Everything Is As It Was Then, Except . . .
. . . it isn’t even as it was then. Julian Sanchez reminds us of something important in the aftermath of Gaubatzfest this weekend:
But if it were true, would it, in fact, vindicate the case for war? I doubt it: I think it may seem that way because the administration has been proven so much more wrong and incompetent than even war critics anticipated that we’ve forgotten the shape of the pre-war debate. Back in 2002, recall, many (and perhaps most) mainstream war critics were willing to stipulate that Iraq either had or at least might have chemical biological weapons—somewhat misleadingly lumped in with nukes under the rubric of “WMD.” The argument, rather (concordant with the CIA’s own analysis, as I recall) was that Hussein was highly unlikely to either use these weapons directly against Americans or to transfer them to terrorists, except in the event of invasion, in which case they might be passed off in desperation or seized amid the chaos by non-state actors. So in the unlikely event that this nutjob is on the level, the only thing it validates is… what opponents of the war were saying in 2002. The only thing that could make this seem remotely like a vindication of the case for war is what Bush has so memorably dubbed “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It looks as though expectations, even among the president’s most ardent supporters, have fallen low indeed.
He’s right. The Sensible Consensus about Iraq’s possession of weapons of some destruction proved so spectacularly wrong, which was a deep lesson in the limits of the Sensible Consensus. The occasional crazed visions of “WMD after all!” like a vision of the Blessed Virgin coalescing - kind of - out of tunnel seepage is a deep lesson in the magical thinking of what’s left of Banana Republicanism. Those are interesting phenomena to be sure!
But the war was not wrong because it turned out Saddam had no so-called “WMD.” The war was wrong and the officials who assured us they “knew” where said weapons reposed spent all their time before - and during much of - the war talking nonsense about those weapons. That’s important to know about the war’s salesmen and cheerleaders. But Tariq Aziz could produce chemical weapons from behind my daughter’s ear like a magic quarter and it would still have always been wrong to go to war with Iraq in 2003.
Comment by Jackmormon —
April 23, 2007 @ 7:43 pm
I’ve got to admit that while I was fervently anti-this-war, and while I was extremely skeptical about the nuclear and biological weapons claims, I was flabbergasted by the apparent lack of chemical weapons.
Trackback by Asymmetrical Information —
April 23, 2007 @ 8:06 pm
Why ask why?…
Jim and Julian agree that even if we had found WMD in Iraq, it wouldn’t have justified the war, so why bother arguing that there were some? It seems to me that this is confusing what war opponents said–and I agree, they did say just that–with victor…
Comment by Thoreau —
April 23, 2007 @ 9:22 pm
I was also opposed to the war even while I agreed that Iraq probably had WMD. I figured that dictators care primarily about their lavish palaces and grip on power, and so while they may be crazy by many measures, they aren’t crazy in the suicidal sense. I figured that there was only one way Saddam would use WMD against the US or hand them off: If he was about to lose his grip on power.
So I considered it the height of insanity to bring about the one and only circumstance under which Saddam would use WMD against the US.
Thus I was surprised when no WMD were used against US forces during the invasion. And once the invasion was accomplished without WMD attacks, I immediately knew that Iraq did not have WMD capabilities.
A few months later, I knew that Iraq wasn’t even close to having WMD. If there had been any significant program, the evidence would have been paraded across the White House lawn and shown in a loop on Fox News. Instead, I heard a new story, about how the real goal was to bring democracy to Iraq.
And that’s when I knew that our country had been conned.
Comment by Matt Weiner —
April 23, 2007 @ 9:48 pm
I felt the same way as Jackmormon. And my feelings about chemical weapons were a lot stronger than Thoreau’s—not just that dictators wouldn’t use them, but that it didn’t matter worth a damn if they did. AFAICT chemical weapons are in almost every circumstances less dangerous than just setting fire to the place. Compare the Aum Shinrikyo subway attacks with the Korean subway fire. So if terrorists got their hands on chemical weapons, that just means they’re not spending their time planning effective attacks.
Comment by Eric Scharf —
April 24, 2007 @ 8:18 am
Whenever someone who ought to have known better plays the nuke card to explain why they were such a bed-wetter in 2002, I just tell ‘em what I said at the time: the Bushies’ refusal to spend a dime securing loose nukes in the former Soviet Union was all the evidence you needed to know that they were speaking in criminally bad faith. Everything since then has been a toss-up between callousness and incompetence, and most of our energy has been spent agonizing over at which point this distinction ceased to matter.
Comment by matthew hogan —
April 24, 2007 @ 8:40 am
What Matt Weiner said.
Comment by Barry —
April 24, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
And, of course, Megan McBS chimes in, with more of her patented ‘we were right to be wrong; you were wrong to be right’. Just like Pierre Courtade.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 24, 2007 @ 2:53 pm
Barry, I think that’s a pretty energetic misreading of her thesis. Her thesis is that whether Julian and I are right or not, our 2002 argument was obviously not persuasive to a majority of the country. The shock of discovering that, contrary to the claims of the Administration, there really were no weapons, did a lot to retrospectively turn former supporters against the war. Therefore, she says, the deadenders continue to hype weapon “finds” because they believe that weapon finds might turn the public back.
Understand that I completely disagree with Megan’s argument of a few months ago that the hawks were not importantly more wrong about how Iraq would go than the doves. Matt Barganier basically pre-rebutted that one. But here she’s making a different, narrower point. I’m absolutely certain she’s right about the social psychology of the hawks, and she may be right about the social psychology of the vox pop. I think Julian and I would admit, in weak moments, that most people don’t think like us.
Comment by Glaivester —
April 25, 2007 @ 9:57 pm
This latest WMD-bit is nothing more than the same old story Michael Ledeen was trying to sell us a few years back: he had friends who knew where the weapons were, but the government wouldn’t listen to them.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 25, 2007 @ 10:03 pm
Good point, G. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gaubatz was one of the friends too. We’ve seen how small and self-confirming the warhawk circle is.