Iraq as Humanitarianism

Eric Posner throws down in The Washington Post demolishing the "humanitarian" case for the Iraq War:

Saddam Hussein was an especially bad tyrant, and Iraqi civilian casualties attributable to the U.S. intervention do not yet equal what he was able to accomplish, albeit over a longer period. The Kurds and many Shiites are better off. And many Iraqis continue to think that the war was worth it, according to polls.

But polls do not reveal the opinions of dead Iraqis. The humanitarian effect of the war has been at best ambiguous against the baseline of the containment period that preceded it, and if current trends continue, the overall effect will be that of a humanitarian disaster.

Many people blame the humanitarian costs of the war in Iraq on the Bush administration's execution of it. This view is a psychological crutch that allows defenders of humanitarian intervention to keep the ideal alive for the next, presumably competent, administration of a President Hillary Clinton or John McCain. But complaints about this war are not noticeably different from complaints about earlier wars, where small mistakes (identifiable as such with the benefit of hindsight) resulted in enormous harm.

Posner goes on to make a broader argument I don't really agree with (though I do agree with part of it) so this gets to be a rare case where I say read the excerpt, not the whole thing!.

Comments

Worth remembering that Posner is deeply anti-American, co-writing one of the only (once) available defenses of the sloppy torture memos of the first term. Be wary of unamerican dicks bearing gifts.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 2, 2006 11:58 AM

Tempted by the forbidden, I read the whole thing. And it wasn't very good. Basically, Posner argues that the whole idea of a humanitarian intervention is screwed up, and claims without any serious analysis of the situation whatsoever that if we go into Darfur we'll screw that up to.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | October 2, 2006 12:35 PM

But complaints about this war are not noticeably different from complaints about earlier wars, where small mistakes (identifiable as such with the benefit of hindsight) resulted in enormous harm.

This is no more than assertion. Posner doesn't give a single example of these 'complaints about earlier wars'.

I don't see how it can be denied that the occupation was monumentally mishandled. I'm not sure 'incompetence' is the right word. It's not just that they failed, but that in some respects it seems they didn't even try.

Here's an excellent article.

http://www.epic-usa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=161

Posted by David Tomlin | October 2, 2006 12:42 PM

Wait wait wait. This is cowardice. You at least have to tell us why you think Rwanda and Darfur would be different, yes? If competence isn't the problem in Iraq, but you aren't willing to abandon humanitarian intervention entirely, then what is the problem? You're more than welcome to borrow his prose and reject his conclusion, but can't you at least tell us why?

Posted by boring | October 2, 2006 1:20 PM

I haven't read the whole thing, but I think Posner's right. Canadians tend to recall the Somalia intervention (which was a paradigm case of humanitarianism). It resulted in the dissolution of the Airborne Regiment for the torture of a young Somali man.

There is zero reason to think intervention in Darfur would be handled better than in Iraq. Humanitariansm is just a bad reason to go to war.

Posted by Pithlord | October 2, 2006 1:24 PM

At the risk of misrepresenting Matt's actual positions, I suspected he would believe:

1. The Bush administration might very well screw up Darfur or some other humanitarian mission. (Posner thinks this)

2. Humanitarian missions, when waged properly, can be a net good (Posner diagrees with this statement being regarded as a safe assumption)

It strikes me that given the ease with which death tolls in failed states can reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, that intervention can be a net good. One should choose carefully, of course, to differentiate between murderous and genocidal leaders, and those with decent armies vs. those that can't really fight back. We could have helped in Rwanda, just by slowing the carnage. Bosnia is harder, but it seems like our presence there, once finally established, has done some good. Iraq is a problem on both counts.

Posted by jfaberuiuc | October 2, 2006 2:20 PM

"Humanitariansm[Liberation ?] is just a bad reason to go to war."

Harrumph. I am very far from accepting this as a principle. All Kantian-PerpetualPeace-Sovereignty stuff that is just so 18th-19th century, viewing individual human beings as the property of their polities.

I though Lincoln settled this question.

Posted by bob mcmanus | October 2, 2006 2:21 PM

Both the excerpt and the whole piece are terrible. Like David Tomlin, I think the key claim is that "complaints about this war are not noticeably different from complaints about earlier wars, where small mistakes (identifiable as such with the benefit of hindsight) resulted in enormous harm."

That claim is ridiculous.

First, the key errors - for example, failing to plan for postwar security, disbanding the army, pursuing sweeping de-Baathification, appointing unqualified partisan hacks to key posts - were not "small mistakes." They were colossal mistakes with catastrophic consequences.

Second, those errors were not just "identifiable with hindsight" - they were very identifiable at the time for anyone with a basic knowledge of the relevant issues.

Third, the errors were not comparable to those made in past wars - instead, they represent a degree of incompetence and irresponsibility in policymaking that's unprecedented in modern American history.

I tend to be sympathetic to arguments for skepticism about the benefits of humanitarian intervention. However, this particular argument is basically worthless.

Posted by N V | October 2, 2006 2:28 PM

"Worth remembering that Posner is deeply anti-American"

One should distinguish between Richard and Eric.

Posted by text | October 2, 2006 2:37 PM

"and Iraqi civilian casualties attributable to the U.S. intervention do not yet equal what he was able to accomplish, albeit over a longer period." This last point is the final fallback for the supporters of the Iraq war, & is as widely accepted as the fact of WMDs was before the invasion. But, while I'm sure that Saddam was a murderous tyrant, I will point out that much of what is believed (and repeated by the neo-cons as their moral justification) was from the same sources that convinced so many that WMDs were a slam dunk.

Posted by Eric Snell | October 2, 2006 2:41 PM

It strikes me that given the ease with which death tolls in failed states can reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, that intervention can be a net good.

This seems like the key problem with Posner's argument to me. He doesn't distinguish Rwanda, Somalia, and Kosovo, which were/would've been interventions into failed states, from Iraq, which was an overthrow of a horrible government but one that was not engaged in active genocide* or civil war at the time. So he's only got one data point to support his argument against humanitarian wars, Somalia, given the weakness of the "slow-motion Iraq" line about Kosovo.

Another weakness is that Iraq was simply not pursued as a humanitarian war; this was not a motivating concern for any of the people who were actually in charge of planning and executing the war. The line about "if the United Nations were to have their way" is particularly sweet, since the U.N. opposed this war.

*In contrast to what happened in 1991; I don't know enough to judge whether that was genocidal, but in Gulf War II it was too late to stop it.

Posted by Matt Weiner | October 2, 2006 2:45 PM

I think the evidence is overwhelming that the "net good" likely to be achieved by humanitarian wars is less than the "net bad" that is created by screwed-up wars of various sorts. So a bright line rule saying "avoid wars unless absolutely forced to engage in them" would be a substantial improvement. The problem with humanitarian justifications for war is that they make it too easy to fight wars in general. Given that all of our enemies are by definition evil, any war can be justified on humanitarian ends.

Kosovo and Somalia did a lot less good, in the end probably a couple of orders of magnitude less, than Iraq did bad. I don't think Darfur, as it is actually likely to get played out, would come close to making up that difference.

Posted by MQ | October 2, 2006 2:47 PM

One should distinguish between Richard and Eric.

Not really really necessary.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 2, 2006 3:00 PM

SCMT: ? Those links show that Richard Posner is a dick, but they don't seem to me to implicate Eric.

Posted by Matt Weiner | October 2, 2006 3:15 PM

Maybe we need this one?

Posted by Matt Weiner | October 2, 2006 3:18 PM

OK, he's a second-generation anti-American dick.

Posted by Matt Weiner | October 2, 2006 3:20 PM

I won't take the time to find the Richard Posner and Gary Becker fulminations on the war in Iraq, but they are so stupidly ignorant than many mistook them for imposters attempting to sully the Posner and Becker brands.

Idiots both. And Eric too.

Posted by decon | October 2, 2006 6:17 PM

Lots of people got waxed in Bosnia. The net gain so far only outweighs the net loss if you ignore that, which is essentially what most people do. If they didn't get kilt on TV, they don't exist. (Putting aside the issue of which group of Yugoslavians are the proper owners of Kosovo, which may yet blow up. So far, the whole deal has been expensive monetarily as well, and that money might well have been put to better use as aid to poor countries.)

Both Rawanda and Darfur pose serious military difficulties. Such difficulties are compounded by the difficulty during an occupation in being able to discern who are the oppressed and who are the victims, although the problem is much worse in Rewanda.

In all three instances, the advocates of intervention are ignoring the costs, and comparing a 'no-cost intervention' (a hypothetical one in the cases of Rawanda and Darfur) to a envisioned magically successful one and then acting shocked that that people wouldn't want to go out and do it.

[And then Matthew wrote his other repsonse while I had to stop in the middle of writing this. Oh, well, kill me.]

max
['Whee.']

Posted by max | October 3, 2006 12:40 PM