It seems odd now, but a year ago, more or less, people were saying that the anti-war faction had been proved wrong by events.
I wrote a note at the time, detailing what I saw as the four major camps who were anti-war; my buddy David alerted me to a fifth. I’ll list them again, briefly: pacifists, who would be against any military action; Bush-haters, who, well, yes; Where's-the-Threatistas, who didn’t believe that Iraq under the Baathists was a threat; At-What-Costniks, who felt that however justified, the invasion would come at the expense of more important things; and the Chomsky-ites, who never believed any of the stated reasons for the invasion and viewed it as a simple resource grab.
Um, which were wrong? Honestly, Your Humble Blogger was wrong to favor the invasion as late as February; I didn’t come around to calling myself anti-war until the first of March. Ultimately, my reasoning put me in the Bush-hater category; I wrote the “Bush has finally convinced me” to oppose the invasion. The Where's-the-Threatistas were right, and I was wrong. The At-What-Costniks were right, and I was wrong (although I still think we’re a rich enough country to pay for both rebuilding Iraq and taking care of domestic priorities, the costs, in blood and treasure, are much more in line with their thinking than with mine). The Chomsky-ites were right, at least that the stated reasons for the invasion were all lies, and I was wrong. As for the pacifists, well, as I said at the time, “It's a basic principle, and as such not susceptible to concrete proof.”
I read what I wrote last year, and I can’t believe that I thought the Baathists would be a threat. I am shocked by how taken in I was. And I am still clinging to my digression of May 31st of last year, when I said:
Digression: Another way, ultimately, to restore the US to the good graces or at least the better graces of the world is to build a paradise in Iraq. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it, like Cato saying Delenda Carthago, until I either die or persuade somebody. End Digression.Now, we’ve dug ourselves further than we were before. Building a paradise in Iraq is now only necessary, but even that will, I fear, not be sufficient. Still, it would be a start, at least with those parts we now control.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
I think you missed another category, which I think of them/us as the Inigo Montoyas, after Mandy Patankin’s character in “The Princess Bride” (Vizzini: Inconceivable! Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.): those who questioned whether the actual methods adopted by the Bush administration had any likelihood of achieving the stated goals.
Inigo Montoyas were commonly agnostic with regard to the objections raised by the other five categories. Many were not strict (or even partial) pacifists, not overly influenced by the name attached to the Bush Plan, and/or bitterly condemning of Saddam Hussein’s regime. They simply remained skeptical of the Bush Plan’s “Step 2: a miracle occurs” (with apologies to Gary Larson).
Maybe they made their own internal comparisons to Yugoslavia after the Tito regime’s end or the historically ugly ends of most ventures of occupation; maybe they remembered that Saddam Hussein got his start as our creature (to some arguable but non-negligable extent) and, as such, reflects badly on our interventionary competence. Whatever the logic, the basic conclusion was, “this is unlikely to start, convolve, or end well.”
The Montoyas appear to have been right, too, though the end will be unknown for years to come.
Ah, sigh, the artifacts of cut-and-paste editing. Please to kindly ignore my “them/us” in the first sentence.
This may well be a different category. There’s a good deal of overlap (as there is with all the categories), as most of the Inigos didn’t buy the threat, and many of them based their belief that it would all end (and begin) badly on their contempt for Our Only President. But certainly, there were people – and I talked to some of them before the invasion, so we aren’t giving them credit for hindsight in advance – who believed that the Baathists had weapons stockpiles and might well threaten stability in the Middle East, and therefore US interests, and who believed that no US administration, however competent, legitimate, visionary or otherwise, would be able to make it turn out well. It was a lousy position to be in, where every alternative was a bad one, but that certainly doesn’t mean they were wrong.
R.I.,
-V.