PartIV: What do we do now?

So now we all turn to Mr. Bush and say, "Well, this looks like another fine mess you've gotten us into." What next? There are many options, but I'll boil them down to three basic approaches: 1. remain for a long time (10 years or more); 2. remain for about 5 years; and 3. pull out as soon as reasonably possible (1 or 2 years).

The proponents of option #1 argue that the US will need a base in the Middle East for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, they agree with my previous thesis that the nurturing of democracy in Iraq is a long-term process. However, I think that most Americans will reject this option on the grounds that it will be too expensive. Even if the current surge is quite successful, it seems likely that the net costs of remaining in Iraq for another ten years would easily top another trillion dollars and maybe another thousand American lives. I think that we can reject this proposal out of hand as too expensive.

This narrows our choice down to a simple choice between leaving sooner (1 to 2 years) and leaving later (perhaps 5 years). The primary argument in favor of the latter is that an early US departure would lead to a civil war and a humanitarian catastrophe. What this argument does not address is whether the US can ever depart without having its departure trigger said civil war. The Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds have shown no ability to compromise for the last few years -- why would the simple passage of time correct the problem? The Israelis and Palestinians have had 40 years to resolve their differences, and time has not healed their wounds. Why should the three sects of Iraqis be any better? There is no reason to believe that a US departure five years from now would be any less likely to trigger a civil war than a US departure 18 months from now.

So we are cursed with the unavoidable consequences of our invasion. Having toppled the dictator who maintained security and stability in Iraq by brutal methods, we are now caught in the position that, as soon as we depart, the Iraqis will begin tearing each other apart until a new ruthless dictator emerges. That dictator will probably be Shiite, and will probably owe much of his success to Iranian aid. There is little or nothing we can do to avoid this outcome. The only thing we control is its timing and the ongoing cost we pay while deferring the final outcome.

This impels me to conclude that our best strategy is to pull out of Iraq as quickly as possible.

Part III: Can Iraq become democratic?

Today my task is to justify my claim that democracy cannot be instilled in Iraq in any reasonable time frame and for any reasonable cost.

I begin by stressing the historical rarity of democracy. Civilization has a good 5,000 years of history now, and during those 5,000 years, with all those different cultures and different political experiments, the number of functioning democracies we can point to is frighteningly small: some of the Greek city-states, early Rome, England beginning sometime between the Glorious Revolution and 1850, the USA, and a good number of developed nations in the 20th century. Democracy does not come easily; it requires very special conditions to work. Indeed, there is not yet a single polity in the world that can lay a convincing claim to being a full democracy. The best examples in Europe and North America are still subject to criticisms regarding the special powers enjoyed by the wealthy in their governance.

Democracy cannot take root in unprepared soil. A culture must possess a number of important traits in order for democracy to function. The first of these traits is near-universal literacy. People cannot rule themselves if they cannot inform themselves on the political issues. Examine this map of literacy rates around the world. Note the strong correlation between literacy rates and democracy; that's no accident. Literacy is not a sufficient condition for a well-functioning democracy, but it's certainly a necessary one. Note that Iraq's literacy rate is below 50%. There is no way that this country is ready for democracy.

But that's only the beginning; there's another crucial consideration. Throughout history, the most common form of social structure is what I will call an "authoritarian patronage system". The basic structure is a pyramid ruled by the Top Dog, with lesser dogs at successively lower levels, all the way down to the base of regular folk. Obedience flows up the pyramid and goodies flow down. In effect, the Top Dog buys the loyalty of his underlings, each of whom buys the loyalty of those underneath him, all the way down to the bottom. This basic structure permeates every single society on the planet, even the democracies. Consider that Mr. Bush demands first and foremost from his subordinates their loyalty. And he rewards that loyalty -- standing by Mr. Rumsfeld long after his resignation was necessary, pardoning Mr. Libby, and so forth. Patronage systems are universal.

Patronage is fundamentally and profoundly inimical to democracy, because it runs counter to the rule of law. The rule of law establishes that policy is determined by commonly agreed upon standards. If you deserve a goody, you get it regardless of how some big dog feels about you. In the rule of law, antagonizing a big dog doesn't mean anything, because big dogs can't retaliate against little dogs. Only the law determines how these things are done.

Here's the crucial problem in making the transition from authoritarian systems to democratic systems: how do you replace patronage with the rule of law? The killer problem is that everybody has to have confidence in each other's sincerity. If you decide to play by the rule of law, and your enemy decides not to, he'll play you for a patsy, take advantage of your cooperative attitude, and seize power, eliminating you in the process. Every society has its antagonistic parties, and obedience to the rule of law requires these parties to trust each other -- something they develop no experience in while living under a patronage system.

In practice, this transition has been accomplished by a slow process, with laws steadily reducing the power of the patrons and incrementally replacing patronage with legal rights. This process has been underway in England (and its daughter polity, the USA) for about 800 years. France tried to make the jump overnight in 1789 -- it didn't work. French democracy didn't really stabilize until early in the 20th Century. German democracy got started in 1848, went through many vicissitudes, made an impressive early effort in the Weimar Republic, and then finally got its feet in the 1950s.

Japan provides a fascinating example of a really odd way to bring about democracy. As part of the Meiji Restoration, Japan made an effort to import democracy along with all the other Western ideas. They made a real college try at it, but they didn't have any idea how to do it properly. Japanese democracy collapsed in the 1930s, but was restored by the Americans after World War II. However, the Americans can't claim any of the credit for Japan becoming democratic. The Emperor simply declared that the Japanese would be democratic, and the obedient Japanese went to work embracing democracy. Again, they really didn't have a good idea how to do it, but the Emperor said so, and that was that. This is important, because the Emperor provided them with the means to replace the patronage system with the rule of law. They didn't have any of the problems with mutual trust that other societies have had.

Russia provides us with a beautiful example of the other side of this coin. Russian culture is profoundly paranoid. These people have been invaded by the Mongols, the Tatars, the Poles, the Turks, the Swedes, the French (twice), the Germans (twice), the Americans, the British, the Japanese -- at one time or another just about everybody has grabbed a piece of Russia. And their own history has been a bloody sequence of horrors and mass murder. Yes, the Russians are paranoid -- they've got good reason to be. They don't trust anybody. And that's why they have never been able to make democracy work. Without that sense of trust in each other, they can't make possibly live by the rule of law. They NEED a strong man ruling the country just to keep them from each others' throats.

So now let's turn to Iraq. Here's a country with 5,000 years of history, all of it despotic. Iraq has always been ruled by a tyrant. Sometimes that tyrant has been moderately benevolent; often he has been malevolent. The Iraqis have nothing in their history to show them how the rule of law works; they have never lived under the rule of law. And so a bunch of naive Americans think that they can snap their fingers, declare "Let there be democracy!" and it will simply spring to life. What a crock!

The most rapid democratization of a similar country was the experience of Turkey, which went from absolute despotism in 1918 to enlightened despotism with hints of democracy under Ataturk, military rule alternating with shaky democracy for many decades, and finally something vaguely democratic began to emerge in the 1980s. Turkish democracy is still weak, and we still don't know if it will stick, but I think that they crossed an important line with the election of the AK party in the last few years. It took 80 years, but Turkey appears to be well on its way to democracy.

So yes, Iraq could pull it off, but it will take 80 years and an enlightened despot enjoying the universal esteem of his people. If such a despot does not arise, it will take longer. Which means that Mr. Bush's second political goal in invading Iraq was hopelessly misguided and doomed to failure.

In Part IV of this series, I will discuss American options at this sad point.

PART II: Warmaking in practice: the Iraq War

How well did the Bush Administration execute the warmaking procedure outlined in the previous post? Let's walk though each of the steps:

STEP 1: Specify the objective

What policy objectives were specified for the Iraq War? Two were offered to the American public by Mr. Bush:

1. Eliminate the threat of Mr. Hussein using WMD against us.
2. Eliminate the terrorist threat from the Middle East by converting Middle Eastern countries to democracies, starting with Iraq.

Neither of these policy objectives makes sense. The first assumes that Iraq did possess WMD. We now know that to be false, but subsequent knowledge is irrelevant to the evaluation of the policy. All that matters is the state of knowledge in early 2003.

Defenders of American policy in Iraq state that "everybody knew" that Iraq had WMD. That claim is false. It is correct that some American intelligence units believed that Iraq possessed WMD. But it is also true that some American intelligence units had serious doubts as to Iraq's WMD. The intelligence services of other countries, relying on American misinformation, also suspected the Iraq had WMD, but none of them had any corroborating evidence of their own, and none of them believed that the evidence was strong enough to justify military action against Iraq. After all, the leaders of those same countries opposed the American attack. Do you think they would have done so had they been confident that Iraq possessed WMDs?

But the conservative argument overlooks one of the most important sources of evidence on this: the Blix Commission. Mr. Blix was in Iraq. He had teams all over the country. They were carrying out a thorough investigation; Mr. Blix's final report ran to over a thousand pages in length. Whenever American intelligence suggested a site to investigate, Blix attempted to investigate it. Now, in some cases, the Iraqi government was uncooperative with the Blix investigators. But Mr. Blix's statements in the immediate prelude to the American attack were clear: he found no evidence of WMDs. He could not certify that Iraq was completely free of WMDs, but his investigation had been thorough and he felt that there was not evidence to justify an attack. Mr. Bush ignored Mr. Blix's evidence and proceeded to attack. In the end, Mr. Blix proved to be correct and Mr. Bush proved to be wrong. In early 2003, there was no compelling evidence that Iraq possessed WMD and Mr. Bush ignored the preponderance of evidence, choosing to give greater weight to flimsy evidence. That was a catastrophic blunder that could easily have been avoided by a more rational President.

Thus, the American government's handling of Step 1 was incompetent. The primary policy objective was based on incorrect beliefs.

Step 2: Devise a plan
From this point forward, we will ignore all aspects of American policy decisions in regard to WMD, because these turned out to be irrelevant. We will instead concentrate our attentions on the remaining policy objective: establishing a working democracy in the Middle East.

It should be obvious that the Bush Administration had no plan for achieving this goal. They didn't even have a plan for securing Baghdad once it had been overrun. The city was in anarchy for days after the Americans captured it. Subsequent American actions, such as the dissolution of the Iraqi Army, made matters worse. It is now obvious that the Bush Administration completely failed Step 2: they didn't just have a bad plan, they didn't have ANY plan. Worse, they ignored the advice of the Pentagon. Following standard practice, the Pentagon felt that at least 300,000 troops would be required to occupy Iraq and insure security. The Bush Administration foolishly ignored these recommendations, insisting that the job could be done with half that number or less -- and they proved to be horribly wrong. Iraq was NEVER stabilized. The anarchy of the post-invasion days simply simmered for years while the Americans kept it from boiling over, but never brought it to an end. The first time that the Bush Administration came up with something like a plan was in the aftermath of the 2006 elections, which forced a chastened Mr. Bush to come up with the "surge" strategy -- which attempted only to achieve security in Iraq, and did nothing to achieve the policy objective of establishing a secure democratic regime.

To this day, the Bush Administration has still not revealed its plan for establishing a secure democratic regime in Iraq. That' s because the Bush Administration has no such plan. It can't -- the task is impossible. I'll explain why in the next post. But let's move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Assess the costs
Again, the Bush Administration completely failed to carry out this step. They estimated costs of the invasion in the neighborhood of a few hundred dead and perhaps ten times that number seriously wounded. But they had no estimates of the post-invasion costs. Did they think that they'd just pack up and leave Iraq the day after Baghdad was captured? What were they thinking? Apparently they weren't thinking anything at all. In an especially ironic twist, the Bush Administration predicted that all the costs of the occupation would be paid for by Iraqi oil. Instead, the current projected cost of the war is at least 4,000 American dead and $1.6 trillion. And we haven't even begun to assess the cost in diplomatic clout. American prestige peaked in early 2002, and began a precipitous decline with the invasion of Iraq. Our ability to command the respect and compliance of other countries with our wishes has fallen to a point lower than at any time since the end of World War II.

Step 4: compare the costs with the benefits
Would the establishment of a stable democratic regime in Iraq be worth 4,000 American lives and $1.6 trillion? I don't think so. And we can be certain about one thing: had Mr. Bush honestly presented these figures to the American people prior to the invasion, he would not have enjoyed the support of the American people. It's obvious that the American people regard the benefits as unworthy of the costs.

Step 5: Execute the operation
The invasion was executed competently.

Step 6: Assess progress against predictions
Again, the Bush Administration completely failed this task. It had become obvious that the invasion was a mistake by 2005, yet Mr. Bush insisted on "staying the course" and never wavered from his original plan long after it was in tatters.

Reviewing these six steps, it is clear why the Iraq War was such a disaster: The Bush Administration botched every step of the procedure. They failed to understand and apply von Clausewitz's ideas. And for that, America has paid a high price.

In my next post, I shall explain why the Bush Administration's second objective (establishing a stable democracy in Iraq) was impossible to achieve.

Why we should pull out of Iraq

This is the first of a four-part series explaining, from a rather different point of view, why we should pull out of Iraq.

I subscribe to Mr. Obama's belief: "I'm not against all wars -- just stupid ones." There are times when military operations are the best solution to a problem. But Americans don't seem to have a rational way of determining when those times are. The attack upon Iraq was one such case. That was a dreadful blunder, and in these essays, I propose to explain why it was such a blunder and why a rapid pullout is the best option available to us.

How to run a war

Americans seem to approach war rather like a football game: it's something that you either win or lose. That's naive. Let's get back to basics. Let's start with the most important book on war ever written: von Clausewitz's On War. I don't recommend that you read it, for several reasons. First, von Clausewitz wrote in the mid-nineteenth century, and the history of those times colors his writing. If you're not intimately familiar with Napoleonic warfare, a lot of what von Clausewitz writes will be alien to you. Second, von Clausewitz was, guess what, German, and he wrote in the classical German style of the time, which means that his sentences drag on forever, which intricately interconnected clauses that are difficult to untangle. Perhaps there are more modern translations that make him more readable -- the one I read was a tough slog.

Nevertheless, von Clausewitz included in this, the most important book on war, the most important sentence on war:

War is the extension of policy to other means.

Sadly, this crisp version is not a lucid translation of the original German. Here are some variations on the original sense, none of which are correct (the above sentence is the best overall translation) but which help clarify the meaning:

War is the continuation of politics into other areas.
War is the extension of political conflict into a different arena.
War is national policy expressed in a violent way.

STEP 1: Specify the objective
Now that you have the basic idea, we can apply it to come up with a rational way to prosecute a war. The very first step is to define the national policy that we seek to pursue. Why do we want to fight a war? What's our political objective? When it's all over, how will the world be different in a way that we find desirable?

STEP 2: Devise a plan
Having established exactly what you intend to achieve, you create a military operations plan that will achieve the political objective you previously defined. This is important: the plan must accomplish what you want to accomplish. You must examine the plan critically, asking hard questions to determine whether the plan really will accomplish the political objective. The mistake so many people make at this stage is the assumption that the application of sufficient military force is certain to accomplish the political objective. This is not necessarily the case. We could, for example, pound the Afghan rebels hiding in the mountains with tens of thousands of tons of bombs and never accomplish anything.

STEP 3: Assess the costs
Now you must carefully assess all the costs of this military operation. The obvious costs lie in military casualties. These include the loss to the economy of young, healthy soldiers who would have contributed considerable tax money to your government, as well as the health care costs of all veterans of the war. You must also take into account the costs of munitions expended and equipment destroyed. Lastly, you must carefully assess the "soft costs" of military action. Whenever you use military power, you make people angry. The world's televisions will broadcast images of dead civilians, screaming orphans, children without arms or legs -- all of this will cost you the goodwill of other people. Of course, it will also gain esteem from the enemies of those you clobber, and that too must be taken into account. However, the general rule is this: when a big guy beats up on a little guy, most bystanders side with the underdog.

STEP 4: compare costs with benefits
Now that you have a fairly good assessment of the costs, compare those costs with the political benefits defined in Step 1. Are the benefits worth the costs? If so, proceed with the operation. If not, abort it.

STEP 5: execute the operation
Unleash the dogs of war

STEP 6: assess progress against predictions
You must continually re-evaluate the operation in light of the cost-benefit trade-off. If at any time the projected costs exceed the anticipated benefits, abort the mission as soon as possible.

This is the right way to run a war. In the next essay, we'll consider how well the Bush Administration carried out these six steps.

Point and Purpose

The purpose of this blog is to foster civil discussions between liberals and conservatives. I am appalled at the inability of liberals and conservatives to communicate with each other. I want to do something about that.

Me? I myself am much more anti-conservative than anti-liberal. I refuse to accept the liberal label, and I think that many liberals would find me a traitor to their cause, because on some important issues, I'm not at all liberal. However, I find myself more often in disagreement with conservatives than with liberals. Let's not get too far into labels just now. Over the course of time, as I post essays exploring issues, my stance will become more clear. If I had to reduce my political philosophy to a slogan, it would be "Rationalism and the Rule of Law". Not very snappy, huh?

I will rigorously enforce absolute civility at all times in this blog. Here's the General Principle:

Everybody will be nice at all times.

And here's The Legal Rule:

No entry may contain any direct or indirect reference to any participant.

It's a clear and simple rule, and while it may seem a bit silly on first sight, it's actually a very good way of insuring that the discussion is confined to the issues, not the personalities. It does impose a somewhat stilted style upon the discussion, but it also guarantees that there will be no ugliness, nastiness, snideness, or any of the other sins that universally stain blogs. Here are some examples of the wrong way to make a statement and the right way to make a statement:

Wrong: "That's an idiotic statement."

Right: "That statement is wrong."

Why: the first statement indirectly calls somebody an idiot. After all, the only person who can make an idiotic statement is an idiot. Many years ago I learned this lesson when I referred to another person's statement as a 'fogeyism'. I hurt the fellow's feelings, and I still regret that comment. I'll not tolerate this kind of behavior here. 

Wrong: "Sorry to puncture your balloon, but..."

Right: "I disagree."

Why: The giveaway is the use of a second person pronoun. This also violates the Nice Principle because it is patronizing. 

Wrong: "Yeah, right, and I've got a bridge to sell."

Right: "This idea fails to take into account the fact that..."

Why: the first statement implies that somebody is naive.

Wrong: An Arabic salutation offered in opposition to a statement about Islam that the writer finds unacceptably charitable.

Right: Counter the idea, not the person.

Why: the Arab salutation is an underhanded way of insinuating that the first writer is a terrorist. The same thing would apply to using such phrases as "Sieg Heil" or "comrade" in reference to another person, because these suggest that he is a Nazi or a Communist.

I realize that this takes all the blood out of your writing -- that's my intention! I don't want a bloody discussion. I don't want people tossing clever insults back and forth. I want insightful discussion. Here's my problem: all my experience suggests that there aren't any conservatives capable of expressing themselves within these constraints. In five years of searching the web, I have yet to find a single conservative website that honors any reasonable code of civility. I have searched through -- I do not exaggerate -- at least a hundred conservative blogs. So I issue a challenge to conservatives: can you come here and make your points in a gentlemanly fashion? If so, I really want to see you. If not, get lost.

I will take other measures to protect the integrity of the discussion. I will throttle back on "ganging up", the tendency for lots of people of one persuasion inundate a single advocate with a mountain of objections. That's not fair -- the underdog needs to have the time to respond to everybody in turn. Whichever side you're on, I will not permit people to gang up on you.

I'm sure I'll be adding to my list of forbidden styles as I get more experience. Just remember the Basic Principle: BE NICE! And if you ever catch me violating the Basic Principle, by all means, call me on it. I'm not above my own laws. 

And I'll be pretty easy on people until we establish our community culture. Don't be afraid of hellfire and damnation descending upon you if you violate The Rule. It has taken me years to develop a truly civil style, and I don't expect anybody to come up to speed on it quickly. The feel of this blog will be more like Pygmalion than Devil's Island. The blogosphere too often seems like a cage full of chimpanzees hurling feces at each other; I expect that I'll have to be gentle in reminding people to put the feces down.

So I'm going to start the discussion with a nicely controversial post in the hope that it will get the discussion started with a bang. I'll have it up in a day or two. In the meantime, I ask anybody who happens to wander into these echoing halls to at least say "Hello" so that it doesn't seem quite so empty here.