Kirkpatrick Again

Brian Beutler notes the late former UN Ambassador's seemingly long record of public support for the war she more recently claims to have opposed. I actually find her account fairly plausible. If you look at her statements, she's clearly trying to be helpful to the pro-war cause, but isn't actually saying "and therefore, we should invade Iraq."

In short, it's just another tale of corruption and weakness in the foreign policy establishment. Like a lot of Democratic Party-affiliated people, Kirkpatrick may well have thought invading Iraq seemed like a bad idea but decided it made more sense to prove that she can be a good vassals to her political and financial patrons. Since the party line Kirkpatrick was supposed to toe was a pro-war one, she toed it. Democrats in her position tended to simply say nothing.

Comments

Kirkpatrick was "Democratic Party-affiliated" the same way President Ronald Reagan was. That is, while she may have been a Democrat several decades prior, she had been a full-fledged Republican for a loooong time by the time of the Iraq business. In short, Jeanne Kirkpatrick was not toeing the Democratic Party line because she's not a Democrat.

Posted by Jim E. | April 10, 2007 10:23 AM

No, Matt isn't saying Kirkpatrick was affiliated with Democrats. He's saying that her behavior was similar to that of foreign policy gurus who themselves are affiliated with Democrats. He probably means people like Richard Holbrooke.

Basically, a lot of people who should have known better, and who laypeople like myself used to rely on for wisdom in these matters, basically took a pass when they should have taken a stand.

Posted by Jim W | April 10, 2007 10:29 AM

In short, Jeanne Kirkpatrick was not toeing the Democratic Party line because she's not a Democrat

I'd love to say, "Read more carefully," but MY's posts require MY-parsing often enough that such is probably not fair. I don't think Yglesias is unclear about whether Kirkpatrick was a Democrat; I believe he's claiming that her motivations for not openly opposing the war were the same as those of many Dems who behaved similarly.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | April 10, 2007 10:29 AM

Translation:
"Kirkpatrick may well have thought invading Iraq seemed like a bad idea but decided it made more sense to prove that she can be a good vassals to her political and financial patrons. Some Democratic-party-afiiliated people did something analogous. "

Seems pretty hard to dispute.

Posted by blatherskite | April 10, 2007 10:44 AM

Kirkpatrick's instincts were very much realist/slightly isolationist. When the Berlin Wall came down, she said something like "Now the United States can become a normal country again." Then Saddam invaded Kuwait. She initially said "it's not our problem" type of stuff, but it wasn't long before her neocon friends, patrons, etc. got her in line. I would guess she was torn then, as about the more recent Iraq war, between the pull of her entire professional and social network, which was neoconservative, and her old instincts. The power Dems who went along with W's war didn't have that excuse.

Posted by ex-Republican | April 10, 2007 10:45 AM

So she voted against the war before she voted for it?

Posted by Max | April 10, 2007 10:54 AM

The power Dems who went along with W's war didn't have that excuse.

Jeebus. It's a pretty terrible excuse, but why wouldn't it be available to Dems? Maybe you never read the "Bull Moose Blog" or TNR or the NYT or WaPo opinion pages (as written by the "left"-ier columists); it isn't as if there weren't supporters of neocon policy in and around Dem institutions.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | April 10, 2007 11:03 AM

The power Dems who went along with W's war didn't have that excuse.

The Democratic instinct was something like "here's our chance to prove we can be strong too." They saw this as a chance to redeem themselves for voting against the Gulf War and looking like a bunch of idiots as a result.

Dems simply don't mingle with anti-war voices the same way Republicans mingle with pro-war voices day in and day out. That's just not the dynamic. The Democratic consultant class was pushing for the war 100%.

Posted by Steve | April 10, 2007 11:39 AM

"irkpatrick's instincts were very much realist/slightly isolationist. When the Berlin Wall came down, she said something like "Now the United States can become a normal country again." Then Saddam invaded Kuwait. She initially said "it's not our problem" type of stuff"

Ironically, it was a realist's realist, Scowcroft, who thought that Hussein was our problem in 1991 because he crossed an internationally recognized border and we (meaning the UN) had the responsibility to show crossing international borders was unacceptable.

Posted by Reality Man | April 10, 2007 11:46 AM

Ah, I see I misread the post. Whoops. Nevermind.

Posted by Jim E. | April 10, 2007 12:11 PM

For what it's worth, at the time, I wrote in a number of places on the net that I "tepidly supported the war" and that was a reasonably accurate assessment of my position.

As a Democrat and a liberal I'm unusually supportive of military intervention probably because many of my thoughts and feelings about this were worked through during the Balkan era. I supported the first Gulf War because I believed that only US intervention would prevent Israel initiating a much, much worse conflict. I'm critical of imperialism but not reflexively anti-war. So I didn't have the temperamental predisposition to be very against the invasion. That's probably the first part of the context of why some Democrats like myself supported the war that other Democrats don't understand: we don't have the gut instinct of revulsion right off the bat.

Like everyone else, I did think the war was a bad idea. I was also certain that Iraq had no WMDs, nor did I think there were any ties to Al Qaeda. However, I did think that Hussein was a bad guy who had a long history of causing regional problems. The stunning and surprising success of the first Gulf War led me to believe that I possibly would be proven wrong again in my pessimism. Finally, I'm among the few on the left who believes the previous UN resolutions were open-ended and allowed further intervention by the US. Those things taken together were, for me, reasons why the war may not be such a bad thing.

It was clearly a distraction from the War on Terror and clearly the obsession of the Bush administration. I didn't like the idea. But it was clear that come hell or high water the Bush administration was bound to fight this war. So I just glumly accepted its inevitability, told myself that it wasn't the worst thing that could happen (the reasoning in the previous paragraph). This was the extent of my "support".

Though tepid, from this I do count myself as one of the pro-war Dems. And, obviously, I was wrong. The fervent arguments against the war were proven correct. In retrospect I realize that I should have been aware of the sheer incompetency of this administration as well as the pervasiveness of their mendacity. I had assumed that the true-believer neocons would have the influence to ensure an intensive occupation and nation-building and that the competency of other parties would see it successful. Boy, was I wrong.

I recognize that there are many Democrats who supported the war for purely political reasons. There are others who are imperialistic and others who are anti-muslim. But I think my own history is an example of a liberal who supported the war for none of those reasons. Just my two cents.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | April 10, 2007 2:32 PM

"The fervent arguments against the war were proven correct"

Those arguments were mostly to 'let the inspections work' and other tripe. A few of the anti-war types did ask how the heck the US was going to govern Iraq after Saddam fell. But pro-war people asked the same question. As I remember, a few made the comparison of Iraq after Saddam to Yugoslavia after Tito, but the retort was that Bosnia/Kosovo had eventually proved to be manageable.

Most of the anti-war types were also complaining about "Half a million Iraqi children starved to death" by the sanctions. Which proved to be as bogus as the Iraqi nukes.

Apparently, gathering good intelligence is very hard.

The takedown of Saddam was indeed a cakewalk. The management of the basically unpredicted insurgency-and-civil-war that followed has not been any sort of a cakewalk.

Posted by Fred | April 10, 2007 3:12 PM

"But pro-war people asked the same question."

I, for one, will be impressed if you can produce one example of a major pro-war booster expressing any grain of skepticism or doubt about post-invasion Iraq. And what difference does it make....difficulties after the invasion would be a check in the 'dont go to war' column. Its the duty of pro-war people to answer the question, not ask it to cover their backs. Just as anti-war folks have to explain why removing Saddam from power would be less of a moral calamity than keeping him - and later on - his sons in charge.

"unpredicted insurgency-and-civil-war"

Oh you must be joking. The CIA and State Department predicted both. They told the president Iraq would not be a cakewalk. They were ignored.

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE): I have not been very enamored with the way half this administration has gone about this effort without thoroughly going into what happens the day after Saddam is down. … The president said that, “What could be worse than Saddam?” Well, what could be worse than Saddam would be a major civil war in the region. [CNN Larry King Live, 10/9/02]

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV): What plans do we have to prevent Iraq from breaking up and descending into civil war? [Congressional Record, S10006-10007, 10/7/02]

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD): The end of Saddam Hussein could mean the start of a civil war. [Congressional Record, S10078, 10/8/02]

Posted by neal Murray | April 10, 2007 8:05 PM