Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Maybe Garry Trudeau can sic Phred the Terrorist on him...

there was a massacre at Hue in the Tet Offensive. This may have been VC though. McCain and other POWs weren't treated humanely. And long after Tet, when the force in the South was mostly NVA, they did fire on clearly marked medical facilities, like medevac helicopters.

There are some positive things to say abut their bravery against overwhelming firepower and their tenacity. But a "very civilized foe" they were not.

I think we would all be better off if we simply ignored Mr. Hitchens from now on. He never impressed me when he was in the Alexander Cockburn crowd (writing nasty screeds about Mother Theresa and the like) and hasn't improved at all with the David Horowitz crew.

Some people (Ted Rall, Ann Coulter, etc) would suck no matter what political camp they happened to be in. They exude profound intellectual dishonesty and should not be given the attention they crave.

Hitchens is fantastic. Always has been. Those who don't like him are usually partisan trolls.

Its well to remember that the North Vietnamese had been fighting a bloody war for 20 years and suffered millions of casualties. By the end they were pretty, but as Hitchens observes, not particularly brutal.

Similarly by the end of 4 years of bloodshed the Pacific campaign, the US marines were a pretty brutal outfit.

It is a mark of a civilized foe/army that is can control its brutality despite suffering large casualties.

The point that Hitchens is making is that the Arab terrorists have gone straight for brutality. It’s a no brainer to say that they are qualitatively different foe.

I think Hitchens is right.

Don't you people remember that Chuck Norris flick where he's a Vietnam vet, and he goes back years later to get the wallet he dropped there - and the money is still in it?

Most honest, gentlemanly people I'm aware of.

American prisoners were certainly occasionally tortured in Vietnam, and civilian populations which supported the south were harassed, brutalized, and occasionally killed. It was war (albeit, a really stupid, costly, and useless one), and war tends to lead to all sorts of atrocities. If anyone cares to note, this happens to be occuring now, both on the part of the Iraqis, and, in case someone might have missed the recent headlines, on the part of the Americans. Hitchens is plain wrong, which unfortunately is getting to be a rather common thing for him these days.

I teach my students that learning how to write well is learning how to think straight. Hitchens has proved me wrong. He's a sad case. I don't know his earlier work; I suppose it's reasonably good. And I don't begrudge his libertarioan/Republican stance. But when he descends to being a hack, to hell with him. He has to look at himself when he shaves every morning. Not something I would want to do if I put out the pap that he's been doing the past few months.

non economist: "American prisoners were certainly occasionally tortured in Vietnam...."

Hitchens: "[the Vietnamese] were not torturers and mass murderers..."

non economist: "Hitchens is plain wrong...."

Hitchens is plain wrong only if you choose (or are only able) to read his remarks in such a way as to avoid his plain meaning: the Vietnamese were not torturers and mass murderers in the sense that the Hussein regime was.

If y'all want to take on Hitchens re his stance on Iraq vs. his stance on Vietnam, fine, that might be interesting - I'm not completely sure what to think myself - but what's the point if you're not going to represent Hitchens' arguments with a bit of care? With someone as good with language as Hitchens, these grunty "Hitchens sucks, man" sort of comments seem especially inappropriate.

So CH is now simultaneously apologist for Bush and the Viet Minh. How long before his brain explodes? But on Vietnam he is trying to make a distinction (which Daniel Davies obstinately fails to grasp) regarding the kinds of weapons people are prepared to use in wars. (Does one, for example, undertake indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilian targets?) And a little more research and evidence is needed, surely, before one decides what the boat people are evidence for.

This is one of the weaknesses of the blogsphere, present setting not entirely excluded -- a certain tendency to pompous pose-striking the overrides nuance, unimpeded by any editor who might urge substance and analysis rather than posturing and snarking.

Vietnam and Iraq certainly had this in common: the wickedness of the enemy was not sufficent justification for a war.

Colin Danby: "So CH is now simultaneously apologist for Bush and the Viet Minh."

Any examples in mind of his writing that you think makes him an "apologist for Bush?" He's pro-war, sure. But his pieces in Slate don't come across as being written by someone with any great fondness for Bush, rather as being written by someone with an intense dislike for the antiwar people, and their arguments.

Hitch too? Isn't there one thing in this country Bush can't completely screw up?

To Joe Mealyus: substitute "apologist for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq" for "apologist for Bush" if you prefer. What's strange and sad is that someone who remembers the mendacity of the Johnson and Nixon administrations around Vietnam, and its cruel results, could be so credulous now. (See http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/other/85-hitchens.html)

Of course this explains why CH has to insist on a distinction (justifiable wars of national liberation versus beyond-the-pale terrorism) that the Bush administration is doing its best to obliterate on the ground, and which most of the jingoes who support the war never recognized in the first place.

“And a little more research and evidence is needed, surely, before one decides what the boat people are evidence for...”

The boat people are evidence that the communist North Vietnam government was worse than the South Vietnamese government. What kind of research do we need to do? The boat people were trying to flee a communist dictatorship, and willing to face extreme peril to do so. Others have done the same. Remember the people who died trying to go over (or under) the Berlin Wall? And to this very day still have boat people trying to flee Cuba. And of course we have shame of the West: Operation Keelhaul where the Allies decided to placate Stalin by repatriating WWII displaced persons who got out of the Soviet Union. Many of these people committed suicide rather than return because they knew they would be sent to death camps. As to Christopher Hitchens, he finally couldn’t stomach the mendacity of the left anymore and jumped ship. It’s interesting that he says he left the Nation Magazine because of the readers, not the editors.

"The point that Hitchens is making is that the Arab terrorists have gone straight for brutality. It’s a no brainer to say that they are qualitatively different foe."

Arab terrorists, sure, but are former Iraqi regulars and Shiite militia in the same league as Al Quaeda terrorists? Should the US treat every armed former conscript with no work and no prospects as it would a Zarquawi or Bin Ladin?

"Hitchens is plain wrong only if you choose (or are only able) to read his remarks in such a way as to avoid his plain meaning: the Vietnamese were not torturers and mass murderers in the sense that the Hussein regime was."

How do we know what kind of torturer Saddam was? Virtually everything Chalabi fed to the US about Saddam in WMD's was a lie, how do we know the tortures were true?

The machine to grind up people alive was never found for example. If that was made up then how much else was? How do we know Saddam's sons did much wrong at all?

"How do we know Saddam's sons did much wrong at all?"

Eyewitness accounts. The written record. Man, Bush is driving the Left completely insane.

Are these similar eyewitnesses to all the WMD's Saddam had? Someone, either Chalabi and his cohorts or Bush has been misleading people about the WMD's.

So the question is a natural one. Given so many lies were told, how do we know which parts are true and which are not?

If I said for example that Saddam was torturing no more people than the average Islamic country that is an ally of the US what facts are available to prove me wrong?

Apparently prisoners were shipped to various Middle Eastern countries to be tortured for the benefit of the US, so how exactly was what they did in comparison to what Saddam was doing the last 10 years?

Since the Republicans now claim the war was to rescue the Iraqis from this ill treatment, they should have been able to prove pre invasion this ill treatment existed.

Also I'm not of the left, I just don't believe in lies and emotional arguments from politicians.

So, if the Viet Cong were restrained and civilized, what were the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Rouge?

If the Saddam Hussein and the Republican Guard were ratonal actors who could be deterred, what of the Syrian Fedayin and the Iranian Mullahs?

Colin Danby: "substitute 'apologist for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq' for 'apologist for Bush' if you prefer. What's strange and sad is that someone who remembers the mendacity of the Johnson and Nixon administrations around Vietnam, and its cruel results, could be so credulous now."

Calling Hitchens an "apologist" just seems a (pointless) way of impugning his motives. And how is he credulous? What bad information, specifically, has he bought into? He thinks that the toppling of Saddam was a good idea - maybe he's completely nuts, but it's interesting that not a single commenter has bothered to adduce a specific Hitchens point that they wish to refute.

Hitchens himself wrote a recent Slate column titled "What I got wrong in Iraq," And what *he* thinks he got wrong was (shockingly, I have opened a new window, gone to Slate, and cut and pasted):

"But the extent of lumpen Islamization in Iraq, on both the Khomeinist and Wahhabi ends (call them Shiite and Sunni if you want a euphemism that insults the majority), was worse than I had guessed."

"How do we know Saddam's sons did much wrong at all?"

Check the Iraqi blogs, or the accounts coming out of Iraq. Salam Pax, December 2002, writing about Uday Hussein: "Everyone except his closest 'friends' know that he is a sick monster. He has already driven himself into a dead end before his father did. Families walk out quietly when he enters a restaurant, he is known to send one of his boys to bring him the women sitting at the closest tables to 'join' him. People hate him, as much as they fear his father."
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_dear_raed_archive.html

A recent New Yorker article by George Packer:

"In March, 2003, a week before the start of the war, a sixteen-year-old girl whom the Baathist police had found wandering disoriented through the streets was brought to the Medico-Legal Institute. Upon examining her, Shaker [Dr. Bashir Shaker, a forensic-medicine specialist] found that her virginity had been recently and violently taken. The girl, named Raghda, was beautiful, with pale skin and large, dark eyes, and she was so miserable she could hardly speak. Raghda seemed nothing like the teen-age prostitutes Shaker examined, and he gently persuaded her to tell him what had happened.

"Raghda had gone to audition as a television announcer at the studio owned by Uday Hussein, Saddam’s psychopathic older son. Along with the six other finalists, she was taken to a room where Uday--crippled from a 1996 assassination attempt--was seated in a chair, holding a pistol in his lap. He ordered the girls to undress and walk in a circle around his chair. When one girl begged to be excused, Uday shot her dead. After that, the other girls, including Raghda, did as they were told. In the following days, Uday (who was committing some of his last crimes in power, while an invasion force gathered along Iraq's southern border) raped the girls, then threw them out on the street, drugged, with a wad of cash, which was how Raghda was found by the police. When she told them her story, they gave her a beating and then took her to the Medico-Legal Institute.

"'If you want to help me,' Raghda told the doctor, 'go tell my parents their daughter was found dead.'"

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact

"How do we know Saddam's sons did much wrong at all?"

How brainwashed are you?

How do we know how bad Chalabi is? The CIA hates him, we know that. Bremer now hates him.

The story I remember about Uday Hussein was that he killed a bodyguard for Egypt's Foreign Minister in fit of rage in front of a bunch of people. The Foreign Minister described him as a psychopath.

There was a reason Baghdad was full of celebratory gunfire the night Uday and Qusay were killed.

"How brainwashed are you?

How do we know how bad Chalabi is? The CIA hates him, we know that. Bremer now hates him."

We do know for a fact people lied a lot about Iraq. We know the stories about WMD's were lies, and the lies were generally directed against Saddam. So how can we really know where the lies stopped and the truth began?

Would someone who lied about Saddam trying to make nuclear bombs and having mobile biological laboratories somehow balk at saying nasty things about him personally?

I don't know if the torture was true or not, I'm asking if anyone here knows. So far it seems no one really does. No one is investigating the allegations of torture against Saddam yet, and whether he was worse than an average Middle Eastern country. For example if he did no worse than the Saudis I don't think it's much of an excuse for invasion.

We know people lied about Saddam because if it was so bad the people would have risen up like Cheney said when the troops came in. Even now most seem to think they were better off under Saddam. Doesn't sound like a reign of terror to me.

dispassionate

Peter K. wrote, "Eyewitness accounts. The written record. Man, Bush is driving the Left completely insane."

Inappropriate generalization. More appropriate: "Bush is driving poster dispassionate insane."

Most Sunnis probably think they were better off under Saddam. The Kurds clearly do not, and the Shi'a don't seem to.

"Inappropriate generalization. More appropriate: "Bush is driving poster dispassionate insane."

Hardly. I simply want to know amidst all the lies that the Bush Administration has told which parts are the truth. Clearly no one here knows whether the stories about Saddam's tortures are true, or you wouldn't need to try the bait and switch.

It's amusing that after all the lies people still get indignant about having to prove things.

"I simply want to know amidst all the lies that the Bush Administration has told which parts are the truth. Clearly no one here knows whether the stories about Saddam's tortures are true, or you wouldn't need to try the bait and switch."

Do you trust Amnesty International?

From their report covering Iraq in 2000:
http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/webmepcountries/IRAQ

"Political prisoners and detainees were subjected to brutal forms of torture. The bodies of many of those executed had visible signs of torture, including the gouging out of the eyes, when they were returned to their families. Common methods of physical torture included electric shocks or cigarette burns to various parts of the body, pulling out of fingernails, rape, long periods of suspension by the limbs, beating with cables, *falaqa* (beating on the soles of the feet) and piercing of hands with an electric drill. Psychological torture included threats to arrest and harm relatives of the detainee or to rape a female relative in front of the detainee, mock executions and long periods in solitary confinement.

"In June Najib al-Salihi, a former army general who fled Iraq in 1995 and joined the Iraqi opposition, was sent a videotape showing the rape of a female relative. Shortly afterwards he reportedly received a telephone call from the Iraqi intelligence service, asking him whether he had received the gift and informing him that his relative was in their custody.

"Amputation of the tongue was reportedly approved by the authorities in mid-2000 as a new penalty for slander or abusive remarks about the President or his family.

"In September a man reportedly had his tongue amputated by members of Feda'iyye Saddam in Baghdad for slandering the President. He was said to have been driven around after the punishment while information about his alleged offence was broadcast through a loudspeaker."

One more comment on atrocity stories in general, courtesy of Orwell ("Looking Back on the Spanish War", 1943):
http://the-stewardship.org/spanishwar.htm

"... The truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it. Recently I noticed that the very people [in the British Left] who swallowed any and every horror story about the Japanese in Nanking in 1937 [prior to Britain's entry into the conflict] refused to believe exactly the same stories about Hong Kong in 1942. There was even a tendency to feel that the Nanking atrocities had become, as it were, retrospectively untrue because the British Government now drew attention to them.

"But unfortunately the truth about atrocities is far worse than that they are lied about and made into propaganda. The truth is that they happen. ...

"These things really happened, that is the thing to keep one's eye on. They happened even though Lord Halifax said they happened. The raping and butchering in Chinese cities, the tortures in the cellars of the Gestapo, the elderly Jewish professors flung into cesspools, the machine-gunning of refugees along the Spanish roads -- they all happened, and they did not happen any the less because the Daily Telegraph has suddenly found out about them when it is five years too late."

Some good quotes but it doesn't answer my question. Did Saddam torture people substantially more than in other Middle Eastern countries. What you are describing probably happens exactly the same in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Jordon, even Israel.

The Administration claims the main reason they invaded Iraq was because Saddam was mistreating his people, so where is the evidence he was?

I don't mean he mistreated 3 people or whatever, where is the overwhelming proof that an overwhelming need for an invasion right now to save lives was required?

I assume they had the same proof of this like with the WMD's. Israel seems to be doing worse to Palestinians every day on the front page of the NY Times. The US sent prisoners to Syria and Egypt specifically to be tortured. So presumably that was to do more than they were already doing at Gitmo.

If saving the Iraqis was now the real reason for the invasion where is the documented overwhelming proof it was necessary?

If I understand correctly, you actually have three different questions:

1. Are the stories about Saddam's atrocities true or not?

2. Did Saddam's atrocities justify the war in Iraq?

3. In particular, were they any worse than other countries in the region, including US allies?

From what I can tell, the answers to (1) and (3) are yes. If you want to compare Iraq to other countries in the region, see
http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/regMDE/regMDE?OpenDocument

My answer to (2) is no. I think war has to be justified by the national interest, not humanitarian motives.
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=afe9ed76.0301211245.3fe5e55%40posting.google.com

By the way, if you want evidence that Saddam mistreated more than "3 people or whatever", see the article "The Great Terror", by Jeffrey Goldberg:
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?020325fa_FACT1

Again, I'm not claiming that this justifies the war, just that Saddam Hussein's regime was indeed a particularly gruesome one.

"From what I can tell, the answers to (1) and (3) are yes. My answer to (2) is no."

From what you can tell, exactly. My point is we don't know the answers to this definitively, yet the administration implies they do know. You may well be right, I am just trying to establish whether the current alibi of the war as a rescue mission has clear intelligence and evidence to support it.

The stories seem to be a mix of truth and bullsh*t placed in a blender on high for 5 minutes. I can't pick out how bad Saddam really was out of all the other information we now know was untrue.

There are numerous videos and still photosI've seen some on PBS--that demonstrate quite clearly that Saddam was a brutal torturer. That's in addition to first hand witnesses. Anyone who thinks that it's an open question is willfully obtuse.

We had the same thing with respect to Stalin’s terror famine in the Ukraine in the early 1930s. The left refused to believe it, although they were quick to believe anything negative about Franco a few years later. Robert Conquest’s books on this subject were attacked by left wing historians (who still dominate the profession) as relying too much on eyewitness accounts. Now of course with the fall of the Soviet Union we know for certain that the terror famine was a fact, and Robert Conquest got it right.

"There are numerous videos and still photosI've seen some on PBS--that demonstrate quite clearly that Saddam was a brutal torturer. That's in addition to first hand witnesses. Anyone who thinks that it's an open question is willfully obtuse."

That wasn't my question though. All Middle Eastern countries torture people, we even ship people to them to get tortured. The Bush Administration claimed the abuse was so bad that it was necessary to invade, and the WMD's not that important.

So my question is what proof is there pre invasion this was true? In various polls Iraqis seem to be saying it was better before the invasion, how could this be if they were being massively abused?

It seems that no one really knows. Since this is the last reason for the war left standing, the right doesn't seem too interested in investigating it either.

Whether Stalin did bad thing or whether Conquest guessed right is not relevant. Did the Bush Administration guess Saddam was mistreating his people or did they have real evidence it was at a high level? And how did they determine it was true and not Chalabi propaganda like the WMD's.

Dispassionate,

What is your point on the Saddam brutality angle? Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are hardly Bush proxies, but they have rather thoroughly documented Ba'athist atrocities. You seem to me to be perilously close to saying that because he was ovethrown by Bush for Bush's purposes, he therefore was probably not all that bad.

I doubt that Bush et al gave a damn about what Saddam did to his own people, other than how they could exploit such atrocities for their own purposes. But again, being overthrown by amoral powermongers is not evidence of character, good or bad.

dispassionate:

“All Middle Eastern countries torture people, we even ship people to them to get tortured.”

What evidence do you have that we send people to the Middle East to get tortured? There is the case of Maher Arar, the Syrian-born Canadian Muslim who claims he was mistreated by the officials from the INS, the FBI and the New York Police at JFK airport, and then deported to Syria. He claims the Syrians tortured him. His story could be true although it sounds somewhat fantastic. We only have his version of what transpired. If a large number of such stories surface, he would become credible. Some people are all too ready to accept even this one case as strong evidence of a US-Syrian torture connection.

As for the tortures of Saddam, we have decades of personal testimonies, the mass graveyards uncovered by US soldiers, documentaries etc. Long before Bush became president, we had stories of Saddam’s brutality. For example, I remember reading a NYT Sunday Magazine article circa 1980 about the Soviet-Style government in place in Iraq. The article also discussed Saddam’s brutality.

Perhaps you think Saddam was not brutal enough (relative to the rest of the Middle East) to justify an invasion. That’s reasonable opinion, but others disagree. Study more and you might change your mind.

"What is your point on the Saddam brutality angle? Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are hardly Bush proxies, but they have rather thoroughly documented Ba'athist atrocities. You seem to me to be perilously close to saying that because he was ovethrown by Bush for Bush's purposes, he therefore was probably not all that bad."

The Bush Administration seems to have latched onto the human rights issue as the reason for the invasion now. So if that is true then there should be a body of evidence that the violations were so bad an invasion was necessary.

The right recently keeps saying they did this as some kind of humanitarian aid mission. I would then like to see some kind of assessments by Bush as to how exactly this rose to the level of a necessary act.

My point probably seems obscure to you. Givernments are supposed to do things for a good reason, deliberate carefully, look at the evidence, etc. They did this with the WMD's even though they were wrong about them. Then they switched to this human rights issue but I see no evidence of planning and pre invasion outrage on the subject.

Therefore I believe (not in a partisan way) that this reason for the invasion is simply not true, and picked after the invasion when the fresh egg was still on their face.

"Perhaps you think Saddam was not brutal enough (relative to the rest of the Middle East) to justify an invasion. That’s reasonable opinion, but others disagree. Study more and you might change your mind."

That's close but not it. I can accept if a government methodically assesses whether to invade a country or not. Like with the WMD's some of it is an acceptable area, other parts less so.

For example I think the setting up of a separate OSD by Rumself et al to assess intelligence was bad because they should know by now how to assess intelligence properly. Cherry picking intelligence is also bad, as is leaning on the CIA.

Beyond that the system has to be allowed to work and screw ups to be accepted. I see no real evidence the system came to a conclusion Saddam had to be deposed because of human right violations, that this was made up as an excuse for the invasion later.

If there was some kind of government mechanism that came to this conclusion I would like to see it. Amnesty International doesn't run the US government so they are only recommendations. If everyone did what Amnesty say the world would be invaded in perhaps 20 countries.

"What evidence do you have that we send people to the Middle East to get tortured?"

I don't have references but it seemed to be in the media on many occasions. Afghanis being shipped to other countries for interrogation. Just last week one blog linked to a German newspaper saying the same thing.

"What evidence do you have that we send people to the Middle East to get tortured? "

For example:

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew94.php

"The Post also reported in March that the U.S. government was secretly sending terrorism suspects to countries such as Egypt and Jordan for interrogation, where they would be subjected to torture. This practice is known as "rendition." One U.S. diplomat is quoted as saying: "These sorts of movements have been occurring all the time. It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can't do on U.S. soil."

"From what you can tell, exactly. My point is we don't know the answers to this definitively...."

The answers to (1) and (3) seem pretty definitive to me. As Steven Rogers noted, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are hardly Bush puppets.

That's separate from the question of whether the "rescue mission" rationale makes any sense. (I don't think it does: governments don't fight wars for humanitarian reasons.)

"The stories seem to be a mix of truth and bullsh*t placed in a blender on high for 5 minutes. I can't pick out how bad Saddam really was out of all the other information we now know was untrue."

If you ignore all the accusations against Saddam from the US government, and you ignore all the atrocity stories in the run-up to the war, you still end up with a tremendous amount of evidence that Saddam's regime was horrific. If you truly want to know, I'd suggest reading "From the Ashes", by Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, or "Republic of Fear", by Kanan Makiya. Any book on Iraq published prior to 9/11, for that matter.

I said: "governments don't fight wars for humanitarian reasons."

Sorry, that should have been: I don't think governments *should* fight wars for humanitarian reasons. For an explanation, see Section 4.2 in the following web page:
http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/mideast.html

Y'know, Peter K. -- we all appreciate that you're Hitch's number one online fan, but you're starting to sound like Parsons in _Nineteen Eighty-Four_. And Hitch is truly starting to sound like he's forgotten what Orwell said in _Homage to Catalonia_ about what happens when you're so busy being against the enemy, you forget whose side you end up being on.

"I don't think governments *should* fight wars for humanitarian reasons."

I don't agree with that. I do think though that if they do wage war for this reason it should be thoroughly discussed and proper policies laid out. Don't let Bush's mess put you off, he didn't invent the idea.

Kosovo and Bosnia were examples of well thought out humanitarian wars. It was always clear that's what they were, the policy was well laid out. Bush's war in Iraq seems to have been called a humanitarian effort only after all the other labels wouldn't fit.

There's probably not much wrong with the Neocon's ideas of promoting democracy, except that the neocon't will mess it up if they are allowed to run it.

Call me a cynic but these I think are the real reasons for the Iraq war:

1. Help for Israel by trying to undermine the Arab states against it, mainly because so many neocons are Jewish. So yes I do think they may have been placing their ethnic background above their service to the US but not seriously.

2. Economic. Getting oil from Iraq to Israel via pipeline, and Jewish businesses running in Iraq. Privatising businesses and selling them off to Bush cronies. Helping Halliburton to perhaps grow into one of the 7 sisters, a major oil company. This has always been the Bush dream for generations.

3. Stupidity. They got suckered in by Chalabi, partially from the threat angle but also from believing he would help get oil to Israel. Cheney apparently wanted to put Chalabi in charge from day one.

4. Political. If it had gone well then a war president gets elected easier.

.
.
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X. (X is a large number towards the bottom of the list. Helping Iraqis for humanitarian reasons. Poppy Bush sold Saddam biological and chemical weapons, and didn't care much when they were used. The Republicans have historically presided over the most brutal right wing dictatorships in South America. The idea they wanted to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to help out the Iraqis doesn't pass the giggle test with me.

Why shouldn't the US government fight wars for humanitarian reasons?

First. George Kennan: "...most foreign peoples do not believe that governments do things for selfless and altruistic motives; and if we do not reveal to them a good solid motive of self-interest for anything we do with regard to them, they are apt to invent one. This can be a more sinister one than we ever dreamed of, and their belief in it can cause serious confusion in our mutual relations."

Second, humanitarian motives (e.g. those provoked by accounts or TV images of great cruelty and suffering) are often temporary and fleeting. If there's no solid motive of national self-interest, humanitarian motives alone are not capable of sustaining the effort and the sacrifices required to fight a war. See Somalia. In the case of Kosovo, humanitarian interest was enough of a motivation for the US to bomb Serbia, but not to actually put large numbers of troops at risk.

Third. War is an extremely blunt instrument. It can achieve massive destruction and death, but in itself it cannot achieve any constructive purpose. At most it can clear the way for constructive activities which follow.

Fourth, from a moral point of view it's probably better to fight a war with limited and self-interested objectives, rather than unlimited and idealistic objectives. Unlimited objectives tend to justify unlimited means. Stanley Hoffmann: "... often the greatest threat to moderation and peace, and certainly the most insidious, comes from objectives that are couched in terms of fine principles in which the policy-maker fervently believes, yet that turn out to have no relation to political realities and can therefore be applied only by tortuous or brutal methods which broaden ad infinitum the gap between motives and effects. What matters in international affairs, alas, far more than intentions and objectives, is behavior and results."

Regarding your list of motivations, I'd add that Wolfowitz believed Laurie Mylroie's conspiracy theories about Saddam Hussein having been behind the 1993 bombing of the WTC, and hence that there was likely some connection between Saddam and 9/11. (See Clarke's "Against All Enemies.")

Moreover, from what I can tell, the Bush administration did believe that Saddam Hussein had WMD. Partly because of (3); but in addition, Cheney had been secretary of defense during the first Gulf War, when they found out that Saddam had been six months away from having a nuclear bomb, and the CIA had no idea. Hence the separate intelligence operation run out of the Pentagon aimed at proving that Saddam had WMD.

Elizabeth Drew, writing in the New York Review of Books: "A close ally of the White House told me, 'The war was supposed to be a huge asset for the President; it was supposed to sweep everything else aside. The game plan was that we'd find the weapons of mass destruction and destroy the careers of those who opposed the war.' Karl Rove, this person said, 'is concerned that the weapons haven't been found. We were supposed to be crushing the other team on this, and we're not. We took a big risk. We assumed that the reason Saddam threw the inspectors out and wouldn't let them back in until the UN forced him to was that he had weapons of mass destruction. This outcome is a widespread concern among the President's friends.'"

Under the category of "stupidity", I'd add a huge amount of wishful thinking: believing that the US could go in, overthrow Saddam Hussein, Chalabi could take over, and the US could get out again.

"Why shouldn't the US government fight wars for humanitarian reasons?"

The points you make are appropriate for a government to decide on, whether to use force or not. My original point of the thread was that Bush did none of this agonising, all of a sudden after the invasion it appeared it was a humanitarian mission after all.

While we may not agree whether a government should do this, we agree that a government should carefully consider all these aspects and not just be gung ho about it.

"Second, humanitarian motives (e.g. those provoked by accounts or TV images of great cruelty and suffering) are often temporary and fleeting. If there's no solid motive of national self-interest, humanitarian motives alone are not capable of sustaining the effort and the sacrifices required to fight a war. See Somalia. In the case of Kosovo, humanitarian interest was enough of a motivation for the US to bomb Serbia, but not to actually put large numbers of troops at risk."

I had a somewhat unique perspective on this. All through the Bosnia war I had some neighbours who were refugees from the conflict. The stories were pretty bad, basically the Serbs were going into one village after another and killing all the men and raping all the women.

The Bosnians could get no weapons because of the arms embargo but the Serbs already had all the weapons of the Yugoslavian army, having disarmed the Bosnian army before the conflict began.

So the Bosnians believed the west was using the embargo to wipe out the Muslims in Europe. Also James Baker gave a quasi green light when he said of the conflict "We don't have a dog in that fight".

Bombing of course solved the problem. The same kind of mechanism could have solved Iraq as well, and let's not forget there are strategic considerations with Iraq near so much oil.

All they really had to do was tell Saddam they would bomb him until he let the inspectors back in, and every time he obstructed them. If the inspectors gave approval the sanctions could be lifted for non military supplies. Like Kosovo that would have solved the whole thing with no big expense and no allied troop losses. You can also be sure there were plenty of wargame results already done which showed this.

Having just read Philip's book on the Bush dynasty it also seems clear Poppy built up all the WMD's in Iraq and actively supported Iraq's nuclear ambitions (Iraqgate). They also appear to have known to some degree that Saddam was planning to take a small area on the border to protect oilfields and a few Kuwait islands to improve access to the ocean. I get the impression they had decided to allow this and then Saddam went to far.

As you say a major factor was to get the left to criticise the war, get a major victory and make them look bad.

"While we may not agree whether a government should do this, we agree that a government should carefully consider all these aspects and not just be gung ho about it."

Agreed. According to Woodward's account, Bush made the final decision to go to war in January 2003 without consulting anyone other than Condoleeza Rice. That really amazed me.

"I had a somewhat unique perspective on this. All through the Bosnia war I had some neighbours who were refugees from the conflict. The stories were pretty bad, basically the Serbs were going into one village after another and killing all the men and raping all the women."

Yes, I know. I would argue that it made sense for the US to intervene, but for reasons of national interest: the West Europeans had to intervene, because the former Yugoslavia was right on their doorstep, and the US had to support them to prevent NATO from breaking apart.

"All they really had to do was tell Saddam they would bomb him until he let the inspectors back in, and every time he obstructed them. If the inspectors gave approval the sanctions could be lifted for non military supplies. Like Kosovo that would have solved the whole thing with no big expense and no allied troop losses."

You really should read "From the Ashes": it provides a good account of why the status quo was breaking down. The 1998 "Desert Fox" bombing was almost exactly what you described. The reason it failed to force Saddam to give in is that the US and UK needed to use air bases in neighboring countries -- particularly Saudi Arabia -- for the bombing, and the bombing was *extremely* unpopular in those countries.

(As an aside, non-military supplies were already allowed back into Iraq, under the "oil-for-food" program.)

"Having just read Philip's book on the Bush dynasty it also seems clear Poppy built up all the WMD's in Iraq and actively supported Iraq's nuclear ambitions (Iraqgate)."

I haven't read the Phillips book yet. My understanding is that Bush I tilted towards Iraq when it looked as though Iran would win the Iran-Iraq war, but the most important support provided by the US was satellite intelligence, and reflagging of Kuwaiti tankers (leading to naval battles with Iran in the Gulf). Iraq was getting most of its weapons from Russia and France.

"They also appear to have known to some degree that Saddam was planning to take a small area on the border to protect oilfields and a few Kuwait islands to improve access to the ocean. I get the impression they had decided to allow this --"

Here I think you overestimate the ability of the US to control other countries. But yes, that's what most observers expected as a worst-case scenario.

"The 1998 "Desert Fox" bombing was almost exactly what you described. The reason it failed to force Saddam to give in is that the US and UK needed to use air bases in neighboring countries -- particularly Saudi Arabia -- for the bombing, and the bombing was *extremely* unpopular in those countries."

IIRC Desert Fox wasn't intended to force Saddam to do things. It was meant to destroy sites believed to have WMD's. Once the campaign ended there was little further attempt to get the inspectors back in.

If they wanted to make Saddam do things then a military option was necessary to be threatened or undertaken. In such a bombing campaign Saddam and his sons would have been targets as well.

I think Saddam would have taken the deal because he had no WMD's anyway. The sanctions were more extensive than just non military, they included virtually anything useful for biological weapons including many mediciens.

Such a bombing campaign could have been done by carrier and cruise missiles. It wouldn't have been necessary to have a massive campaign, just an ongoing on destrying more and more until Saddam gave in and let the inspectors in. Since the alternative was invasion I think the world would have regarded it as forcing a resolution with lesser bloodshed.

Really this is the Kosovo solution, and it worked there OK. The invasion by comparion was a disaster, there's no real way the bombing could be a disaster. The worst is it might have been ineffective, but since bombing could level as much of Iraq as they wanted it's hard to see how it would not be persuasve.

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Hitchens was flat out wrong. Here's my reply.

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