The War

After reading posts by Andrew Sullivan on the whys and wherefores of Iraq, it was refreshing to see this analysis by Josh Marshall. Virtue, thy name is clarity.

As for Sullivan:

In supporting this war, I did so for a few central reasons: 1) the possibility of Saddam handing over WMDs to Islamist terrorists; 2) the removal of an evil tyrant in violation of umpteen UN resolutions; 3) the establishment of some kind of democratic space within the Middle East to counter the cycle of autocracy and Islamism that was becoming a clear and present danger to the U.S.

1) There was sufficient evidence at the time that the WMD trope was fallacious that many discounted it; that evidence only got stronger. 2): The arrogance here is simply unbelievable. Did someone ask us to take over for the UN and invade Iraq? As I recall, we did it in spite of the UN. 3): So to counter the cycle of autocracy and Islamism, we attack a secular Islamic state, while leaving the local theocracies alone.

Contrast this with Marshall's comment:

It's often been noted that we've had a difficult time explaining or figuring out just who we're fighting in Iraq. Is it the Sunni irreconcilables? Or is it Iran and its Shi'a proxies? Or is it al Qaida? The confusion is not incidental but fundamental. We can't explain who we're fighting because this isn't a war, like most, where the existence of a particular enemy or specific danger dictates your need to fight. We're occupying Iraq because continuing to do so allows us to pretend that the initial plan wasn't completely misguided and a mistake. If we continue to run the place a bit longer, the reasoning goes, we'll root out this or that problem that is preventing our original predictions from coming to pass. And of course the longer the occupation continues we generate more and more embittered foes to frame this rationalization around, thus creating an perpetual feedback loop of calamity and self-justification.

The difference is that Marshall is a journalist who is used to dealing with facts. (In fact, sometimes he seems to be one of the few left who actually acknowledges facts.) Sullivan is a theoretician who is more comfortable with ivory-tower speculations.

I can't even call the Iraq war a blunder at this point. Its execution has been worse than incompetent, but its inception was a deliberate act that still seems to have no rational basis, unless you are prone to entertaining the idea that Cheney and Halliburton are the key decision-makers, and I'm not ready to go that far. Yet.