The Raven' s Blog, Web Log of Eric Ferguson: Second Half of April Archive

How I got it right
April 21

There was a recent series in Slate, Why Did We Get It Wrong, in which writers described as "liberal hawks" tried to explain how they could make such a terrible mistake as lending their reputations to the sales campaign for the invasion of Iraq. There's certainly nothing shameful in some honest introspection after such a serious error. I congratulate these writers for being willing to answer this question publicly. Then again, much of the writing was so shallow as to illustrate the real source of the error. Perhaps there's as much to be learned from those of us who got it right, the roughly one-quarter to one-third of Americans who never backed the invasion. OK, let's be presumptuous and say there's even more to learned from how we got it right --- or at least how some of us got it right. After all, there were 80-100 million Americans who never fell for the sales pitch and while I won't pretend I speak for all of them, I can say what I was thinking.

So here are some thought processes that avoided the biggest mistake of the century, so far anyway (Iran anybody?). Take note that none of this required hindsight, and can be applied to future sales pitches for new wars (really, think Iran):

Don't accept the assumption that the government knows things they can't tell us or has wisdom we don't have.

The Bush administration did hold things back from the public. They fed the assumption that they couldn't tell us more without compromising intelligence sources. Instead, it turned out they gave us everything that helped the case, withheld anything they could that undercut it. All we could reasonably decide upon was what presented to the public. The people presenting the information in support of their policy were also the only source of information. How convenient. The way I like to put it is "The government knows less than what it's telling us."

Charges weren't proven, and need to be before inflicting war. They don't need to be disproven, just not proven.

If an administration wants to inflict the horrors of war, the reasons for war should be proven to a high standard. To oppose the war, I didn't need Bush's charges against Iraq disproven, just for them to be not proven.

The evidence of WMD and Al Qaida didn't hold up. Lots of assertion, but not much presented to the public.

Several of Slate's writers mentioned Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council. What I noticed at the time was Powell's repeated statement these these were facts, not assertions. The first time he said that, I wondered why he would need to say that. After a few repetitions, I suspected no one would keep repeating that these are facts and not assertions unless these were really assertions and not facts. Powell's speech was about the only time we ever got specifics instead of unbacked --- but oft-repeated --- assertions. That this was the best case the bushies could make shows just how weak the case was.

History shows those who start wars are rarely right about how they'll go.

Pick a war, any war, and almost guaranteed the side that started it was wrong about how it would go. Examples where the aggressor was right are hard to find. That was enough to tell me the bushies and neocons were almost surely wrong about their "candy and flowers" predictions, even before looking at any specifics about Iraq.

Not every war is WWII or Vietnam.

Most Americans know something about only these two wars. They don't know much about even other American wars, let only wars not involving the US, so if a war isn't like one of these wars, then we're going to work off bad analogies. So Saddam was Hitler even if he wasn't, because all dictators we come into conflict with are Hitler. Maybe another war is more instructive, like Britain's war in Iraq in 1920, which indicates certain bad things could happen, like those things that did happen. Now we're staying in Iraq because the lesson conservatives took from Vietnam was "don't leave".

Don't start one war while still fighting another.

Even if invading Iraq otherwise looked like a sound idea, history teaches that it's foolish to start one war before finishing another. Even if the threat from Iraq was real, it clearly wasn't immediate, but the war in Afghanistan had just begun when attention and resources were transferred to preparing the invasion of Iraq. The chance to finish off Al Qaida and the Taliban was blown, fighting in Afghanistan continues, and reconstruction languishes. So instead of having one war after another, there are two disasters simultaneously.

Few dictators have been overthrown through foreign invasion. WWII is an exception, not an example.

Here's that "all wars are WWII" thinking. Outside of WWII, how many dictators have been overthrown through foreign invasion? Contrast that with how dictators generally are overthrown, and it appears foreign invasion is perhaps the least effective means of removing them. It's at least not a common one.

Iraq was not the only brutal regime, so why did Iraq require an invasion while others didn't?

I wrote enough letters at the behest of Amnesty International to know that Saddam was brutal without needing Bush to tell me. However, he wasn't the only brutal dictator. The Myanmar junta was already in power. The Chinese leaders who massacred protesters in Tiananmen Square were still in power. The Sudanese regime that has killed so many in Darfur was killing in southern Sudan at the time. So why did only Iraq merit an invasion? No war supporter answered that question. To my knowledge, none has yet.

Don't trust Bush.

OK, that sounds like a reflex, but before it was reflexive it had to be proven as a reliable guideline, and the fact the sales campaign to invade Iraq was coming from Bush was reason enough to be suspicious. The "liberal hawks" and Democratic congressmen should have shared that suspicion since they had already seen the way Bush seized power in 2000, the connections to the corporate scandals that broke in 2001 and 2002 (remember those, the ones driven out of the news by the sudden need to vote RIGHT NOW on Iraq?), and the infringements of civil liberties and human rights. No American wants to believe any president would lie about something as serious as war, but looking at Bush's history and the people around him, could that possibility really be dismissed? That wasn't reason enough to oppose the war, but it was reason enough to look at the evidence thoroughly and take nothing on its face.

Finally, war has to be the last option. Everyone who resorts to war says they do so only as the last option, but that hardly means they're telling the truth. Too often, it means something more like, "We won't resort to war --- until we think other means won't work," or, to be more cynical, which is normally a safe position dealing with modern conservatism, the "last option" can mean, "We won't resort to war --- until we're ready to attack." No hindsight was needed since even before the invasion, the inspectors were finding nothing and were receiving cooperation from the Iraqi government. So perhaps the main lesson I would ask war supporters to learn is that "last option" really has to mean only after all other methods of resolving a dispute are exhausted. That alone would have been enough to stop them making the mistake that got them confessing their error five years later.

"You don't care about me."
16 year old Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, when he realized the Canadian agent he thought had come to take him out of Hell and home to Canada was just another interrogator.

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at his pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose."
Abraham Lincoln in 1848, during the Mexican War, expressing why allowing a president sole discretion to decide when to invade another country is dangerous to the liberty of his own country.

"The OPR [the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility]also has been far behind in producing required annual public reports summarizing its activities. Last month, it released its report covering fiscal year 2005. That means many investigations undertaken during the tenure of former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales remain under wraps."
LA Times reporter Richard B. Schmit, in an article written in July 2008, on how the OPR is hiding the results of investigations --- assuming they actually are investigating.

"Mr. Chairman, I think the number's actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108, and the total number that were declared homicides by the military services, or by the CIA, or others doing investigations, CID, and so forth — was 25, 26, 27."
Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, on the number of detainees killed in Bush's prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and locations still secret.

"Democracy works, but sometimes churns slowly. Time is short. The 2008 election is critical for the planet. If Americans turn out to pasture the most brontosaurian congressmen, if Washington adapts to address climate change, our children and grandchildren can still hold great expectations."
James Hansen, on the 20th anniversary of his testimony before Congress where he informed them global warming was now certain, and how little time remains to prevent catastrophes.

"Who will chair the commission investigating the secrets of warrantless spying, years from today? Will it be a young senator in this body today? Will it be someone not yet elected? What will that senator say when he or she comes to our actions, reads in the records how we let outrage after outrage after outrage slide, with nothing more than a promise to stop the next one? I imagine that senator will ask of us, 'Why didn't they do anything? Why didn't they fight back? In June 2008, when no one could doubt anymore what the administration was doing---why did they sit on their hands?'"
Sen. Chris Dodd, in his speech on the Senate floor opposing the FISA bill and retroactive immunity.

"We had the worst natural disaster in the history of this country Katrina, and there wasn't a drop of oil spilled."
Sen. Norm Coleman, proposing more offshore oil drilling. There was actually enough oil spilled to match the Exxon Valdez. Whether Coleman is lying, or ignorantly repeating Republican talking points, is unknown.

"I'll go back to square one on this: We squandered a lot of gifts. Human beings were given a lot of great gifts. We were given the ability to reason, this extra-large brain, walking erect, having binocular vision and the opposable thumb, and all of these things, and we had such promise, but we squandered it on goods and superstition. We gave ourselves over to the high priests and the traders, and they are the ones we allow to control us."
George Carlin, in an interview with Salon, on how he became a disappointed idealist.

"To date, seven long years after we scooped up our first detainees in Afghanistan, not a single one of them has faced evidence, his accusers, or anything remotely resembling a legal court hearing on his guilt or innocence."
Joseph Galloway, military correspondent for McClatchy, on how responsibility for war crimes goes right to the top, despite efforts to confine consequences to the bottom, in light of the recent McClatchy series on detainees.

"As I was leaving the UN food distribution center in Damascus, Layla Atiya, the widow with seven children, touched my arm. 'Can you tell me one thing?,' she pleaded. 'Why did America do this to us? What did we do to America to make her hate us so?'"
Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink, writing about her visit to Iraqi refugee camps.

"So we're sitting here and, for example, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who said that he wanted to be a martyr on 9/11, make no mistake about it --- he said that he just couldn't get a visa --- launched into a description of what kind of psychotropic drugs he's taking here at the prison camp, or being given here at the prison camp. And the media monitors hit the white noise button. We didn't get to hear what exactly he's being given and we didn't exactly hear his explanation about why he's on medication.

And one of the escorts here explained that this was HIPAA protection, the Health and Information Protection Act on a place where the Bush Administration says the Constitution doesn't apply."
Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg, on the restrictions placed on the press and mistreatment of detainees.

"If the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court was really concerned about fairness, it could have simply asked the Florida Supreme Court to devise a universal standard, appoint a judge to enforce it, and then extend the state's meaningless 'safe harbor' deadline to make it possible to complete the recount. It did not do so because it was not interested in counting the votes. It wanted George W. Bush to win."
Gary Kamiya, Salon writer at large, in a review of the HBO's "Recount", on how the Supreme Court stole the election for Bush.

"Convicting and imprisoning Paul Minor on corruption charges could be a powerful way to curtail contributions to the local Democratic Party."
U.S. House Judiciary Committee report on political prosecutions by the Bush DOJ. Minor was a vital contributor to the Mississippi Democratic Party.

"Where does the madness end? Where do words lose their meaning? Al-Qa'ida is not being defeated. Hizbollah has just won a domestic war in Lebanon, as total as Hamas's war in Gaza. Afghanistan and Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza are hell disasters — I need no apology to quote Churchill's description of 1948 Palestine yet again — and this foolish, stupid, vicious man is lying to the world yet again."
Robert Fisk, columnist and resident of Lebanon, responding to remarks by Bush that show he hasn't the least understanding of the region he's mucking up.

"The short version: Republicans in Congress, McCain included, have slashed the United States budget for wind energy since Carter was president, which is why McCain has to speak at a Danish turbine manufacturer instead of an American one."
Mother Jones reporter/blogger Jonathan Stein, noting that McCain made his climate change speech in a Danish wind turbine factory after repeatedly cutting funding for wind development here.

"We get off on warfare."
Rev. Rod Parsley, McCain's spiritual advisor, who calls for mass murder, in a snippet of a sermon in a video by Mother Jones and Brave New Films. That line of Christian charity comes about 1:25 into the video.

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