Iraq was a war sold on lies, backed up with guilt trips for anyone who disagreed. "You say our plan is dishonest and poorly thought out? You must support Saddam's rape rooms!" I loathe that style of argument.
We managed to alienate several NATO allies who would have joined our coalition. (Source: Talking with serving soldiers in those militaries who'd been ordered to start prepping to support the effort.) The reconstruction was run by 22 year old members of the College Republicans who were responsible for things like fixing a nationwide electrical grid. This did not work.
And as you pointed out, it all ended in torture, which predictably produced crap intelligence.
The proponents of the war embraced clearly evil choices from the very start. And their plan represented a strategic defeat for the US, at a cost of trillions.
Bush's work on AIDS did vast good. He contributed to habitat conservation. He worked genuinely hard to minimize the amount of racism and religious hatred aimed at Muslims.
I once volunteered to help set stuff up before a global security conference and as a reward I got to listen in on a conversation with several prominent people including an American general (I'm 90% sure it was Petraeus). The general gushed over Mohammed Bin Salman and had no criticisms of him at all. I couldn't wrap my head around how someone who'd play a key role in the Iraq War which was supposed to be for the sake of democracy could have such an uncomplicated admiration for a dictator. "Don’t piss in my face and tell me it’s democracy" is a great response to this kind of thing.
And I agree that George W. Bush was a real idealist. Natan Sharansky wrote about Bush in his latest book, Never Alone, and came to the same conclusion. Despite his overall positive and in many ways remarkable legacy W gives an important and horrifying example of the dangers of combining idealism and violence. While everything the government does relies on threatened or actual violence (to collect the taxes to fund it if for nothing else), PEPFAR didn't make our government more violent than usual, whereas the Iraq War and torture definitely did. Sometimes we have to be violent to defend ourselves, but the Iraq War and torture were not necessary to protect the US, and, especially considering that everything has an opportunity cost and we still have so many unmet opportunities to improve the world by doing stuff like fighting disease and responding to famines, I think we should use whatever proportion of our resources we decide to use on improving the world* for that kind of thing and stay out of the violent idealism business for the foreseeable future.
*hopefully a much bigger portion than we use now considering how much good effective global programs do
"It would be better to live under of robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some points be satiated; but those who torment us for their own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to heaven yet at the same time likely to make a Hell of earth"
Holy f*** this articulated a lot of things I've tried and failed to really articulate, about where our intervention as a country has been good and I'm still proud of it, and where it's been utterly monstrous, sometimes in the same era, and I'm still ashamed we failed to stop it. Also as usual, a couple of historical notes I'd forgotten but are important. Thanks, Ozy
> As Gerson puts it, our own self-interest calls for a foreign policy that prioritizes "democracy, free trade, economic progress and development, and good government."
This claim strikes me as having a lot in common with arguments advanced much more recently by military historian Bret Devereaux. And in both cases, I think the claims are maybe technically true if you squint at it, but pretty misleading. The American government seems to treat free trade as essential, but treat the other three (or at least, non-Americans having the other three) as nice-to-haves. And from a callously self-interested point of view I'm not sure that's the wrong approach. Sure, sometimes dictators start stupid wars, but lots of times they don't, and as Bush proved democracies are also capable of starting stupid wars.
So while technically we might benefit from all four things in Gerson's list, we mostly benefit from the second one, and listing them together the way he does seems misleading.
Iraq was a war sold on lies, backed up with guilt trips for anyone who disagreed. "You say our plan is dishonest and poorly thought out? You must support Saddam's rape rooms!" I loathe that style of argument.
We managed to alienate several NATO allies who would have joined our coalition. (Source: Talking with serving soldiers in those militaries who'd been ordered to start prepping to support the effort.) The reconstruction was run by 22 year old members of the College Republicans who were responsible for things like fixing a nationwide electrical grid. This did not work.
And as you pointed out, it all ended in torture, which predictably produced crap intelligence.
The proponents of the war embraced clearly evil choices from the very start. And their plan represented a strategic defeat for the US, at a cost of trillions.
Bush's work on AIDS did vast good. He contributed to habitat conservation. He worked genuinely hard to minimize the amount of racism and religious hatred aimed at Muslims.
Brilliantly said.
I once volunteered to help set stuff up before a global security conference and as a reward I got to listen in on a conversation with several prominent people including an American general (I'm 90% sure it was Petraeus). The general gushed over Mohammed Bin Salman and had no criticisms of him at all. I couldn't wrap my head around how someone who'd play a key role in the Iraq War which was supposed to be for the sake of democracy could have such an uncomplicated admiration for a dictator. "Don’t piss in my face and tell me it’s democracy" is a great response to this kind of thing.
And I agree that George W. Bush was a real idealist. Natan Sharansky wrote about Bush in his latest book, Never Alone, and came to the same conclusion. Despite his overall positive and in many ways remarkable legacy W gives an important and horrifying example of the dangers of combining idealism and violence. While everything the government does relies on threatened or actual violence (to collect the taxes to fund it if for nothing else), PEPFAR didn't make our government more violent than usual, whereas the Iraq War and torture definitely did. Sometimes we have to be violent to defend ourselves, but the Iraq War and torture were not necessary to protect the US, and, especially considering that everything has an opportunity cost and we still have so many unmet opportunities to improve the world by doing stuff like fighting disease and responding to famines, I think we should use whatever proportion of our resources we decide to use on improving the world* for that kind of thing and stay out of the violent idealism business for the foreseeable future.
*hopefully a much bigger portion than we use now considering how much good effective global programs do
"It would be better to live under of robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some points be satiated; but those who torment us for their own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to heaven yet at the same time likely to make a Hell of earth"
Holy f*** this articulated a lot of things I've tried and failed to really articulate, about where our intervention as a country has been good and I'm still proud of it, and where it's been utterly monstrous, sometimes in the same era, and I'm still ashamed we failed to stop it. Also as usual, a couple of historical notes I'd forgotten but are important. Thanks, Ozy
Yeah, I think that author is what's known as a state of denial...
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/09/13
> As Gerson puts it, our own self-interest calls for a foreign policy that prioritizes "democracy, free trade, economic progress and development, and good government."
This claim strikes me as having a lot in common with arguments advanced much more recently by military historian Bret Devereaux. And in both cases, I think the claims are maybe technically true if you squint at it, but pretty misleading. The American government seems to treat free trade as essential, but treat the other three (or at least, non-Americans having the other three) as nice-to-haves. And from a callously self-interested point of view I'm not sure that's the wrong approach. Sure, sometimes dictators start stupid wars, but lots of times they don't, and as Bush proved democracies are also capable of starting stupid wars.
So while technically we might benefit from all four things in Gerson's list, we mostly benefit from the second one, and listing them together the way he does seems misleading.