There Are Good Arguments Against the War in Iraq

So how come nobody on the left can make them? How come it's all conspiracy-theory, black-helicopter, America-is-evil nonsense?

While there are always arguments against war, certainly arguments against waging pre-emptive wars, arguments against the costs and hubris of nation-building, and obvious arguments to be made against the war in Iraq, the anti-war movement and the left in this country seem to be incapable of making them.

So, for much of this post, I'm going take the position of a rational devil's advocate--someone who is against the war (which really isn't me at this point) and believes it was a mistake, thinks there are probably good reasons to withdraw, but recognizes that the American and European left are all as detatched from reality as the most homicidal terrorist who believes blowing up a bus is going to lead them straight to honor and prestige in Heaven. Because the left is missing every opportunity to make a solid case against the war, and instead weaves political spin in with fantasy in with self-congratulatory delusion in with blind pessimism to make a mix of wishful black bile that makes them impossibly good and their ideological opponents, and America (at least, those who believe in American exceptionalism and endorse and support America's super-power status, and consider America a force for good in the world) as greedy, evil and self-serving. When, if they were serious about arguing against the war, they could make real progress. If they could resist the tempation to villify their enemies and gaze wistfully at themselves through the soft-focus lens of their own narcissism.

Where to start? I couldn't begin to encompass all the examples. So, I'll start here:

For example, AlterNet refers to it's ongoing war coverage as 'The War On Iraq', and certainly isn't alone in calling the war 'The War On Iraq'--in order, of course, to make the point that the U.S. is waging war against a nation and it's people, not, say, engaged in a hubristic effort to bring Western-style Democracy and freedom to a troubled and oppressed part of the word, where such an effort is largely unprecedented, and the history of such well-intentioned meddling isn't very good.

Which, to me, suggests that if you find it difficult to agree that the U.S. is conducting an imperial or unjust war on Iraq, most on the left are telling you that you are wrong, and that you are, in essence, the enemy. I find this even more ironic given the left's repeated, completely hollow claims of patriotism and "love of country". It's one thing to claim patriotism while dissenting from policy; quite another to claim patriotism while claiming that your country is imperialistic; that it is waging an unjust war on innocent people; that it's men and women in the military terrorize Iraqi men and women in their houses in the middle of the night. It's one thing to say that nation building is not something we should do, that it's not an effective use of our resources, and even that (as is often suggested) it is not, strategically, the way to wage a war on terror. Quite another to say that the war on terror is an excuse for the evil US to torture brown-skinned people and steal their oil. If you really consider yourself a patriot, but have questions about the war in Iraq, is looking at your country as a source of evil and bad things in the world (which is not an unusual refrain from the left) going to resonate? Or is it going to alienate you from people you might otherwise support and vote for, because they've gone too far?

At the very least, it's an open question.

Going on: in a recent book (reviewed here by AlterNet, my convenient source for all the left's best irrationality), called Unembedded, four "independent" journalists show us the true face of the Iraq war. It is a photo documentary of the "human face of war-ravaged Iraq". I tend to wonder if it touches any upon the human face of opressive-dictator-ravaged Iraq, where entire families often ended up shot and buried in mass graves, where all the prisons were dens of torture of the tongue- and hand- and eye-removing kind, where there were rape rooms, and so on. While it may not be our job to save the world from despots and dictators, no matter how many children get shot in the head in front of their parents as part of government intimidation, and no matter how many political dissidents get blinded with a red-hot poker or have their tongues cut out with dull knives, to simply behave as if that didn't happen while simultaneously bemoaning the human cost of war seems disingenous. Certainly, there would be reasons not to have gone to war in Iraq, and the human cost is one of them. But to pretend the human cost in Iraq started (and ends)with American military action is simply untrue, and certainly doesn't strike one as the kind of "patriotic dissent" the left is so fond of claiming.

The review bemoans what they feel is an attractive portrayal of American soldiers (and if you think that, by and large, anything has changed on the left in regards to how they see and feel about the American soldier since Vietnam--other than a vague awarness that spitting on them and calling them "babykillers" does not serve their political goals very well--then I have a bridge to sell you; a heroic portrayal of the American soldier, no matter how accurate and newsworthy, is anethema to the left). But here's a book to the rescue that shows you what happens when the American military does it's job (which, if you don't know, is to kill people and break things): things are broken, and people get killed.

And that's the whole problem. We rarely see who is at the receiving end of a hellfire missile, or a 50-caliber rifle, or a 500-pound bomb. The politics of that destruction and the anger and desperation it fuels, remains hidden.

So, that's the problem: the American people are stupid, and don't understand what happens when people get bombs dropped on them or get shot repeatedly by a machine gun! People who supported the war, or voted for Bush, don't understand that people die, and things get blown up, in wars.

As is often the case in regards to difference between the right, the middle, and the left, I have to question the entire orientation of that sort of thinking, the entire template they are operating from. American's have seen the face of war, and most everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who has been to Iraq, and almost everybody has known somebody, or known someone who knew somebody, who was injured or died on the battlefield.

Many of the people who voted for Bush were veterans of wars and military engagements in the past and, indeed, the military--those most likely to have seen, up close and personal, the ravages of war--voted overwhelming for Bush (something the left knows and expects, which is why they have, at various times, tried to have military absentee ballots disqualified for technical reasons). This is not a nation of complete ignoramuses who don't know that people die in wars and that bad things happen when bombs start falling. Right at the beginning, I think they lose everyone who isn't already one of the enlightened faithful (who can sorrowfully shake their head and how others don't understand the true face of war), because their foundational assumptions are just wrong.

Along the way we visit hospitals in Fallujah and Baghdad where relatives wash their dead and care for the wounded. We see a mosque in Baghdad where women mourn more than 50 killed by a U.S. bomb. We see an Iraqi boy triumphantly celebrating the explosion of an American vehicle. And from the courageous Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, the lone Iraqi photographer in the group, (Alford and Anderson are Americans, Leistner is Canadian) we see an extraordinary sequence of photographs of civilians running from a U.S. helicopter attack on Harif Street in Baghdad in September 2004.

Now, maybe it's just me, but does anybody else detect a potential political agenda in this "journalism"? There was nothing good to see? At all? I wonder if there were any pictures of, I dunno, Iraqis voting in free elections for the first time. Or Iraqis picking through Saddam's mass graves, trying to find evidence of loved ones, long lost without a trace. Or maybe a picture of the woman who, when voting in Iraqi parliamentary elections for the first time who said, "Anybody who doesn't appreciate what America has done, and the president Bush, let them go to Hell!" No pictures of her, I'm betting.

And, more to the point, since the template is wrong--stupid ignorant Americans don't know people die in wars!--they completely miss what seems to me a very logical question: couldn't what they, the authors, are doing have been done during any war? Couldn't it have made the rebels look like quite the murderous cads during the revolutionary war? And wasn't the human cost terrible? Certainly, it was during the Civil War. Perhaps America should have just let the South secede? And during World War II, and World War I, and the Korean War? And certainly, we did it in Vietnam. Certainly, I'm sure there were plenty of French collaboraters unhappy with America fighting the Nazis in France, and I'm sure there could have been plenty of ugly pictures. Again, the human cost of war is not unique to Iraq, and acting like it is presumes and either (a) an ignorance in the intended audience that is not there or (b) a near religious devotion to the anti-war, anti-American-exceptionalism crowd that is really the exclusive domain of the far left.

And in case it isn't obvious, they hate American-exceptionalism, and believe that anyone who embraces it does so through ignorance:

Consider this: The picture most widely distributed during the Marines' violent siege of Falluja last November was a close-up shot of Marine Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, otherwise known as the Marlboro Man, his face smeared with the grime of war and a cigarette seductively hanging from his lip. This image was taken by Los Angeles Times embedded photographer Luis Sinco and published in over 100 newspapers on Nov. 11, 2004. On that day in Baghdad alone an estimated 19 people were killed and an unknown number lost their lives in Falluja. But it was the Marlboro Man who made the front page coast to coast. There are no Marlboro Men in Unembedded.

See, the reason you aren't against the war, and the reason you don't loathe the American military, is because you have been brainwashed (you stupid people) by these "artificial" images of American soldiers looking like strong, brave, honorable American soldiers, and you were too dumb to know that people also died during military actions in Baghdad and Falluja. Because you're ignorant and shallow (proof: you voted for Bush), you think the American military and war in general are all about standing around looking cool with cigarettes, and don't know that real bombs get dropped on real people, and real people get shot, and people really die in wars.

This one just amazes me: Ten Ways to Debate Iraq, by Michael Schwartz. You must read it to believe it, and unless you are already a die-hard leftist, I expect you, too, will be amazed at the willful ignorance and unapologetic, unwavering single-minded one-sideness to the orientation. These "Ten Ways to Debate Iraq" are an excellent example of why the left has so much trouble debating Iraq, and why they can't make the sort of traction with the public at large, or the American voter, that they feel they should (indeed, Bush never should have been elected--much of this was going on, and being "debated" by the left, before the 2004 elections in November).

Just some samples. A reader complains that no mention is made of anything that has improved in Iraq since the U.S. "invaded", and the author explains why this was, previously, just ignored as a topic: it's wrong, everything is, in fact, worse that before, in every conceivable way!

Water and energy delivery as well as schools are worse off than before the U.S. invasion. Ditto for the state of hospitals (and medical supplies), highways, and oil production. Elections are a positive change, but the elected government does not have more than a semblance of actual sovereignty, and therefore the Iraqi people have no power to make real choices about their future.

To prove this, the author cites this "report" on YubaNet (interestingly, a "community-created" website where the material on it is completely unvetted, and no one is particularly accountable for the content, and the author is given as "Committee on Government Reform - Minority Office". The article cites it's request for the investigation by representative Henry A. Waxman (he couldn't have a partisan dog in this fight, could he?), which is interesting as the Commitee on Government Reform - Minority Office seems to, for all practical purposes, be Henry A. Waxman and is clearly a house organ of the Democratic Party. Fascinating.

Nothing was mentioned about Iraqis who want the U.S. to remain (especially the Kurds and the majority of Iraqi women. ... I know of no study indicating that Iraqi women favor the U.S. presence. Perhaps you are referring to the fact that large numbers of women in Iraq are upset and angry over the erosion of their rights since the fall of Saddam. I know some commentators claim that the U.S. presence is insurance against further erosion of those rights, but everything I have read indicates that a significant number of Iraqi women (like all Iraqis) blame the Bush administration for these policies. After all, the Americans installed in power (and continue to support) the political forces spearheading anti-woman policies in the country. Polling data do not indicate that any sizable group of Sunni or Shia women support a continued U.S. presence.

I note they don't mention this poll, from ABC News (they're going to lose their MSM media credentials if they don't watch it), which seems to indicate that most of the people in Iraq are optimistic and thinks are and/or will be getting better, and at least half feel that things are better off than before the war. Nor are the more informed and thoughtful comments and folks like Peter Beinart, of the once-lefty now more moderate New Republic: who notes both that the Kurds (those who have benfitted most from Western-style liberal Democracy, and have been in more direct contact with America and her military, over the past 15 years) want America to stay, and that bad things that would happen if America simply cut and ran, or started scheduling immediate troop withdrawal, as most on the left advocate.

Indeed, it's curious as the left argues against the war in Iraq and agitating for withdrawal without candidly acknowledging the almost certain consequences, for both the Kurds and everybody else. As Peter Beinart (traitor to the left) notes in his article, "anyone who thinks U.N. peacekeepers can protect Kurds against armed fundamentalist militias should do a Google search with the terms 'Rwanda, 1994' or 'Srebrenica, 1995'".

Certainly, the U.S. gains military and political "experience" from the war, as from any war, but at the expense of many deaths (2,127) and injuries (at least 15,704) to American soldiers. Beyond these publicly listed casualty figures lie the endless ways in which the lives of our soldiers are permanently damaged: On November 26, for example, the New York Times reported on a recent army study indicating that 17% of all personnel sent to Iraq have "serious symptoms of depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder." Since about a million American troops have now seen service in Iraq, approximately 170,000 have gained the "experience" of having a severe mental problem. Moreover, the war experience in Iraq has proved so demoralizing to the military that many of the best soldiers are leaving at the end of their tours, instead of staying on in active or reserve status. This is undermining the viability of the military, long term.

This is simply sophistry. While I don't argue, and would never, that training and educating our military in modern warfare is a reason to go to war, or remain engaged in war, the idea that having the military actually do what a military does--that is, fight enemies and occupy territory--somehow weakens our military strength is nuts. There are plenty of indications that the "many of the best soldiers" canard is just that: re-enlistments are up, not down, and most of the best soldiers would in fact be leaving at the end of their tours if their companies weren't engaged in Iraq (there are more profitable and less dangerous lines of work for such people). They simply aren't willing to leave their brothers in arms in the midst of a war. It's a reason commonly cited for going back into the field, and even wounded soldiers do their best to find their way back to the battle lines. American soldiers don't want to leave their fellow soldiers while there's still work to be done. An idea, I'm sure, quite alien to the author, Michael Schwartz.

While I wouldn't normally engage the point about the future benefit of oil reserves, given I don't think it's really an argument for or against the war, I do have to quote one part of the author's debunking of that as a good thing about the Iraq war:

Moreover, such privileged access would have deprived the Iraqis of their right to use the oil to their own benefit -- something they desperately need now that the Saddam Hussein regime, twelve years of brutal sanctions, and the current war have gutted the country.

Catch that? Twelve years of "brutal sanctions"? What's the template of this guy, do you think? One wonders why he didn't just say "now that Saddam's benevolent but misguided regime and fascist America's brutal Sanctions of Death have gutted the country". Why not just go all out?

In regards to the benefits of Democracy in the Middle East being a potentially good reason for the Iraq war, and at least for not cutting and running now, the author says this:

We can all agree that a strong democracy in the Middle East would have huge benefits for Iraq and for its neighbors as well as for the rest of the world. If I thought that our actions there were actually helping to bring this about, perhaps I might also believe that the benefits of an active democracy outweighed at least some of the many problems we have been creating. But from the beginning, the talk of democracy was a hollow mantra, just one of a group of public rationalizations for a war motivated by the Bush administration's desire to dominate Middle Eastern politics and economics. The U.S. government has never actually relinquished sovereignty to the Iraqi government.

It's been, what, two years? A little impatient, aren't we? Did anybody ever say we'd be relinquishing complete control the day Saddam was overthrown? Uh, no. No. Nobody said that. And it's not a reasonable expectation. And it's really a non-issue--immediately relinquishing sovreignty wouldn't make anything better for anybody in Iraq. While the author claims, bizarrely, that he would be for a strong democracy in the Middle East, if he believed we were actually helping bring this about, he fails to mention how leaving Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq (until his admittedly more psychotic and belligerent kids finally took over) would have been better for democracy in the Middle East. But, the author claims, talk of Democracy was a "hollow mantra" (no, if it were hollow, there wouldn't have been two significant elections in the two years since the U.S. "invaded" Iraq to "impose" freedom and democracy). Again, sophistry. It makes no sense. How is having two elections in two years paying lip-service to democracy?

Next, the question is raised about what fundamentalist Muslims hope to achieve. The author, being liberal, feels a compulsive need to mention that Christians can be bad people, too:

I assume that, when you refer to "fundamentalist Muslims," you are referring to terrorists, including those in Iraq and those who attacked the World Trade Center, the London tube, and the Madrid trains. First, I have to disagree with this identification of the terrorists (who are indeed fundamentalist) with all fundamentalist Muslims. That would be the same as characterizing those who bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building as "fundamentalist Christians" and then implying that the destruction of such buildings is what all fundamentalist Christians yearn to achieve.

Actually, it wouldn't be, because the folks who bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building weren't fundamentalists. They weren't even Christians. Timothy McVeigh was agnostic. Check out this Townhall.com article on the subject.

The longer the U.S. stays, the more the Islamic terrorists there are likely to gain strength; the sooner the U.S. leaves, the more quickly the resistance will subside, and -- with it -- support for terrorism. The administration's Iraqi occupation policies are the equivalent of a nightmarish self-fulfilling prophesy.

Nothing is cited (except the author's previous opinion piece on the subject) to prove this claim. And it would need to be proven. But, again, it's the template: America is bad, so the longer every day Iraqi's are exposed to America and American badness, the more they will hate America, and the easier it will be to recruit new terrorists. Couldn't it be that the longer we are there, the more the humanitarian side of Americans will win over ordinary Iraqis? No, that's crazy talk, they'll all hate America more, just like the American left! And how does leaving before we've finished huge infrastructure projects that will take years to complete help anything? Before, he complains that water and electricity and everything else is worse than before, and even though that's largely not true, it can sure be a hell of a lot better than it is today, and it certainly falls short of American standards. So, while there are still many improvements to be made, we should just leave? That would make them like us better? And as the "resistance" more and more targets Iraqi police and recruits, Iraqi government officials and ordinary Iraqi citizens, where exactly are they supposed to withdraw to to make the "Iraqi" (i.e., former Baathist/Syrian/Iranian) insurgency subside? And it doesn't even address the main issue, which is what was that nothing was mentioned about what fundamentalism Muslims wish to achieve, which is a fundamentalist theocracy under which women are slaves and dissenters are dead. While Hussein's secular despotism was despicable, an Islamic theocracy would and will be worse. And is the likely outcome of an early American withdrawl.

7. Nothing was mentioned about the results of the U.S. evacuation from Southeast Asia (over a million killed within 5 years).

I think we need to disentangle two different events involving the (forced) American departure from Southeast Asia. First, there was Vietnam, where it was always predicted that a horrendous bloodbath would follow any American withdrawal. Indeed, there were certainly deaths there after the U.S. left, and many refugees fled the country, some for the United States. But whatever these figures may have been, they were dwarfed by the incredible bloodbath that the U.S. created by being in Vietnam in the first place. Reputable sources suggest that millions of Vietnamese died (and countless others were permanently wounded) during the war years.

Our withdrawls from Vietnam were forced? By what, other than the U.S. Congress, Nixon, and the U.S. Media? And it was "always predicted that a horrendous bloodbath would follow any American withdrawal"? Then why did the left, the anti-war movement, and many of the Democrats agitate for that actions that led directly to that horrendous bloodbath? And "dwarfed"? All facts--that is, documented evidence--contradicts that. The deaths in one year after our withdrawal, in fact, dwarfed the Vietnamese casualties of the entire Vietnam war.

But he's not done with the morally myopic historical revisionism (and he's not done earning David Horowitz's label of leftists as "soaked in the blood" of the results of their cluess policies and causes):

Second, there was the holocaust in Cambodia, which may well have resulted in a million or more deaths. This was also, however, a complex consequence of the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia, not a result of our departure. Cambodia had a stable, neutral government until the Nixon administration launched massive secret bombings against its territory, invaded the country, destabilized the regime, and set in motion the grim unraveling that led to the rise of the murderous Khmer Rouge. If the U.S. had withdrawn from Vietnam in 1965 or 1968, that holocaust would quite certainly never have happened.

Even if you grant, without reservation, the template the author is writing from, you could still ask would the holocaust in Cambodia have happened if American troops had still been there? And the short answer is: no.

But the idea that Cambodia had a stable, neutral government before the "massive secret bombings" is willful blindness. That the Khmer Rouge would never have been, except for America, comes from the left's normal template: everything bad is America's fault. Bad things happen because America was involved. And it's just stupid. It's an infantile understanding of the world. And even if the Khmer Rouge was only there because of America (just like the terrorists in Iraq are only there because America is in Iraq), pulling out clearly wasn't the answer. But it will work in Iraq? Huh? Oh, he explains (not):

The situation in Iraq is not that dissimilar. If the U.S. withdraws soon, there is at least a reasonable chance that the violence will subside quickly and that peace and stability in the region might ever so slowly take hold. The longer the U.S. stays -- further destroying the Iraqi infrastructure and destabilizing neighboring regimes (like Syria and Iran) -- the more likely it is that horrific civil wars and other forms of brutality will indeed occur.

Okay. It doesn't get any better. You'll have to read the rest yourself. But rest assured: although there can be good arguments against war in Iraq, those on the left are not capable of making them.