPEC | 4284 | 22.7 |
| Total | 18892* | 100 |
* Oddly, the EIA stats don't add up. In this chart, imports are 10,126 thousand bbls per day, but in this chart, imports add to 13,714. In either case, Saudi Arabia is not the bogeyman the Buchanan Right would have them be.
Saddam was supporting terrorism: True, possibly relevant. Saddam was harboring terrorists, though not al Qaeda. Saddam was training terrorists to hijack planes, but thanks to 9/11, no plane load of tourists is going to go down quietly anymore. Saddam was paying families of terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank, but now the way is paved for the theocracy in Iran to take over that racket. Saddam was waiting to rid himself of the UN inspectors so he could resume production of WMD, but at the time of invasion, he was in check. Saddam was a rival to al Qaeda, and we could have played them against one another, though they may have tried to play that rivalry out by attacking Western targets. In any case, this point is something the anti-war crowd would be wise to consider; they should grow up, stop trying to play gotcha by arguing that the president tried to tie Saddam to 9/11, and stop ignoring the fact that Saddam was indisputably supporting terrorism in the Middle East. At best we can say that we don't have proof that Saddam helped the 9/11 plot. After all the accusations that Bush didn't "connect the dots", the calls for his resignation by reason of incompetence in the wake of 9/11, and the subsequent decision to strike pre-emptively, how culpable are they for the invasion? I'm enough of a student of history to know that President's sometimes make such decisions to quell criticism rather than because it is part of their innate belief, and that because they downplay that reason, it isn't recognized until well after the events have unfolded. Further, the burden here is on the anti-war crowd who also complained about the 9/11 intel failure: you can't simultaneously complain that someone is not doing enough and that they have gone too far without describing the middle path between the two -- what would they propose to have done to prevent Saddam, who had already attacked Iran, Kuwait, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, from following al Qaeda's lead and striking the US? What in the history of Muammar al-Gaddafi's aggression and turnabout is relevant and useful?
Saddam was irrational: Not true, but it would be relevant if it were. It's fun to think of him as "So Damn Insane", but his actions reveal him to be a coldly calculating self-preservationist. He attacked Iran for personal and national gain and received American backing. He sought and thought he had American approval before invading Kuwait. He turned to the jihadis when that went awry, and then used the profits from oil-for-food to keep French, Russian, and UN diplomats on his side. He got rid of his WMD materials while keeping the scientists under his thumb so that he could revive those programs after the UN declared him to be free of WMDs. The only thing he didn't count on was that W would decide to invade on the basis of faulty intel rather than the reports coming back from Muhammad al Baradei. Otherwise, everything he did was the action of a man who set goals and adjusted his tactics to achieve them. Brutal, sociopathic, evil, yes, but irrational? No more so than the tinpot dictators that run Saudi Arabia, Iran, most of Asia, and half of South America. When irrational people get their hands on nukes, that is a concern.
Would you send your son to Iraq? Definitely not relevant, and hypotheticals are neither true nor false. In fact, this has to be one of the most juvenile "arguments" yet offered. The armed forces of this country are voluntary. Nobody is making anyone else go. At first, the accusation was leveled that the Bush Administration is racist on the basis that minorities are more likely to get killed, but that was a Viet Nam era statistic. In the modern, volunteer army, minorities are more likely to be medics and serve in other support roles, while white men are more heavily represented in the front lines. And once this is pointed out, some Left Wingers dismiss those soldiers as right wing religious rednecks. Apparently it's okay to be callous about human life if they happen to listen to different music or hold different beliefs which you can dismiss as irrational. Well, unless those happen to be non-Christian irrational beliefs. The theory appears to be, "It's okay to kill anyone not considered PC, e.g. white male Christians. They're all known to be evil." This is the de facto position of the self-proclaimed Reality Based Community.
The quagmire is creating flies, not just drawing them: True, but so was the status quo ex ante. Prior to the invasion, al Jazeera was nightly showing images of children suffering from the trade embargo. Oil for Food wasn't working, and it was all the fault of America and England. That is how the al Khobar towers, USS Cole, and 9/11 bombers were recruited. Still, this seems relevant since they are probably recruiting at a higher rate than if Oil for Food was still running.
Oil for Food was a corrupt program that enriched Saddam as well as several French, British, Russian, and UN officials: Yes, but is that grounds for invading a country? US Agriculture subsidies have been a scandal for generations, but we aren't even jailing anyone for them. On the other hand, would we have ever had proof about the scandal without invading the country?
X People are dying every year because of the violence: It seems likely that more people are dying now (how can I really know?), but I'm still unsure whether this is true with respect to how things might have been. I am also uncertain how relevant it is. The opposing view is that we should have let Saddam stay in power because, while some people were dying, at least it wasn't as many. I'm not comfortable with sentencing those people to live miserable lives under Saddam (the case had we not invaded). Is that any different than being happy that Saddam is out of power even if I oppose the means by which he was deposed? Can you love the sin (overthrow) and hate the sinner (invasion)? Furthermore, even if you did believe that fewer people would have died with Saddam still in power, that rests on two assumptions: that Saddam would have continued in the same fashion as before (his killing rate would have been steady), and that civil war in Iraq was not likely if Saddam had been left alone. The first is possible, though we know that he planned on resuming WMD development after getting the clean bill of health from al Baradei, a frightening thought in light of the A. Q. Khan revelations. The second is naive - a naivete which apparently infected the Administration before the invasion, and which infects the anti-warriors today.
There was no plan to win the peace: True, entirely relevant. A related argument is that Bush rushed to war. If they had negotiated at length with the Turks, and brought the 4th ID from the north, the initial looting and insurgency might never have happened, or would at least have been controlled faster. If they had gone in with a plan to prevent the lawlessness, the economy might have bounced back faster and fewer people would now be willing to put up with the insurgents. Had the transition been cleaner on these accounts, we could have pulled out sooner and without as many negative aspects including confirmation of Osama's thesis that the US doesn't have the stomach to fight.
Without Saddam, Iran will have a free hand to dominate the region: Oops. True and relevant. What were they thinking? It's a little cynical, but we would have been better off, and quite possibly everyone in the region would have been better off, had we left Saddam in power to oppose Iran's designs on hegemony.
Rumsfeld and the Republicans supported Saddam in the 1980s: Another one from the kids. True, and relevant, but not the way intended. Yes, we provided support to Saddam. It seems unlikely that Rumsfeld knew the Kurds were being gassed at the time he was in Iraq since it wasn't exactly an open country and the stories didn't come out for months afterwards. Yet we probably knew or should have known what they were doing with "dual use technology" agricultural chemicals. Still, does the fact that you made a mistake (if it was that) mean that you can never try to fix it? I think this is one of the better examples that true arguments may only be argumentative without providing any real illumination. At the same time, it is worth contemplating why they were supporting Saddam. He was fighting Iran; it's called realpolitik. Cynical? Yes. Unethical? Definitely. The best solution? No, but possibly the least bad solution. Children shouldn't play geopolitics; someone could get hurt. Unfortunately, the adults now in charge haven't shown themselves to be much better.
If we cut and run now, it will only encourage the jihadis: Possibly true, probably relevant. It may only encourage them to expend lots of resources fighting each other for control in the wake of the power vacuum (Wahabists vs. other Sunnis vs. Shiites). It may also encourage them to attack us here to obtain further pullouts; however, by pulling out and using the Department of Defense for defense, we may be doing ourselves a number of favors.
So the list of relevant true arguments (of varying strengths, and not all working in the direction hoped by the arguers) consists of:
- Saddam was exporting terrorism
- The quagmire is creating flies, not just drawing them
- X people are dying every year because of the violence
- There was no plan to win the peace
- Without Saddam, Iran will have a free hand to dominate the region
- If we cut and run now, it will only encourage the jihadis
I think this frame of reference is useful for analyzing complex problems. The only points worth contemplating are those that are both true and relevant. Unfortunately, in most public discourse, so few of the resonating points meet both tests.
Labels: philosophy, police-state, politics
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