The Trouble With War

It sounds almost absurd to need to point out that "war is usually bad" but in a world where John McCain is taken seriously, more people need to listen to John Quiggin:

Finally reaching a conclusion, the central error in pro-war thinking is the belief that every war has a winner. On the contrary, in war there are far more losers than winners, and in most cases there are no real winners apart from the merchants of death mentioned above. Even those who seem to win have usually sowed the seeds of future disaster. The only sane response to war is to end it as soon as possible.

It's obviously possible to find a few exceptions to this in history, but they're really, really rare and as he says "I’m more and more convinced that arguments for war, or about the conduct of war, that rely solely on WWII should come under the same embargo as other arguments that invoke Hitler and Nazism." WWII aside, the main class of successful wars seems to be things like Gulf War I, where a campaign was undertaken for very limited defensive objectives. Over time, I think the wisdom showed by George H.W. Bush and other coalition leaders at that point when they decided not to press momentary advantage and transform the fighting into a larger war with only illusory gains looks more and more impressive.

Comments

I am constantly frustrated by those unable to separate two lines of thought:

1) World War II was ultimately a necessary war, and the outcome was significantly better than if the other side had won, and

2) World War II was pretty awesome and hey it gave us the baby boom and rockets and a humming economy, let's start another one soon.

Posted by Freddie | April 6, 2008 11:19 AM

This is yet another example of Matthew coming oh so close but not quite there. The mindset that regards Gulf War 1 as a "success" is a big part of the problem. I'll leave the proof of that statement that Gulf War 1 was a failure as an exercise for the reader. Hint: "Even those who seem to win have usually sowed the seeds of future disaster."

Posted by LarryM | April 6, 2008 11:20 AM

Prussia was a big-time winner in the Franco-Prussian War. The US won the the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War and the Indian Wars pretty convincingly. Japan won the Russo-Japanese War and profited handsomely by it. Britain won the Falklands War hands-down and averted a steep decline in its international standing by doing so. None of those wars were fought for limited defensive objectives and all resulted in increased wealth, prestige and power for the winner.

Posted by Bloix | April 6, 2008 11:21 AM

Just watch, Matt's next post will be "why I still hate pacifists" or some such.

Posted by Steve V | April 6, 2008 11:28 AM

What about civil wars and revolutions? It seems pretty obvious that those, at least, are sometimes necessary- if two sides have completely incompatible visions for society that can't compromise with each other then there's really no alternative. See the U.S. in 1861, England in 1649, Germany in 1618, France in 1789, Russia in 1917, Cuba in 1959, Spain in 1936, Nicaragua in 1979, etc. In each of those cases whether or not you agree with the outcome there was a very clearly defined winner and loser.

Posted by Hector | April 6, 2008 11:36 AM

The Falklands War wasn't for limited defensive objectives? The war was fought to regain control of a few small islands that were primarily inhabited by sheep. It's hard to think of a war with more limited objectives. At least Grenada was inhabited by people and possessed an airport. As for Britain's regained prestige, I recall countless jokes about the war when it was being fought. Granted, Argentina came out looking even sillier, but is that not an example of a negative sum game?

As for your other references, I see your point but will note that none were fought in modern times. Wars used to be about stealing land, but that's usually not the case anymore. And with a world awash in arms, insurgencies can easily afford to fight back to the extent that larger powers can rarely profit from any land they do manage to steal. We sure aren't getting any profits from Iraq. Instead, we are spending more than $100 billion per year to REDUCE the flow of oil from Iraq.

Posted by fostert | April 6, 2008 11:45 AM

"The only sane response to war is to end it as soon as possible."

The problem is, that sentiment is simply not possible. If the entire world were made up of Wstern oriented cultures governed by liberal democracies, perhaps. What do you suppose the liklihood of that is? The better desire is to avoid war when possible, and, when it's not, to use as much violence as possible in order to shorten the duration.

Posted by James Robertson | April 6, 2008 12:03 PM

I agree with you about HW, but he could have done even better and taken up the Russian offer and given Saddam a way out without destroying Iraq's civilian infrastructure and his own people would undoubtedly have taken care of him themselves without constant external threat to make it all too easy for him to keep his vicious internal-security system in place. From the point that HW went in he was committed to regime change and *that* was the start of the long paralysis and the tragedy.

Posted by Chris Dornan | April 6, 2008 12:06 PM

Prussia was a big-time winner in the Franco-Prussian War. The US won the the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War and the Indian Wars pretty convincingly. Japan won the Russo-Japanese War and profited handsomely by it. Britain won the Falklands War hands-down and averted a steep decline in its international standing by doing so.

I'd (mostly) agree with this short list of "successful" wars, but even here several of the positives don't seem that tremendous. What exactly was America's great prize in the Spanish-American War? Annexing Puerto Rico, dominating Cuba, and colonizing the Philippines aren't exactly the greatest things in the world.

And what was Japan's huge benefit in the Russo-Japanese War? Aside from seizing some extra land in China, they mostly just showed the European Great Powers how "tough" they were, which provided some benefits but eventually made them overconfident and got them into a totally disastrous war with America.

And the Falklands Island victory meant Thatcher got reelected and Britain got to keep all those sheep, but what else?

The Franco-Prussian War and our own Mexican War were huge and valuable victories, but they're very much the exceptions.

I'd guess that if we add up all the negatives and positives from all the major wars of the last 150 years, the former outweigh the later by about 10-to-1 for most nations with a generally winning record, and maybe 100-to-1 for the ones with a generally losing record.

Since America has been extraordinarily lucky during this period---with WWII being a relatively cheap triumph which established American global dominance---we tend not to recognize that we're the huge outlier in this list.

Posted by RKU | April 6, 2008 12:12 PM

Sadly, John McCain seems to feel he personally lost in his war. He was shot down, captured, and broke under torture. He never attained the military stature of his father and grandfather.

He has never gotten over his defeat and seeks attonement in the Middle East.

Posted by Hedley Lamarr | April 6, 2008 12:27 PM

I don't think the U.S. should have intervened to save Kuwait. I was opposed to the commencement of the Gulf war I. But the end of the Gulf War also stank. Bush did one thing right - he created a coalition. And at the end of the war, there was actually a popular uprising, in fact uprisings everywhere. These are the only conditions under which overthrowing Saddam with U.S. troops made sense. I don't know why anyone would believe that the Cheney of yesterday was right and the Cheney of today is wrong - they are the same Cheney. What the Cheney of yesterday did not like was that any overthrow of Saddam that happened in 1991 would not be under U.S. control - in fact, Bush's coalition was real, it had teeth, and the U.S. couldn't do what it wanted. Besides which, the U.S. was also not in a position, at that point, to bring in and enforce a buncha reactionary or Islamacist exiles on Iraq. The Bush decision not to finish the war then was a huge mistake, just as the Bush decision to invade Iraq was a huge mistake. Once Bush I screwed up and Saddam restored his position (thus permanently sealing the idea in the Iraqi consciousness that the Americans were secretly on Saddam's side - which is another reason that a future invasion wasn't going to work for the Americans), there wasn't any way to "make up" for this, and those who supported the invasion as a form of making up are very silly people.

There aren't any algorithms you can apply to history, so that you get this position that you can apply in all cases. There are only rules of thumb that have to change as the circumstances change.

Posted by roger | April 6, 2008 12:30 PM

The KLA launched the conflict in Kosovo, NATO backed the KLA, and both wound up making pretty significant gains -- NATO at very low cost to itself, the KLA at a cost it certainly deemed acceptable for gaining independence.

The problem with the language of game theory, including "positive sum games" and "negative sum games", is that the evaluation of the sums is extremely subjective. Nobody agrees on how to award points to different outcomes. As I posted on Quiggin's blog, you may not think a united Vietnam is worth 1 million dead North Vietnamese soldiers -- but the North Vietnamese do. Similarly, it would unquestionably have been a win-win proposition for the 9/11 hijackers and everyone on those planes if they had decided that morning to forget about the whole thing and keep the boxcutters sheathed. That is, it would have been a win-win from our perspective. But not from theirs.

Posted by brooksfoe | April 6, 2008 12:48 PM

The problem with the language of game theory, including "positive sum games" and "negative sum games", is that the evaluation of the sums is extremely subjective. Nobody agrees on how to award points to different outcomes.

Yes, this is a very important point to keep in mind.

For example, consider the case of the Serb ultra-nationalists who sparked WWI by assassinating the Archduke.

In some respects, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, causing not only the complete destruction of their hated enemy the Austro-Hungarian empire, but also the creation of a "Greater Serbia" including all the South Slavs, namely Yugo-Slavia, which then survived for almost 100 years.

On the other hand, I think something over 30% of all adult-male Serbs were killed in their "victorious" WWI, the highest casualty rate of any country. And huge additional numbers were killed in various external and civil wars in the decades which followed, up until the present day. By constrast, life in the Austro-Hungarian Empire had been pretty quiet, peaceful, and pleasant for the previous 100 years.

Was it worth it? It entirely depends on the relative values you place on ethnic-nationalism, political pride, and military glory versus having almost an entire generation of your whole population wiped out.

Posted by RKU | April 6, 2008 1:01 PM

Re: None of those wars were fought for limited defensive objectives and all resulted in increased wealth, prestige and power for the winner.

All of the wars you mention (except the Indian Wars) were limited in their objectives, if not defensive, and the Falklands War was defensive since Argentina was the aggressor. Germany did not want to conquer France in 1870, nor did the US want to take over Mexico outright and transform its society. The Germans only wanted to take over a piece of territory they regarded as theirs and end French influence east of the Rhine and the Americans of course wanted to seize the northern provinces of Mexico. Not small objectives, but not boundless unlimited ones either.

Re: In each of those cases whether or not you agree with the outcome there was a very clearly defined winner and loser.

I'm not sure that anyone within the old Holy Roman Empire came out a clear winner in the Thirty Years War. The Dutch, maybe, since they gained independence de jure (they'd had it de facto since the 1590s). Outside Germany, France emerged as Europe's premier power, finally facing down the Hapsburgs decisively. But in Germany itself there were no winner: just mountains of corpses.

Re: What the Cheney of yesterday did not like was that any overthrow of Saddam that happened in 1991 would not be under U.S. control

I've long wondered if the US stand-down while the Iraqi rebels were slaughtered in 1991 was similar to the Soviets standing off while the Nazis crushed the Warsaw uprising. In both cases forces inimical to the regime but independent of the regime's foreign foe were destroyed. The Bush I administration expected to handily win reelection in 1992, so the plan may have been to go back into Iraq afterward, depose Saddam, but not have to deal with Saddam's rebels either. The delay of twelve years gave time for other rebels to take their place.

Posted by JonF | April 6, 2008 1:54 PM

Actually WWII is an example of a war with more losers than winners. Not only Germany, Japan and Italy lost, but so did Britain, France, the Netherlands and all of Eastern Europe, if by "losing" you mean coming out of the war worse than when you went in.

Posted by Jose Padilla | April 6, 2008 2:41 PM

WWII is the strangest example, because the clearest winner - the U.S. - won in part because it stayed out as long as it did.

We won WWII largely because of the hard work destroying most of the NAZI military by the Russians and the British. The Pacific front ended so successfully because we waited and developed incredibly powerful technology which was not available earlier.

WWII reveals that "winning" like the Russians and British can be losing (or at least mixed) long-term. Waiting and avoiding war as long as possible, like the U.S., can be very successful strategically. Notably, every nation that "won" was acting defensively. It was the aggressors (Germany and Japan) that lost big-time.

Indeed, most of the people invoking WWII would argue that the U.S. should have gotten involved earlier. Although they may be right from a moral perspective, it seems likely that getting involved earlier may have been strategic error for the U.S.

Posted by MDtoMN | April 6, 2008 2:52 PM

The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian wasn't all that terrific, creating long-term French enmity against Germany.

Posted by Danny | April 6, 2008 3:02 PM

I like the fact that MY's analysis of the Iraq war has been consistently about withdrawal since he stopped supporting the war. But I think he is still laboring under an illusion shared by the pro-war people. It is sort of like applying the stock picker's technical analysis to history. You look for patterns, and then you assume these patterns will repeat themselves, and then you make predictions based on the patterns. In a sense, you let analogy triumph over circumstance. This is why the warmongers have a disconcerting habit of finding lessons in wildly different circumstances - Korea, World War II, etc., etc. MY is applying this method for the reverse point. Because Bush II's invasion was a disaster, we can use it to show Bush I was right to not invade Iraq. But this applies a rigid logic to two very different set of circumstances - it is as though, as with technical analysis, all we need to get hold of is a central pattern and apply it mechanically.

That is the root of a lot of foolishness in foreign policy.

Posted by roger | April 6, 2008 3:06 PM

"...the 'wisdom' of GHW Bush..."

Pretty impressive all right. We had half a million pairs of boots on the ground and the international wind at our backs but this group of weenies decided it was too hard to actually win the war, so they told the Iraqis to rise up. When they did, we sat on the sidelines and watched as probably hundreds of thousands were slaughtered. We were somewhat disturbed by that, so we instituted "no-fly zones" to enforce the embargo, which killed hundreds of thousands more innocent Iraqis while tightening the regime's grip on power and enriching its collaborators. Given the extra time, Saddam Hussein subverted the authority of the Security Council (probably terminally), and prepared Iraq for the guerrilla war which killed a couple of hundred thousand more Iraqis and over 4000 Americans.

Really, impressive wisdom Matt.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 6, 2008 3:59 PM

JonF,

1) Wasn't there a faction in the US at the time that wanted to annex all of Mexico?

2) Re: the Thirty Years' War, I should have been more clear. The 'victors' in that war were the German Protestants, who received an effective guarantee that in the territories governed by Protestant princes the papacy would not seek to reinstate Catholicism by force of arms. 'Cuius regio eius religio' and all that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia

3) Regarding Serbia, I think that Serb nationalists would almost certainly see WWI as a great victory. Much like the Vietnamese today see the Vietnam War as their finest hour- not a tragedy but a triumph. Not everyone in the world places the same value on peace, prosperity and freedom that we do.

Posted by Hector | April 6, 2008 4:01 PM

I think Iraq War 1 was a failure inasmuch as it led to Iraq War 2. Every bad consequence that opponents of Iraq War 1 predicted did come true.

Posted by Gary Sugar | April 6, 2008 4:24 PM

None of those wars were fought for limited defensive objectives and all resulted in increased wealth, prestige and power for the winner.

Britain won wealth, prestige, and power in The Falklands War? I didn't know that.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 6, 2008 4:25 PM

The people who live in Seoul today likely think there was a good outcome to the war that was fought on the Korean peninsula 50-plus years ago, compared to what their cousins to the north have experienced.

Posted by Will Allen | April 6, 2008 4:43 PM

I think in the modern West, and in the US in particular, there's a serious misconception of what war is for. The historic purpose of war is essentially organized looting. Take the enemy's treasure, land and women. The Romans understood this - and there were clear winners in most of the wars they fought. Genghis Khan also understood this - and his wars also had clear winners. I think Stalin would say that the USSR clearly "won" WWII - they gained territory, looted all of Europe East of the Danube, and enhanced the prestige of a regime that had its shaky moments in the 1930s. If Iraq hasn't produced a winner it's because our objectives are so muddled - war is certainly far too blunt an instrument to use as a tool for social change. The neocon strategy in Iraq is akin to firing a shotgun at a dysfunctional family and hoping that the more responsible members of the family are the only ones left standing after your barrage.

Posted by vanya | April 6, 2008 4:51 PM

The neocon strategy in Iraq is akin to firing a shotgun at a dysfunctional family and hoping that the more responsible members of the family are the only ones left standing after your barrage.

That's a great metaphor!!

Posted by RKU | April 6, 2008 5:16 PM

As much as this discussion has featured some intelligent points, it also illustrates one of my pet-peeves: The lopsided focus on recent history as opposed to the whole sweep of history.

It totally bugs me because, for all the merits of focusing on recent history, it means you are always limited to a very small, potentially unrepresentative, sample.

Posted by libarbarian | April 6, 2008 7:21 PM

Vanya,

Stalin, personally, entered World War II for the sake of preserving his power, as he did everything else in his brutish life. But I suspect that most of the Communist Party militants, and even the more ideologically committed among the populace, did believe they were going to war for an ideal, not for 'land and women'. I would submit that many people in the Soviet Union and its sympathizers abroad did see the war as a crusade for socialism against the Nazi beast- for the ideal of equality against the ideal of racial supremacy- and they did see it as a tool for bringing 'social change' to Europe*. That Stalin himself was a cynical, sadistic gangster doesn't mean that the entire Soviet Army was made up of such people. He couldn't win the war by himself, after all.

*In the last analysis, WWII did bring a great deal of 'social change' to both Western and Eastern Europe, for better or for worse.

Posted by Hector | April 6, 2008 8:20 PM

Looking at the broad sweep of history, the idea that wars are _all_ over 'land and women' strikes me as....strange. Not even Marx at his most economic-deterministic would have said that.

World War II wasn't ultimately over land and women, it was in large part over a conflicting set of ideals. So was the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnam War, the Nicaraguan revolution, the Mexican Revolution, the U.S. Civil War, the Crusades, the English Civil War, the Napoleonic wars, the Thirty Years War, basically most religious wars, and a whole slew of others. Wars that are _purely_ over land seem to be the exception....after all, it's hard to inspire people to give up their lives for simply a bit more land, wealth, and women. Look at Latin America for example, compare the many civil wars and revolutions during the last two centuries (many of them explicitly ideological in nature) with the relatively few border wars (War of the Pacific, Chaco War, and so forth).

Posted by Hector | April 6, 2008 8:28 PM

Let me add myself to the one other person who is not so sure Germany "won" the Franco-Prussian war if long term consequences are taken into account. France was permanently pissed off and spent the next fourty years working out way of regaining lost territories, including an alliance with Russia and England that might not have otherwise taken place. In order to defend their win, Germany became a militarized state, and set up a defensive posture that further alienated the rest of Europe. And thus when the next war did take place, in part caused by the Franco-Prussian war, Germany then lost the Alsace-Lorraine along with lots of soldiers and money.

The larger lesson seems to be that if you "win" a war and in doing so leave a sufficiently strong and disgruntled enemy with the motivation to redress their grievances over the long term, then perhaps you haven't "won". What makes WWII more of a clear win, as opposed to WWI, was that efforts were taken to ensure that the defeated enemy was not permanently alienated from future alliance.

Posted by glenn | April 6, 2008 8:40 PM

Morons.

Rich people who don't live in countries where they're likely to be killed during the wars they finance are the only "winners" in any war.

The morons who fight in the wars and the civilians who remain in the countries being fought ON are the ones who lose. Maybe a few politicians like Hitler and Goering, who are on the wrong side at the end, lose. The rest of the politicians who are on the winning side "win".

If you think military-industrial complex CEOs and investment banks and politicians making out okay is "winning", then start some more wars.

Everybody else loses.

As for the reasons politicians advance to sucker morons into supporting their wars, who cares? In the end, it's money and power. And even that - even ideology - is just the excuse to cover the desire to kill other primates because they're afraid that the other primates will get the money and power. And money and power are just surrogates for the fear of death, the fear of competition from other primates.

You're chimpanzees fighting over bananas, the lot of you.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 6, 2008 9:25 PM

"The better desire is to avoid war when possible, and, when it's not, to use as much violence as possible in order to shorten the duration.

Posted by James Robertson | April 6, 2008 12:03 PM"

However, blowback can be just as problematic, especially in the days of globalization, international travel and an oversupply of small arms and explosives. Think of it this way: the Armenian genocide led to the assassinations of key members of the Ottoman government by pissed-off Armenians, yet the Ottomans still won that conflict. However, the Hutu power militants in Rwanda unleashed the highest rate of killing since the end of WWII and still lost after killing off the vast majority of Rwandan Tutsis. Instead of standing victorious over a Tutsi-free Rwanda, they were forced into refugee camps in the former Zaire and Rwanda became largely controlled by Tutsi rebels. Since the RPF was awash in small arms (unlike the Armenians), they could fight off the Hutu military.

If bin Laden hadn't turned his guns on the US and there weren't so many Muslim vs. infidel conflicts in the world (Kashmir, Palestine, Bosnia, etc.), 9/11 would probably have taken place in Moscow or St. Petersburg partly in revenge for the Soviet genocide in Afghanistan. The utility of maximum force is high if it's against your own people if you're a dictator (think Hama rules in Syria, which also has added to the fact that the Alawites will probably be slaughtered if the Ba'athists ever lose power, so even there it was a poisoned chalice) and goes down in the modern era against others no matter who you are. A number of suicide bombers in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for instance, mention revenge for a dead friend or relative as part of their motivation. Machiavelli felt it was better to be feared than respected, but that if that fear descended into pure hate, that would be the downfall of a Prince. Overwhelming force in the modern era can easily lead to that hate.

Posted by Reality Man | April 6, 2008 9:52 PM

Also, the problem with pointing to WWII as an example of anything just shows how historically illiterate a lot of American political commentators are. WWII was exceptional in that it was 1) a world fucking war 2) the largest war in history and 3) brought down initially three empires (Japan, Germany and Italy) while also sowing the seeds that brought down the British and French Empires as well. The fact that there was a clear good side and a clear bad side, in part due to clear ideological differences, also is unusual historically. Studying wars like the Iran-Iraq War, the civil war in the DRC/former Zaire, the Korean War (where we ended up losing near-total control of the Korean peninsula by stupidly and needlessly provoking China), the fight between the French and the Viet Minh, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, etc. are less glamorous but hold more revealing about the modern state of warfare. Neocons just want to be "Great Men of History" just like the members of the "Greatest Generation" and thus need to see the world through a WWII lens to make their dreams of glory come true. It's sad when we seem to be led by a bunch of Tyler Durdens.

Posted by Reality Man | April 6, 2008 10:01 PM

To quote myself in response to a number of comments above "Even those who seem to win have usually sowed the seeds of future disaster."

It's certainly true that many wars are seen, in retrospect and by nationalist/sectarian ideologues, as victories, even though on any objective count, the members of the nation they are supposed to love lost a lot and gained little of enduring value.

To take one example cited above a lot, the 'winners' in the Vietnam war sacrificed millions of lives for a victory over capitalist imperialism. Thirty years later their direct successors were thrilled to get into the WTO, and eager to implement all the required protections for foreign capital. Was it really necessary for all those people to die?

Posted by John Quiggin | April 7, 2008 12:22 AM

To take one example cited above a lot, the 'winners' in the Vietnam war sacrificed millions of lives for a victory over capitalist imperialism.

The "capitalism" part they're now happy to reverse course on (if in a rather Korean dirigiste fashion rather than a Wall Street deregulated one). The "imperialism" part, however, they are still glad to be rid of. And there is a very strong argument that their success in the capitalist order is founded on their success at creating an effective unified national state free of foreign domination, and with a ruling class that has exclusively Vietnamese loyalties. An independent South Vietnam, or even a united Vietnam run by a Diem-style cosmopolitan Saigon clique, would have been very likely to end up like the Philippines, semi-Americanized and hopelessly corrupt. The Philippines is still richer than Vietnam for the nonce, but Vietnam has better long-term prospects.

Furthermore, from a narrow North Vietnamese perspective, their country is far better off today than it would have been had they given up the fight, since they gained the richest part of the country and the very part which allowed them to successfully turn towards a market economy in the '80s (notably because the privatization of rice farming in the Mekong Delta in the '80s quickly yielded surpluses, exports, and hard currency; privatization in the less fertile North would not have been so strikingly successful, and reforms might have withered on the vine as did Soviet agricultural reforms in the '80s).

Again: was it worth 1 million deaths? To my mind, no, absolutely not. But I'm not Vietnamese.

Posted by brooksfoe | April 7, 2008 4:15 AM

Maybe this is the right time to bring up the great "win" the Israelis got in '67.

It seems to me war is always a catastrophe with more losers than winners short and long term. But we keep fighting them, so the next best thing to not having a war is surely not losing one. Nothing is more expensive than losing a war.

The peaceful resolution of international disputes is going to require legitimate security architecture with predictable, consistent, and effective enforcement mechanisms. It looked like we were on the right track towards this goal in 1945, and again in 1991, but now it seems further away than ever.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 7, 2008 9:55 AM

Robert Powell, it is high time that someone called bullshit on your arrogant puffery.

Try to square this statement...

"The peaceful resolution of international disputes is going to require legitimate security architecture with predictable, consistent, and effective enforcement mechanisms. It looked like we were on the right track towards this goal in 1945, and again in 1991, but now it seems further away than ever."

...with this earlier one...

"We had half a million pairs of boots on the ground and the international wind at our backs but this group of weenies decided it was too hard to actually win the war, so they told the Iraqis to rise up. When they did, we sat on the sidelines and watched as probably hundreds of thousands were slaughtered. We were somewhat disturbed by that, so we instituted "no-fly zones" to enforce the embargo, which killed hundreds of thousands more innocent Iraqis while tightening the regime's grip on power and enriching its collaborators."

-------------------------------------

So which is it... do you want legitimate international security architecture, or do you want the US to go in guns-a-blazing with or without international support, and to hell with the chaotic consequences? I don't really need to ask that question do I? You'd only consent to the former if the rest of the world were willing to consent to the latter.

The enforcement mechanisms that emerged from the international security agreements (that you claim to support) provided for ending the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. They did not provide for removing Saddam Hussein from power, nor did the coalition that Bush and Powell painstakingly built support such a decision. From any liberal internationalist viewpoint, Bush I made the correct decision not to press on to Baghdad. His signal error was engaging in bombastic rhetoric which incited a rebellion that he had no intention of lending any material support to.

This is properly seen as falling into a long line of American foreign policy disasters (Budapest, Bay of Pigs, Prague) where brave men and women went to their deaths believing that the United States was going to send them reinforcements, because hawkish assholes like you tried to curry domestic political support by talking and acting tough and trying to paint anyone with a sense of caution as a "weenie."

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | April 7, 2008 10:35 AM

Calling "bullshit" is common here, particularly on the part of boorish narcissists who deal with opinions that don't fit their basic assumptions with insults.

Resolution 678 called for the ejection of Iraq from Kuwait AND the restoration of peace and stability to the region. It should have been obvious to everyone, as it was to many of us at the time, that the latter would be impossible without removing Saddam Hussein and holding him responsible for the enormous crimes committed by his regime, including dragging us into the war we're still trying to conclude. Nothing in the Resolution said or implied anything to the contrary.

It seems pretty clear that we were expecting Saddam to be toppled by the insurrection we called for with stunning shortsightedness and moral callousness--otherwise, why call for it at all?. And then what? I can't imagine that there would have been much in the way of objections if we had actually persisted with offensive operations against the Republican Guard actively involved in massacre, particularly denying Saddam the ability to use airpower, in order for this insurrection to have a chance to succeed, and then supported the development of a replacement government.

Or do you think the "world community", which didn't seem to object to our call for Iraqis to rise up, would insist that we let the rising fail? I guess it's possible that the Egyptians and Syrians would have pulled out of the coalition, but given their level of actual contribution, I could live with that. Instead we decided to kick the can down the road, and sign on to genocidal sanctions as the easy way out. Except that it didn't work.

Just a minor historical reminder--the Bay of Pigs was a tiny, controversial operation that was an orphan to begin with; and we had about as much chance of assisting Budapest or Prague as we had of flying to the Moon in a helicopter. We had a huge army already in Iraq in 1991, plenty big enough to stabilize the place and turn over to a provisional government which, minus the experience by the majority Shi'ia community of being stabbed in the back by us, would have been a lot more cooperative than it is now.

Having an effective enforcement mechanism requires doing things that actually work. What we did in 1991 only appeared to work, and even the appearance didn't last very long.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 7, 2008 3:04 PM

"Resolution 678 called for the ejection of Iraq from Kuwait AND the restoration of peace and stability to the region. It should have been obvious to everyone, as it was to many of us at the time, that the latter would be impossible without removing Saddam Hussein and holding him responsible for the enormous crimes committed by his regime, including dragging us into the war we're still trying to conclude. Nothing in the Resolution said or implied anything to the contrary."

Except there was peace in the region, unless you think we should have gone in over Hussein's support for suicide bombers in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is more Israel's problem, not ours. Yours is a purely subjective reading that makes several logical leaps to go from Point A to Point Q. Considering that the region has become less peaceful as a result of this war, you're entire armchair generaling is based on bullshit that is meant to make you feel like a man instead of the doughboy you are.

Posted by Reality Man | April 7, 2008 11:55 PM

The "peace in the region" you tout was about like the "peace" achieved by your role model, Neville Chamberlain. Check with the survivors of the Iraqis killed by sanctions. Maybe we should have just stopped WWII in late 1944--after all, most of Germany's military capacity had been destroyed, and most of the Jews were already dead. Continuing towards Berlin only helped the Soviet Union.

Look, this is all hypothetical. Matt's point was GHW Bush's "wisdom". I think trying to take the easy way out that has led to institutional genocide, massacres, continuing war and the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands was profoundly unwise. You're entitled to your own opinion, but it seems a sure marker for a lack of credible arguments when people resort to ad hominem wise cracks instead of substantive facts.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 8, 2008 2:40 AM

Let me point out that the uselessness of wars becomes even clearly if you subtract from your list of "winners" all those who entered wars involuntarily. The Germans did okay as a result of the Franco-Prussian War--but the French started it. Other examples will come to mind . . .

Posted by rea | April 10, 2008 1:38 PM

I am just so glad we won prestige and power in the Falklands. Makes up for the continuation of Thatcher's rape of our nation's wealth on behalf of plutocrats innit.

Posted by Dr Zen | April 10, 2008 11:15 PM