The Big Picture - Part II

I have a correspondent who believes the argument about this war rests on facts. The person with the best argument is the person who has his facts right. I've replied that the argument about this war rests on judgments, not facts. I reached a judgment long before the war started that it is wrong, and no facts will change the judgment. My opposition to the war is based on reasons, and nothing has occurred to change those reasons, to weaken my convictions. In a sense, even though the war has offered plenty of opportunities to say I told you so, judgments about the war are largely independent of day to day developments.

Let me give an example. In a recent article I said that no one wants to join the military anymore. My correspondent wrote back to say, you have your facts wrong! Here are the statistics to show that the military is still able to recruit soldiers. One response on my part might be to acknowledge that if I took more care to get my facts right, I'd be able to argue my case more effectively. But that's not my response at all. I don't really care how many people the army is able to recruit each month. The disturbing phenomenon we see is that the army is having trouble finding people qualified for the positions it needs to fill, at a time when the whole country should be united behind fighting the war that started on September 11, 2001. Instead of a united country, we have a divided one, one where the military itself says that recruiting numbers are down. When I say that no one wants to sign up for the military any more, the exaggeration is intentional. It's a way of stating a judgment, not a way of stating facts.

So let's take another look at the big picture. I've said that we should stay away from consequentialist reasoning when we think about this war, because a good outcome down the line won't justify what we've done. But I want to have it both ways. I do want to think about the bad consequences of this war. If good consequences come about years from now, I won't ignore them. They'll have to go in the balance against the bad consequences now. I can't imagine any good outcome that would outweigh what we've already seen. The government argues that the good outcome it's working for is victory in the war that began on September 11. That's a fantasy. No one ever won a war with a plan like the one these guys have. A lot of superpowers have lost their way with a plan like this one, though.

Here are some of the bad bits:

- Total ruination of our military: its credibility, its respect around the world, its ability to attract new soldiers, its ability to wage the type of war we're in, its whole reputation as a force for good in the world. Notice the exaggeration? Not all of these things have happened yet: not everywhere, anyway. The process is far along, though, much further along than we care to think.

- Loss of our position as the world's leading power. World leadership does not depend on our power to blow things up. It depends on our ability to persuade people to follow us. We can't do that anymore. We have lost a lot of followers during the last three years, since Bush began to prepare the world for our attack.

- An inability to fight our real enemies, now and in the future. The war in Iraq is the only game we have. When it's over, what plans will we have to fight Al Qaeda, the people who did us harm, and who continue to plan our destruction? Our plans to fight them will be no further along than they were when we launched the Iraq war in March 2003. Our motivation to fight them will be nil, until their next successful attack. In a way, though, they don't even need to launch another attack against us. They have already managed to remove us from our position of world leadership, with a lot of help from us, and I don't think they could ask for a lot more. We put Al Qaeda on the run in Afghanistan, but they've already achieved their aim of weakening our influence.

- Loss of the initiative in the fight. Al Qaeda took the initiative on September 11, and except for a short time in Afghanistan during the winter and spring of 2002, they have kept it. If I were in their place, I would like my position: time is on their side, they can hardly deal with all the people who want to blow themselves up for them, they have money and new recruits are flowing in, their opponent is struggling, on the defensive and unable to achieve any of its goals.

- No opportunity to redeem ourselves. We've missed them all. Others have given up on us. We will pay the price of arrogance and fight without friends. Did you think we would reach this point in the weeks after September 11? We all knew that a war started on that day. Did you envision this one three and a half years later? How did you think the war would look to its participants once we got mobilized to fight? Did you think it would look like this?

In the balance on the good side is the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. No one can argue the beneficial impact of that result, accomplished in three violent weeks in the spring of 2002. Removing Kim Jong Il would have a benficial impact, too, but there are reasons we don't do it. On balance, the bad consequences of the war in Iraq far outweigh the one good one. And that's a matter of judgment.

That's all for tonight. Thanks for reading,

Steve