Responsibility

I find myself distinctly unsurprised to be in total agreement with Brian Katulis' latest on what's wrong with timid, centrist approaches to Iraq, but I especially liked this ditty on "responsible" solutions:

One other important point to note -simply slapping a "responsible" label on proposals does not exonerate analysts from actually owning up to some very grim consequences of some of the policies that they espouse. Many of the negative consequences feared by those who oppose U.S. troop redeployment from Iraq have already occurred just as U.S. troop levels were INCREASING in Iraq. When historians look back on 2006-2007 in Iraq, they will see this as a period when massive campaigns of sectarian cleansing were underway - killing thousands, displacing millions more, and resulting in the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since 1948.

When one consider that the current policy of supporting "bottom up" security initiatives means that the U.S. military is actually cooperating with sectarian cleansers and in some cases serial murderers - as Jon Lee Anderson's excellent piece in the New Yorker highlights - then it raises questions about who is being "responsible." So instead of posturing about who is most "responsible" and "serious" about "U.S. interests" when we debate Iraq, it is probably better to just say that we agree there are no good options on Iraq and engage in the debate on its merits and facts.

Indeed it strikes me that the yearning for a "responsible" approach most often comes in the course of a kind of abdication of the responsibility to think things through and do the best one can to pick a side in debates about big, important strategic choices. The choices facing the country are enormously consequential in a way that's a bit frightening, but shying away from those choices is the reverse of taking responsibility.
.

Comments

This at a time when thousands of refugees are returning to Iraq, casualties for both Iraqis and US personnel are way down, oil revenues are in fact being shared, and it seems increasingly likely that some sort of local defense arrangements are going to produce the gradual transition from what had been a completely centralized totalitarian state to a loose federal structure with a reasonable level of stability. Brilliant.

There may not be any "good choices" in Iraq, but that was unquestionably true in 2003 as well. One choice that's clearly not good OR "responsible" is to opt for a self-inflicted defeat after going on twenty years of massive involvement at enormous cost. That involvement was due to the fact of multiple vital national interests in the Persian Gulf, which remain.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 16, 2007 11:15 AM

As a person who was alive and conscious in the 1980s and watched the US foreign policy attack and slaughter much of the 3rd world (especially in Central America and Southern Africa) under a broad variety of justifications, there's a fairly basic principle to be learned:

When leaders say that a certain policy is justified in order to "avoid violence", you can be sure that there are a number of motivations for the policy, but the stupidest, most naive, childlike way to go about it is to assume that "avoiding violence" is their actual policy priority -- particularly when it's the same people who just gleefully unleashed murderous violence upon the exact same population.

The US foreign policy establishment doesn't care in the slightest whether or not Iraqis slaughter each other. Not one bit.

What they *do* care about is if somehow that slaughter ends up becoming some sort of a real or PR world problem for them.

In this case, it's a pretty clear choice: withdraw and let the sectarian violence be blamed on your withdrawal, or mount a huge and absurd propaganda campaign about a new strategy (Teh SURGE!!!) in order to make it seem that the sectarian violence is somehow more under your control.

Suddenly the situation looks more logical and less the result of confusion by the foreign policy establishment.

Posted by El Cid | November 16, 2007 11:20 AM

Mr. Powell seems to be huffing meth or something.

On the other hand, the opposite of responsible by any definition, Matt, would be to support the Iraq invasion in 2003, then change your mind and favor evacuating the devastated carcass of that unfortunate land regardless of the subsequent consequences for what remains of its decimated (or close to it) and displaced peoples.

It occurs to me that we're all going to get a lot grumpier before this debacle is over.

Posted by elle loco | November 16, 2007 11:24 AM

Robert Powell gets a hard-on about "vital national interests" again.

Tell us Robert, which vital national interests have been furthered by our going-on-20-years military involvement in Iraq, that wouldn't have been equally well served by leaving Saddam Hussein in power. If we invaded, oh, I don't know, Nigeria next week, then it would suddenly be in our vital national interests not to lose the war in Nigeria. BFD. Wars profit the few and punish the many. (Hint: you're one of the many.)

Posted by Bill | November 16, 2007 11:27 AM

Or put another way, it must be in our "vital national interest" to spend 3 trillion dollars on an unwinnable war, so that we can succeed, in the redoubtable Victor Davis Hanson's words, at "stabilizing the country with a radical cessation of violence." Well shit, who needs to fix Social Security and Medicate when you can just do that?!

Posted by Bill | November 16, 2007 11:33 AM

There are times when the "responsible" thing to do is remove oneself from the picture. The problems of Iraq are exacerbated by the presence of American troops. The "responsible" thing to do is leave.

Remember how this war was supposed to help stabilize oil prices? How's that working out?

Posted by Whispers | November 16, 2007 11:38 AM

Okay, snark aside: How do the real area experts--you know, the ones who were systematically ignored in the runup to war because they all opposed it--come down these days on staying vs. going?

Off the top of my head, the last time I checked, Juan Cole was very leery of pulling the plug and helicoptering out of the Green Zone. I think John Burns is a smart, fair observer who has been there longer than any other sane person would probably choose to be, and of late he has been annoyingly if only vaguely supportive of "teh Surge." Michael Ware at least impersonates a savvy, streetwise man-on-the-scene for CNN betimes, and last time I heard him, he more or less sounded like Burns, despite his constant and admirably savage flaying of Bushspeak BS on Iraq. Who else, who else? Who among the truly, deeply informed sez run run run?

Posted by elle loco | November 16, 2007 3:02 PM

Mr. loco, I don't think the folks you named are particularly good examples of "the truly, deeply informed". There are an awful lot of people in the military, the State Dept, executive branch national security types from the Clinton years, etc. who have a great deal of experience in Iraq and a pretty non-political perspective. They are much better sources of information than Green Zone commandos like Michael Ware and highly politicized academics like Cole. Burns seems pretty good, and like most of the real experts, he's not buying the self-hating nonsense that assumes we can't ever succeed in projecting force against our enemies.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 16, 2007 5:30 PM

Oy--another sudden right-wing convert to radical postmodern epistemological relativism. Mr. Powell, a persuasive voice-vote kind of majority of area specialists both in and out of government opposed this whole adventure. It's one of the signal symptoms of a classic March to Folly. Obviously, given my own particular intellectual vanities, I'm curious as to whether many of those who knowledgeably opposed the war now have qualms about the vogue to bail out of Iraq. I'm not interested in revisiting the neoimperialist wet dreams of Messrs. Wolfowitz, Boot, Krauthammer and whoever else you would bring to the party. Sorry!

Posted by elle loco | November 16, 2007 5:47 PM

Powell's bullshit devolves down to the same "we're turning the corner" bullshit that the right has been using for the last four years.

It was bullshit in 2003 - it's bullshit now.

Only now it's truly LAME bullshit.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 16, 2007 11:40 PM

In response to Elle Loco:

I think that Brian Katulis qualifies as an expert who supports withdrawing American troops from Iraq. As far as I know, he didn't start writing about Iraq until after the invasion, but at this point he seems to have the requisite knowledge. He was coauthor of a report on Iraqi public opinion published shortly after the invaision[1], and in 2005 coauthored a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq.[2]

[1] http://www.ndi.org/ndi/library/1626_iq_focusgroup_072503.txt

[2] Lawrence J. Korb and Brian Katulis, Strategic Redeployment: A Progressive Plan for Iraq and the Struggle Against Violent Extremists, Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, October 2005

Posted by Kenneth Almquist | November 17, 2007 2:14 AM

I think it's fair to include the Clinton national security team, including past CIA Directors; and members of Congress serving during our long history with Iraq, and the various people with specific knowledge of Iraq that they consulted, as "experts". In terms of "the whole adventure", you must include the action that started our direct Iraqi involvement, Operation Desert Storm. It, like Operation Iraqi Freedom, was supported to the tune of about 3:1 by the most relevant "experts"--the ones responsible for authorizing it.

It's more or less pointless to try carrying on a rational discussion about Iraq with people who only started paying attention to it during Dubyah's first term. We went to war in Iraq in 1991 as a consequence of its invasion,rape, and annexation of Kuwait, a charter member of the UN General Assembly and US ally. Since that time we have, in a bi-partisan way, tried virtually everything under the sun to bring this conflict to a reasonable conclusion, including vast expenditures of treasure and not a little blood in enforcing the genocidal and counterproductive sanctions regime. People familiar with the details of this effort, including the behavior of the Iraqi regime, the terms of the ceasefire agreement and subsequent Chapter VII UNSC Resolutions, the particulars of the UN inspections, the Duelfer Report, etc. may have something to contribute here. Those who imagine themselves experts because they've read all the columns of experts like Maureen Dowd and memorized all Howard Dean's speeches, don't.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 17, 2007 4:51 AM

PS--
A sure tip-off that a poster is unlikely to have anything useful to say on Iraq is the characterization of comments they find difficult as "right-wing" or "conservative". Like virtually every important foreign policy initiative since WWII, the war in Iraq has had consistent bi-partisan support. Moreover, the idea of bringing democracy to places that have never known it by means of gigantic efforts and expenditures from the Federal government may be many things, but "conservative" is certainly not one of them.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 17, 2007 5:25 AM