Dr. Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute on With Friends Like These, U.S. Enemies Don't Seem As Bad:
The media made much of President Bush’s “axis of evil” — much as administration “spinners” had hoped. The excessive demonization of the admittedly autocratic Iran, North Korea, and Iraq allowed the administration to build public support for an aggressive invasion of Iraq as well as hard-line policies toward these “rogue” states. But a more appropriate moniker might be “axis of exaggeration.” The Bush administration has failed to find unconventional (nuclear, biological and chemical) weapons in Iraq or to provide convincing evidence that the crude and limited super weapons programs in any of these three nations actually constitute a threat to a superpower half a world away. Perhaps as shocking as the administration’s exaggeration of the threat from these three “rogues,” is the unacknowledged real danger posed by snuggling up to “friendly” despotic countries — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — the Bush administration’s “axis of expediency.”
The interesting part of this whole equation (which is pooh-poohed by the nationalists among us) is the fact that we once enjoyed the same type of relationship with Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and other bad men. For decades. And we are doing it all over again.
Who knows, maybe we'll be invading Saudi Arabia in five years. Or politically unstable Pakistan next year. How long before whatever puppet we eventually leave in Iraq turns on us? How many junior Saddams are now in our good graces? How many are we going to create, like the one we just took out of power? How many times will we repeat this circlejerk? I fear the answer.
Read the rest of Dr. Eland's article here. This entry also posted at Stand Down.
Well, it might be possible that the result of military action in Iraq may have something to do with current events around the world as we blog.
“WASHINGTON – The dawning new year has been witness to good news from a number of the world’s most protracted conflicts and dangerous trouble spots.
Promising developments are suddenly marking the global landscape: between nuclear powers India and Pakistan; in Sudan, where rebels this week reached an agreement with southern rebels that could end Africa’s longest civil war; in Libya, which recently announced it would give up its unconventional weapons programs to reenter the community of nations; in US-Iranian relations, with Iran agreeing to international inspection of nuclear sites; and even in North Korea, which this week offered to freeze its nuclear programs.
While foreign-policy experts generally remain cautious about linking these events too closely or about assigning them a common catalyst, they do see some common threads.”
Posted by Gazza on January 9, 2004 12:29 AM
Oh come on. This is ‘heads i win, tails you lose’ logic. There are always good things going on in the world, just as there are always bad things going on. As you well know (or should do), the Libyans have been becoming more ‘moderate’ for a number of years now, and any public statements they have made about this are explicit about the reasons: they want the lifting of sanctions (you know, the kind of sanctions that’ weren’t working’ in Iraq). I have absolutely no idea what Sudan could possibly have to do with Iraq, but again, there are always ceasefires and attempts at peace treaties (which sometimes break down) in war situations. There has been a long term battle in Iran between ‘moderates’ and ‘hardliners’ going back to the mid ‘eighties, which the ‘moderates’ seem (if only temporarily) to be winning. North Korea is a more difficult case: it has vacillated between bluster and deference to South Korea(and the US). If i had to guess i would imagine that North Korea’s offer is not serious (but i may be wrong).
But what about the things that are getting worse? The plight of the Palestinians, the internal human rights situation in Pakistan and the ‘stan’ countries generally etc. etc.?
What is going on here is two elementary mistakes: firstly mistaking correlation for causation, and secondly making inferences in the absence of a ‘control’. Just because the things mentioned above followed after the Iraq invasion, it does NOT follow that they were CAUSED by the invasion. And secondly, you can’t infer that they would not have happened ANYWAY. As i have argued elsewhere, there are long term trends towards democracy and away from totalitarianism in all the middle eastern countries. These have been continuing for decades without the help (and frequently with the hindrance) of the US. For the US and Britain to take credit for these things now is staggering hypocrisy.
(Incidentally what i mean by absence of a ‘control’ can be explained by an example from road safety. There is a long term improvement in road casualty rates which has been going on since the ‘sixties. Therefore if you make an ‘intervention’ and casualty rates go down, you can’t infer that this is because of your intervention. In the same way, GIVEN THAT THEMIDDLE EAST (and the world generally) HAS BEEN TENDING TO BECOMEMORE DEMOCRATIC OVER THE LAST TWENTY YEARS ANYWAY) you can’t infer that any further changes in this direction are the direct (or indirect for that matter) result of the invasion).
What i mean by ‘heads i win tails you lose logic’ is that when ‘good’ things happen it is as a result of the war on terrorism, but when ‘bad’ things happen it is apparently because we have not been fighting the war on terrorism hard enough. For these claims to mean anything, strict criteria for ‘success’ and ‘failure’ have to be set out before the operation begins. Have terrorist atrocities decreased since the ‘war’ began? Do we feel safer? Is Al-Qaeda defeated, or close to defeat?
In any case
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1119380,00.html
it seems the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction is almost over.
Posted by Brendan on January 9, 2004 05:17 AM
Brendan, I agree with your point on causality. Without omniscient knowlegde of the hearts and minds of those in the middle east, I can not say what positive things are the result of the Iraq war. I also cannot say what negative things were caused by the war, nor can I say that those positive things were NOT caused by the war. Both sides of the argument have been guilty of pointing at things that are not positively tied to the war and saying that the war caused it or didnt cause it. Assumptions cause all sorts of issues. It is of course feasible that Sadam would hae been deposed without the war, that all the middle east would have turned around on their own. It is also feasible that trade is the best thing for democracy and that no sanctions have ever been a benefit. It is further feasible that the overall loss of life and resources would have been far worse if we had not gone to war and simply “let things take their natural course”. It is even feasible that if the UN had been in support of the action that things would be no better off. I am no fortune teller, and neither are you. There are a few things that can be tied directly to the war, some positive, some negative. As much as we like to look at the big picture and say what is good and what isnt, that is something only time really tells, and even if things work out well, is there a gaurantee that they couldnt have worked out better? The causality concept could shoot down practically every argument I have heard on either side of this whole thing.
Posted by limberwulf on January 9, 2004 09:29 AM
Limberwulf:
i think that’s true, and part of the reason that the ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ war debate has gone on interminably: there is no criteria for being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. No one is prepared to make a prediction (for the very good reason that predictions might turn out to be wrong) excepts ones that are so vague as to be meaningless. So the anti-war position is that ‘bad’ things will happen as a result of the war, and pro-war that ‘good’ things will happen, but the precise nature of these things is never defined, or is introduced post hoc (for example, the opening of the schools and hospitals in Iraq: fine, but this was never a prediction of the pro-war case made BEFORE the war: the rapprochement with Libya is the same). The result is that whatever happens in Iraq everyone can claim that they were ‘right’. And so the debate goes on. The problem is that whereas in science there is no particular stigma attached to being wrong, in political science this is very far from being the case. I’ve always been pretty careful not to make predictions (how would i know what’s going to happen in the future? i’m not a fortune teller), but you could argue that that means my position is inherently untestable, which i would tend to agree with. It’s not a question with an easy answer. I do think that there are two issues here, though: a MORAL issue (was the war justified morally?), and a PRAGMATIC issue (will it be better for the people of Iraq), and people tend to switch between the two issues without acknowledgement. If i kill someone who (i discover later) was a mass murderer on the way to kill people then this was morally wrong, but pragmatically justified. But people tended to elide the two arguments, making all sorts of predictions as to what would happen in Iraq that were obviously far too pessimistic, because they felt that the war was ‘bad’ and that this would somehow be proven if ‘bad’ things resulted from it. On the other hand, it does explain in my opinion, all the fuss about WMD: at least this question is empirically testable: there either were such weapons or there weren’t. One of the key predictions of (most) of the pro-war people were that such WMDs would be discovered.
This has been a bit more philosophical than most posts, but it does explain, in my opinion, why few people are going to have their minds changed by the debate, and why it will go on (in theory) forever: if you are arguing post hoc you can always find reasons for your position being the correct one.
Posted by Brendan on January 9, 2004 10:39 AM
Absolutely right Brendan. I will say this for the never ending debate though: when it is carried out by thinking individuals who are willing to be honest with themselves and others and set aside emotion, it can certainly reveal a great deal more about a situation than any one person’s perspective could possibly discover on its own. In the short time I have started truly discussing this subject on this site and others I have found far more reason to dislike our current crop of leaders than I had found on my own. And I have also been pointed towards a few more alternatives than I had personally thought of. I am far from having mymind changed, but I have certainly had my mind improved and excersized. If nothing else I am at least a lot less lazy on studying what I am talking about. There is nothing like a bunch of propoganda and lies to mess up what would otherwise be a productive debate, its good to find a place where one can engage in such debates with a very low amount of that couding the issue. Many thanks to the founders of this arena.
As for WMD’s, I will be quite bothered by the whole opening premise for war if they are not found, even though that was only 1/3 of the reasons given to go. I have not written them off as non-existent yet, not because I am holding lost hope that they be found and my position exhonerated (though that might be nice), simply because I dont like being yet another “I want it now” American. I could hide some pretty phenominal stuff in a place the size of Iraq if given enough time. I might be able to shuffle it off to some other place entirely. The fact that the WMD’s havent been found is not proof that they were not there, at least, not yet. Eventually, there will be a time that I will concede that they did not exist, but I have not reached that point. I will say this though, I wont be one of those tos witch arguments to something new just because my old one is beaten if it turns out there are indeed none to be found. Time alone will tell…
Posted by limberwulf on January 9, 2004 04:24 PM
Ahem. I said…ahem.
Just an an aside, highway casualty rates have gone down as a direct result of seatbelt laws, airbags, lower highway speeds, drunk driving enforcement, and redesigned car interiors and structural integrity.
Of course, to someone who hated the automobile industry, none of these factors would be credited with the drop in highway casualties.
See…sometimes these things happen for “NO REASON”.
What silliness. I’m still laughing at the line “The Middle East is just naturally becoming more democratic”. BWAHHAHAHAHAHAHA. ha.
Posted by Robert Kessler on January 9, 2004 04:18 PM
careful Robert, I tend to agree that there is outside influence involved, but remember that the US was a colony under the rule of a dictator at one point. Who told us to be “democratic”? Man strives for freedom by nature, and that goes for all men. I have no problem helping others in their struggle for freedom, nor in showing what freedom can be like. I do have a problem in showing them what the US is right now, because its not exactly what I would call “free.” We have fallen far from the free place we once were, and as a result, we do not have the greatness of growth and innovation we once did either. It is not entirely gone, neither the freedom or the greatness, but we need to get back to the roots of what we once were before I will be truly proud of this nation again.
Everything happens for a reason, but a lot of things will be tied to the incorrect reasons to fit our own perceptions. That which is self-evident to us isnt necessarily the truth, and that goes for both sides of the debate.
Posted by limberwulf on January 9, 2004 04:34 PM
oh robert robert robert.
I may not know much, but believe me, i know about road safety, having studied little else over the last few years.
The basic law of highway safety is known as Smeed’s Law (as you will be aware from your vast knowledge of the safety literature) which relates traffic volume to accident rates. This is the best predictor of the current reduction in accident rates (and just in the highly remote chance you know what you are talking about, i am aware that the reduction in accident rates since the sixties is to a certain extent a statistical construct and the reduction in some ways has been going on since long before then).
There is a genuine debate about the efficacy of seat belts etc….as you will be aware from your profound knowledge of works such as John Adam’s Risk, and Gerald Wilde’s Target Risk. I have actually read all of Gerald Wilde’s writings on Risk Homeostasis, and carried out studies on it myself, so i am slightly sceptical, but few doubt that the predictions of the seat belt lobby have not been borne out: the same goes for all the other things you mention: i would give you the references except you clearly have them all yourself: i’m not going to insult you by implying you talk endlessly about things you know nothing about.
Smeed’s law (as you will know) seems to work because with higher traffic volume traffic speeds are lowered: moreover, with gridlock
(paradoxically) you simply have less oppurtunites to have an accident. John Adams has a different interpretation, as you will be aware, in his famous paper on the subject, which you will of course have read.
This is, therefore, an example of a system ‘self organising’ without ‘top down control’ as you will be aware from your vast knowledge of complexity and systems theory. You laugh at the idea that things happen for ‘no reason’, which is good because of course i never said nor implied that.
I have two full filing cabinets next to my desk full of papers concerning road safety, and describing the work in safety i have done for the nuclear industry and the rail industry. However, from your patronising tone you sound like you have more. May i borrow some?
I’m glad to see you are laughing at the line “The Middle East is just naturally becoming more democratic” because of course that’s your line not mine, and i’m laughing at it too. What i wrote was
“THE MIDDLE EAST (and the world generally) HAS BEEN TENDING TO BECOME MORE DEMOCRATIC OVER THE LAST TWENTY YEARS ANYWAY”. This is debatable (all points are debatable), but i think in the context of Iran, Afghanistan, UAE, Lebanon etc, it is fairly unarguable (even Saudi has made positive noises, although for the moment noises is all they are)(whether of course this democratisation will continue is anyone’s guess). I would argue that due the exigencies of operating in a high technology ‘wired’ world, there will be a tendency towards democratic government in all countries, simply because it is more efficient (the efficiency of the Allied war effort as opposed to the Nazi war effort is well known: totalitarian states are intrinsically inefficient). Middle Eastern states have been held back by their oil which has enabled the ruling elites to ‘bribe’ their population. Nevertheless, which declining oil stocks in the middle east (and the necessity, therefore, to introduce new industries into the economy), and the introduction of mobile phones, the internet and satellite TV, i think democratic pressures are growing. I know quite a few people who have lived in Saudi Arabia and UAE recently, perhaps you would like to debate it with them? Or are you threatened by people who know what they are talking about?
Posted by Brendan on January 9, 2004 05:40 PM
Hey, Brendan, where did Kessler suddenly get all that wonderful knowledge? Find out what cereal he’s eating.
Posted by Anonymous on January 9, 2004 07:50 PM
incidentally i meant to delete afghanistan because i thought it would lead to irrelevant bullshit, but actually i don’t think there is much doubt that khabul, at present, is more free than it was ten or twenty years ago (the provinces are another matter). Whether this process will continue in the short run is anyone’s guess (i have posted on this elsewhere and have no intention of repeating the discussion here). However, as i have said, as countries industrialise, i think there are long term trends towards democratisation in all countries, although of course, there may be fairly heavy set backs in the short to medium term. On the other hand, as Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead….
Posted by brendan on January 9, 2004 06:07 PM
Further on Brendan’s point, I think some of the predictions made by either side in the “war vs. nowar” debate have been quite testable, other (sometimes of necessity) more vague. And some are just casting about for justification after the fact.
The predictions that Saddam had WMD or links to al Qaeda were eminently testable, and both failed the test. The predictions that Iraq’s conventional army would fold quickly was borne out. On the antiwar side, specific predictions about the regional consequences of the invasion were also testable, and weren’t borne out. OTOH, predictions that the invasion would lead to a bloody insurgency are certainly proving correct, though how bloody it will get and how long it will last are still up in the air.
There are also specific predictions whose ultimate resolution is just longer-term, and don’t lend themselbes to the instant gratification atmosphere of blogspace. We have reason to suspect that the Iraq War has not only failed to dent al Qaeda, but actually strengthened it; at this point, however, we simply can’t prove that (and it’s one of those situations where you hope to be wrong). In a similar vein, we’re not going to have strong indicators of exactly what damage the war (and the pre-war fiasco) has done to the international system, or how extensive or long-lasting that will be, for some time yet. Nor are we likely to know how or even if the full neocon scenario for the region is going to implemented, and what its fallout will be if it is.
On the other side, humanitarian hawks — which is now at least superficially most of them since the core justification for the war failed –believe the ultimate results of the invasion will justify their immediate human cost. This argument is often based on very specific things, like quality of life and the number of people Saddam would probably have killed, so it’s testable even if that process is complex in the extreme. And we won’t know the answer to that for a while either, though there are strong reasons to suspect otherwise.
Naturally, prowars casting about to ennoble the enterprise will seize on recent positive developments as being connected to the war. The ties are weak — arguably weaker than the negative events that surrounded the buildup (which the average ‘monger of course pooh-poohed as being connected at all). While people claiming that Libya or Sudan were connected to the war can be pretty much dismissed IMO, those claiming a tie to improvements in Iranian or Korean relations have a somewhat better case. OTOH, I tend to think those miniature “thaws” are cautious attempts to exploit the clear faltering of the neocon agenda as a way of returning to business as usual. I wouldn’t look for them to last if the US resumes a hyper-aggressive stance.
[* – I, for instance, thought it quite possible that Turkey would be drawn into the conflict trying to suppress the Kurds. Wrongly so, at least in the short term. There were even more extreme predictions that had Saddam launched WMD at various people… which were based on the assumption that there was at least some truth in Washington’s claims. Oops.]
Posted by Doctor Slack on January 9, 2004 04:29 PM
I don’t think it’s possible to “excessively demonise” North Korea – that is one godawful place with one scary dictator.
Posted by Yehudit on January 9, 2004 05:33 AM
who stated anywhere that North Korea had been ‘excessively demonised?’
Posted by Brendan on January 9, 2004 05:39 AM
er…ok sorry i didn’t read the original post…apologies to Yehudit (about the ‘excessive demonisation’) thing.
Posted by brendan on January 9, 2004 08:27 AM
just drifting thru the web cam across this site:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB21/06-01.htm
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/
also worth checking out.
These are secret documents recently declassified. Here is George Bush in1991 in the secret document authorising Desert Storm: ‘Access to Persian OIL and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to US national security.’. (note, if you will, the order in which these priorities are expressed).
Posted by brendan on January 9, 2004 06:53 AM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1119720,00.html
Posted by Anonymous on January 9, 2004 09:14 AM
This is a newly published study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I disagree with what seems to me to be an amoral, utilitarian perspective. (For example, the notions that the US shouldn’t lie, because if we do other states will stop believing what we say, and it will be that much harder for us to make them do what we tell them; or that the US should not invade states that pose no threat at all to the US, because our allies (due to European squeamishness?) will be reluctant to join in, and the US might overlook some slightly bigger threat that it might be more efficient for us to pulverize. )
These examples are exaggerated just to make clear what I’m driving at. The paper doesn’t say these things. What it does do is criticize certain actions or practices of the US as ineffective or unproductive, or counterproductive, and no doubt they are. But, more importantly, in my view, they are also wrong. It is wrong for US officials to lie about other states, to claim such states have weapons, or alliances with terrorists, which US officials know such states don’t have, or have no good reason to believe that they have. It is wrong fabricate threats from such states based on non-existent weapons combined with non-existent alliances. It is wrong to make war on such states using fabricated threats as a pretext.
Certainly I don’t want the US to pursue policies which are ineffective, unproductive, counterproductive or what have you. But the US military power is so overwhelming that considerations of efficiency or utility will not, in the short run, prevent us from inflicting a huge amount of suffering before we run out of resources. Only ethics, values, morals, a keen sense of right and wrong will prevent it, in the short run. And the Carnegie report’s silence regarding these considerations is where I take issue with it.
That being said, it is a valuable study with much to recommend it. Below are excerpts from its “GUIDE TO KEY FINDINGS,” a sort of executive summary. The report is, I suggest, among the “must reads” for all who are seriously interested in the subjects discussed on this thread.
WMD IN IRAQ – EVIDENCE AND IMPLICATIONS
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
GUIDE TO KEY FINDINGS
Iraq’s WMD programs represented a long-term threat that could not be ignored. They did not, however, pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the region, or to global security. (p. 47)
With respect to nuclear and chemical weapons, the extent of the threat was largely knowable at the time. (p. 47)
Iraq’s nuclear program had been dismantled and there was no convincing evidence of its reconstitution. (p. 47)
Regarding chemical weapons, UNSCOM discovered that Iraqi nerve agents had lost most of their lethality as early as 1991. Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, and UN inspections and sanctions effectively destroyed Iraq’s large-scale chemical weapon production capabilities. For both reasons, it appears that thereafter Iraq focused on preserving a latent, dual-use capability, rather than on weapons production. (p. 47–48)
[…]
It is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed, hidden, or sent out of the country the hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons, dozens of Scud missiles and facilities engaged in the ongoing production of chemical and biological weapons that officials claimed were present without the United States detecting some sign of this activity before, during, or after the major combat period of the war. (p. 55)
[…]
Prior to 2002, the intelligence community appears to have overestimated the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq but had a generally accurate picture of the nuclear and missile programs. (p. 50)
The dramatic shift between prior intelligence assessments and the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), together with the creation of an independent intelligence entity at the Pentagon and other steps, suggest that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policymakers’ views sometime in 2002. (p. 50)
There was and is no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam’s government and Al Quad. (p. 48)
There was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMD to Al Qaeda and much evidence to counter it. (p. 48)
The notion that any government would give its principal security assets to people it could not control in order to achieve its own political aims is highly dubious. (p. 49)
Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs, beyond the intelligence failures noted above, by:
Treating nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as a single “WMD threat.”
The conflation of three distinct threats, very different in the danger they pose, distorted the cost/benefit analysis of the war. (p. 52)
Insisting without evidence—yet treating as a given truth—that Saddam Hussein would give whatever WMD he possessed to terrorists. (p. 52)
Routinely dropping caveats, probabilities, and expressions of uncertainty present in intelligence assessments from public statements.(p. 53)
Misrepresenting inspectors’ findings in ways that turned threats from minor to dire. (p. 53)
While worst case planning is valid and vital, acting on worst case assumptions is neither safe nor wise. (p. 54)
The assertion that the threat that became visible on 9/11 invalidated deterrence against states does not stand up to close scrutiny. (p. 57)
FULL TEXT
http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/IraqReport3.asp?from=pubdate
Posted by Tom Doyle on January 10, 2004 03:41 AM