Prevention

Kevin Drum:

The good news for Obama, however, is that it gave him a chance to tweak Hillary yet again about Iraq. I don't know for sure if that's a winning strategy, given that his forward strategy for withdrawal isn't very different from HRC's, but it's a helluva lot better than Social Security. If he wants to disinguish himself more sharply from Hillary, this is the place to do it.

This is all true, but it's worth going non-meta here. Hillary Clinton's past support of invading Iraq doesn't really tell us anything about her forward-looking Iraq policy. And it's true that both candidates have left enough vagueness in their forward-looking Iraq policies that it's hard to say if they'd do things any differently. But past conduct vis-a-vis Iraq isn't a predictor of forward-looking Iraq policy but it does offer a glimpse at various other issues.

The thing that I feel people who want to discount the Iraq issue or write it off as some kind of teenage foible are missing is that the Iraq debate had actual content about the appropriate shape of American foreign policy. In particular, after 9/11 a lot of people -- Matt Yglesias, Hillary Clinton, Kevin Drum, George W. Bush, John Edwards -- decided that it was important for the United States to become more willing to engage in preventive war to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Obviously, I'm not going to stand here and tell you that that was an unforgivable mistake, since I made it myself. But since I've decided that that was a mistake -- not just Iraq, but the change of heart about preventive war that led me to support Iraq -- I'd like to find a candidate who didn't make that mistake (Obama) or who like me now thinks it was a mistake. Hillary Clinton, as best one can tell from her record, her public statements, and the views of people associated with her campaign, doesn't think that was a mistake.

Comments

I think Matt is confusing "doesn't think that was a mistake" with "is unable to admit ANY mistake, including that one."

To paraphrase someone on Aristotle, the words "I was wrong" do not fall easily from Hillary's lips.

Parallels with current holders of high political office will suggest themselves.

Posted by Anderson | November 21, 2007 4:13 PM

I think past iraq conduct certainly is a predictor of future policy - how many of the people who voted against it voted for withdrawal, versus those who voted for it? It's not determinative, but it certainly plays an important role - maybe the most important of available information.

Posted by Anonymous | November 21, 2007 4:25 PM

It's not the policy, it's the inclination. Hillary and Obama may be laying out similar withdrawal plans, but it's more likely that Obama's heart is in his plan than that Hillary's is in hers.

Getting out of Iraq can be spun all sorts of ways: we kicked ass -- bring the soldiers home and give'em a parade; we did our best -- Iraquis have to sink or swim on their own now; we can do no more -- whatever happens after we leave, we don't have the troops to keep occupying Iraq. There's room in each of those spins to allow for continuing the occupation. A President who thinks the invasion was a mistake in the first place is more likely to stick to a withdrawal plan than a President who backed the invasion. The latter would be more tempted to look for excuses to stay.

-- TP

Posted by Tony P. | November 21, 2007 4:29 PM

"If he wants to distinguish himself more sharply from Hillary, this is the place to do it".

Wrong. The one thing serious contenders for the nomination must do is avoid compromising themselves on basic national security issues. Hillary hasn't "apologized" because she wasn't wrong--based on what was known in 2002 she made the right decision.

We know the downside of what we did. We don't know the downside of what we didn't do.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 21, 2007 4:45 PM

Hillary hasn't "apologized" because she wasn't wrong--based on what was known in 2002 she made the right decision.

Obama (and others) could see through Bush's duplicity right then and there. Why couldn't Hillary?

Hillary supporters try to believe either that:
(a) Hillary also could see through Bush's duplicity (but for political reasons had to pretend to go along for several years)
or
(b) that she couldn't see through it (but she's grown older and wiser since then, and although political reality prevents her from admitting the mistake she won't repeat it, all evidence to the contrary)
or
(c) that she was, in fact, correct (and therefore Bush was fully justified in deciding to invade Iraq).

All of them disgusting options IMO, but the third ought to be an immediate disqualifier.

Posted by rty | November 21, 2007 5:04 PM

We know the downside of what we did. We don't know the downside of what we didn't do.

Ergo, we have never made a mistake. Sweet! I like this new thinking. I shall immediately begin to apply it in my daily life.

Posted by Glenn | November 21, 2007 5:09 PM

The Night Rider reporting, the Hans Blix declartion that no weapons could be found, Scott Ritter warning of the outright lies being told, and IAEA reports offering nothing to support the Nigerian Yellowcake lie which was exposed as a lie pre-invasion, the UN vote to not support the invasion are fact.
You write like an intelligent guy.
It is hard to believe someone in the Media could be so ill informed at the time.

Posted by charles | November 21, 2007 5:35 PM

Well, of course, she WAS wrong, and there was plenty of information available at the time to know that the decision to invade Iraq was very, very questionable--and you don't start major wars on a very, very questionable basis.

The leadership of the Democratic Party, unfortunately, chickened out. This is nothing new for us Democrats. And even though this was one of the more egregious chickenings-out, in terms of the practical implications, it's also one of the most understandable politically. Fall of 2002 was a very, very tough time for somebody in any kind of even semi-swing state/district to vote against Presidential use of war powers for a purportedly anti-terrorist purpose. So I really don't see it as practical to disqualify every Democrat who chickened out in that particular wise from higher office.

But as for why Clinton hasn't apologized, I think Anderson is right in the top comment, and Yglesias is wrong. It's not that Clinton doesn't THINK it was a mistake--she would have to be a Grade Double-A moron not to realize by now that it was a mistake--it's that she doesn't want to ADMIT that she made a mistake. That is a 100% political calculation, and it is just peachy-keen by me that it should be so, because the question of whether a politician wants to "admit" that some past act was a "mistake" is not worthy of a lot of interest in my view, save in the purest sense as an exercise in navel-gazing.

Posted by Trickster | November 21, 2007 5:41 PM

"And it's true that both candidates have left enough vagueness in their forward-looking Iraq policies that it's hard to say if they'd do things any differently."

Differently than Bush, or differently then each other?

Posted by HeavyJ | November 21, 2007 5:51 PM

Hillary hasn't "apologized" because she wasn't wrong--based on what was known in 2002 she made the right decision.

Let her say that and get 2 percent of the vote in the primaries.

Seriously, if you believe that, vote Republican. Get out of our party, and take Hillary with you.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 21, 2007 6:04 PM

That is a 100% political calculation, and it is just peachy-keen by me that it should be so, because the question of whether a politician wants to "admit" that some past act was a "mistake" is not worthy of a lot of interest in my view, save in the purest sense as an exercise in navel-gazing.

No way. First, just on a moral level, she owes an apology to the 3,800 American families who will not see their husbands, sons, wives, daughters, mothers, or fathers this Thanksgiving or in any future Thanksgiving because Hillary voted to kill them.

Second, apologizing indicates that she learned something from the mistake. Not apologizing indicates we are going to get the same right-wing hawkish foreign policy that Hillary has always supported.

Bottom line is that we need to go in a more dovish direction or lots of people are going to get killed. Hillary, by not apologizing, is saying she won't lead us there. Therefore, she isn't qualified to be President.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 21, 2007 6:09 PM

First, just on a moral level, she owes an apology to the 3,800 American families who will not see their husbands, sons, wives, daughters, mothers, or fathers this Thanksgiving or in any future Thanksgiving because Hillary voted to kill them.

I utterly, utterly reject this. Listen, I've had an anti-war inclination my entire life and it has redoubled since I've become something of a student of war. But war actually is sometimes a good and necessary evil. And the President of the United States needs to look at a decision to make war and make it as a hard and cold calculation as to what is in the best interests of the United States and of the world we live in. The President can't be required to accept personal moral culpability for each soldier who dies because of the President's good-faith, best-effort attempt to make smart choices about whether or not to make war.

Sometimes more people will die because you didn't go to war than because you did. That's not the default state, but it exists. The President needs to be able to think those things through, make the decision to the best of her capability, then leave that decision behind and move on with a clear mind to the next decision.

Second, apologizing indicates that she learned something from the mistake. Not apologizing indicates we are going to get the same right-wing hawkish foreign policy that Hillary has always supported.

Your second sentence frankly does not make sense to me. Whether I choose to apologize for a past act has nothing at all to do with my future intentions. As long as I've got speakerphone, I could call you up and apologize profusely for breaking into your house last night even as I'm sharpening my burglar tools for the next attempt.

What if apologizing also means you will never be elected President?

What does apologizing gain? What does it mean? Precious little, in a political context. Apologies are just words, and words from a politician's mouth are not rare as precious rubies.

I'd probably like it if she apologized, too, but it's not something I'm going to get hung up on. She made a political judgment not to apologize, and I don't really get why it should matter whether she does or not.

Bottom line is that we need to go in a more dovish direction or lots of people are going to get killed.

As I said, there are such things as good wars, but generally speaking I'm with you here.

Hillary, by not apologizing, is saying she won't lead us there.

Sorry, but this is a huge leap in logic. Or in something, because I don't see the logic at all. I'm 1000X more interested in picking up on the signals as to her future policies than in whether she apologizes for something that happened years ago.

Posted by Trickster | November 21, 2007 6:39 PM

Well at least the Republican nominee wont be able to accuse her of not suporting the war effort.

Posted by charles | November 21, 2007 7:02 PM

But war actually is sometimes a good and necessary evil.

I agree with that. But when it is not necessary, it is just evil, and those who enacted the policy owe the people whom they killed (at the very least) an apology.

The President can't be required to accept personal moral culpability for each soldier who dies because of the President's good-faith, best-effort attempt to make smart choices about whether or not to make war.

Not true. Not only is the President responsible, but the Congress as well. And if holding them responsible makes them less likely to use force, that's a feature, not a bug, and a useful feature given that the political alignment over the past few decades has been overly pro-war.

Sometimes more people will die because you didn't go to war than because you did.

Not more Americans. If Saddam kills his own people, that is terrible, but lots of dictators kill their own people. It isn't cause to intervene.

Hillary's job was to protect the AMERICAN people. Instead, she voted to kill 3,800 of them in Iraq, and made the security of the rest of us even worse in the process.

Whether I choose to apologize for a past act has nothing at all to do with my future intentions.

Sure it does. When you do something wrong, an apology is an indicator that you don't intend to do it again. Refusing to apologize is an indicator that you still think you didn't do anything wrong and will do it again when you get the chance to.

What if apologizing also means you will never be elected President?

The lives of those 3,800 Americans are a little more important than Hillary Clinton's ambitions. Big deal. She gets to retire in the Senate, and then gets a cushy pension. That's a better deal than the troops she voted to kill got.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 21, 2007 7:22 PM

Trickster, a student of war, doesn't think Hillary should apologize for the Iraq war because hey, sometimes, wars are good, and how can we ever know which is which ahead of time anyways.

Well done, Trickster.

And Robert Powell quips:

We know the downside of what we did. We don't know the downside of what we didn't do.

I'm so not high enough right now, but I think the point is that in 2002, the architects of the war did in fact know the downside of not invading, i.e. that it would be less than advertised. Iraq was a war of opportunity, not necessity, in the eyes of the Bush administration. But on the other hand, they actually had little clue, at the time, of the potential downsides of invading, as was amply borne out. So, given that your counter-factual downside was highly embellished, and your real downside was a total, gosh-almighty surprise, maybe people like you ought to just shut the fuck up, instead of reminding people about unknown unknowns. The potential downsides of invading were, it so happens, known knowns, before the invasion -- just, not known by the people who now claim they couldn't have known better, apparently because they were too busy shouting down the people who actually knew.

Posted by Bill | November 21, 2007 7:50 PM

Hillary hasn't "apologized" because she wasn't wrong--based on what was known in 2002 she made the right decision.

As rty mentioned, a lot of us saw the dog-and-pony show for what it was at the time.

If Hillary Clinton couldn't that says a lot about her capabilities as a world leader.

And as Matt points out, she isn't even willing to say that the war was the wrong decision knowing what we know today.

That leaves us to conclude that she thinks the policy was fine, George Bush was the problem. And that puts her in the same club as all the neocons who complain that George Bush screwed up their beautiful war plan.

Posted by Jinchi | November 21, 2007 8:52 PM

Matthew is getting deeply confused on this matter. He thinks that because HE made a mistake in judgement, then it's understandable that Hillary made a similar MISTAKE in judgment.

Which is utter bullshit.

Matthew was NOT a US Senator with the powers that US Senator Hillary Clinton had in 2002--including access to US intelligence, the power to publicly confront George Bush when intelligence was manipulated in a deceitful way in the public debate, and the power to halt approval for war via filibuster if need be.

Nor did Matthew have the power to talk in a SCIF with the Democratic Chairman of Senate Intelligence Oversight when that Chairman expresses strong reservations about the Executive's evidence --as Senator Bob Graham did.

There was nothing the Iraq Commission did that could not have been done by Democrats in 2002 prior to voting to approve war.

The President lied to us about the basis for going to war --and the Democratic leadership is still lying to us re WHY they enabled that war and supported that President.

When the largest Democratic donor is an Israeli billionaire who makes clear that his ultimate loyalty lie with Israel, when the Israel leadership lies to the American People, when Fortune repeatedly cites the Israel Lobby as one of the most powerful forces on Capitol Hill and when Saddam Hussein is a threat to Israel but not to the USA, then I think it's pretty damm clear what happened in 2002: The Democratic leadership decided their political futures were more important than the lives of 3700+ servicemen. They CHOSE to be whores for the Israel Lobby rather than represent their American people --and everything was mere playacting after that.

And lest they have any hesitation in reaching that decision, billionaire and long time Israel supporter S Daniel Abraham stabbed Howard Dean in the back in a dirty underhanded fashion in Iowa. AIPAC took down Cynthia McKinney in a similar fashion.

And now Democrats think HILLARY should be PRESIDENT?? Hillary has never shown herself capable of being anything other than a docile housewife?

Docile because she puts her personal ambition above any allegiance to any recognizable moral principle-- and hence can be totally controlled by that ambition.

You could go out and pick any housewife in America at random and that person would be a better candidate for President than Hillary.

Because that person would not kill 3700 of our soldiers to whore for special interests. That housewife would draw the line at some acts. That housewife would place the national interest above her personal interests.

Come to think of it, you could probably go out on the streetcorners of Washington , pick any whore at random and find someone who would have more backbone, more moral fiber, than Hillary.

It's one thing to have sex for money -- but to send 3700 innocent servicemen to their deaths and then continue to suck up to someone like Haim Saban takes depravity to a much more disgusting level. Most common people would consider killing themselves if they had that much guilt on their conscience.

Posted by Don Williams | November 21, 2007 9:57 PM

Trickster, a student of war, doesn't think Hillary should apologize for the Iraq war because hey, sometimes, wars are good, and how can we ever know which is which ahead of time anyways.

Brilliant encapsulation of my remarks.

Suggestion: give honest conversation a go some time. It's not as bad as you might think.

Posted by Trickster | November 21, 2007 10:01 PM

In particular, after 9/11 a lot of people ... decided that it was important for the United States to become more willing to engage in preventive war to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
I hope you do realize that this never ever made any sense and still doesn't. Connecting 9/11 (which had absolutely nothing to do with nukes and was low-tech in the extreme) to nuclear proliferation is idiotic, and millions of us knew it--before 9/11 and afterwards. Pakistan is far more responsible for proliferation and should have also then been the number 1 target for preventative war, given their dictator too, no? And why not war against North Korea? Yet again, "a lot of people" including yourself again did not agitate for or support preventative war with either. Funny about all that, huh? How many dead are there now in Iraq? How many displaced? How many lives ruined both there and here? How much treasure and resources squandered? And what about Afghanistan?

Edwards learned from his horrendous mistake. Hillary refuses to. There is no justification for preventative and unjustified war and especially against countries that were no threat to us. (and that's leaving out the blatant and obvious lies sold to us.)

Our officials protect and defend the Constitution and our laws--not our personal security. This absolutely false construction of how "keeping us safe" and "homeland security" are now the President's #1 job and priority is dangerous and undemocratic in the extreme--it invites dictatorship in the name of "protection" and "security" and perpetuates fear and endless threats, as well as causing neglect of our domestic priorities and needs and rights which should always take precedence.

We're all responsible for what's done in our names and by our government. We pay for it, and our elected officials are supposed to act responsibly--especially when it involves squandering our lives and resources. It's beyond shameful that so many still don't understand that speaking so causally of elective violence and war and invasion and bombing just because we don't want other countries to have what we have (or simply want control of resources we need) ensures we make more and more of the same horrendous and evil "mistakes".

Posted by amberglow | November 21, 2007 10:05 PM

Obama should keep after Hillary for her Iraq vote but more important for her Iran vote. Clearly she still works for AIPAC. America was pushed into war with Iraq to benefit Israel, and that must never happen again.

Posted by J. E. Dundee | November 21, 2007 10:39 PM

As I've said before, there is only one justification for a war, if any, and that is when the US is being directly threatened OR when there is a threat to someone which the United Nations and the majority of the international community believes is a threat to the world or a major region of the world. Note that I say, "major region", not just "some other country."

Given the Nazis intent to take over Europe and Eastern Europe, and Japan's intent to take over China, and much of Asia, WWII would seem to qualify.

The original Korean War did not qualify, even though the UN supported it, because it only involved Korea (initially.) Vietnam did not qualify. Kuwait did not qualify. Afghanistan did not qualify. Iraq did not qualify. North Korea would not qualify (unless they started actually threatening someone outside their peninsula with nukes.) Iran does not qualify (ditto).

There is no other "good" war. And most of the time, even "good" wars could have been prevented by more intelligent action on the part of one or more of the actors. That action could have been diplomatic, economic, military, or covert, but it would have been cheaper in the long run than going to war.

So even a "good" war should be prevented if humanly possible.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 21, 2007 11:18 PM

>In particular, after 9/11 a lot of people -- Matt Yglesias, Hillary Clinton, Kevin Drum, George W. Bush, John Edwards -- decided that it was important for the United States to become more willing to engage in preventive war to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Well I don't know what was going on in Matt's head, but the evience strongly suggests that neither Hillary or Edwards bought into a case for preventive war, and there is no reason to believe that Hillary is going to continue down that road in the future. What Hillary (and Edwards, and Kerry) bought into was the idea that it would be poltically fatal not to pretend to belive Bush when he said he was seeking his authorization in order to avoid war. Not brave of them, but not evidence that they are neocons either. (As for Obama, it was much easier for him, as a then obscure political figure, to be "brave." A bravery he hasn't really shown as a sitting senator.)

Posted by tdraicer | November 22, 2007 12:03 AM

The problem is that Hillary touts all this experience she has as a first lady but, being involved in her husband's policies, ect. Vilsack took this a step into the fantasy realm by saying she was the face of foreign policy yesterday.
Regardless, she was involved in policy to whatever degree.
this means she had access to the information regarding Iraq. She was around when these facts were being dissembled.
2 years later, in the Senate, with all that information she had above what other senators had, the fact that she did not read the NIE and voted against the Levin admendment, shows a person who puts political calculation above the good of the country and it's people.
her excuse of not knowing, of thinking she was voting for diplomacy is simply absurd. She made a cold calculation and it backfired. But, is being forgiven by even the anti war faction of this party.
I could see it with a Jr. Senator like Edwards but, for someone who is sooooooo experienced in the ways of policy and what is going on inside the white house and then claim ignorance is simply too much to not call her on.
I am, however, more surprised by the pundits, the bloggers and the progressives in overlooking this and then even saying it doesn't matter.
Of course it matters. She is playing all for fools and they allow it.

Posted by vwcat | November 22, 2007 12:26 AM

If anyone should be apologizing, it should be George H.W. Bush, who invaded Iraq in 1991 with over a half-million troops and the international wind at his back, but decided that actually winning the war was too hard. After putting us in the moral position of the Red Army before Warsaw in 1944 by calling for an uprising, then watching from the sidelines as it was crushed, he made some of the difficulties we faced after 2003 inevitable.

While we're at it, we should also apologize for the million-odd Iraqis killed by the UN sanctions we supported rather than taking responsibility for obtaining a decent conclusion to the war.

The fact of the matter is that responsible people like Hillary, Biden, Powell, Schumer, Feinstein, Berger, both Kerry's, et al supported the invasion because, unlike some posting here, they didn't just wake up some time in 2002 and discover that the world had a Big Problem with Iraq.

In terms of learning from mistakes, perhaps the principle lesson from WWII was that international organizations charged with maintaining peace and stability must have a credible enforcement mechanism. If the League of Nations had been able to enforce its Resolutions about German, Italian, and Japanese aggression and violations of bans on certain weapons, tens of millions of deaths would have been avoided. Iraq offers a number of useful lessons, but peace at any price is not one of them.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 22, 2007 3:32 AM

Mr. Williams-
Wow, just wow.

We were eye to eye up to and including here: The President lied to us about the basis for going to war --and the Democratic leadership is still lying to us re WHY they enabled that war and supported that President.

But then you go off the deep end into the Marianas Trench.

Does the Israeli lobby have influence in our foreign policy? Undoubtably. But do you really think it is the central organizing principle of Bush's or Clinton's or anyone else's foreign policy? Really?

And the idea the Cynthia McKinney's political fortunes are the result of AIPAC, 'the joos, inc.(TM)', or anyone else's machinations other than McKinney's is just about the funniest thing I've read today. Bravo, sir, and have a happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by Kolohe | November 22, 2007 4:04 AM

Trickster:

Suggestion: give honest conversation a go some time. It's not as bad as you might think.

Maybe if you relied less on non sequitur (such as referring to "good wars" in the context of Iraq) in making your argument you'd run into fewer "dishonest" reactions to it.

Posted by Bill | November 22, 2007 8:18 AM

Mr. Powell,

Indeed the death of an estimated million innocents in Iraq as a result of UN sanctions through the 90's was driven by what I think have been proven to be alterior motives. Is this the Big Problem to which you refer below?

Seems like yesterday we were reading about
Food for Oil, black market oil deals,
and Kofi's son implicated in related corruption.

"The fact of the matter is that responsible people like Hillary, Biden, Powell, Schumer, Feinstein, Berger, both Kerry's, et al supported the invasion because, unlike some posting here, they didn't just wake up some time in 2002 and discover that the world had a Big Problem with Iraq."

We now know any assertion of Iraq being any kind of strategic threat was wishfull thinking on some peoples part.

Your paragraph could be interpreted as implying the Big Problem was the Iraqi nationalized oil industry.

Posted by charles | November 22, 2007 8:18 AM

Yet again, Robert Powell reaches for WWII analogies to explain the "Big Problem" the world had with Iraq.

Here's how a sane person ought to view it.

Iraq invaded Kuwait. That aggression would not stand, to quote GHWB. We kicked Iraq out of Kuwait, which is all the international community would support. Removing Saddam would've meant going it alone and facing the same dreary, no-win occupation we're facing now. Saddam's army was virtually destroyed. Should he have decided to attack or invade another country after Kuwait he would've been repelled once again. So at that point, he had ceased to be a Big Problem For The Entire World, a la Hitler (as if he ever was). He was thenceforth, properly understood, a minor nuisance for the region Big Problem for the Iraqi people. Maybe Robert Powell thinks that a big problem for the those two constituencies spells unavoidable American intervention, war and occupation, and American blood. If so maybe he should reexamine why we make certain foreign policy decisions, because it's a big big world out there, with many Big Problems. Not all of them present the opportunity for enormous corporate profit, of course.

I'm fine with a credible international peacekeeping force, too. In the absence of one, it should not fall to the the United States to police the world. Which is why we only, in fact, police areas where certain entities stand to profit greatly from it.

Posted by Bill | November 22, 2007 8:45 AM

That's "ulterior" motive, charles. The up-front motive was clearly to control the ongoing threat of a genocidal totalitarianism sitting on the fulcrum of the world economy in total defiance of what little normative infrastructure stands between civilization and the law of the jungle, without having to do what we should have done in 1991. That was, win the war and address the problem directly.

People who weren't paying attention after 1991, and now imagine that Saddam's Iraq wasn't "any kind of strategic threat" are either willfully ignorant or working on a reprehensible political agenda. Fortunately, the nation's bi-partisan leadership is affected by such folks about as much as by those who imagine the whole thing was a result of the World Jewish Conspiracy.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 22, 2007 8:55 AM

Can some journalist PLEASE ask all the leading candidates whether they support the doctrine of preventive war?

You don't have to force candidates to explicitly rehash past decisions. Of course, any position on this doctrine carries implications for the past. But still there would be some ambiguity, i.e. a candidate who supported the Iraq invasion might repudiate this radical doctrine today and going forward, without spelling out whether she (a) mistook a remote threat for an imminent threat in the past, (b) once embraced preventive war but now thinks it's a bad idea, or (c) something else.

What is really important is to get the candidates on record as saying either that they oppose or embrace this doctrine. ("It's Iran, stupid.") It has to be made clear that preventive war is a more radical idea--far more destabilizing and just wrong--than preemptive war, which involves a seemingly imminent threat. Preventive war means attacking a country because they might someday threaten you, not because they threaten you now (or very soon). If you examine George Bush's prewar statements, it's clear he framed the invasion more as preventive than preemptive. This made him less vulnerable than he might be to charges that he exaggerated the threat from Iraq (although of course he did exaggerate it); but in the process of hedging his bets as to his factual claims regarding Iraq's possession of WMDs and its intent to use them against the US, he embraced the most radical possible doctrine as a justification for the invasion.

Please, please, oh might Mainstream Media, ask this question. Please understand the difference between preemption and prevention, and please understand that if someone responds that preventive war might be OK sometimes but not all the time, this translates as "Yes." If you embrace the doctrine of preventive war, that doesn't mean you will invade any country that might someday pose a threat to you--because to do that you'd have to invade a very long list of countries. Acting on this doctrine sometimes--as a matter of choice--is the only real way it could work. So a "maybe yes, maybe no" answer is an affirmative answer.

Posted by Doug | November 22, 2007 9:25 AM

Robert Powell, striking what must be his best Christopher Hitchens pose:

The up-front motive was clearly to control the ongoing threat of a genocidal totalitarianism sitting on the fulcrum of the world economy in total defiance of what little normative infrastructure stands between civilization and the law of the jungle,

The "fulcrum of the world's economy" endured the devastating Iran-Iraq War during the 1980s, with the United States openly supporting one side's WMD attacks against the other (whilst illegally selling arms to the other, for hostages) and yet somehow the world's economy didn't entirely seize up and keel over. Genocidal totalitarianism was never an ongoing threat to the United States, of course. It does tend to rear its head under regimes that we've openly supported. Such ironies ought to be taken under consideration when we entreat the world to join us in stemming the tide of the jungle.

And declaring Saddam a dire strategic threat to the United States is mere argument by assertion. As I seem to recall the U.S. thriving quite well while Saddam Hussein was in power, I'll suggest he was NOT a significant strategic threat until the authors of an opportunistic war decided it was in their interests to portray him that way, and tacitly blame him for 9/11.

Posted by Bill | November 22, 2007 9:52 AM

Furthermore, I'd love to hear how imperiling the U.S. economy with a trillion dollar war represents money well spent in the interests of the world economy. But the "preventive war" crowd still imagines that theirs is the only solution to sticky situations. George Bush appears to made his best effort to bankrupt America's future.

Posted by Bill | November 22, 2007 10:03 AM

Doug's suggestion is a good one. Anyone who argues in favor of a "pre-emptive" war had better have much better intelligence resources than we have demonstrated over the last few decades.

Anyone who argues for a "preventive" war should be immediately disqualified from consideration for high office. Bismarck described preventive war as "suicide from fear of death." Of course, none of this has anything to do with Iraq. It's impossible to have either pre-emption or prevention in a war that's been ongoing for a dozen years, featuring massive deployments (with combat pay), continuous combat operations, and an embargo that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Anyone who argues that the US provided any significant military support to Iraq should be immediately disregarded as an ignorant crank.

It is embarassingly obvious that Iraq, as a client state of the Soviet Union, had an almost exclusively Warsaw Pact-model military, from small arms and tanks to rockets and the latest Mig fighter bombers. After the USSR, the largest suppliers of arms were France and China.

At one point when it looked like Iran might win the war, we supplied some spare parts, ammunition, and satellite photos of Iranian positions. We also provided some loan guarantees for Iraq to buy surplus US grain, and Saddam had his picture taken with Rummy. Big deal. The total amount of "support" amounted to less than half of 1% of Iraq's military aid during this period. The Reagan administration blocked the sale of trucks that might have had military value, and took some US companies to court to block their sale of potential "dual use" items. Like Dylan said, "propaganda all is phoney".

Posted by Robert Powell | November 22, 2007 12:30 PM

Two words. Lieberman-Kyl.

I was tempted to give clinton the benefit of the doubt regarding her Iraq WPRA vote. She wasn't the only one with lapsed judgement back then. That she would never publicly admit the mistake is also forgivable IMO, given her specifically unique history as a target of sustained press hatred and demoguery.

Her Lieberman-Kyl vote did it for me. She's learned nothing.

End of discussion.

Finito.

Posted by otto schmidlap | November 22, 2007 1:50 PM

Kevin Drum:
"Hillary Clinton's past support of invading Iraq doesn't really tell us anything about her forward-looking Iraq policy."

I would have considered that statement to be reasonable up until her Lieberman-Kyl vote. Now we know about her forward-looking policy. On issues of war, trust her as far as you can throw her.

Posted by otto schmidlap | November 22, 2007 2:00 PM

If anyone should be apologizing, it should be George H.W. Bush, who invaded Iraq in 1991 with over a half-million troops and the international wind at his back, but decided that actually winning the war was too hard. After putting us in the moral position of the Red Army before Warsaw in 1944 by calling for an uprising, then watching from the sidelines as it was crushed, he made some of the difficulties we faced after 2003 inevitable.

He shouldn't have called for an uprising, and he also shouldn't have invaded Iraq, because that led to the basing of troops in Saudi Arabia which was one of the leading causes of 9/11.

But if we take his invasion of Iraq as a given, he was absolutely right not to seek regime change. (And by the way, Dick, he did win the war.) The UN and the coalition were signed on for ejecting Iraq from Kuwait, and we would have precipitated an international crisis by trying regime change. Plus, since ANY invasion of Iraq would result in what happened in the 2003 invasion, we just would have bought the same mess 12 years earlier.

But more broadly, I would say this to you, Dick. You need to stop worshipping American military power. Just because we have a lot of weapons doesn't give us wisdom, and it doesn't mean that it is rational for us to project power all over the world. The reason that terrorists attack us and don't attack Norway is that Norway knows better than to base its troops all over the world and to bomb and invade all the time.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 22, 2007 7:00 PM

The up-front motive was clearly to control the ongoing threat of a genocidal totalitarianism sitting on the fulcrum of the world economy

I am going to be very cynical here, but what the hell do these two concepts have to do with each other.

I understand that there are arguments against genocidal totalitarianism, but if the genocidal totalitarian is willing to sell us oil, isn't it REALLY irrational to do anything that might cut off the supply?

Really, I'd take a genocidal totalitarian who sells us oil over a failed state embroiled in civil war which cannot produce or export nearly as much oil because of the sectarian strife (i.e., the current situation) any day. But then, that's because I am actually concerned with what benefits the United States and not the psychic benefits of sending the military all over the world and waiving our collective penis in the air.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 22, 2007 7:05 PM

In terms of learning from mistakes, perhaps the principle lesson from WWII was that international organizations charged with maintaining peace and stability must have a credible enforcement mechanism. If the League of Nations had been able to enforce its Resolutions about German, Italian, and Japanese aggression and violations of bans on certain weapons, tens of millions of deaths would have been avoided. Iraq offers a number of useful lessons, but peace at any price is not one of them.
Except of course, that since its inception the Republicans and right wing have viciously fought any real exertion of power by--or beefing up of-- the peacekeeping forces of the UN, and some even want it killed entirely or made even more powerless (except when it proves useful--using it to give a gloss of respectability to whatever we want to do at the moment)

We used to simply install and/or remove puppets (see the Shah, and see Saddam, etc)--not invade and occupy their countries with massive military forces. If we must meddle (for resources or for whatever reason), we should go back to those things. They will not allow the UN to get big or powerful enough to become a real threat.

Posted by amberglow | November 22, 2007 7:10 PM

Bill, I said:

Suggestion: give honest conversation a go some time. It's not as bad as you might think.

And you said:

Maybe if you relied less on non sequitur (such as referring to "good wars" in the context of Iraq) in making your argument you'd run into fewer "dishonest" reactions to it.

Not a good answer. Go back and read harder. The context was theoretical, a comment about how the President should make decisions on whether to go war or not go to war in general, and my (strongly held) opinion that the idea that the President needs to personally apologize to every soldier killed or injured would put a strong structural impediment in the way of that decision-making process. If you want to tie Iraq into that, then I think you have the obligation to read the entire conversation to see what I actually said about Iraq. The only thing I said about that was was that Clinton's vote to authorize the war was "wrong" (no modifiers, just "wrong"), and that there was plenty of information already available at the time of that vote to know that war on Iraq would be a very, very questionable proposition and you don't go to war on a questionable basis.

But you didn't do any of that, so I think you can go ahead and take the quotation marks off of "dishonest." You blatantly mischaracterized my position and you did it in such a way as to make me out to be a fool. I don't much appreciate that, and it's a far cry from straightforward constructive conversation.

Posted by Trickster | November 22, 2007 11:49 PM

Mr. Schmidlap--you are of course entitled to give anyone you want "the benefit of the doubt", but on Kyl-Lieberman, this act makes war with Iran LESS, not more, likely. No one in their right mind advocates attacking Iran, but since they were aiding attacks on US troops, it was a very good idea to make it clear we are not unaware of their role, or willing to accept it. Some major loss of American soldiers due to Iranian meddling is the sort of incident that could provoke a warlike response. That's now less likely.

Mr. Esper--you should attempt to learn more about the history you pontificate on. The UNSC Resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq specifically called for the ejection of Iraqi troops from Kuwait, AND the return of the area to peace and stability. The latter was obviously not going to be done while Iraq was comprehensively violating the terms of the ceasefire and all subsequent Chapter VII Resolutions. It still hasn't been, although we are making progress finally. It would have been a hell of a lot easier when we had sufficient troops on the ground, and before the infrastructure of the nation was completely destroyed, along with hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, by Saddam's repression and the sanctions regime.

The idea that finishing the job in 1991 would have "precipitated an international crisis" is hilarious in the context of what's been going on in Iraq for the last thirty years. It's probable that doing so would have caused the Syrians and Egyptians to drop out of the coalition. I could live with that given the fact that they were of absolutely no real use anyway, and that we could have expected the much more useful support of all those poor people who died in the uprising we cynically ignored.

I think it would be a good idea for the UN to have a standing force to act against wars of aggression, genocide, and the proliferation of wmd's. The main obstacle to that development is not the mean ol' Republicans, but the sort of misguided fools who opposed the enforcement of its most important Resolutions since 1950 against the state that most directly challenged it since its founding--Iraq.

Trickster--I agree with your point about apologies, but you're expecting the impossible from "Bill". He's clearly incapable of "constructive conversation".

Posted by Robert Powell | November 23, 2007 2:23 AM

So, Robert:
Lieberman-Kyl will PREVENT, not expedite war with Iran. I gotta admit, I havent heard that one before. I'll file in the same folder as Clear Skys Initiative, and the old Reagan chestnut about trees causing air pollution.

It's kind of funny the term "No on in their right mind". I have no idea if Bush or Lieberman are in their "right mind", I'm pretty certain Lieberman is. Bush, not so much.

Yes Robert, Bush certainly WOULD attack and bomb Iran. And yes, he WILL quote Lieberman-Kyl if and when he does it. The text of it will be stenciled on the smartbombs and fighter-jet wings. And super-sane Joe will support him all the way. And when we, HC, and all the other Democrats push back, Joe, Bush and Fox News will throw Lieberman-Kyl back in their/our faces every time. So thanks for NOTHING Hillary.

And let's not be naive when it comes to our indignation at Iranians aiding insurgents. "No one in their right mind" could expect the Iranians not to get involved in a war on their borders. WTF did you expect? How shocking is it that Iran might supply fuses and explosives to Shiite insurgents? Oh, we certainly wouldn't do such a thing. Would we?

You might also remember we aided Iraq in attacking Iran when they were at war. We fund and train terrorists like MEK and Jundallah to attack and kill Iranians, and have done so for many years. Long before 911 and the Iraq war. There is a distinct possibility that US special forces are helping kill Iranians inside their borders at this moment. You may believe the Witehouse denials. I believe Sy Hersh, who reported it in the New Yorker.

Keep telling yourself that Lieberman-Kyl will prevent war with Iran. War is peace, Ignorance is strength. Remember that the Iranian people love us (they actually do at the moment) and will treat us as liberators after we bomb their centrifuges, destroy their Air defense system and kill a bunch of them in the process. They'll rise up and toss the mullahs from power. Then they will throw candies and honey cakes at our feet. Their women will beg to bear our children.

Posted by otto schmidlap | November 23, 2007 11:20 AM

The UNSC Resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq specifically called for the ejection of Iraqi troops from Kuwait, AND the return of the area to peace and stability. The latter was obviously not going to be done while Iraq was comprehensively violating the terms of the ceasefire and all subsequent Chapter VII Resolutions.

1. It doesn't matter what was in the resolution, the coaltion was going to bolt and the rest of the world wasn't going to interpret the resolution as you do.

Now, maybe you don't give a crap about the rest of the world thinks, but I would suggest to you that the more that the US thumbs its nose at the rest of the world, the more the world will get behind efforts by governments like those in Russia, China, Venezuela, and Iran to stop us, or at least will not stand in the way of such efforts. So your unilateralism is self-defeating in the long term.

2. You are pretending that things Saddam did LATER ON mean that the region wasn't restored to peace and stability at the end of the Gulf War. That is wrong. It was restored to peace and stability, and then Saddam started violating the resolutions (which didn't, of course, actually affect peace and stability-- we could have lived with Saddam indefinitely).

It's probable that doing so would have caused the Syrians and Egyptians to drop out of the coalition. I could live with that given the fact that they were of absolutely no real use anyway, and that we could have expected the much more useful support of all those poor people who died in the uprising we cynically ignored.

Um, Robert, it wouldn't have just caused the Syrians and Egyptians to drop out. Our UN mandate depended on the support of Russia and China. And we needed the Saudis for basing rights. And all of those governments would have dropped out.

Plus, the Syrians and the Egyptians are vitally important, because they have this ability to make our lives miserable by supporting or condoning terrorism. People who think that there's no cost to giving up decent relations with questionable governments are people who don't know very much about how the world works.

The main obstacle to that development is not the mean ol' Republicans, but the sort of misguided fools who opposed the enforcement of its most important Resolutions since 1950 against the state that most directly challenged it since its founding--Iraq.

That's silly. I don't think badly of Israel at all (indeed this says more about the UN than it does about Israel), but Israel has clearly violated more UN resolutions than any other country.

Further, Truman used the UN to go to Korea. Clinton would have used the UN to go to the Balkans if he could have. It isn't the Democrats who are stopping multilateral action to stop genocide.

But I would also say that multilateral action to stop genocide may be fine if it is truly multilateral and we are talking about Darfur or Rawanda, but it was not in our interest at all to stop genocide in Iraq even when it was happening. (And indeed, we didn't try, e.g., the Reagan Administration's reaction to Saddam's chemical attacks.) And of course, there was no genocide happening in Iraq after the Gulf War anyway.

Look, Saddam was willing to sell us oil. Keeping our military out of the middle east would have saved almost 3,000 American lives on 9/11 and another 3,800 in the Iraq War. The fact that Saddam would have continued his dictatorship (and indeed, whether he would have succeeded in overthrowing the monarchist plutocrat dictators in Kuwait) is completely irrelevant to American interests in the region as long as he was willing to continue to sell us oil.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 23, 2007 2:02 PM

Mr. Schmidlap--I'm not particularly interested in what Administration figures might wish they could do, or in pop mind-reading. What I am quite confident that they CAN'T do is to start a war with Iran without the slightest indication that the intelligence community, the Pentagon, Congress, the UN, or the American people would tolerate such a rash act. I am not surprised that Iran feels the need to be involved in Iraq. I think it's a good idea for American leaders to object if that involvement means doing things that get our soldiers and our allies killed. It could help to prevent the kind of incident that would provoke a counter-productive response.

Mr. Esper--counter-factuals are tough to argue, but from what I saw at the time, keeping up offensive operations a little longer, which was certainly within the perogatives of the nations actually supplying armies to enforce the Resolutions in '91, would quite likely have toppled the regime before anyone objected, and many would not only not have objected but been pleased. Most of the interested parties voted for the current UN mandate under which we are working to stabilize the country, and there's little reason to think that they wouldn't have done so then as well. I certainly care what other countries think, and even more what they do, but in military terms the Egyptians and Syrians were a non-presence. In political terms, they'd probably be about where they are now.

What we would have prevented would have been the enormous massacres of Shi'ites and Kurds that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the ceasefire (you call that "peace and stability"?); and the appalling destruction of life and infrastructure caused by the sanctions. The latter killed exponentially more innocent Iraqis and destroyed far more infrastructure than the last invasion. Both 1991 disasters significantly poisoned the well for us in Iraq, as people like you and Bush seem to have overlooked.

You need to read up on the difference between a Chapter VI and a Chapter VII Resolution. The former is a non-binding recommendation for the peaceful resolution of disputes of the sorts which have piled up against Israel, the terms of which Israel couldn't implement without the cooperation of the Palestinians even if it wanted to.
Chapter VII Resolution are mandatory, binding on all member states, and call for the use of "all necessary means" for enforcement.

Recently, Democrats have been much less supportive of the UN than Republicans--Clinton went to war in Bosnia and Kossovo (both actions I supported) without so much as a nod in the direction of the UN. They are also the party most likely recently to feature people who think enforcing the Security Council's gravest and most important sanctions is "illegal". But I don't put much stock in partisan politics. Like Jefferson, "if I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

Passivism, and to a lesser extent Isolationism, are legitimate philosophies. I respect the opinions of those who believe these ideas would make for good US policy. I don't think there's a chance in Hell that such views will ever have much more of a political effect in the States than to damage the prospects of any candidate they're associated with.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 23, 2007 4:17 PM