OT -

re: Skube, go read what happened when Josh contacted him - you won't believe it

jeesh, misspelled my own name

fatbear, but fatbeat may be a new alias

Jim Webb and Al Gore were against it from the outset. Given their prior positions in government, I'd think the VSP would take notice of their opinions. I don't remember, were either of them on TV at all? Were they shunned like the rest of the anti-war folks?

Fatbear:
I don't know what's worse, the editor just inserting the first few names that came to his head, or Skube signing off on it when he never even read the blogs the editor decided to throw in the op-ed? And these guys think the blogosphere can't be trusted? Sounds like the LA Times and Skube need to practice what they preach.

Lets not forget that, in the wake of 9/11, Americans were collectively pissed off and wanted to see something blow up. We needed to see some sort of tit for tat regarding us being attacked. Because military doctrine and the commentary surrounding it has still not stepped meaningfully away from the cold war, attacking an old boogeyman of a nation-state seemed like a good idea at the time.

a) I dunno, Kevin Drum, why did you support invasion for most of the runup?

b) Maybe there's a Number 5: herd mentality, as with our recent financial market bubbles. That many people couldn't possibly be wrong about the health of the dot.coms/mortgage lending industry/fancy hybrid hedge funds. So I better follow along, too.

Analysis is fun, but I'm convinced that most Americans, common folk as well as politicians, support the ideas of Empire and Pax Americana whether they care to admit it or not.

The American way of life depends on oil, and it depends even more on our ability to dominate the planet. Most Americans understand this at least on a subconscious level.

There were also Mearshimer and Walt: see, for example

http://www.middleeast.org/launch/redirect.cgi?num=273&a=53

The larger media community is wedded to "the narrative," not analysis. The narrative in, say January 2003 was that war was not inevitable - that Bush was not yet committed, and that UN diplomacy (either building a genuine coalition to "disarm" Iraq or to avert a war) was an action undertaken in good faith.

When war did in fact begin, analysis of the cause became deeply unpatriotic. Who could oppose "Operation Iraqi Freedom?"

No amount of analysis could have stopped the Administration having the war it wanted to have. Congress might have done, but that horse bolted in September 2002.

You can't track this subject without understanding the importance of political leadership.

There was very, very few people outside of elective politics who could at the beginning of 2003 have stood up, said that invading Iraq was a foolish thing to do, and made a difference. No one bopping away at Brookings, or writing now and again for Foreign Affairs, or teaching at some Ivy League school was among that group. The men who were, were almost all old men who hadn't been political combatants on any kind of regular basis for years: the elder Bush, George Schultz, James Baker, Henry Kissinger.

Basically, whether to invade Iraq in 2003 was a political question. People who wonder now why opposition to the invasion was not highly visible from the "foreign affairs professionals" or the retired policymaking community are kidding themselves only slightly less than people who ask why the media was not more aggressive in criticizing the administration on its path to war.

In politics, you don't get the luxury of being always popular and always right, and you can't ever count on the media to do you job for you. Opposing war with Iraq in 2002-03 would have been politically risky -- if not immediately, for people like Sen. Clinton and then-Sen. Edwards, then eventually. Elected officials who challenged the administration were very likely to get pounded right into the ground if they opposed war, and a war turned out well.

But unless you're in public office to campaign instead of the other way around, risks like that are just part of the job. If you are in public office to campaign....well, let's just say I think elected officials like that deserve more criticism than what Kevin calls the AFPC.

realisticforeignpolicy.org

"The Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy is a group of scholars, policy makers and concerned citizens united by our opposition to an American empire. The Coalition is dedicated to promoting an alternative vision for American national security strategy that is consistent with American traditions and values.

The Coalition has attracted interest and participation from individuals from across the political spectrum. The effort began as an informal study group, but has evolved into a formal response to the prominent think tanks and publications that are openly advocating an activist American foreign policy in which the United States would use its predominant military and economic power to promote change abroad.

While few oppose the goal of political and economic liberalization, many individuals question both the morality and the efficacy of using military force and diplomatic pressure to achieve these aims. This was the starting point for our discussion, and continues to be the organizing principle (Statement of Principles) on which we operate.

In order to counter the arguments of those who favor empire, the Coalition holds conferences, and media events, promotes research, and communicates a vision of the alternatives to American empire, including a restrained foreign policy that protects American interests."

Of the ones who didn't support it[....]some were afraid of being wrong...

And the ones who DID support it, they had no fear of being wrong. In fact, as we all know, they're still revelling in their wrongness. (see M. Ignattief, for example)

They even claim that their wrongness is more correct than the non-supporters' rightness. And they expect us peons to buy that bullshit.

These people could at least have the decency to start clamoring for an end to this travesty instead of worrying about their befouled reputations.

And Kevin, I think you're wrong about the monolithic support thing. This squalid, hermetic clan of pundits, politicians and "experts" were vastly outnumbered by decent citizens around the world who were horrified by Bush and Cheney's intransigence.

Prove me wrong.

Still have to give credit to members of the business sphere - Larry Krudlow and Jim Cramer cheerleaded going to war on strictly moral grounds - They thought it would help the stock market. This is when Cramer called Cheney a "True Patriot".

"They just flat out thought it was a good idea."

They were really stupid. We need a new community of American foreign policy experts.

I don't get this hyperanalytical attempt to rationally justify the failure of the AFPC experts to avoid the disaster in which we are now mired.

I think we need a new set of experts. It does not matter at all why the current group of experts was wrong.

Lies. I was against it. Many people were. But the force and the volume of the lies and the inability to counter them effectively silenced me. I still argued against it, but even I had to concede there probably were wmds. And at times I felt they MUST have some info pointing to al qaeda connections of involvement in 9-11. By the time it was clear tha my instincts were right, it was too late. No way to fight that. they have all the cards.

There's also a difference in how good Liberals are in getting the message out, and we were much worse five years ago.

MSNBC Countdown did not exist, or was just coming on the air. The liberal blogosphere was one-tenth of its current size.

Liberals and moderates that were in the pundit class were more interested in discussing policy than hacking away like the Conservatives, and that is still the case. Consider an argument between Robert Novak and Bill Press, which is essentially the type of arguments we got. It's like a discussion between Hannity and Colmes.

So, the 10% of pundits who went on the air to oppose the war said: "Well, I know Saddam's a really bad guy, and I know we have the best army in the history of the world, and I hate to think that he might develop WMDs, and he supports terrorism, but I'm just not sure that we should go to war, at least not until we get some more allies on our side or find more evidence."

That argument was countered by the 90% of pundits who said: "French-loving traitor, why don't you move to Iraq if you love Hussein so much, you wine-drinking terrorist! YOU SUPPORT TORTURE!!11!!!1"

I don't know how my TV set survived.

> Lets not forget that, in the wake of 9/11,
> Americans were collectively pissed off and wanted
> to see something blow up. We needed to see some
> sort of tit for tat regarding us being attacked.

Has Afghanistan, Tora Bora, and Rumsfeld/Bush's utter failure there been pushed so far down the memory hole that it isn't even part of the discourse anymore? This would tend to validate Atrios' and Yglesias' theories more than a little.

You know - Afghanistan - where the /people responsible for 9/11/ were hiding.

Cranky

The Bushies were making fun of everyone who didn't want to go to war. They changed the name of French fries to freedom fries. They invented an Axis of weasels. They said everyone who didn't want to go was Neville Chamberlain and Georgie was Winston Churchill. We were sissies and namby-pambies and faggots and perverts and we didn't fly the flag enough.

And that's why we had to go to war. So we wouldn't be sissies.

Let's not over-analyze this thing. Truth is that after 9/11, a majority of Americans wanted our government to bomb the snot out of some brown people somewhere on Earth. It' didn't matter if the bombees were complicit in the 9/11 attacks; there was just an irrational blood lust for some kind of primitive revenge.

In terms of what the public sees, then, it's not 70-30 in favor of the war, it's more like 70-7 in favor. It's overwhelming.

Speaking as a member of the public, this sounds right to me. It's like all we were hearing was how we so needed to do this war, and there was all this evidence in favor of it, and all I really had to fuel my skepticism was my distrust that Bush would be doing this sort of thing for the right reasons.

there was just an irrational blood lust for some kind of primitive revenge.

Maybe in some other part of the country. Where I live, there are mostly just normal people with good heads on their shoulders.

Can't say I know much about the AFPC. I'm sure I have an issue of Foreign Affairs lying around I've never read the whole thing of, but other than that, I don't read the big writers on this a lot.

Surely one part of this whole dynamic has to be the absence of any discussion of a more rational hawkish alternative. Like, say, actually fighting back against those who attacked us on 9/11:

www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com

From the beginning, the Bush administration has insisted that the Sauds are our friends and allies in the War on Terror, no matter how many Americans they happened to have murdered. Between this and the trumped up intel about Iraqi WMD, I think people will eventually realize that the defense of the Saudis was the bigger (and more treasonous) lie.

And of course, in both cases the corporate media has been more than happy to be led around by the nose by the White House.

Ah, Kevin.

Look, no one has 20-20 hindsight. The fact of the matter is, back in '03, the only people who opposed the war were hippies and drug-heads and deadbeats. Everyone I knew supported it strongly and still do.

Why is it taking a little longer than expected? Obviously, because the US was met with two enemies it couldn't possibly fourseen: liberals and Al Qeada. The liberals have proven, beyond anyone's wildest imaginations, of how they will sell out every time for political gain and any chance they get to trash the flag. On the other side, we couldn't have known that AQ would take advantage of the situation and attack poor civilians. But that strategy has backfired on them now.

The short of it is, we're making progress, and those few who were brave enough in '03 to support the war will be vidnicated by history one day.

JK wrote:

Fatbear:
I don't know what's worse, the editor just inserting the first few names that came to his head, or Skube signing off on it when he never even read the blogs the editor decided to throw in the op-ed? And these guys think the blogosphere can't be trusted? Sounds like the LA Times and Skube need to practice what they preach.

Hold on, JK. We don't know that Skube's editor really did this, and Skube wasn't just making a lame excuse. By the way, fatbear, it's not really Political Animal standard operating procedure to put comments on the previous post on the thread for the newer post. That's some way to spread Skube's excuse around for him.

Scott Ritter is a very important story in all this -- I clearly remember thinking, gee, he used to be so well-respected, now he's this appeasing loon. Wonder how he lost his way.

To this day, I don't really know how he got so marginalized so fast.

"Seemed."

It's worth remembering that popular opposition was vast, well-mobilized, and diverse. Before analyzing the domestic dynamics of the groups who opposed the invasion, remember that popular protest was global, and that the international community was overwhelmingly against the idea in Europe, the Arab world, Asia, Latin America, etc., etc.

Of course, there were a handful of otherwise relatively sensible Americans who were either in favor or bewildered enough not to oppose Bush's invasion. That said, the question that we should ask, either as historians or advocates of a more healthy foreign policy and political dialogue, is whether or not popular and political opinion was as enthusiastic as the Hillaries and Powells would have us think.

Let's start there.

Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chaffe could think straight, how about some more Democrats?

I don't know what's worse, the editor just inserting the first few names that came to his head, or Skube signing off on it when he never even read the blogs the editor decided to throw in the op-ed? And these guys think the blogosphere can't be trusted? Sounds like the LA Times and Skube need to practice what they preach.

Why do we assume Skube signed off on it...was even shown it before it ran? The tone of both his emails to Josh Marshall seem to indicate he had nothing to do with adding or approving Josh's name--and the second email makes him sound like he's somewhat pissed off at the editor's action.

Not that this excuses Skube for the rest of his silly and unintentionally ironic op-ed.

The American foreign policy community has a bias in favor of military action — or, maybe more accurately, a bias against analysts who have a consistent history of skepticism toward military action. For obvious reasons this bias was amplified after 9/11.

All the more reason to act with more caution if you ask me.

Look, no one has 20-20 hindsight. The fact of the matter is, back in '03, the only people who opposed the war were hippies and drug-heads and deadbeats. Everyone I knew supported it strongly and still do.

Egbert is either a fucking liar or a drooling moron. The two are not mutually exclusive so i will say...both.

In addition to the hippies and drug-heads were the weapons inspectors and a lot of the retired intelligence community.

Marines.mil scrambled egbert. Be a man. Step up, yella fella.

What do you say to these NCO's egbert? Are they chickens and cowards and traitors?

5. The hubris and sense that history doesn't apply to us that comes with the loony belief in American exceptionalism (prevalent on both the left and the right).
6. Pundits who just wanted to kick ass (whoa... Tommy-boy!)
7. Dropping bombs make more money for the media than filming handshakes
8. it's a cheap and easy way to pump up your status by sounding like a tough guy when other people's children are going to do the fighting; maybe a special draft just for the kids of pundits and politicians.
9. FP attracts a lot of wackos with political and psychological axes to grind. It's a grand excuse for little men to play big.

"Why did support for the war seem so monolithic during the runup to the invasion of Iraq?"

Possibly because many people who publicly challenged the invasion were mocked and blacklisted. People lost their jobs by opposing the war. People like Kevin get paid to pretend to forget about this. How fucking convenient for them.

I call Bullshit! Everyone, I mean everyone (with a functioning brain) knew this was sold on Lies for ulterior motives. Looking for WMD - but kicking the inspectors out (Us not Them). What was the Hurry? That in itself should have rang some bells!
Remember, the DSM had been written by this time period, most of the world saw Powell's BS and opposed this. The COW was always a joke!
Our policy experts missed every bit of this!?
US of Amnesia!
Cheney's energy task force, Pipelines, Dollars or other currecy anyone? Can't have US forces on Bandar's turf somebody might see a US soldier
(F) driving a car! Ya know?
Who does Bushco owe a favor or two to - Boo Boo?

I'm a housewife in northern Maine.

Why was this so hard to figure out? Saddam was bad, but he was contained.

The perpetrators of 9/11 were in Afghanistan, and we had them on the run.

Saddam and bin Laden never conspired. Saddam was secular, bin Laden was deeply orthodox and couldn't stand Saddam.

The push to war came from a mental-lighweight rich boy who cheated to get elected in 2000. (I remember Brent Scowcroft, sent by GHWB, trying to talk Bush out of invading Iraq, but Bush was absolutely determined.)

Common sense said, let sleeping dogs (ie Saddam) lie. Don't borrow trouble. We had a full plate dealing with the Taliban. -- all cliches, and all right on the mark.

It was all testosterone, hubris and jingoism -- there were no intellectual underpinnings to anyone's support for this colossal mistake.

Lets not forget that, in the wake of 9/11, Americans were collectively pissed off and wanted to see something blow up. We needed to see some sort of tit for tat regarding us being attacked. Because military doctrine and the commentary surrounding it has still not stepped meaningfully away from the cold war, attacking an old boogeyman of a nation-state seemed like a good idea at the time.
Posted by: Thomas on August 19, 2007 at 9:27 PM
---
Let's not over-analyze this thing. Truth is that after 9/11, a majority of Americans wanted our government to bomb the snot out of some brown people somewhere on Earth. It' didn't matter if the bombees were complicit in the 9/11 attacks; there was just an irrational blood lust for some kind of primitive revenge.
Posted by: cajun on August 19, 2007 at 9:59 PM
---

YEP and YEP, and don't forget how swiftly we toppled the government in Afghanistan right after 9/11. The Soviets did that mess for a decade and we dusted it off in a few months! Who's next? So Saddam is going to smart-ass (bluff) around with UN inspectors now? Don't think so-we've got plans for you, bud! The Libyans turn over their nuke program. The Iranians are even talking of a deal (which we rejected in early '03). Hubris from all this blinded us to the problems of invading Iraq.

Why did it go over?

Because the media was (and is) in alignment with the Bush regime... they are both serving the same masters.

What sort of 'honest' media would sit through the whoppers typically slung out during a Bush regime 'press conference' without challenging them?

Would it really be that hard?

Mr. XXX, your story has changed. So tell us, were you lying back then... or are you lying now... or are they both lies?

Perhaps we shouldn't forget that those who advocate the use of military force to solve such imaginary and hypothetical problems ought to have a good deal of moral imagination about the consequences of such action. As even one without military experience can tell you, force has its own logic. To envision it as the extension of some kind of foreign policy dissertation ignores this basic fact. As Ignatieff put it best, he was wedded to how interesting his ideas were, not to whether their consequences were horrifically wrong. Maybe we should remember that next time.

". . . it would hurt their career aspirations. . ."

Those that saw this war coming but did not act to prevent it should not be President. Strike them from your list.

Kevim should go back and fact check the poll numbers on the build-up to the Iraq war.

Because Kevin has a very poor memory.

Why did support for the war seem so monolithic?

The poll numbers for invastion of Iraq were barely over 50% and NEVER MONOLITHIC. Bush had to LIE alot about mushroom clouds and other things just to get the public polls for invastion of Iraq over 50% and it was only barely over 50 when he invaded Iraq.

So there was NO monlithic support for invading Iraq except in Kevin Drum's head.

AND lately Australia is theatening to pull out of Iraq if they don't get their Iraq oil contracts, the ones that I'm sure the Bushies promised: Australia: No Iraq oil law, no troops:

Also David Bacon, a California professor tells us about the ONLY benchmark the Bushies actually cares about in Iraq.

Sen. Carl Levin is right - Iraqis sound quite capable of taking care of themselves but Bush wants those oil contracts in the worse way. It is sounding more and more like Bush is losing "our vtial interest in the region". So sad, too bad, but I've always believed that one should not go to war to steal another countries natural resouces.

Kevin, you forgot the lying.

Please Kevin, no more posts trying to rationalize your support of the invasion. Go ahead, stand in front of the mirror and do your best Stuart Smalley: "I was wrong, I was very wrong. I supported the Iraq invasion, and it was wrong, but it doesn't matter, because people still like me!!!"

Now that you have that settled, you can move on.

Several posters above have nailed the feeling in 2003 fairly well. Everyone knew Bush was lying, everyone knew Saddam was no threat to us, everyone knew this had nothing to do with 911, everyone knew this was just Big Oil marking turf. But, Saddam was a bad guy and Afganistan had not sated our need to kill some more Mideasterners. Bush was giving us the cover to say it was OK.

The dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about, is that the real reason so many people supported the war, was because we were almost guaranteed to be WINNERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just like in 1991. I work with a Brit and I asked him in mid 2003 what the Brits thought about the war, his response: "We won didn't we". All is forgiven if you win. The only reason the invasion is not popular anymore, is that it doesn't look much like a win anymore.

The other dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about, is that America is sliding. Manufacturing is lost. The middle class is losing ground financially. We are much worse off than we were 25 years ago, only maintaining our standard of living with a steady diet of cheap Chinese merchandise. Everybody in the middle class knows this is true, but nobody wants to talk about it. The rich people are taking our country from us and we are afraid to take it back. ALL WE HAVE LEFT IS OUR MILITARY. THE REST OF THE WORLD IS KICKING OUR BUTT ECONOMICALLY, BUT WE CAN STILL KICK THEIR BUTT MILITARILY.

Now we know we can't even do that.

It's natural that there was so much support for overthrowing Saddam, because there seemed to be so many good reasons to do so:
-- Saddam's horrendous misrule -- the torture and genocide
-- Saddam thumbing his nose at the UN, ignoring resolution after resolotion
-- the belief that he was developing WMDs
-- the belief that he might work with terrorists
-- the possibility that if Saddam developed nukes, he might again invade Kuwait
-- the pressure against UN sanctions that was leading to their elimination
-- the reminder from 9/11 that inaction could be dangerous
-- our apparent success in Afghanistan, leading to optimism that we would be successful in Iraq

The reason most Americans turned against the war is that we didn't win it. When we seemed to be winning, the war had overwhelming support.

My experience was there'd be headlines about Saddam's son-in-law's admission to the UN that Saddam had a WMD program. And then I'd read in the British press that he also said they were all destroyed. I still haven't read that in our papers to date.

Or take the "Saddam Statue" pix. No American corporate media, of any format, has ever shown the wide shoot taken from a roof nearby where you can see a bunch of tanks blocking off all the roads into this area that was completely deserted. Except for, it turns out, about 150 guys scrambling around. Guys who arrived with Chalibi the day before. But we here have seen plenty of closeups of them, and it sure looks crowded.

There were about another thirty things like this, lies repeated, and never pointed out, in our media.

So, you left off the hugely important "disinformation campaign run on the American people" from your list of possible causes.

This is really a critical question (who to trust?) if Americans are not to be led astray again by a future administration and its collaborators. And the policy under consideration doesn't have to a military one. I see a lot of global warming hustlers coming down the pike (ethanol as the wonder fuel for GW).

I personally blame the media for not allowing any serious opponents of the war to speak, other than a very occasional op ed or short TV interview. Critics of a US invasion were 'out there.' Sen. Byrd held long soliloquy's in an empty Senate chamber on his disapproval. Al Gore and Ted Kennedy were outspoken in their criticism. And much truth was to be found in the European press.

So, without a conscientious media we are left to discover the truth of any issue on our own. This means homework for all of us but with the internet it becomes feasible. At least we can look at multiple arguments on any issue, scour the global print media, read varied opinon. This is a lot of work for the average person but it becomes a responsibility of citizenship and a necessity for informed opinion in the present day. US foreign policy 'experts' for the most part can't be trusted. The major problem with these experts seems to be their a priori conviction that America must enforce its power to its strategic advantage rather than allowing for any ideological foundation based on cooperation and tolerance. It's as simple as that.

A funny incident from pre-invasion days: A neighbor and I bumped into each other during dog-walking outings. We ended our conversation by talking about the possible coming invasion of Iraq. She thought that indeed Iraqi WMDs would be flying through the neighborhood if we didn't invade. (Well, that's what they said on the nightly news). As she returned to her house I ran after her shouting "Don't believe the TV news!" Well, I'd still give anyone that advice, although hopefully in a more rational manner (and add to that MSM print too).

This war is all egbert's fault -- the fuckin' Bush apologist. I say we keelhaul the scurvy dog, and offer him to the sharks. We've got any number of big tiger sharks -- 10' - 17' long and about a half-ton in weight -- hanging right off Portlock here in east Honolulu. Feed 'em egbert, and save a sea turtle -- it's a fair trade.

PS: And bravo to the above commenters who emphasize the lies that were told daily to the American public by this administration. This wasn't a normal policy debate in the sense of differing views on an optimal solution, but a concerted effort to deceive. But that's getting to be par for the course on all issues.

The American way of life depends on oil, and it depends even more on our ability to dominate the planet. Most Americans understand this at least on a subconscious level.

Say you spend your whole life in an iron lung, being kept alive somehow. All that's possible for you is what's within there; then someone opens the door one day.

I think you are so used to what you see you're not used to what's possible. There's a lot out there and it's not as far away as it may seem. Remember where we've come from. Humans have a lot of potential to be good and reciprocation. There just has to be incentives for people to do it, and then they go along, are satisfied and peaceable. People don't really want to fight that much and can be raised not to irrationally require it.

-- Saddam's horrendous misrule -- the torture and genocide
a rule that was aok as long as he was "your bastard" And if this is to be the criterion for invasion, you've got a lot of work cut out for you. Better get that draft in place.

-- Saddam thumbing his nose at the UN, ignoring resolution after resolotion
ooh, watch out Israel! Perhaps if it is the international community at large (in the form of the UN) that was being thumbed at by Saddam's nose, then it was the decision of the internatinal community at large (in the form of the UN)to decide what actions to take.

DO NOT EVER PRESUME TO BE TAKING ACTIONS IN OUR NAME! The U.S. in its current form neither represents me nor my values and I would be very surprised if a vast, vast majority of the foreign community did not agree. Our voices are not yours. If you want to talk about thumbing noses at the U.S., fine.

-- the belief that he was developing WMDs
again the conflating of chemical, biological and nuclear threats, only one of which - nuclear - is truly a WMD and this was a threat no one sane believed in. And there were plenty of doubters about the chemical and biological weapons.

-- the belief that he might work with terrorists
yes, the belief he would supply his sworn enemies, Al Qaeda. There has never ever been any real evidence that there was ever any threat of this.

-- the possibility that if Saddam developed nukes, he might again invade Kuwait
Oh please. The nuke possibility? Please see my comment about sanity above. This was as likely as the frickin' pilotless drones. And Saddam wasn't some rock-em sock-em robot mindlessly on the attack nor was he some weird wacked-out martyr. He was an asshole and a bully very much into self-preservation. Remember his offer to go into exile just before the invasion that has seen the death of half a million Iraqis? An offer that was brushed aside. An invasion of Kuwait would have meant the end of Saddam.

-- the pressure against UN sanctions that was leading to their elimination
Again, the U.S. has no right to unilaterally say it is acting on the behalf of the U.N. You are one member. If you want to see the U.N. take action, win the frigging debate at the U.N. The only action that can be seen to be taken on behalf of the U.N. (aka the international community) is action sanctioned by the U.N.

-- the reminder from 9/11 that inaction could be dangerous
What the frick did action against Saddam have to do with preventing the terrorism of stateless groups? Inaction on the issues that lead to the radicalization that leads to terrorism, yes. And yet inaction on the most galvanizing issue in the ME - Palestine - never seems to be seen as dangerous by you chest-thumping twits. Though Bush's inaction here (and his propping up of Israeli delusions as to what is ultimately possible) has cost countless lives.

-- our apparent success in Afghanistan, leading to optimism that we would be successful in Iraq
If you'd been reading the international press at the time, you'd have realized that 'success' in Afghanistan was only apparent. You sure as heck hadn't yet captured Osama and your allies wanted you to keep your eye on the ball.

Next time you make a list see if you can manage to get one item right.

. Humans have a lot of potential to be good and reciprocation.

Should have been:

Humans have a lot of potential to be good and for reciprocation.

Why did support for the war seem so monolithic during the runup to the invasion of Iraq?

1. Bush was still thought of as a straight talking Texan, and Colin Powell had credibility.

2. Nobody, at least outside of intelligence, neoconservative, and administration circles, could have dreamed that the WMD intelligence was absolutely and totally bogus. How much insiders knew will probably never be learned.

3. I don't think many people outside of the neo/paleo conservative academic debate were aware that a bunch of powerful Jews in the Defense Dept. were plotting to use the U.S. military against the enemies of Israel to "drain the swamp."

Kevin,

It didn't help that "responsible" "liberals" such as yourself, Matt, Josh Marshall, Pollack (etc.) supported the war, thus helping the administration (and war supporters) to define the leftward edge of acceptable debate on this issue as "reluctantly in favor of invasion," while the rightward edge of acceptable debate on this issue was, of course, "avidly in favor of invasion." Any opinion falling outside of that frame (such as outright opposition to invasion) could be successfully discounted... "heck, 'even the liberal' Kevin Drum thinks we should invade Iraq, so why listen to those fringe hippie fruitcakes who say otherwise?"

If you want to understand why support for the invasion *seemed* so monolithic in '02 and early '03, try understanding why you, personally, supported the war (ditto: allegedly liberal pundits like yourself), 'cause there's where your answer'll be.

Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA

Category 2 was greatly enlarged by deceptive accounts of Saddam's weapon capacities (I personally chose to believe Scott Ritter over Colin Powell, but many weren't so careful).

Category 3 was greatly enlarged by the horrendous attacks both categories 1 and 2 directed against them. Even mildly saying "if you're wrong, that's a lot of blood on your hands" is a pretty nasty accusation.

Mainly, those who opposed and didn't speak up were in a horrible situation: you may be 90% sure the WMDs crap was BS, but if you're wrong, you will be totally pilloried; whereas if the other side is wrong, as we've seen -- no biggie. This was a totally unfair bias, but obviously true.

Also, please cite some survey research. Pulling numbers out of your ass makes you look like a hack.

As for myself, I was part of the 400,000 person march in New York before the war. There seemed like a lot of us at the time. And boy were we ignored.

The reason most Americans turned against the war is that we didn't win it. When we seemed to be winning, the war had overwhelming support.

So - fair-weather patriotism? Is that what you -you of all people, accuse those who oppose the war of now? You, the pathetic, gutless wretch that thinks its okay for the Constitution to be breached, so long as you can convince yourself it makes you feel "safe."

Some of us aren't easily-led fools, and had the sense to be against from the outset. Your list of Saddam's offesnses is pretty mundane as far as feckless thug dictators go, and we don't rush to set up democracies elsewhere (Burma ring any bells?)

Not everyone is the faithful bootlick like you have proven yourself to be. Some of us would rather die that turn into whatever it is you have become.

I would dispute the basis of your assertion, that the majority of the US foriegn policy establishment supported the war. Certainly the majority of the pundits (some of whom claim expertise in foreign policy) supported the war, but we also know that many, if not most, of the on-the-ground ball carriers, from ambassadors to the entire Dept. of State, opposed it.

Consensus is that the foreign policy establishment was simply not heard from. Ignored by the media, intimidated into silence, jeered at by the government. The public? The public be damned. People didn't want to invade Iraq in spite of the drumbeat of lies, which a lot of them believed and still believe.

Your problem is not your foreign policy establishment. Your problem is (with insignificant exceptions) that you have fascist clowns for a government, fascist clowns for an opposition, fascist clowns running your media and all of them jump and run with a handkerchief every time a millionaire sneezes. And lots of millionaires liked the war, because what did they have to lose?

How about because the opponents of the war thought marching would some how prevent the war.

Also, some opponents of the war were so flabbergasted by the idea that anyone was actually considering something so ludicrous that they found it hard to marshal their arguments. It's actually remarkably hard to respond effectively to people who propose ideas that are just totally ridiculous. There's a "Where do I start?" problem.

Kevin - you make the mistake all idiot liberals seem so anxious to make these days: you assume the war was a mistake just because it has gone badly. Did none of you study logic in school? The premises underlying certain actions and the actions themselves are not the same thing: good things have come from bad premises just as surely as bad things have come from good. There were good arguments to be made for war, certainly at least for the threat of war, and if liberals, led by the idiots over at Kos, refuse to recognize that the vaunted left wing resurgence will be short lived.

Egbert:
Look, no one has 20-20 hindsight. The fact of the matter is, back in '03, the only people who opposed the war were hippies and drug-heads and deadbeats. Everyone I knew supported it strongly and still do.

Actually, the only people that supported the war were egbeats.

GLMHMW,

There were NO good arguments to be made for war. The arguments that may have sounded persuasive to you were based on lies and deception. It's easy to make a good argument if you get to invent the facts as you go along.

There were good arguments to be made for war, certainly at least for the threat of war

I had a number of friends at the time who thought it was a ploy brilliantly played... And good things did come from the threat... renewed weapons inspections that were clearly showing any threat of WMDs to be much less than had been thought in some circles and, as Bush continued his relentless push, we even had the last minute offer of Saddam to go into exile. But in contrast to these friends I was certain that Bush et al were determined to attack whatever good the threats brought. An idea I thought insane for well... what's happened. I was unfortunately right. In any case, I would have condemned this invasion whatever the short to middle-term outcome; the doctrine of preventative attack is an evil one (even if it's only a cover excuse for an every bit as bad colonial invasion). Had it been an internationally sanctioned humanitarian intervention, conducted with humanitarian ends in mind, my views might have been different. But that it was so evidently not.

"Jim Webb and Al Gore were against it from the outset."

Jim Webb wasn't all that high-profile a guy, at the time. And Al Gore's opposition wasn't that it was morally wrong to invade a nation that didn't attack us, wasn't planning to attack us and posed no threat to us. His opposition, such as it was, was that the invasion would distract us from pursuing Al Qaeda, and that the invasion effort should be pursued with more allies than the U.S. had contemporarily amassed ("If you're going after Jesse James, you ought to organize a posse first."). Theoretically, then, if we'd captured Bin Laden and ammassed a larger coalition by 2003, a war of aggression on Iraq would've been a-okay with Al Gore. From the supposed leader of the American Left within the political arena, that's pretty weak sauce, and goes right up there with the accomodation of the "liberal" pundits in explaining how the acceptable frame of debate was set so far to the right, vis a vis the invasion.

As long as the purportedly liberal party in this country is dependent upon military contractors and multinational conglomerates for campaign contributions, and as long as America's liberal voters continue to believe that they have no option but to vote for whatever candidate is put forward by that "liberal" party, wars of American aggression will continue. Either we make a change, or get used to it.

Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA

War sells papers. The bosses wanted profit, the writers wanted excitement.

What I don't get is that it seemed plainly obvious at the time that the war was based on lies - chiefly the lie that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11, but many other lies that were plainly revealed during the run-up to the war. From the beginning, the administration appeared determined to exploit 9/11 to its own sinister ends. I understand why ordinary folks didn't think this way. But I don't understand why this wasn't more obvious to more people in the punditocracy, unless they were blinded by the excitement of getting to think and talk about a war.

The press, which exists to expose corruption, became corrupt as hell. The adversarial role of the press was abandoned and all we heard was propaganda. Dissent was banished from the TV. Donahue, the lone skeptic on television, was fired. There remains little adversarial examination of this administration and the neocons who dragged the country into this invasion with lies remain spouting off on tv.

Even though the reasons put forth for this invasion were preposterous (drones with nukes, an overheard phone conversation, cartoon presentations at the UN, bogus yellowcake documents) and the administration obviously was not acting in good faith when it pulled the inspectors, people were relunctant to question the corrupt press or the corrupt administration.

Government depends on a level of trust that is necessary for it to function at all. I will give a couple more reasons.

Congress did not believe that Bush would lie to them about the intelligence. That is unthinkable for any president to do and still get cooperation from Congress. This is why people in Congress voted for the resolution, while people outside the beltway did not.

The original resolution was seen by some as a show of force. They believed that it could force Saddam to let inspectors back in (it did) and that Bush would not go ahead with war if Saddam was capitulating.

i had a friend who,AT THE TIME,of the war in iraq vote said:

i can't understand why not a single congressman,
didn't ask of bush, cheney and powell the following question:

i know less than or equal to zero about what's
going on in iraq so i have to take your word
on everything-----i will vote for the "go to war resolution" if you will guarantee us right now,
at this time,you will resign on the spot if the reasons you have given us to go to war turn out to be invalid?

he was invoking (what i call) the "post a performance bond in escrow" principle:

the "post a performance bond in escrow" principle:

if somebody makes a statement that you strongly suspect will turn out to be false ask him:
would you post a large,large performance bond in escrow that i can collect on immediately if that statemennt turns out to be false?(*)

(*)you get some very interesting reactions,
when you pose this question---it is really quite capable of seriously shaking somebody up.

> Government depends on a level of trust that is
> necessary for it to function at all. I will give a
> couple more reasons.
>
> Congress did not believe that Bush would lie to
> them about the intelligence.

I am sorry, but by 2002 _anyone_ who trusted Bush/Cheney/Wolfwoitz (and this includes Congress, Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias, and Josh Marshall) was an idiot. Those people had demonstrated over and over since 2000, including every move they made after 9/11+21, that they were NOT trustworthy.

Cranky

The country was sufferring from bloodlust after 9/11. It is as simple as that. This was reinforced by the seeming ease of victory in Afghanistan.

You still see the residual of this emotional state whenever someone stands up and supports the overthrow the Taliban, and advocates that we do more in Afghanistan to "win". However, the problems of winning in Afghanistan are just as intractable as those in Iraq; and the US has far less to lose if it abandons Afghanistan rather than Iraq. In good conscience, I don't see how anyone can support the invasion of Afghanistan, while opposing the invasion of Iraq. Neither action had long term chance of success, in my opinion- and both have turned out about exactly as I thought they would- protracted unorthodox warfare that cannot be won by the US without morally unacceptable war policies, and a public that will not support a war action that lasts more than a year without an obvious existential threat to the country. There were no national leaders of either party that made the arguments against invasion that were logically consistent.

You can't be a member of the foreign policy establishment unless you support Israel completely. You see what happens to dissenters. Eliminating Saddam seemed like a way to advance Israel's interests (and others). Note: same can be said of attacking Lebanon. Of course, it did not work out that way.

Kevin --

Here's are questions I'd like to ask you and the "experts" who favored the war. First: "Were you in favor of proceeding to take Baghdad in the first Gulf War?" My guess is that, for the reasons Dick Cheney has eloquently and repeatedly stated, you and they did not. Second: "So what made you think it was a better idea a dozen years later?" My guess is you and they don't have a very good answer. Some of us remembered the views of those who thought taking Baghdad would lead to a quagmire and thought the war, aside from being contrary to traditional American policy, would simply lead to chaos.

(I mean, who did they expect to run Iraq? Ahmed Chalabi? Give me a break. They were in favor of creating a power vacuum that would suck us, the Sunnis, the Shi'ites, the Iranians, the Saudis, and maybe more, into a destabilizing civil war. What idiocy.)

The American foreign policy community has a bias in favor of military action — or, maybe more accurately, a bias against analysts who have a consistent history of skepticism toward military action. For obvious reasons this bias was amplified after 9/11.

Its not just a bias against those with a consistent history of skepticism, it's far worse than that. Its a bias against anyone with any history or no history of skepticism, as long as they are currently opposed to the war in question.

Kevin, your argument here is a very subtly camoflaged version of the argument that the netroots were right about Iraq for the wrong reasons because they are pacifists. But this is a lie. Many of us are not pacifists and many of us non-pacifists saw through Bush's WMD Hoax before the war. It wasn't hard if you were honest and unafraid of the impact on your career or reputation.

A lot of AFPC members, both liberal and conservative, supported the invasion of Iraq for principled reasons. It wasn't a matter of being cowed into agreement by an all-powerful foreign policy collective. They just flat out thought it was a good idea.

There was only one argument for the Iraq War that potentially passed muster in terms of Just War theory -- if Hussein had real WMD that he was trying to pass onto al Qaeda. This argument was exploded before the war, even though frightened pussies (present company *cough* NOT excluded) failed to appreciate that fact.

I am a left of ghandi liberal and I had reservations about bombing afghanistan (because the people there were not the problem it was the taliban that we had been supporting throughout the soviet invasion of...) but I was a little on the fence about iraq. Why? I could believe that he had weapons of mass destruction still. We GAVE him WMD. Rumsfeld HANDED them to saddam to fight the iranians. It was our fault that he probably had them. I was also swayed by the fact that Hillary supported the war... I figured she knew whatever Bill had known. And who wants to be wrong about this type of thing?

1) We knew the US had given saddam WMD.
2) All the people who were supposed to know something about it supported the invasion despite knowing that Bush was lying his ass off. Perhaps it was a gulf of tonkin incident that would have turned out correctly.

in any case, had bush/rummy/cheney/satan not been so arrogant we could have toppled the guy, set up some sympathetic baath member and let them sort it out themselves. but they screwed the whole thing up

In good conscience, I don't see how anyone can support the invasion of Afghanistan, while opposing the invasion of Iraq.

There's some nice rhetorical sleight-of-hand, there, Yancey. If I didn't know you to be such a ruggedly individualitic guy and all, I might even suspect you of dishonesty. At the time, it was perfectly valid to support the invasion of Afghanistan -- which was deliberately harboring al Qaeda, which actually attacked us on 9/11 and before -- and to oppose the invasion of Iraq, which not only didn't have any relationship with al Q worthy of the name, but also would likely have deprived the Afghanistan conflict of crucial resources, as many predicted at the time.

Speaking of which:

Neither action had long term chance of success, in my opinion- and both have turned out about exactly as I thought they would- protracted unorthodox warfare that cannot be won by the US without morally unacceptable war policies, and a public that will not support a war action that lasts more than a year without an obvious existential threat to the country.

Which, of course, explains ol' Yancey's long record of vocal opposition to Bush's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. But my memory is a bit hazy going back that far, Yancey ol' buddy. I'm sure that in your ruggedly individualist way you'd never write a self-flattering hindsight post, so I'm sure you can provide a contemporaneous citation of your expressing just that opinion.

Thanks in advance.

Other factors:

1. War opponents, for whatever reason, converged on an approach emphasizing moralistic/accusatory arguments at the expense of pragmatic/factual inquiry. These arguments played in to the hands of "skepticism skeptics", and was readily discounted.

2. There was consensus, here and abroad, that the sanctions-based containment regime was unsustainable -- and there was intense humanitarian concern over its induced excess mortality (same order of magnitude as the current conflict).

The casus belli were manifold, and nobody had to buy one standard version.

Finally, the was a typical war fever, in which ordinarily sane reviewers found incontestible merit in arguments they would find ludicrous in other contexts or at other times.

But there was no FP elite consensus for invasion. this would be a reinvention of history. At best, there was a marginal majority for coercive inspections, and a consensus acknowledgment that Bush was going to do something anyway (along with consensus acknowledgment that he had the legal and political wherewithal to proceed if he chose).

Kevin apparently missed the operative word: seemed.
Whether the media was actively complicit or simply derelict in its duty, the result was the same. Had the press, in all its forms, simply done its job and questioned the administration flacks (Rice/Cheyney/whoever), the lies used by the administration to panic the country into support would have quickly been laid bare.
"You said the Iraqis are developing/have developed X; yet the British, German, French and UN say no. What aren't you telling our allies? And why?"
However that is what real journalists do; we have talking heads.

Your "dynamics" all appear essentially to be groups and you left some big ones off the list.

The big group you left off the list was the American people themselves. Quite few posts above refer to Americans being pissed off and wanting to hit something, someone or anything, and were not too picky and all that is no doubt true; but for me it seemed as if the great American unwashed simply did not know or care.

I spent a lot of 2002 in California and I recall email rants home about stupid Americans who did not seem to know or care that they were being driven, as sheep, to a war that simply was not necessary or even relevant to the national interest or the world's well-being. The ability of the White House to say black was white was staggering, and the ability of the public (and its leaders) to swallow it and not call the lies was beyond belief.

I recall months of flicking through the news cable channels trying to get a sense of what it was all about and those channels did not much more than give me blow-by-blow repeats of the saga of some miners stuck at the bottom of a Pennsylvania mine shaft, or the endless courtroom drama of a paedophile murderer in San Diego, inanities about freedom fries. Real news that mattered? Forget about it. The hardcopy media was better, the cherry picking of intelligence and so on, was all reported - but it did not seem to get through and half of them appeared to be leading the charge.

For that matter, inanity brings me to another group not on the list, the US Congress, that simply turned and saluted the flag anytime there was a possibility that their patriotism might be called into question. You have been ill-served there too.

America's parochialism is truly appalling. I recall listening to Scott Ritter contributing a bit of common-sense on the car radio (driving past Irvine I remember) but his contribution was a very lonely, if ultimately correct, voice in America. The whole country was really and truly in la-la land.

What is truly amazing, however, is that it is now five years later and the truths so evident then are only in the last year or so being recognized amongst you, and with such a touch of wonder. Amazing.

It is so sad to see what has happened to my beloved America since 2000 but, at the bottom of my heart, I am beginning to realize that maybe you deserve what you have now because you have been so stupid, ignorant and unaware. And so afraid.

Wake up. The world really needs you. But not as you are.

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