I don’t generally post here in this Tohu Bohu links that have been lunked everywhere around, but I will use my fondness for mine host as an excuse to give in to temptation. So, here is a link to some faith-based history on a topic of some interest to some Gentle Readers.
To be fair, web archive mishaps are as common as the slips of the tongue called “Bushisms”, and although such are fair game for mockery of public officials, it isn’t fair to judge a presidency based on that sort of thing. Should, on the other hand, a Gentle Reader want to judge Our Only President based on the actual archive. I might draw attention to such statements as this one from March 23, 2003:
I do know that we expect them to be treated humanely, just like we'll treat any prisoners of theirs that we capture humanely. I think it's an interesting contrast that a lot of their soldiers welcome American troops, they're surrendering gleefully, happily. And they'll be treated well. And I ask you to ask the Defense Department for further details. Patsy.Er, I should mention that he wasn’t calling the Defense Department spokesman a patsy, just the reporter. Whose name, presumably, was Patsy. Or not. I’ll also add that on March 23, Our Only President said “In the early stages of this war, the world is getting a clearer view of the Iraqi regime and the evil at its heart. In the ranks of that regime are men whose idea of courage is to brutalize unarmed prisoners.”
Oh, fine. I wasn’t actually going to make a serious post about Iraq today, but now I’ve started, I may as well throw my recent insight onto the screen and see if it holds up better than the last few. It occurred to me, after reading, wait, let me find it, oh right, it was a note by Jesse Taylor over at Pandagon, wherein he said
This, I think, is the disconnect between reality and much of the pro-war right. When the New York Times or Washington Post criticizes the war, they're criticizing the war that's happening. It's a war where there's a large-scale insurgent movement, where the al-Qaeda interest in Iraq was seeing Hussein gone and using the subsequent unrest to recruit and attack, where new cafeterias aren't replacements for dead kids. In the Fighting Keyboarder world, everyone's got their own version of this war - in some, we're creating a nation of adoring America-fans, in others we've crushed the insurgency and whatever's left is simply a shadow pumped up by the "MSM".
I think he’s missing something there, or more likely deliberately omitting something for rhetorical effect. And in conversation with my Best Reader, that something he omitted sharpened, for me, to an actual point worth making. Which is that many people on the anti-war side may well look at the military conflict (the invasion and occupation, or whatever you choose to call it), and see a situation that is bad and appears to be degrading. It’s possible, I suppose, to interpret the facts on the ground as indicative of slow improvement from a state worse than previously understood, but I don’t think that such an interpretation could reasonably considered persuasive enough to convince a skeptic.
On the other hand, people on the pro-war side may well look at the social and political infrastructure and see a good deal of improvement. Because in fact there has been a good deal of improvement. Before the invasion, the only political infrastructure was that supporting a corrupt and vile dictatorship; my understanding is that there is not much serious question about that. I would have estimated Saddam Hussein to be in the top five evil crazy dictators at the time he was deposed. For all that there was a civic society in place, it was not one with a reasonable infrastructure for an elected parliament, a judiciary for adjudicating laws created by that parliament, or a law enforcement branch for, er, actually enforcing laws. Collecting taxes, yes, there was something in place for that I understand. It’s a start, I suppose.
Anyway, now there are some glimmerings of an infrastructure that, if continued on their current path, could conceivably in a few years bring to Iraq the kind of corrupt, incompetent and ineffective government we associate with, say, Nigeria or Haiti or even Bangladesh. This is a marked improvement. Let me say that as clearly as possible: there has been a tremendous improvement in the political infrastructure in Iraq. It has gone from insanely bad to unimaginably bad. One wonders, is it possible that, for instance, a government with only the corruption, tyranny, effectiveness, and lawlessness as, oh, Pakistan, or Myanmar, or Libya could be in place before my Perfect Non-Reader is draftable?
No, wait, I got snarky, and I didn’t mean to. My point was that there has, in fact, been improvement on that score, and that I could understand a person who, when looking at the “Iraq War”, looks at that end of things and sees a good deal of improvement, and wants to know why somebody else claims not to see any improvement at all, when that other person either means by “Iraq War” the military conflict exclusively, or some combination of the two which weights things in a different way than the first person does.
Now. The two things are not entirely separate, of course. I would guess that we are nearing the limit of improvement on the political infrastructure side without military success. That is, without being able to provide some vestige of what we call homeland security, there will be no way for any government to have enough legitimacy to nurture the seeds of political institutions. On the other hand, without a legitimate government, it will be very difficult to do much more in the military way. It’s possible that this is a Catch-22, but it’s possible, even likely, that smarter people than me will see a way out. I’m not much for either tactics or strategy. If there’s anything I’m good at (and I hesitate to claim that there is), it’s spotting ways in which different people are using the same words to mean different things, and then talking at cross-purposes. It isn’t much use in actually improving things in Iraq, but it might possible help conversations about improving things in Iraq.
It’s all I’ve got, anyway.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
And, of course, there’s more than political infrastructure and military conflict to conceivably evaluate about Iraq. (I’ll skip the joke about there also being political conflict and military infrastructure.) There’s also:
energy infrastructure
economic development
educational system
health care delivery
agriculture
potable water
oil field management
cultural institutions
religious institutions
roads and bridges
and all the other little things that make life enjoyable, or even possible. Is it good that there’s a new school, or bad that the kids have cholera? With so much to pick and choose from, how do you define success or failure?
There’s also the effects of our involvement in Iraq on other countries’ citizens and governments, both in terms of looking to Iraq as a positive or negative example and in terms of figuring out how to cringe appropriately when John Bolton takes his seat on East 43rd. Is it good that Iran has been scared into holding an election, or bad that someone more committed to their nuclear program was elected? I think you’re right that people on different sides here are talking past each other.
At the start of your post, I assume you’re contrasting the President’s quotes with the reported situation at Abu Ghraib. But the President was quite clearly talking about how we would treat Iraqi soldiers who we captured. The Pentagon estimated that the Abu Ghraib population was primarily innocent civilians. We sent Iraqi soldiers home. We locked up and mistreated primarily people who drove taxis and ran shops.
Were the incidents being talked about imprisoned US soldiers? I seem to remember a little fair-haired boy on Saddam Hussein’s knee, but then that might have been from the 1990 war. I could look it up, I suppose.
Anyway, the more important point is that you are, of course, right about standard-of-living issues, but Our Only President and his secretive cabal of incompetents and crooks have not yet suggested that we went to war over the standard of living in Iraq. There have been three major issues (I think there were thirty minor ones, and honestly quality-of-life does come up among those): the actual threat that the Ba’athist regime posed to US interests, the liberty and freedom of the Iraqi people, and the ongoing War on Terrorr. Now, liberty and freedom seem to me to include political infrastructure, but not to include potable water or the economic infrastructure. I see the argument that says that such things should be or at least can be included, but I don’t usually buy it. However, it is true that, for instance, I see public schools such as those so famously painted by our boys overseas as part of the political infrastructure, so it’s clear that it, er, isn’t clear. This is another area where sloppy definitions mean we talk past each other. It’s quite likely that the painted-school example is considered by many people to be an otherwise irrelevant treat, like a painted shoe store. Which is fine, but it would help me to know.
Thanks,
-V.
The other important issue in working through the perceptual problem has to do with the portion of Iraq under discussion.
The Kurdish North — looking good!
The Shia South — there are troubles, but overall the mechanisms of government are being established.
The Sunni Triangle — here the problems are somewhat larger . . .
If one looks at portions of the country, it’s easy to see that progress is being made, and that war is, for now, over. In other parts of the country, it’s unclear that any progress is being made or that it can be made in the context of a U.S. occupation or in the context of a united, democratic Iraq.
Within the Kurdish region of the country, I think they are already better off than Pakistan, Myanmar, Libya. Within the Shia south, I think there are clear prospects for reasonable good political arrangements to develop. The problem is in the Sunni Triangle, and in the goal of a united Iraq in which the whole country enjoys some vestige of homeland security and stable, democratic political institutions, in which the Sunni minority is satisfied and secure as a minority.
Belatedly: wanted to note that I really appreciate all three of you talking about the complexity of the situation. I don’t have anything to add, but I find this discussion useful and interesting—and incidentally a lot less tension-inducing than the usual ranting at cross-purposes I see on both sides.