The Costs of Polarizing War

by publius

Fred Kagan's recent screed is hardly worth the effort. It's not even an argument -- it's an attempt to shore up conservative support by demonizing liberals (or "hyper-sophisticates," as he calls them). Like many other neoconservatives, his foreign policy vision is conceptually reactionary in that it's rooted in hippie hatred and ressentiment. To the extent there's an actual argument lurking in there, it's classic Green Lantern Fallacy -- our only obstacle to success is a lack of will.

I did, though, want to address Kagan's claim that war critics are essentially rooting against our military:

The antiwar party rather gleefully seized upon recent Iraqi Security Forces operations against Sadr’s militia and other illegal gangs as proof of this — the general glee with which the antiwar party has greeted any setback in Iraq is extremely distasteful and unseemly, whatever domestic political benefits they believe they will receive from those setbacks. Even if one believes that defeat is inevitable and withdrawal necessary, no American should take pleasure in the prospect of that defeat.

Pretty distasteful stuff. Not only is this "stab in the back" rhetoric venomous and nasty, but it's not true. War skeptics feel very strongly that our current policy is wrong, dangerous, and a tremendous waste of both blood and money. The events in Basra tended to support these arguments in particularly relevant ways. Thus, airing these criticisms -- even passionately -- is hardly "glee." In Kagan's defense, it's easier to rationalize criticism as military hatred, particularly if your Iraq commentary has transformed you into an object of national ridicule. But that doesn't make the claim any more accurate.

But just for the sake of argument, let's assume that he's right. Let's assume there are substantial numbers of progressive Americans actively rooting against the effort in Iraq. If anyone is to blame for this unfortunate state of affairs, however, it's the administration and its pundit cheerleaders such as Kagan who have -- from Day 1 -- treated the war as a partisan weapon.

This is a serious point. There's a reason that successful wars require bipartisan support. When wars are conceived and maintained as purely partisan affairs, then the fates of political parties become intertwined with the fate of the war, thus creating horrible incentives. As a result, rooting against the war -- while extremely distasteful -- becomes rational for the anti-war party.

To be clear, I morally and emphatically reject this point of view. While I may disagree strongly with the war, I root for success whatever the domestic effects. But that said, you can see the rationality of the boogeymen Kagan describes. The fate of America's two primary political parties -- because of the White House's deliberate polarization strategy -- now turns on the success of the war. For instance, in 2002, the GOP consciously and loudly integrated the Iraq War into its election strategy. It did the same thing in 2004. Had the war gone well, we can all agree that the military success would have been eagerly used by the GOP (including Kagan) to bash Democrats for a generation. Thus, Bush's polarization strategy forced progressives to root for military success while simultaneously knowing that success would result in the decimation of their political party. That's not a choice people should have to be making.

(On an aside, the same thing has happened with Petraeus. Republicans have been so eager to use him for political purposes that criticism of him becomes politically rational for the Democrats.)

The larger point is that, when war is required, we need to go to war as a country. Bundling the war with domestic politics not only undermines the mission itself, but creates poisonous divisions at home. In fact, I'm starting to increasingly fear the "Weimar hangover" (i.e., the domestic effects of withdrawal). As this week's hearings illustrate, the administration's strategy is to stall and kick the can to the next administration. When we inevitably withdraw (particularly if it's a Democrat), it will be easy for the ultra-nationalists to adopt a "stab in the back" narrative that will further poison the domestic well.

The trick I think is to convince sane conservatives not to join them. Specifically, whether the "hangover" develops depends on whether fact-based conservatives remain focused on the facts or fall under the sway of the "blame the traitor liberals" narrative that Kagan is already pushing.

Comments

[Sebastian]

Yes it is political. But why? I fully understand what we *used to* get out of the political statement. It was that large Communist countries couldn't use North Korea as a proxy to attack a South Korea.

That was good. I supported that kind of political/military statement.

But now that North Korea is NOT a proxy for a larger country (much less a larger country that we have grave ideological differences with) what is the political statement that requires those troops?

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

It seems to me that 2nd Division is needed more urgently in Afghanistan

Gary,

How much of a strategic reserve does that leave us with, if something unexpected happens in another part of the world. I agree about the need to reinforce our troops in Afghanistan, but I'm getting very nervous about what happens if our ground forces are completely committed to existing conflicts with nothing in reserve.

But now that North Korea is NOT a proxy for a larger country (much less a larger country that we have grave ideological differences with) what is the political statement that requires those troops?

Sebastian,

I think part of the political aspect is that the extension of the US strategic deterrence umbrella to friendly countries like Korea may have been understood to be an implied context for the nuclear non-proliferation regime we've worked hard to put in place. If we withdraw that umbrella, South Korea may need to re-evaluate whether their continued participation in this regime is in their long term best interests. That could trigger a nuclear arms race in East Asia which I think everyone recognizes would be a bad idea. Having NK claim a sort of backyard nukes program is bad enough, but the situation could get worse.

[Slartibartfast]

Well for starters, I don't think such a pullback would cause a war in Korea, so I'm not especially worried about dead Koreans. It would, however, represent a significant shift towards China replacing the US as the hegemon in East Asia.

Ah, I see that there was an actual noncontradictory explanation for your apparently inconsistent position. Thanks for clarifying.

Which is not to say I agree, just that I now understand what you were trying to say.

Probably it was unwise of me to casually dismiss actual Korean casualties even while seeming to dismiss possible future casualties. I didn't mean to do that.

[Gary Farber]

"But you seem to understand this, since you quote the Korean president making this exact point, so i guess I'm not sure what you're position is exactly."

I think I understand Lee Myung-bak's political position reasonably well, and why he takes this line, and why he wishes the U.S. to take his line.

I don't see that: a) this means the U.S. should automatically take Lee Myung-bak's line; and b) that there's any contradiction between supporting "the mere presence of the U.S. forces in Korea" and those forces being as I outlined, the 51st Fighter Wing, and Osan air base, a platoon or company of MPs, maybe, and a few other residual forces as I described.

Why, exactly, I repeat, are these not a sufficient deterrent, other than tradition? I repeat the question you did not respond to: are you saying that if the the 51st Fighter Wing, and Osan air base, as well as the DMZ, Seoul, and much of the ROK army, get overrun, that the U.S. won't respond identically as it would if we had 2nd Division sitting there as well? Do you believe that Kim Jong Il believes the U.S. would respond differently? If so, why?

I'm sure, after all, you recall just how few troops we had in the ROK when North Korea invaded the first time, which is to say zip and nada.

[...] On 23 March 1949 President Truman approved the withdrawal of the remaining U.S. troops from Korea, a regiment of the 7th Infantry Division. Ambassador Muccio notified the U.N. Commission on 8 July 1949 that the United States had completed withdrawal of its forces on 29 June and that the U.S. Army Forces in Korea (USAFIK) had been deactivated as of midnight 30 June.

North Korea attacked across the 38th Parallel in force "in the pre-dawn darkness of Sunday, 25 June 1950."

[...] Other than KMAG and ADCOM personnel, the first American troops to go to Korea arrived at Suwon Airfield on 29 June, the day of MacArthur's visit. The unit, known as Detachment X, consisted of thirty-three officers and men and four M55 machine guns of the 507th Antiaircraft Artillery (Automatic Weapons) Battalion.

But we still counter-attacked, ASAP.

[Doctor Science]

OCSteve wrote:

I reflexively jump to the defense of the military at any perceived slight. I have to be careful not to take someone’s apparent satisfaction at being proven right by events to be satisfaction with the actual events.

Where do you think that reflexive jump comes from? Why do perceived slights to the military seem to require more defense than slights to other institutions? Isn't your reflexive jump (which is widely shared) crucial to the perverse incentive system ThatLeftTurnInABQ describes?

[Sebastian]

"I think part of the political aspect is that the extension of the US strategic deterrence umbrella to friendly countries like Korea may have been understood to be an implied context for the nuclear non-proliferation regime we've worked hard to put in place. If we withdraw that umbrella, South Korea may need to re-evaluate whether their continued participation in this regime is in their long term best interests."

That is a lot of what-ifs, especially considering that South Korea had a secret nuclear arms program even while it was under our umbrella.

It seems to me that the nuclear question is beyond our control. It will depend mostly on the perception about Chinese ability to rein in North Korean stupidity. If the Chinese can keep North Korea from being crazy, South Korea and Japan won't nuclearize. If they can't, South Korea and Japan will nuclearize.

The same goes with Chinese pushiness in general. If the Chinese look like they are getting bellicose, Japan can get have nuclear weapons in a couple of months (and that is probably an understatement) and South Korea is the same.

In none of the scenarios I can see is the tripwire an important facet (either way) of the nuclear policy.

[Slartibartfast]

Why do perceived slights to the military seem to require more defense than slights to other institutions?

I'd guess it's because OCSteve has been (or still is) in the military, and sees some of those slights trickling down onto him.

[Gary Farber]

"How much of a strategic reserve does that leave us with, if something unexpected happens in another part of the world."

I'm not arguing with those saying we should proceed with drawing down combat units in Iraq.

Also:

BY KEVIN MAURER, Associated Press Writer
WILMINGTON, N.C. - The Army's 82nd Airborne Division will reclaim its role as the nation's quick-reaction force in 2009, once again keeping a unit on alert and ready to jump into combat anywhere in the world within 18 hours.

A brigade from the Army's 101st Airborne Division took over as the country's quick-reaction force last year, after all four 3,500-solider brigades of the Fort Bragg-based 82nd deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Three of the four have since returned to Fort Bragg.

The last 82nd unit to serve as the "division ready brigade" was the 2nd, which was the first unit sent into Iraq last year as part of the "surge" that added 30,000 troops to the U.S. forces there.

Division spokesman Maj. Tom Earnhardt said the mission is considered a core responsibility of the 82nd and its paratroopers, all of whom are trained to rapidly deploy on short notice.

But mostly: keep withdrawing units from Iraq over the next year.

[Turbulence]

I'd guess it's because OCSteve has been (or still is) in the military, and sees some of those slights trickling down onto him.

OCSteve, like all of us, is (or was) part of many groups. I have the distinct impression that perceived slights to other groups that OCSteve has belonged to in the past would not trigger the same sort of response. But that's just speculation on my part. So OCSteve, would you feel the same way regarding slights against people from upstate NY, or slights against computer professionals, or slights against people that live in PA, or slights against consluttants?

[Doctor Science]

I'd guess it's because OCSteve has been (or still is) in the military, and sees some of those slights trickling down onto him.

Ah, I didn't know that. That's understandable -- most people tend toward unreasonable defensiveness of institutions they're in -- but, as I noted, OCSteve's gut-level defensiveness is very widespread, including among conservatives who are not and have never been in the armed forces.

[Ugh]

Giblets on the cost of the war...ON THE MOON!!

[Doctor Science]

Re: the Green Lantern Fallacy. I find it hope-making that the current Green Lantern is shown as exceptionally powerful because he is an artist, and thus has extra *imagination* to go with his will.

[Slartibartfast]

I tend to be defensive against blanket criticisms, because I have fairly frequent contact with people in the military, and nearly all of them are people I respect a great deal.

But that's just me. I can't speak for anyone else.

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

That is a lot of what-ifs

Understood and agreed. This stuff was never an exact science even during the Cold War, much less now. I file this away under the category of If-it-ain't-broke-don't-try-to-fix-it. The Korean peninsula and NE Asia more generally have been pretty stable for the last few decades (considering the circumstances), and it seems like we have enough problems on our hands in other parts of the world already, so I can understand why inertia has carried us this far without an re-evaluation.

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

or slights against consluttants?

Is this a typo, or an empirical test?
:-)

[someotherdude]

I find that the sensitivity toward “slights” against the military tend to reflect certain cultures/ethnicity/race. There are many vets in Puerto Rican and Black communities and families; however there is not the same type of nationalistic investment in those communities. The “blood and soil” crowd tend to view the military differently than former colonized folks. I do believe there is a difference between patriotic and nationalistic. Call me a romantic.

[OCSteve]

Doctor Science: Where do you think that reflexive jump comes from? Why do perceived slights to the military seem to require more defense than slights to other institutions?

I don’t have personal ties to a lot of other organizations. I didn’t give years of my life to other organizations. I didn’t loose close friends in other organizations (training accidents, not combat).

I mean I suppose I might reflexively defend the University of Maryland someday – but the situation has never come up.

Isn't your reflexive jump (which is widely shared) crucial to the perverse incentive system ThatLeftTurnInABQ describes?

Probably. All I can do about that is to recognize it and try to account for it – as I’ve tried to explain here (not very well I guess).

[byrningman]

I'm sure, after all, you recall just how few troops we had in the ROK when North Korea invaded the first time, which is to say zip and nada.

Exactly. Don't you see that this is exactly why the presence of American troops in South Korea has such significance now? Pyongyang and Moscow believed that the US was leaving South Korea out of its zone of containment in East Asia, that is why Stalin finally gave Kim the go-ahead to attack. Of all possible countries to be discussing, Korea is the most clear-cut case of the essentiality of unambiguous commitments. Only a respectable number of boots on the ground constitutes such unambiguity.

The general staffs of countries like South Korea take their security doctrine very seriously. I'm not sure if you're serious about "leaving a platoon or the embassy marine guards," but as regards air bases etc., they don't really mean squat in terms of a political commitment, if for no other reason that planes can fly away very quickly. Can you imagine their reaction if you walked into a meeting with them, and with nice shiny powerpoint slides showed them how some aircraft and troops in Japan etc. could really protect them just as well? They don't give a rat's about deployment times etc., they want several thousand GIs at least in harm's way, so if the bullets start flying there's no possible way the yankees might pull out and leave them hanging.

As someone else pointed out, the entirety of US strategic hegemony on a global level is predicated on such commitments. Regionally, the South Koreans might be tempted to get nukes, or both South Korea and Japan might in time be tempted to cozy up to China, something US strategic planners have nightmares over.

Globally, deterrence rests on credibility. If that credibility were lost in just one place, the house of cards starts to collapse. Heck, it's for that reason some argue that Vietnam War was still worth it, for if for no other reason it shored up the US deterrence posture.

[trilobite]

Doctor Science, you're behind the times. There are now many current Green Lanterns, and the artist character is no longer the star of the series or considered exceptionally powerful.

How this impacts the North Korean situation remains unclear, but will no doubt be resolved in an expensive crossover event.

[byrningman]

The Korean peninsula and NE Asia more generally have been pretty stable for the last few decades (considering the circumstances), and it seems like we have enough problems on our hands in other parts of the world already, so I can understand why inertia has carried us this far without an re-evaluation.

On the contrary, along with the Indo-Pak dispute, East Asia is the most dangerous, most important place in the world, and promises to be for a very long time.

The 21st century is very much about East Asia. I would be astounded if Washington were to weaken its hand by withdrawing voluntarily from Korea.

[cleek]

Don't you see that this is exactly why the presence of American troops in South Korea has such significance now? Pyongyang and Moscow believed that the US was leaving South Korea out of its zone of containment in East Asia, that is why Stalin finally gave Kim the go-ahead to attack.

that was 50 years ago. all of those people are dead. right?

[Barbara]

This entire article sets up a false proposition (that those opposed to the war revel in Iraqi catastrophe) as a means of not discussing the choice that most opponents of the war favor, and that is, planned withdrawal. By avoiding this discussion Kagan doesn't have to admit that the majority of American people now side with those who opposed the war all along. Much better to just continue impugning their patriotism.

[OCSteve]

Turb: I have the distinct impression that perceived slights to other groups that OCSteve has belonged to in the past would not trigger the same sort of response. But that's just speculation on my part. So OCSteve, would you feel the same way regarding slights against people from upstate NY, or slights against computer professionals, or slights against people that live in PA, or slights against consluttants?

slights against people from upstate NY – Somewhat. We’re typically thought of as rubes. Many of us are and are proud of it. But yes I’ll reflexively defend the rubes against the city-folk.

slights against computer professionals, or slights against people that live in PA, or slights against consluttants – Not so much. I’ll join you in slighting any of those groups (with glee).

Look – I’ve already said it’s emotional and not rational. If you’re looking for some kind of explanation that makes sense – well there is none. And we’ve had the conversation before. The best I can do is to be aware that it is there and that it colors my opinions.

[Gary Farber]

"They don't give a rat's about deployment times etc., they want several thousand GIs at least in harm's way"

Do you have a particular range of numbers in mind, then?

Presumably it's not 37,500, where we were not so long ago, or some larger number.

You haven't said the current ~28,500 aren't sufficient.

Would ~12,000 do, in your opinion?

~8,000? ~4,000? ~2,000?

And if the the 51st Fighter Wing has no deterrent value, I take it you're find with us withdrawing it from South Korea?

And I'm going to keep trying here: I repeat the question you did not respond to: are you saying that if the the 51st Fighter Wing, and Osan air base, as well as the DMZ, Seoul, and much of the ROK army, get overrun, that the U.S. won't respond identically as it would if we had 2nd Division sitting there as well? Do you believe that Kim Jong Il believes the U.S. would respond differently? If so, why?

someotherdude: "The “blood and soil” crowd tend to view the military differently than former colonized folks."

Might there be an excluded middle that consists of neither group?

Is it possible to respect members of the U.S. military, and a role of the military, and still be against colonialism, d'ya think?

[Gary Farber]

"Globally, deterrence rests on credibility. If that credibility were lost in just one place, the house of cards starts to collapse. Heck, it's for that reason some argue that Vietnam War was still worth it, for if for no other reason it shored up the US deterrence posture."

Yes, we fought the Vietnam more or less solely for that rationale, after all.

Yet U.S. credibility survived quite adequately after the worst happened, nonetheless.

It'll survive a complete failure in Iraq, if it should come to that, too. Will that credibility be worse off? Sure. Is it vastly worse off now than it was in 2002?

Do I even have to answer that?

And will U.S. military/diplomatic credibility yet survive the worst possible outcome in Iraq?

Yeah, it will. And so will we.

[bc]

Why do perceived slights to the military seem to require more defense than slights to other institutions?

Could it be that they put their lives on the line regardless of political persuasion? Maybe? Just a thought.

Somewhat random thought:

clearing off my desk and ran across an email from a friend regarding a purported WaPo contest (not sure of that) to take any word from the dictionary and alter just one letter and supply a new definition. A few seem apropos:

Dopeler Effect (start of the war): the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter wehn they come at you rapidly.

Karmageddon (Korea): It's when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes, and it's a serious bummer.

Bozone (all of us): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

And just in time for April 15:

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

[byrningman]

I repeat the question you did not respond to: are you saying that if the the 51st Fighter Wing, and Osan air base, as well as the DMZ, Seoul, and much of the ROK army, get overrun, that the U.S. won't respond identically as it would if we had 2nd Division sitting there as well? Do you believe that Kim Jong Il believes the U.S. would respond differently? If so, why?

I've actually not really discussed anything but that issue over several posts. If you don't understand the issue by now, I'm sorry that I have not been able to explain it in a more clear-cut manner.

that was 50 years ago. all of those people are dead. right?

I think you're joking (sorry, but I'm not sure anymore). In any case military doctrine, being inherently conservative and cautious, evolves very slowly, and is naturally informed chiefly by a country's recent strategic history. Since WW2, the USA has been the guarantor of South Korean security. Among the benefits for the USA are bases in an economically vital part of the globe, and the fact the such protected countries (S. Korea, Japan, Germany) don't then feel the need to develop and deploy strategic nuclear deterrents of their own. Strategic nuclear weapons being the only conceivable substantial threat to the United States territory and population, deterrent their proliferation is one of the cornerstones of American grand strategy (as is the case for nearly every nuclear power -- N. Korea and Pakistan seeming to be two exceptions).

[Turbulence]

Hey, if we really think that the only benefit to having lots of US soldiers in Korea is precommitting us to fight in the event that NK attacks, why do they need to be soldiers? I mean, if they're just going to be hostages anyway, why can't the US government set up a scholarship to pay for 20,000 students to get free college educations in SK every year on the condition that if things go bad, they won't get any special airlift out?

Wouldn't dead kids have just as strong an emotional value as dead soldiers if all we or the South Koreans care about are hostages? I mean, kids probably cost less, they can't be used to gin up any wars in the middle east, and the education and cross cultural experience seem like huge wins.

I only half kidding. This whole idea of planning to sacrifice soldiers to signal precommitment feels rather wrong.

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

Where do you think that reflexive jump comes from? Why do perceived slights to the military seem to require more defense than slights to other institutions? Isn't your reflexive jump (which is widely shared) crucial to the perverse incentive system ThatLeftTurnInABQ describes?

Just to clarify something, in the earlier comment of mine that Doctor Science is referencing here, I was arguing about the asymmetric politics of wartime with regard to the majority of the electorate who do not have friends or family serving in the military. That is one reason why I think we need to bring back the draft, to recreate a sense of shared risk when these decisions are being weighed.

[byrningman]

Yes, we fought the Vietnam more or less solely for that rationale, after all.

I beg to differ. Logevall's Choosing War is perhaps the best recent presentation of alternate explanations (and one which I personally find more convincing).

[Turbulence]

Could it be that they put their lives on the line regardless of political persuasion? Maybe? Just a thought.

Indeed. In that regard, the military is very unlike fire and police departments. I can't tell you how many times fire fighters have told me that they won't rescue people from homes that have election signs for the wrong party on the lawn.

[byrningman]

This whole idea of planning to sacrifice soldiers to signal precommitment feels rather wrong.

OK I really need to stop procrastinating and do some work now, but it doesn't necessarily mean that these guys are there as martyrs to the policy of deterrence. In fact, the assumption that US commanders might want to save those guys would suggest that they would hurry to reinforce, resupply and otherwise support as quickly as possible, thus instigating the escalation and full-hearted commitment to S. Korea's defense that the Koreans would like to see.

cheerio

[Slartibartfast]

In that regard, the military is very unlike fire and police departments. I can't tell you how many times fire fighters have told me that they won't rescue people from homes that have election signs for the wrong party on the lawn.

Sarchasm?

[someotherdude]

How this impacts the North Korean situation remains unclear, but will no doubt be resolved in an expensive crossover event.

Posted by: trilobite | April 10, 2008 at 04:11 PM

NERDDDDD!!!! (Those crossovers always suck me back in!!!!)

Is it possible to respect members of the U.S. military, and a role of the military, and still be against colonialism, d'ya think?

Posted by: Gary Farber | April 10, 2008 at 04:21 PM

No doubt, I guess what I'm trying to say is this: I find that, in my family and the communities I work within, one does not have to begin each criticism of the governments/THE STATE’s use of the military with pronouncements about “respecting the troops” or genuflections about military service. It seems to be, that it is already assumed unless otherwise stated, that these feelings exist.

I think it is a testament to the skill of the Republican propaganda machine to fuse the decisions of government bureaucrats and right-wing politicians with the soldiers on the ground. Now if I could get them to convince folks that criticizing my irresponsible acts are tantamount to killing kittens and puppies, I could get away with murder.

[Gary Farber]

Yes, we fought the Vietnam more or less solely for that rationale, after all.

I beg to differ. Logevall's Choosing War is perhaps the best recent presentation of alternate explanations (and one which I personally find more convincing).

I wrote "rationale," not "reason."

I don't know that I have any disagreement with Logevall, having only read summaries, but I don't know that I disagree with this by Jeffrey Kimball, either:

[...] Logevall brilliantly details and documents Johnson's decisions, but were these part of a long-term pattern, and if so, what was that pattern and what were its causes? Each president and each top adviser was a unique individual, but they all walked steadily into the quagmire. Why? The prime policy reason, it seems, was to avoid defeat and thereby maintain credibility. John McNaughton put it succinctly in 1965: the need was to avoid "a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a ['counter-subversion'] guarantor)."

[...]

Perhaps mine is simply a quarrel about how one defines "structure," because Logevall's book, it seems to me, provides abundant evidence for what I would call a "structural" argument. It goes something like the following. President Johnson was the prime but not the only agent of dramatic escalation in 1964. His instrumental role was facilitated by what Logevall describes as a "permissive" historical and institutional environment -- an environment in which opponents of the war, for example those in Congress and the press, ultimately deferred to him. But Johnson was also an agent of change because his personality and historically-rooted ideological mind-set was such that he could not accept defeat in Vietnam. He could not because he, like other presidents before and after him, linked his institutional persona with the nation's interests -- a conceit, no doubt, associated with most heads of state. Thus, Johnson believed that his personal defeat would be the nation's defeat; his loss of credibility would be the nation's loss. Moreover, he had also inherited foreign policy commitments involving American prestige, treasure, lives, and rhetoric from previous administrations, which were seen by him and significant others to be at risk in Vietnam and which could not easily be gambled in choosing disengagement. He thought of himself as being trapped in a catch-22: if he withdrew, he would be damned and he and his programs would suffer politically, but if he escalated he would be damned and he and his programs would suffer politically. On balance, his foreign-policy concerns about credibility and his political concerns about criticism from the right and even from cold-war liberals and centrists disinclined him to disengage from Vietnam but impelled him to try harder to win. He would chance a turnaround in Vietnam. His most trusted can-do advisers from corporate America, the military, the imperial bureaucracy, and elite universities told him that the war and the citizenry could be manipulated, managed, or ignored; he, the tall, macho Texan and former majority leader of the Senate, concurred. Stewards of the most powerful nation in the world, he and his top aides could not really imagine defeat should they strive to avoid it; such hubris is not uncommon among empire builders or leaders of world systems.

However one phrases such a structural explanation, Logevall provides most of the evidence. Unfortunately, he gives short shrift to analyses of Johnson's ideological worldview or of the indirect but nonetheless essential links between the powerful notion of credibility and the economic and national-security goals and assumptions of those in leadership positions. (One mid-level aide once told me that intervention in a particular third-world country was necessary in order to preserve "free enterprise," protect "national security," and maintain U.S. "credibility" with its friends and dependents.)

And so on.

[Ugh]

As someone else pointed out, the entirety of US strategic hegemony on a global level is predicated on such commitments. Regionally, the South Koreans might be tempted to get nukes, or both South Korea and Japan might in time be tempted to cozy up to China, something US strategic planners have nightmares over.

Globally, deterrence rests on credibility.

Cozy up to china and do, what? And WTF are we deterring these days? The only thing I can see that we are possibly deterring is North Korea invading South Korea. Is China really going to invade Taiwan in the absence of US deterrence?

And, quite frankly, at the rate we're going "US strategic hegemony on a global level" is going the way of the dodo in my lifetime, if not by 2025.

[someotherdude]

I say this with very many Marines, Navy, and a West Point graduate in my family, alone. Let alone the folks in the community.

[Turbulence]

Slarti,

Yes, it was sarcasm.

[cleek]

I think you're joking (sorry, but I'm not sure anymore).

no, not really.

the goals of Stalin and Kim Ill-Sung don't really seem relevant as reasons why we need troops in SK today.

[Ugh]

Are they really fncking beating the Iran war drums again?

I wonder if they have concluded that there's no way McCain can win the election, so they'll bomb Iran to cause a regional conflageration that will plunge the world economy into stagflation, thus ensuring they re-take the White House in 2012.

Of course, every time I've fretted that they're going to bomb Iran I've been wrong.

[OCSteve]

Turb: Indeed. In that regard, the military is very unlike fire and police departments. I can't tell you how many times fire fighters have told me that they won't rescue people from homes that have election signs for the wrong party on the lawn.

Come on Turb. You and I have got down into the dirt a few times. No one diss’s the FD or PD in a discussion like this. For many of us, those are the two occupations most often held up to that level.

OK – on preview (it is your friend) I see Slarti already asked and you said yes – sarcasm. Cool. I do like you and I don’t want to have to go all Upstate NY on your *ss… Listen close and you can hear that banjo…

[Phil]

I'm surprised this went less remarked on, but:

But in other places they're still necessary. . . . Ask Japanese and most of them would rather have the U.S. provide deterrent defense for them than bear the cost themselves.

Uh, the fact that the Japanese would prefer that we do something they don't want to do themselves hardly makes our continued deployment "necessary." And until and unless the Japanese get the right to vote in our elections, I'm manifestly uninterested in how they want us to spend our money and military resources.

As to the rest, Bruce Baugh sums it up pretty well, and cleek says a lot of what I'm thinking throughout the thread.

Oops, forgot this:

If we'd done what you suggest in, say, 1999, we'd have really been up a creek on Sept. 12th, 2001, having to mobilize an entire armed forces from scratch with which to attack Afghanistan.

What was the size of the standing armed forces on Dec. 6, 1941? What was it on Dec. 8? How many enlistees did we get right after Sept. 11?

And although this is surely going to make me a pariah among some, perhaps having to take the time to decide whether "attacking Afghanistan" was itself the correct response to 9/11 -- especially given how swimmingly that has gone, Iraq or no Iraq -- might actually have been a good thing.

[Gary Farber]

"What was the size of the standing armed forces on Dec. 6, 1941? What was it on Dec. 8?"

But, Phil, Operation Torch, the first major U.S. operation of the war, didn't happen -- because we weren't capable of making it happen -- until November 1942, and wasn't a disaster because landings were largely unopposed, against the French.

When we faced real resistance, German resistance, at Sidi Bou Zid, it was a disaster: "By this point, the U.S. forces had lost 2,546 men, 103 tanks, 280 vehicles, 18 field guns, 3 antitank guns, and an entire antiaircraft battery."

It was a crushing defeat for the U.S., because the Army was too green. After a year.

[Turbulence]

The discussion above about ramp up times to operational effectiveness in WW2 seems to miss one vital point: it doesn't matter how big our military is if both our civilian and military leadership are too stupid to appreciate the military's limitations. Small size is, after all, nothing but another limitation. If our army was twice as big as it was in 2003, does anyone think Iraq would have gone differently for the first few years? I don't. We still wouldn't have had enough infantry, military police, and people who gave a damn about counterinsurgency. We would have just saturated the country with more teams focused on eliminating the enemy at all costs, blowing stuff up and (at best) antagonizing the civilian population. When your problem is an insurgency, making your high intensity warfare army bigger just speeds up the rate at which you fail.

The problem here is that the civilian leadership can't come to grips with the fact that our military is quite limited and that our military leadership can't shut down their can-do-anything happy talk internal monologue long enough to sensibly advise the civilian leadership. That problem will continue to exist whether our military consists of 10,000 or 10,000,000 soldiers.

[cleek]

The discussion above about ramp up times to operational effectiveness in WW2 seems to miss one vital point: it doesn't matter how big our military is if both our civilian and military leadership are too stupid to appreciate the military's limitations

and it misses another: nuclear weapons and near total air superiority.

the need to quickly mobilize huge numbers of troops is greatly reduced by the fact that we and our closest allies are perfectly capable of obliterating any country that would try anything like a full-on invasion. nobody is going to invade the US or any of its allies.

in this day and age, a large standing army is an offensive weapon. nukes handle the defense completely.

we don't need hundreds of thousands of soldiers and trillions of dollars in weapons unless we plan on using them. we could get by with a much smaller army - and everyone on earth would probably be better for it.

[Gary Farber]

the need to quickly mobilize huge numbers of troops is greatly reduced by the fact that we and our closest allies are perfectly capable of obliterating any country that would try anything like a full-on invasion. nobody is going to invade the US or any of its allies.

in this day and age, a large standing army is an offensive weapon. nukes handle the defense completely.

If we rewrite U.S. military doctrine, and realistically threaten to drop nukes in a first strike -- it's always been U.S. policy to not renounce the right to do this, to be sure -- sure.

But, you know, there are reasons that we've never actually nuked any invaders or anyone else, be it after South Korea, Tibet, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Afghanistan, or any other act.

Do you really think relying on nukes or nothing is a wise policy?

[byrningman]

we don't need hundreds of thousands of soldiers and trillions of dollars in weapons unless we plan on using them. we could get by with a much smaller army

Nevertheless, current US strategic doctrine is to maintain a level of military expenditure so immensely beyond that of any single possible rival of coalition of rivals that they will be discouraged from even trying to compete. In effect then, you spend those trillions of dollars on weapons so that you don't have to use them.

That's the theory anyway. Britain's Dreadnought program pre-WW1 is probably the most oft-cited precedent, but hopefully things don't turn out that way.

[byrningman]

Do you really think relying on nukes or nothing is a wise policy?

It's funny actually, history seems to be repeating itself. In the 1950s, relying on nukes was basically exactly what Ike wanted to do. He thought it was nice and cheap. JFK instigated the next major inflation of peacetime military spending under the mantra of 'flexible response,' i.e. having the conventional forces to allow for a greater array of options between capitulation and armageddon. Carter started the next boost, and the current administration has done it yet again. The basic cause of the rate of expenditure now seems to be that no hard choices are being made; the political climate is amenable to spending enough money to try to do everything.

[dmbeaster]

russell:

I did not mean to imply that the concept of the large citizen army never existed prior to the French levee en masse. It was rarity in military history, but it clearly did exist on prior occasions. From the point of view of our founding fathers and the fear at the time of standing armies, the recent history with which they were familiar did not involve armies based on the general citizenry. Standing armies in that era tended to be quasi-mercenary that served as the tools of despots, who as a rule did not trust arming the general citizenry.

Even the English had a free-booting tradition for armed service.

[Bruce Baugh]

Side note: the best libertarian commenters (folks like Jim Henley and IOZ, who are real for true libertarians) have been remarking for a while now that a democracy that finds itself engaging in counter-insurgency is just about certainly fighting the wrong war. That makes sense to me, and the further the Iraq mess goes, the more it seems like a good criterion. If you have to suppress the native population, it's hard to see how you're going to get self-determination out of it, at a minimum, and even the best-prepared counter-insurgency activity involves doing some awful things to people whose primary crime is resisting occupation.

[cleek]

If we rewrite U.S. military doctrine, and realistically threaten to drop nukes in a first strike

huh ?

i intended to say that nukes make a good deterrent against anyone else trying a first-strike against us; not that nukes make for a good offense.

But, you know, there are reasons that we've never actually nuked any invaders

we haven't nuked any invaders (in the sense i thought i was clearly using) because there haven't been any. nobody has invaded the US since the early 1800's. and now that we have nukes, the odds of anyone doing so are pretty much nil. it was foolish to try invading the US before; now it's suicide.

...or anyone else,

and now i'll assume i'm misreading you. Hiroshima is the most humbling place i've ever been.

Do you really think relying on nukes or nothing is a wise policy?

as a deterrent? sure.

maybe this will help...

i'm envisioning a far less expansive and meddlesome military. a kind of military that might make a paleocon isolationist happy: purely defensive, not interested in policing the world, propping up one dictator over another, etc.. we don't need 500,000 ready-to-go troops for that.

---

Nevertheless, current US strategic doctrine is to maintain a level of military expenditure so immensely beyond that of any single possible rival of coalition of rivals that they will be discouraged from even trying to compete.

right. and i'm saying that doctrine is wasteful and dangerous.

[byrningman]

aye, I think I agree.

[OCSteve]

cleek: in this day and age, a large standing army is an offensive weapon. nukes handle the defense completely.

But if our only possible response to anything is a nuclear strike… what if on 9/12 our only options were (a) do nothing or (b) nuke Afghanistan?

I mean I’m not sure that I disagree with you, but nukes are no deterrent to some folks. I’d prefer to have some option between shrug it off and Armageddon.

[Jesurgislac]

OCSteve: But if our only possible response to anything is a nuclear strike… what if on 9/12 our only options were (a) do nothing or (b) nuke Afghanistan?

What if on 9/12 the only options the US had were (a) play with a rubber duckie (b) get drunk?

I’d prefer to have some option between shrug it off and Armageddon.

Well, it would probably have been more effective to go after the people actually responsible for the attack on the US on 9/11, rather than launching all out war on Afghanistan.

But the Bush administration has always been more for style than substance.

[Phil]

What Jes said. "No gigantic standing army" does not equal or imply " no army."

[OCSteve]

What if on 9/12 the only options the US had were (a) play with a rubber duckie (b) get drunk?

Obviously I’d go with (b). ;)

Anyway I think my point stands. Should we really have gone after AQ or the Taliban with nukes?

[Jesurgislac]

Obviously I’d go with (b). ;)

Brussel sprouts martini to you too.

Should we really have gone after AQ or the Taliban with nukes?

No more than we should go after Bush and Cheney with nukes or an army. Criminals are not defeated by military means.

[OCSteve]

Brussel sprouts martini to you too.

Ack! Blah! Spit spit…

Criminals are not defeated by military means.

I seem to recall that we indicted OBL and requested his extradition around ’98. Didn’t seem to work out all that well given what happened after that…

Look – I’m not up to invading any more countries – really, I’m not. But you either have a standing military or you do not. There isn’t some economy version that is just big enough to handle whatever may come up but not big enough to tempt the civilians in power to do stupid things.

I suppose we could have put a few battalions of NG troops on chartered airline flights, politely requested permission to land in Kabul, then went to the Hertz counter and rented as many jeeps and SUVs as they had on hand…

[Jesurgislac]

I seem to recall that we indicted OBL and requested his extradition around ’98.

I seem to recall that the US attacked Afghanistan with 75 cruise missiles on 20th August 1998, thus making it highly improbable that the government of Afghanistan would consider equably any request for extradition from the US.

Of course, had the US been willing to present evidence of Osama bin Laden's involvement in September 11 to the government of Afghanistan - a normal first step in extradition - we might even now be watching reruns of The Trial of Osama bin Laden on US Five.

But you either have a standing military or you do not. There isn’t some economy version that is just big enough to handle whatever may come up but not big enough to tempt the civilians in power to do stupid things.

Granted. The problem is when you have a broken electoral system that ensures that civilians can get into power and do stupid things, unchecked, with your military. A small standing army run by a democratic government is - I say this in the strangled tones of a pacifist forced to admit an unpleasant fact - probably an unavoidable necessity, and the advantage of democracy is supposed to be that if you do anything too stupid, you get voted out next time. Bush doesn't have that check: and nor will McCain.

I suppose we could have put a few battalions of NG troops on chartered airline flights, politely requested permission to land in Kabul, then went to the Hertz counter and rented as many jeeps and SUVs as they had on hand…

Well, I and others did wonder why the US wasn't either sending an undercover team for the purpose of kidnapping Osama bin Laden and taking him somewhere where he could be formally arrested and charged: or - more practically - why the US was not dealing with the Taliban to get them to hand over Osama bin Laden.

As we got to know the Bush administration better, we realized that it was because bombing the bejasus out of Afghanistan was the most popular thing to do, and gave a nice booster to moving the US into war with Iraq. As for actually arresting Osama bin Laden, well... his family wouldn't like it, and the bin Ladens and Bushes are friends.

[Ugh]

OT - I can haz impeechmint now?

[cleek]

I can haz impeechmint now?

ooh George, your deniability is so... plausible.

[Xeynon]

It's funny actually, history seems to be repeating itself. In the 1950s, relying on nukes was basically exactly what Ike wanted to do. He thought it was nice and cheap.

Right. And as I recall, when he promised to use them at the first sign of Soviet aggression, the Soviets promptly called his bluff by crushing the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Nuclear strikes entail such horrific moral, geopolitical, and environmental costs that they're pretty much unthinkable even when forceful retaliation against a bad actor is necessary. Hence there's a very good reason to have other deterrents in our arsenal. Are you really prepared to argue that, say, nuking Baghdad would have been a better response to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait than the Gulf War was? Or that we should have nuked Belgrade to end the Yugoslav civil war or the Kosovo conflict?

If you have to suppress the native population, it's hard to see how you're going to get self-determination out of it, at a minimum, and even the best-prepared counter-insurgency activity involves doing some awful things to people whose primary crime is resisting occupation.

I agree with you Bruce. The thing is, we're now fighting this war now whether we should be/want to be or not. The salient question is not whether it's the right war, but how we get out of it without making a bad situation worse.

it was foolish to try invading the US before; now it's suicide.

I think byrningman was pretty clearly talking about people invading U.S. allies, not just the U.S. itself.

i'm envisioning a far less expansive and meddlesome military. a kind of military that might make a paleocon isolationist happy: purely defensive, not interested in policing the world, propping up one dictator over another, etc.. we don't need 500,000 ready-to-go troops for that.

If you're not interested in the U.S. policing the world, somebody else would be all too happy to do it for us (China, looking in your direction). As many beefs as I have with American foreign policy, if there's going to be a global hegemon one way or the other, I'd vastly prefer that it be us. Who would you rather have taking the global leadership role,
a liberal democracy with longstanding if imperfect commitments to freedom and human rights, or a hyper-nationalistic, oppressive one party dictatorship?

What Jes said. "No gigantic standing army" does not equal or imply " no army."

I wouldn't call an all-volunteer standing army of 500,000 drawn from a total population of more than 300 million "gigantic". Note that the size of our armed forces has been significantly reduced since the end of the Cold War, as well.

[Jesurgislac]

OT - Not so long as CBS is still happy with the euphemising of "Harsh Interrogations" and puts torture in scare quotes.

[Jesurgislac]

Xeynon: Who would you rather have taking the global leadership role, a liberal democracy with longstanding if imperfect commitments to freedom and human rights, or a hyper-nationalistic, oppressive one party dictatorship?

When you put it that way, Xeynon, definitely the former. The United Kingdom will therefore step forward to resume our global hegemon role, while the US, a hyper-nationalistic, oppressive one party dictatorship, can bloody well step down.

More seriously, "policing the world" is what the UN is supposed to be for: the US is, at the moment, the key obstacle to this, as under no circumstances is the UN allowed to police the US or American allies.

[Xeynon]

Well, I and others did wonder why the US wasn't either sending an undercover team for the purpose of kidnapping Osama bin Laden and taking him somewhere where he could be formally arrested and charged: or - more practically - why the US was not dealing with the Taliban to get them to hand over Osama bin Laden.

1.)How about the fact that Afghanistan is a very big, very rugged place and we didn't have any idea where in it he was hiding? It's not like he sent his video messages with neatly stamped return address in Kabul or anything.

2.)Uh, the U.S. did try to negotiate with the Taliban. The invasion didn't happen until a month after 9/11. As I recall, during the interim Bush tried to negotiate with the Taliban, up to an including "give up bin Laden and in exchange we won't invade you". Mullah Omar refused. The fact that he did so, knowing that it would result in a military invasion that was sure to topple his government and quite possibly result in his own death, demonstrates pretty conclusively that the Taliban would not have ever willingly surrendered OBL.

[Ugh]

OT - Not so long as CBS is still happy with the euphemising of "Harsh Interrogations" and puts torture in scare quotes.

I should have linked the ABC version which at least uses torture in the headling (but still with scare quotes).

[Jesurgislac]

How about the fact that Afghanistan is a very big, very rugged place and we didn't have any idea where in it he was hiding?

My point was that if you couldn't locate Osama bin Laden with a small team, you really couldn't do it with a fullscale invasion.

)Uh, the U.S. did try to negotiate with the Taliban.

Uh, no. The Taliban kept repeating that they wanted to see the evidence: the US kept repeating that Osama bin Laden should be handed over or they'd attack. This is not negotiation. Negotiation is when both sides come to the table prepared to discuss, concede, and agree. The US was threatening aggressive war, not negotiating.

[Slartibartfast]

You know that things are getting wierd when it's me that's advising y'all to step...away...from the nukes.

I don't think nuclear weapons play into any of our global conflicts currently in progress, or even any of them that are brewing. If North Korea elects to attack South Korea in force, and nuclear weapons are not employed, we will not use them.

IMO, of course. But we haven't used nuclear weapons in over six decades, and I don't think we're in any hurry to break that streak.

[Slartibartfast]

My point was that if you couldn't locate Osama bin Laden with a small team, you really couldn't do it with a fullscale invasion.

Careful, there; someone's talking points are getting trampled.

[Jesurgislac]

Slarti, I'd think it was obvious: if you really, really want to capture Osama bin Laden, the way to do it was to say quietly, under the table, to the Taliban: "Look, we want to help you rebuild your country, and we want to put this man on trial. Here's our evidence for believing him to be the person ultimately responsible for a terrorist attack that killed thousands. We guarantee that once he's in our hands we will hand him over to an appropriate neutral authority to be held in custody till he's tried. Help us get him, and in return, what help do you want for reconstructing Afghanistan?"

Sure it would be a deal with the devil: but it's not as if the US hasn't offered concessions and help and recognition to other repressive governments, and on the plus side, thousands of Afghans killed in the US attack wouldn't have died, the US might actually have done something to help Afghans going hungry, and where violence couldn't change the Taliban's mind on human rights issues, moral suasion by means of aid might have had a better long-term effect - certainly, it couldn't have had a worse one.

That people in the US were spontaneously getting bellicose and looking around for some crummy little country to throw up against the wall and show who's boss, was fairly obvious - I was hearing pro-war comments from friends online who were no more pro-Bush than my coffee mug. But this could have been directed into more productive channels.

Well, maybe.

[cleek]

i'm just gonna go ahead and quote myself, from way up in the thread, where i first mentioned nuclear weapons:

The discussion above about ramp up times to operational effectiveness in WW2 seems to miss one vital point: it doesn't matter how big our military is if both our civilian and military leadership are too stupid to appreciate the military's limitations and it misses another: nuclear weapons and near total air superiority.

and i added that little bit of bold so at maybe clear up a little bit of the confusion that seems to have overtaken y'all.

m'k ?

[Xeynon]

When you put it that way, Xeynon, definitely the former. The United Kingdom will therefore step forward to resume our global hegemon role,

Right, because you guys did such a bang up job of it. It's pretty generally agreed that many of the most serious problems that exist in places like Africa and the Middle East today are legacies of your colonial efforts and your misguided redrawing of national borders, which did things like lump Shi'ites, Sunnis, Turkmen, and Kurds together in a made-up place called Iraq. And your human rights record was even better. It was Britain to which Gandhi was referring when he quipped that he thought western civilization would be a good idea, if I recall. I know you western European left-wing intellectuals just love you your moral vanity, but there's really zero evidence from history to support it.

while the US, a hyper-nationalistic, oppressive one party dictatorship, can bloody well step down.

I know you're just being your normal button-pushing self here.. but seriously, as bad as the U.S. is at times (and I will be first to admit that we're no angels), if you don't think it's better than China on the human rights front, nationalism, or militarism fronts, I humbly suggest you visit Tibet. Or the Uyghur homeland in Xinjiang. Or any number of Chinese jails in which political prisoners are routinely beaten and capital 'T' tortured. Or go to Beijing and try calling Hu Jintao a fascist pig on the streets and see how long it takes you to get arrested/deported. Or point out which region of the U.S. only remains so because its under military occupation. Etc., etc., etc.

More seriously, "policing the world" is what the UN is supposed to be for: the US is, at the moment, the key obstacle to this, as under no circumstances is the UN allowed to police the US or American allies.

This is just wishful thinking, for several reasons.

1.)since the interests of its member states diverge, the U.N. will rarely be able to even agree on when police action is necessary, much less summon the political will to bring it about or decide what form it should take (see Darfur, Kosovo, the Korean War, and too many other examples to enumerate).

2.)The U.N. has no power to enforce its decrees without military cooperation of its member states. When member states are not willing to provide troops, it can clear its throat and condemn things VERY FORCEFULLY, and do little else. See Rwanda, the early stages of the Balkan civil war, etc. When the U.N. police actions have been successful, it's been entirely because the most powerful member state has acted to make it so.

3.)The hegemon (whoever it is) will always have the option of completely ignoring the U.N. or similar international bodies if it so desires. See, for example, Nazi Germany telling the League of Nations to buzz off. Or if you wanna go really old school, Athens ignoring the principles of the Delian League, because it could. Ultimately, international law is only as legitimate as the most powerful country considers it to be.

I'm not anti-U.N. - I think it's a necessary organ for building cooperation on vital issues and can provide a useful sheen of legitimacy to police actions when they're necessary. But to think that it's capable of independently policing the globe is to fundamentally misunderstand its limitations.

All that said, if the UN had wanted to police the U.S. and its allies, France or Russia or somesuch could have put forth a resolution STRONGLY CONDEMNING the joint U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq. Strangely, nobody did.

[cleek]

(and now i'm going to complain about web sites which rewrite your HTML in mysterious ways)

the indented and non-italic part of my last post was me. the italic part was Turbulence. there was supposed to be a line between those two bits.

and then the bottom should read:

and i added that little bit of bold so as to maybe clear up a little bit of the confusion that seems to have overtaken y'all.

don't know why i have so much trouble with comments here. is it the tiny little comments box ?

[Slartibartfast]

if you really, really want to capture Osama bin Laden, the way to do it was to say quietly, under the table, to the Taliban

Interesting. How do you know that this was not done? If the request was under the table, you'd never have seen it.

I don't have any particular opinion one way or another as regards the way we made our wishes known to the then-government of Afghanistan, but I don't see the Taliban as playing any role other than obstructionary.

[Jesurgislac]

Slarti: Interesting. How do you know that this was not done?

I don't. It just seems more intelligent and potentially more effective than anything we've ever seen the Bush administration do.

And it presumes that the Bush administration wanted to arrest and try Osama bin Laden, when having him loose was a wonderful excuse to attack Iraq in 2002 or 2003.

Xeynon: Right, because you guys did such a bang up job of it.

Ooh, pot calls kettle black! It was a joke. I have no imperialist ambitions for my country.

[Xeynon]

if you really, really want to capture Osama bin Laden, the way to do it was to say quietly, under the table, to the Taliban: "Look, we want to help you rebuild your country, and we want to put this man on trial. Here's our evidence for believing him to be the person ultimately responsible for a terrorist attack that killed thousands. We guarantee that once he's in our hands we will hand him over to an appropriate neutral authority to be held in custody till he's tried. Help us get him, and in return, what help do you want for reconstructing Afghanistan?"

Just a few questions you can perhaps answer.

1.)Why do you think the Taliban would have been persuaded to give up OBL by any evidence of his complicity in the 9/11 attacks, given that they'd long considered him a blood ally and not only http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/217947.stm>refused to hand him over but provided him aid and succor even after he'd personally admitted responsibility for previous attacks against U.S. civilians (such as the 1998 embassy bombings), and that they had a brief but accomplished history of thumbing their nose at international opinion? You don't seem to get that fundamentally, you can't reason with people who aren't rational, and the Taliban aren't rational people.

2.)what makes you think the Taliban had any interest in rebuilding Afghanistan? Seems to me they were far more interested in keeping it mired in the Dark Ages than rebuilding it. These are people who think that girls shouldn't go to school and women should be stoned if they refuse to wear a burqa. I highly doubt they'd have been enticed by infidel aid in rebuilding their country along modern lines.

If we'd done a better job with the occupation of Afghanistan and not gotten sidetracked by Iraq, we'd have done the Afghans an almost unmitigated favor by forcefully removing their government.

3.)If a foreign country provided shelter and direct assistance to a man who carried out an attack in London which killed thousands of your fellow Britons, would you think the British government was entitled to respond with force? If not, what would constitute sufficient grounds for military action in self-defense by your reasoning?

[Xeynon]

Ooh, pot calls kettle black! It was a joke. I have no imperialist ambitions for my country.

Yeah, I know. I don't have any for mine, either. But like I said, if someone is gonna be the global hegemon (and somebody is, whether you like that reality or not), better us than, say, China.

[Jesurgislac]

But like I said, if someone is gonna be the global hegemon (and somebody is, whether you like that reality or not), better us than, say, China.

Better your hyper-nationalistic, oppressive one party dictatorship than theirs? Well, you would think that, but frankly, I'd rather neither one. The UN was intended to be the global police and peace organization: the US remains the primary stumbling block in the road of it not working, and would be the best means of ensuring that it did work.

Why do you think the Taliban would have been persuaded to give up OBL by any evidence of his complicity in the 9/11 attacks

Have you forgotten? The Taliban needed overseas help desperately, and knew it. And - though you probably have forgotten this - on 12th September 2001, there was a global upwelling of good feeling towards the US over the whole world. The Bush administration chose to kick it into the gutter and smash it to bits, but it existed. Yes, I do think that a skilled and direct diplomatic approach, genuinely intending to do right by Afghanistan, could have worked - if the US had been willing to try it rather than threaten force. The US made no legitimate attempt to extradite Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan.

what makes you think the Taliban had any interest in rebuilding Afghanistan?

Because (evidently, unlike you!) I was following Afghanistan and the rise of the Taliban in the news from well before 2000 - probably from when I first read Full Tilt, which was sometime in the early 1990s. Yes, the Taliban were interested in rebuilding Afghanistan. They just couldn't do it. Yes, they were a monstrous government: but the US has dealt with monstrous governments in the past, and has not denied aid to people living under monstrous governments.

If we'd done a better job with the occupation of Afghanistan and not gotten sidetracked by Iraq, we'd have done the Afghans an almost unmitigated favor by forcefully removing their government.

I almost agree with you, though the thousands of Afghans killed by the US attack on Afghanistan cry out against it. (Marc Herrold, using a method later adopted by the Iraqi Body Count project, estimated Afghan deaths at 3000+: from what we know of the IBC success at counting, that certainly means actual numbers were far higher.) War is seldom the best means of changing governments.

Nor is there any evidence that the US ever meant to do right by Afghanistan. The Iraq war had been planned since before Bush took power, remember? Documented at PNAC. September 11 was an excuse, not a reason.

If a foreign country provided shelter and direct assistance to a man who carried out an attack in London which killed thousands of your fellow Britons, would you think the British government was entitled to respond with force?

No, I'm a pacifist. Do you think the British government was entitled to "respond with force" because Americans supported the IRA during the Troubles, then? Should we have bombed Chicago and Boston, key sources of fundraising for terrorism?

[russell]

But like I said, if someone is gonna be the global hegemon (and somebody is, whether you like that reality or not)

This is a common argument, but I find that I'm not convinced.

Why is someone inevitably going to be the global hegemon? I think the normal state historically, by far, is that there is not one.

[byrningman]

This is really ahistorical; one need only read one of the multiple excellent accounts of the War on Terror (broadly defined) to know that the Taliban deliberately gave refuge to OBL and Al Qaeda for years. They sacrificed their own regime rather than give them up for pete's sake.

We're segueing into cartoonish anti-american stuff here.

The invasion of Afghanistan was quite proper--any elected government that sits by while its citizens are slaughtered by the thousands will not remain elected for very long. The execution was clearly botched, since it seems like not putting a good number of American troops into Tora Bora was an epic blunder.

I also don't believe the American government owes the Afghan people anything, cold-blooded though that may seem. Unlike Iraq, where they do have an immense responsibility, the invasion of Afghanistan was purely defensive. IMHO they would have been well within their rights to have left long ago, had the forces they went there to knock out truly been wiped out. If anything, they would be doing Afghanis a favour by leaving.

[Sebastian]

"Why is someone inevitably going to be the global hegemon? I think the normal state historically, by far, is that there is not one."

To be fair, the norm is either that there is a large hegemon (Rome wasn't 'global' but it was most of the world as could be travelled to by Romans, same with China) or there are massive and often generation spanning wars among smaller more evenly matched states. So there are non-hegemon options, though I'm unaware of any peaceful non-hegemon options.

[Donald Johnson]

"I also don't believe the American government owes the Afghan people anything, cold-blooded though that may seem."

It seems cold-blooded because it is cold-blooded. We used Afghanistan to bleed the Soviet Union. We and the Russians owe them quite a lot.

[Jesurgislac]

byrning: The invasion of Afghanistan was quite proper--any elected government that sits by while its citizens are slaughtered by the thousands will not remain elected for very long.

That would be a terrific argument, if Afghanistan had any connection to September 11. Which no one had been able to show it did.

Unlike Iraq, where they do have an immense responsibility, the invasion of Afghanistan was purely defensive.

That would be a terrific argument, if there was any evidence that the government of Afghanistan knew about the attack on the US in advance - and had the power to prevent it.

I also don't believe the American government owes the Afghan people anything, cold-blooded though that may seem.

Yeah, because it's not as if CIA support of the Taliban and other Islamic fanatics in 1978 because they were the only local group that coherently opposed the Saur coup* had anything to do with the Soviet invasion in 1979, nor that the US support of the mojaheddin against the Soviets had anything to do with the long war that destroyed Afghanistan's infrastructure in the 1980s, nor that the previous Bush administration's decision to abandon Afghanistan to rot had anything to do with the power vacuum and the well-armed and well-trained Islamists who became the Taliban government in 1995. No, the US doesn't owe the Afghan people a thing, byr - how could anyone think such a thing? Sheesh.

*That is, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan coup - a local Communist party that, supported by the Afghan army, overthrew the regime of Mohammad Daoud Khan, who himself had taken control of the government in a 1973 coup...

[russell]

So there are non-hegemon options, though I'm unaware of any peaceful non-hegemon options.

That's a good observation. Although, I think the means by which would-be hegemons will compete may be different now, if only because a full-out military conflict would likely destroy much of the planet.

I'll make a different point.

The argument that the US is the most benign available hegemon is often used to justify global projection of US military power.

I'm not sure our playing that role, especially by military means, is universally popular.

There are also a lot of countries -- China, India, Iran, and others -- who are, for historical and other reasons, natural regional hegemons. I don't think there's any realistic way for us to prevent them from emerging as economic, political, or even military rivals.

I'm also not at all sure that 'last global hegemon standing' is a role we can afford to play. Not without giving up lots of other things that we won't really want to give up.

So I think we need to find another way to watch out for our interests around the world.

[russell]

That would be a terrific argument, if there was any evidence that the government of Afghanistan knew about the attack on the US in advance - and had the power to prevent it.

By September 11, Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda had openly declared war on the US, had bombed US embassies in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi, and had bombed the USS Cole.

During all of this time, Bin Laden received support and shelter from the Taliban in Afghanistan. A Taliban court found Bin Laden to be 'without sin' wrt the embassy bombings. They weren't gonna give him up to us.

The US waited four weeks after the 9/11 attacks before attacking Afghanistan.

I don't really think lots of folks were chomping at the bit, pre 9/11, to invade Afghanistan. Iran, yes. Iraq, yes. Afghanistan, my guess is no.

I'm not a fan, at all, of Bush or of his foreign policy, but my best guess is that if an alternative to invasion was available, we probably would have taken it.

It would be hard for me to think of a case in the last 60 years of US history when a military response would have been more clearly justified.

[Jesurgislac]

I don't really think lots of folks were chomping at the bit, pre 9/11, to invade Afghanistan. Iran, yes. Iraq, yes. Afghanistan, my guess is no.

I doubt if most Americans had even given Afghanistan a thought.

But post 9/11, a lot of Americans wanted to see their government doing something - and invading another country and killing several thousand people seemed just right.

I'm not a fan, at all, of Bush or of his foreign policy, but my best guess is that if an alternative to invasion was available, we probably would have taken it.

Well, in the sense that the people of the US wanted to see some country suffer for what had happened to America, yes, I suspect that if 9/11 had happened on Gore's watch, Gore would have ended up invading Afghanistan; while Bush and the Bush administration have special ties to Saudi Arabia and the bin Laden clan, probably no US government could have taken the risk of attacking Saudi Arabia. While tackling al-Qaeda using non-military means would undoubtedly have been more effective, it also couldn't have produced showy results 4 weeks after September 11. Getting the Taliban to point out Osama bin Laden and let a US military team go in and take him away might have worked - but it would have required the US to make an expensive committment to Afghanistan, and left the Bush administration with no excuse to attack Iraq.

Attacking Afghanistan was popular with bloodthirsty Americans who wanted to see ragheads die, and liberal Americans could tell themselves they were doing the Afghans a favor.

All in all, yeah: it was probably inevitable. But talking it up as "defensive" is fantasy. The US has not become safer from al-Qaeda because Afghanistan is rotting in the hands of the warlords and the US has a gulag at Bagram Airbase.

[Nombrilisme Vide]

@byrning
This is really ahistorical; one need only read one of the multiple excellent accounts of the War on Terror (broadly defined) to know that the Taliban deliberately gave refuge to OBL and Al Qaeda for years. They sacrificed their own regime rather than give them up for pete's sake.

Right. Because if something was true at one point in the past, it will forever be true until the end of time. They sheltered him before, so their requests for evidence before talking extradition in the face of global condemnation and immanent invasion were dismissable out of hand.

The invasion of Afghanistan was quite proper--any elected government that sits by while its citizens are slaughtered by the thousands will not remain elected for very long.

Very, very debatable. Is military action the proper response to criminal action, even large-scale criminal action? Especially when the nation harboring a non-state actor is expressing willingness to negotiate extradition? Also, in re: your last line, something is not "proper" because it's popular... and don't even try to tell me that the US administration didn't help shape said popularity, nor that they couldn't have tried to shaped a different one.

I also don't believe the American government owes the Afghan people anything, cold-blooded though that may seem. Unlike Iraq, where they do have an immense responsibility, the invasion of Afghanistan was purely defensive.

Purely. Purely. We have a nation expressing a desire to negotiate the extradition of the non-state actor we claimed (from evidence we'd show no one) to be responsible for a massive criminal act on our soil, and we baldly refuse to negotiate or even show them the evidence. A sovereign nation should hand over foreign nationals dwelling w/in its borders immediately and w/o question upon demand by third-party nations?

And forgetting the "purely" portion... how was it "defensive" at all? Retalitory, certainly. Pre-emptive, a strong case can be made. Defensive? Um, no. Afghanistan was not attacking the US. We have never claimed that the Afgan government did anything of the sort, and if we did we'd be hard pressed indeed to present evidence. If we lump resident foreign actors into the Afgan government, Al-Queda was not attacking the US. They had launched one attack that took years of planning to execute. There was no immanent danger of another. It's very difficult to see how a war for regime change in a nation that was harboring a criminal, and refusing to extradite him w/o evidence, can be characterized as defensive. We did not like that government's policies, and we told them to change said policies (which, mind, did not include "attack the US") or we'd destroy them. Very defensive, indeed.

Well, actually, it's not hard to see. I know exactly where you're coming from claiming this. It's just that I can't rationally conclude this myself. I'd need to conflate Al-Queda and the Taliban, ignore our refusal to negotiate, throw rule of law out the window, and accept American exceptionalism. Alas, I'm disinclined to do any of these things, let alone all.

[Nombrilisme Vide]

@russel
They weren't gonna give him up to us.

We should have publicly called their bluff and presented our evidence. As it stands, we'll never know if they'd of extradited him, only that they wouldn't give him up to us when brashly demanded to w/o evidence. World opinion on 12/09/01 was not the same as world opinion on 10/09/01. Would it have made a difference? We can't know now, because we didn't bother to find out.

[Slartibartfast]

It just seems more intelligent and potentially more effective than anything we've ever seen the Bush administration do.

Granted.

And it presumes that the Bush administration wanted to arrest and try Osama bin Laden, when having him loose was a wonderful excuse to attack Iraq in 2002 or 2003.

I thought it wasn't really all that great of an excuse, and so did a lot of other people. For the ++Nth time, I didn't think that the administration had made a firm connection between bin Laden and Iraq; more that they'd made a GWOT connection. But that's a digression; this is really an argument of opinion than anything else, at this level.

[Sebastian]

"Getting the Taliban to point out Osama bin Laden and let a US military team go in and take him away might have worked - but it would have required the US to make an expensive committment to Afghanistan"

What does this scenario have to do with reality? The Taliban wasn't going to 'point out Osama bin Laden'. They repeatedly made it clear, after 9/11, that he was a valued guest in their country.
I understand that it would be nice if the Taliban had been willing to say "he's over there go get him". But they weren't. And so far as I've seen, no one has claimed that they were even secretly willing to give him up. So this looks like a science fiction fantasy about how Afghanistan, not anything much to do with the actual Afghanistan.

"Attacking Afghanistan was popular with bloodthirsty Americans who wanted to see ragheads die, and liberal Americans could tell themselves they were doing the Afghans a favor."

At least you are clear about how you feel about the situation. You might have something approaching half a point if you were talking about Iraq. But the fact that you are applying it to Afghanistan pretty much just shows where you are coming from emotionally rather than analytically.

[Sebastian]

FWIW, I think the Taliban was ideologically in a bind. Under their system they couldn't trust non-Muslim testimony so to be ideologically pure, they almost certainly could never give bin Laden up. Furthermore they had been schooled by bin Laden to believe that the US would never actually attack, so why would they give up their ideological commitment for nothing.

So given their wacky constraints, it was almost inevitable that they wouldn't give him up. But that doesn't change the fact that they wouldn't give him up. It merely explains it.

[russell]

Attacking Afghanistan was popular with bloodthirsty Americans who wanted to see ragheads die

Right after 9/11, my wife and I were talking to her folks. My father in law was a infantry soldier in the Phillipines during WWII, my mother in law spent that war building Corsair aircraft in Akron OH.

The first thing they said was, "We hope we don't go to war over this".

The desire for a military response was far from universal.

Would it have made a difference? We can't know now, because we didn't bother to find out.

After the embassy bombings in '98, Bin Laden was indicted in US criminal court. The basis of the indictment included courtroom testimony from Al Qaeda members and satellite phone records linking the African AQ cells to Bin Laden directly.

The Taliban refused the request, claiming that the evidence was insufficient.

You're right, we'll never know what might have happened if we had made whatever intelligence we had linking Bin Laden to 9/11 public.

Based on their response to the embassy bombings, however, I feel pretty comfortable not giving them the benefit of the doubt.

[russell]

Sorry, before "the Taliban refused the request" in my post above, please insert, "The US requested that Bin Laden be extradited".

[Turbulence]

What does this scenario have to do with reality? The Taliban wasn't going to 'point out Osama bin Laden'. They repeatedly made it clear, after 9/11, that he was a valued guest in their country.

I don't think we know a great deal about what they repeatedly made clear in private. Certainly, if they came to the conclusion that the US would not be satisfied with anything but war, making bold public statements about not giving in makes sense. Nevertheless, I do lean towards the notion that a competent administration could have gotten Bin Ladin without going to war.

I don't find the Taliban's behavior after the embassy bombings dispositive. 9/11 was a much bigger deal than the embassy bombings on the world stage and a rational government that concluded nothing would result from blowing off the US on the embassy bombing front could easily conclude that they could not do so after 9/11.

I also don't put much faith in arguments that the Taliban were ideologically bound to Bin Ladin. Even the staunchest ideologues can achieve remarkable, um, flexibility when a sufficiently large sum of cash appears. Consider the behavior of the Saudi Royal Family, those paragons of Islamic virtue: they've become quite flexible. The Taliban had been getting tens of millions of dollars in cash from the US for years due to anti-opium efforts so it is not like they were fundamentally averse to taking American cash or dealing with the US government.

Moreover, the notion of being a war time preznit is at the core of Bush's being. This is something that is vitally important to him; he can't really do all the boring preznitting stuff well, but being a war leader, that's what he lives for. And while the American public might have been satisfied with getting Osama sans war, doing so would have taken massive political finesse. In any event, there's no question that in terms of electoral and political gain, going to war was the best option hands down. The public wanted something done, and saber rattling followed by deployments counts as eight kinds of something.

This administration has shown that it is competent in one and only one domain: the relentless striving for electoral and political gain. I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume that in a moment of crisis, that lone competency dominated their planning.

[russell]

I do lean towards the notion that a competent administration could have gotten Bin Ladin without going to war.

Could be.

But, you know, just because Bush is a putz doesn't mean the Talibs weren't arrogant, apocalyptically violent, self-righteous, bloody minded thugs.

You can slice it any way you like, but the Taliban were not Bin Laden's unwitting dupes, nor were they the helpless, innocent victims of raging US aggression.

[Turbulence]

But, you know, just because Bush is a putz doesn't mean the Talibs weren't arrogant, apocalyptically violent, self-righteous, bloody minded thugs.

Absolutely. In my experience though, arrogant, violent self-righteous thugs respond to incentives and can be dealt with, especially if they're incredibly poor (both financially and militarily) and their negotiating partners are incredibly wealthy.

I could be mistaken here, but I sense (not in your comment russel) an undertone of "you can't reason with those crazy Taliban lunatics!"; that seems awfully familiar: after all, we couldn't reason with that crazy Saddam Hussein, and we certainly couldn't reason with Iran. Those people are so irrational and ideologically blinkered that you can't negotiate with them. Except that they were trying to negotiate and they were acting (mostly) rationally. In fact, the Iranian government even made overtures where they offered a whole lot -- overtures that were rebuffed.

I'm not saying that there are no crazy irrational governments on Earth, but I do think that we seem to assume that everyone we don't like is crazy and irrational and can't be negotiated and furthermore, that we've often been wrong about that. Given our long unbroken record of abject failure, and our own government's demonstrated irrationality, perhaps we can impose a ten year moratorium on this line of thinking? Maybe we could start by assuming that other governments are rational and are responding to incentives as they see them and then devote ourselves to negotiating in good faith to disprove that assumption? It sure would be nice to have a foreign policy that was not one giant exhibit demonstrating the Fundamental Attribution Error. Alternatively, we could ignore the mistakes of the past and carry on as we have been. I have a strange feeling though that the next country that pisses us off will be run by irrational madmen...

[Turbulence]

To be clear, this is what I would have done if I were running the country: I would have "encouraged" Saudi Arabia to ensure that high ranking Wahabbist clerics denounced the attacks as unislamic, hopefully giving some religious cover for the Taliban to work with us. I would have approached them directly and talked with some humility while stressing common bonds and talking about how times have changed.

You know, something like "Omar, we know you're not responsible for this, but if it had happened to you, you'd be pissed...we've worked together before, and that's worked out pretty good for both us, eh? we're both tight with King Faoud, so let's see if we can't work something out here...that embassy thing and the Cole, those were pinpricks, but this is a big fscking deal...I mean, for crying out loud, Le Monde is running a front page saying 'We're all Americans today'...this isn't going away and right now we're looking at support from around the world that makes the Gulf War look unilateral...even the Iranians, Syrians, and Libyans are falling over themselves to help out...and hey, look, we understand that you guys kind of got screwed with that whole Soviet invasion thing and we certainly played a role in that...we're sorry, but we'd like to take this opportunity to right some of the mistakes we've made in the past...we're thinking $20 billion cash every year for five or ten years to start with...we know that we're asking a lot of you and its going to be hard for someone in your position to say yes, but I can promise you, the clerics in SA are about to ease the religious path for you and we really do want to partner with you to help develop Afghanistan..."

Now, I don't think that sort humility is morally required here, but I do think it increases the odds that you can walk away with a deal. I think we would have been well within our rights to say "here's a book with some evidence, now turn him over or else" but that wouldn't have been very persuasive. This isn't hard: going up to someone and demanding they do what you say or else inclines normal people to dig in their heels and reject you, no matter how correct you are. Smart negotiators need to defuse that sort of reaction, and this is exactly the kind of intelligence that I don't think GW or Cheney or any of their staff possessed.

I have no idea if it would have worked, but I am pretty sure it had a better chance of working than what we did do. The point is that if you decide that your opponents respond to incentives and you move some of those incentives around, you can actually reach favorable settlements. Odds are, the Taliban had reasons for not doing what we told them and I think exploring those reasons could have been very fruitful if the administration hadn't been hell bent on reaping the political and personal gains of being a war time President.

[someotherdude]

The Bush administration had no intention to get Bin Ladden. The Bin Laddens and Saudi Elite were up to their necks with support for Al-Queda. Afghanistan was the base (now the base seems to be Pakistan); however the money came from Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi Paradox

Summary: Saudi Arabia is in the throes of a crisis, but its elite is bitterly divided on how to escape it. Crown Prince Abdullah leads a camp of liberal reformers seeking rapprochement with the West, while Prince Nayef, the interior minister, sides with an anti-American Wahhabi religious establishment that has much in common with al Qaeda. Abdullah cuts a higher profile abroad -- but at home Nayef casts a longer and darker shadow.

This article was written by Michael Scott Doran a star within Neocon circles, and it pretty much shows that Bin Laden is character within Saudi political wars. The Taliban were between a rock and a hard place, and it was easier for Bush to push a bunch a poor Afghani’s around than confront the Saudi political establishment. I mean, if the big bad US is not willing to deal with Bin Laden supporters in Saudi Arabia, what chance would the Taliban had? Support for Bin Ladden is stronger in Saudi Arabia (and apparently Pakistan) however, why would Bush and gang go after folks who would make him look like a bigger fool? Iraq and Afghanistan were low lying fruit, trying to get Bush to turn on his “friends” in Saudi Arabia would have taken a type of bravery he is just incapable of conjuring up. And its apparent, many Americans don't have the bravery to call Bush on it.

[Anarch]

Since you asked this...

Gary: Are you saying that if the the 51st Fighter Wing, and Osan air base, as well as the DMZ, Seoul, and much of the ROK army, get overrun, that the U.S. won't respond identically as it would if we had 2nd Division sitting there as well?

No.

[liberal japonicus]

When we discuss the Taliban and how unreasonable they are, we should always keep this image in mind.