Hi. Pleased to meet you! Sorry if this is awkward and I know its been a few days but Dave and I got to know each other through commenting on Shay's substack so maybe its an effective way for like minded people to find each other which I think its desirable.
Thank you for liking my below comments. Relatedly, I think its a problem where the left has such control of the narrative that most millennials and gen z people aren't even exposed to how the Bush administration would explain itself. Instead, you have a situation where the likes of Steve Bannon find people who have other unrelated quarrels with the left from things like Gamer Gate and claim this as a "conservative movement" of the younger generation. Which has nothing to do with the conservative movement of the older generation who are summarily dismissed by "edgy" internet trolls with Pepe the frog profile pictures making essentially left-wing arguments, who then go on to criticize the left for unrelated things.
Also, the mathematician GH Hardy once said "It is never worth a first-class man's time to express a majority opinion. By definition, there are plenty of others to do that". In 2003, when there was broad bipartisan support for going into Iraq, someone criticizing it might have been worth listening to if they were raising sensible concerns like about the insurgency or about the fact that de-Ba'athification in addition to putting many potential insurgents out of work would also dismiss the personnel needed to keep daily life running. But then these could have been put in tension with the arguments Shay has presented here and something could have been gotten out of the tension like not doing de-Ba'athification and having a strategy more like the surge from the outset. But if all people say is platitudes or left-wing jargon like "violence is not the answer, we should use diplomacy" or "hurr durr neocolonial imperialist military industrial complex hurr durr" then its kind of hard to do that. So I don't blame the Bush administration for "not listening". But what about now? Today clearly, as you note, Shay has expressed a small minority opinion at least in terms of what people are willing to express. And unlike much of the dissent against the bipartisan consensus is 2003, it actually makes sense. And yet most people just seem to like the sound of their own voice expressing what is clearly a majority opinion now, at least in terms of what people express.
There's also more empirical evidence NOW - at least in terms of what people commonly might be expected to reference - to refute the main claim of many of the critics of removing Saddam for the reasons presented here as opposed to the faulty intelligence about current WMDs, though as Shay mentions he would get WMDs even if he didn't already have them. The argument went "change must come from within" which was based on the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. But those were all tinpot regimes that relied on the USSR to crush dissidents like with the Prague spring and once Gorby decided "Moscow is silent", as the young Putin was famously told, it was game over for all of them. And of course Gorby himself decided to fold in Russia itself but now we have Putin so change did not "come from within" Russia, rather Eastern Europe and the Soviet republics elsewhere stopped being captive to Russia because Gorby let them go and now Putin wants to retake Ukraine. But as for whether or not change could "come from within" Iraq, may I present to you Syria? Furthermore, even if the Iraqi people could do their own regime change, how does that imply that the democratic Iraq wouldn't erupt on sectarian cleavages exploited by somebody like Zarqawi, which was the real cause of the Iraq war's death toll, not US involvement, which was a mitigating factor. And then if Saddam got WMDs, in the chaos, somebody like Zarqawi could obtain the WMDs.
People who fixate on the idea that we NOW know that Saddam didn't have WMDs YET don't answer the question as to how they would prevent the death toll of the Iraq War if he did have WMDs - the Bush administration developed a partial answer to that in the form of the surge strategy which was successful, and I have a further idea of my own that I can tell you privately. Also people who said "change must come from within" were not disoriented by Syria, and soon enough had to worry about the Bad Orange Man in their own country, even though he beat Jeb! in the 2016 GOP primary in part because the Dem perspective on Iraq had become accepted "wisdom" among the Republicans as well.
The Leftists and neo-progressives on the far Right who dropped chemical agents from the definition of weapons of mass destruction when it suited them deserve the utmost scorn, IMHO. Great essay, Shay. How quickly the narrative is warped by conventional wisdom, opportunism, and cravenness.
As I told you that's not it, and therefore this argument furthermore doesn't help make our case.
Saddam got rid of his chemical weapons after he used them twice, once against Iran and once against the Kurds. In responding to the discovery that he did not have WMDs, something Dick Cheney concedes (obviously, as he, contrary to popular belief, is a man of integrity), supporters of the invasion instead point out that he had used chemical weapons, an example of WMD, twice, suggesting a higher probability that he still had them, along with other WMDs.
They further argue that Saddam would have restarted his WMD program - biological, chemical and nuclear - after the collapse of the sanctions regime. That's the argument to make.
Another great column by Shay. Another benefit of the change in Iraq - no longer home to terrorists who needed a place to hide. And not talking about AQ. Going back years - Carlos the Jackal, Abu Abbas from the Achille Lauro attack and others.
There’s a good essay at the Dispatch by an Iraq War vet suggesting that Americans visit the country and observe how life for the average Iraqi has improved.
Yes and that's exactly the problem that people have, apart from us neocons. To the left, the horrors of Saddam's regime are "a figment of your colonial, orientalist imagination". To the Trumpist right, Saddam brought LAW AND ORDER and "killed terrorists".
Great piece! So few have the balls to make this argument anymore.
Hi. Pleased to meet you! Sorry if this is awkward and I know its been a few days but Dave and I got to know each other through commenting on Shay's substack so maybe its an effective way for like minded people to find each other which I think its desirable.
Thank you for liking my below comments. Relatedly, I think its a problem where the left has such control of the narrative that most millennials and gen z people aren't even exposed to how the Bush administration would explain itself. Instead, you have a situation where the likes of Steve Bannon find people who have other unrelated quarrels with the left from things like Gamer Gate and claim this as a "conservative movement" of the younger generation. Which has nothing to do with the conservative movement of the older generation who are summarily dismissed by "edgy" internet trolls with Pepe the frog profile pictures making essentially left-wing arguments, who then go on to criticize the left for unrelated things.
Also, the mathematician GH Hardy once said "It is never worth a first-class man's time to express a majority opinion. By definition, there are plenty of others to do that". In 2003, when there was broad bipartisan support for going into Iraq, someone criticizing it might have been worth listening to if they were raising sensible concerns like about the insurgency or about the fact that de-Ba'athification in addition to putting many potential insurgents out of work would also dismiss the personnel needed to keep daily life running. But then these could have been put in tension with the arguments Shay has presented here and something could have been gotten out of the tension like not doing de-Ba'athification and having a strategy more like the surge from the outset. But if all people say is platitudes or left-wing jargon like "violence is not the answer, we should use diplomacy" or "hurr durr neocolonial imperialist military industrial complex hurr durr" then its kind of hard to do that. So I don't blame the Bush administration for "not listening". But what about now? Today clearly, as you note, Shay has expressed a small minority opinion at least in terms of what people are willing to express. And unlike much of the dissent against the bipartisan consensus is 2003, it actually makes sense. And yet most people just seem to like the sound of their own voice expressing what is clearly a majority opinion now, at least in terms of what people express.
There's also more empirical evidence NOW - at least in terms of what people commonly might be expected to reference - to refute the main claim of many of the critics of removing Saddam for the reasons presented here as opposed to the faulty intelligence about current WMDs, though as Shay mentions he would get WMDs even if he didn't already have them. The argument went "change must come from within" which was based on the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. But those were all tinpot regimes that relied on the USSR to crush dissidents like with the Prague spring and once Gorby decided "Moscow is silent", as the young Putin was famously told, it was game over for all of them. And of course Gorby himself decided to fold in Russia itself but now we have Putin so change did not "come from within" Russia, rather Eastern Europe and the Soviet republics elsewhere stopped being captive to Russia because Gorby let them go and now Putin wants to retake Ukraine. But as for whether or not change could "come from within" Iraq, may I present to you Syria? Furthermore, even if the Iraqi people could do their own regime change, how does that imply that the democratic Iraq wouldn't erupt on sectarian cleavages exploited by somebody like Zarqawi, which was the real cause of the Iraq war's death toll, not US involvement, which was a mitigating factor. And then if Saddam got WMDs, in the chaos, somebody like Zarqawi could obtain the WMDs.
People who fixate on the idea that we NOW know that Saddam didn't have WMDs YET don't answer the question as to how they would prevent the death toll of the Iraq War if he did have WMDs - the Bush administration developed a partial answer to that in the form of the surge strategy which was successful, and I have a further idea of my own that I can tell you privately. Also people who said "change must come from within" were not disoriented by Syria, and soon enough had to worry about the Bad Orange Man in their own country, even though he beat Jeb! in the 2016 GOP primary in part because the Dem perspective on Iraq had become accepted "wisdom" among the Republicans as well.
The Leftists and neo-progressives on the far Right who dropped chemical agents from the definition of weapons of mass destruction when it suited them deserve the utmost scorn, IMHO. Great essay, Shay. How quickly the narrative is warped by conventional wisdom, opportunism, and cravenness.
As I told you that's not it, and therefore this argument furthermore doesn't help make our case.
Saddam got rid of his chemical weapons after he used them twice, once against Iran and once against the Kurds. In responding to the discovery that he did not have WMDs, something Dick Cheney concedes (obviously, as he, contrary to popular belief, is a man of integrity), supporters of the invasion instead point out that he had used chemical weapons, an example of WMD, twice, suggesting a higher probability that he still had them, along with other WMDs.
They further argue that Saddam would have restarted his WMD program - biological, chemical and nuclear - after the collapse of the sanctions regime. That's the argument to make.
Another great column by Shay. Another benefit of the change in Iraq - no longer home to terrorists who needed a place to hide. And not talking about AQ. Going back years - Carlos the Jackal, Abu Abbas from the Achille Lauro attack and others.
Yes sir!!! https://irp.fas.org/eprint/iraqi/
There’s a good essay at the Dispatch by an Iraq War vet suggesting that Americans visit the country and observe how life for the average Iraqi has improved.
That only works if an American is able to compare to life under Saddam.
Well, if we’ve all become so solipsistic that we can’t imagine the horrors of Saddam’s regime, then any experience is essentially meaningless.
Yes and that's exactly the problem that people have, apart from us neocons. To the left, the horrors of Saddam's regime are "a figment of your colonial, orientalist imagination". To the Trumpist right, Saddam brought LAW AND ORDER and "killed terrorists".