Iraq: (oil + dictator + WMD/Fear)

War: (War powers + money + need for intelligence)

If they were not considering history here, then were they considering POWER, the getting of it, the keeping of it? Through oil and money? As an excuse for more surveillance? Funded by money siphoned from the war? War Powers to enable it all?

You lay out a great case for why they never should have invaded. I agree.

But then the question remains, exactly as you pose it: "why great America made such a blunder?"

Thus my speculations and questions above.

Could such a terrible, horrible scenario have been operative?

I find a lot to like in Greg Palast's view that there was a tussle between the neocon and more sober state dept/oil types. While the neocon dream was insane, the "realist" approach was at least fairly plausible, if not exactly moral. But the balance see-sawed toward the crazies when the time came, and the realist Jake Garner was ousted quickly, too.

The administration coudn't agree on a unfied rationale so they used all of them. Thus various writers could find something to be down with.

Mainly, I think, the elite was feeling that Afghanistan was just reaction, and they wanted action. 9/11 embarrassed them as much as angered them. The one rationale that had the widest popularity was "they only respect strength", which I heard from conservative and nominally liberal friends both.

There's nothing unpatriotic about not believing that there were any good motives for this war and you should probably apologize for implying otherwise.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Ignatieff . . doesn't even begin to know all the reasons why he was so completely nutso about Iraq. It makes me wonder if anyone who was wrong about Iraq has yet gotten right about why they were wrong. Reed Hundt

But listing all the facts which made invading Iraq a bad idea has little if anything to do with the question of why Ignatieff made the error in judgment that he did -- that is, the question of what "reasons" led to his mistaken judgment.

He says it resulted from a combination of wishful (hopeful?) thinking and of admiration for and loyalty to Iraqi emigres whose lives were being rendered meaningless. The issue is whether 1) those are the true reasons and 2) whether, if they are, the rest of us should care.

As to the first we cannot know and in the event there's no reason to think that Ignatieff is telling the truth. And as to Ignatieff's character flaws, who cares.

Good points, TW. It should be noted that their respect of strength was "monorail" and did not extend to the peace/negotiating table, public relations or strength in planning. The rationale only related to immediate physical military strength. These are the same ol' same ol' rationales from our cave man ancestors; nothing elevated.

What bothered me about the "strength" argument was it left out the fact that revenge was equal if not more important to desert cultures.

Just a couple of comments:

1. meant that the invasion of Iraq would be perceived globally as unwarranted

1. As to why great America made such a blunder, I reject the unpatriotic view that no one had good motives.

Ignatieff cites Machiavelli that a prince (i.e., a dictator, since he wrote "The Prince" as a handbook for dictators) ought not to be afraid of doing wrong, and Ignatieff gives the example of t Churchill and Roosevelt as not having been afraid of doing wrong (I'm not sure to what extent this is even true, by the way. Tellingly, we are not supplied with details).

1) The fact is, however, that Churchill and Roosevelt (who were not Princes, or dictators, but leaders of republics) (and DeGaulle, whom Ignatieff also mentions) are not remembered for doing wrong i.e., for making mistakes -- but for what they consistently and predictably did right 90 percent of the time, and for consulting with and deferring to the knowledge of experts when they were wrong (conspicuously and often, in Churchill's case). In contrast, Ignatieff and Bush will be remembered for what they consistently did wrong 90 percent of the time and for flying in the face of and ignoring expert opinion.

2) Significantly, Ignatieff does not cite Machiavelli on the disastrous unwisdom of trusting exiles that comprises Chapter 31 of his "Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy" (or handbook for Republics), a book that is less sensational but more representative of Machiavelli's beliefs and conduct of life and certainly more germane to the political system we ostensibly have now.

It is troubling that Ignatieff was a teacher of history and political "science" (which he correctly characterizes as worthless, as a discipline of knowledge) to our future leaders at Harvard's school of government. No doubt this partially explains the abysmal leadership we now have.

Ignatieff's article shows him to still be a full-blown neo-con and egomaniac, a' la Conrad Black, and he will thus be remembered.

Flashback 2002, the Guardian, UK:

"Officials in the CIA, FBI and energy department are being put under intense pressure to produce reports which back the administration's line, the Guardian has learned. In response, some are complying, some are resisting and some are choosing to remain silent.

"Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," said Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-intelligence. .............
Mr Cannistraro said the flow of intelligence to the top levels of the administration had been deliberately skewed by hawks at the Pentagon.

"CIA assessments are being put aside by the Defense department in favor of intelligence they are getting from various Iraqi exiles," he said. "Machiavelli warned princes against listening to exiles. Well, that is what is happening now."

by Julian Borger in Washington
Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

I think destor meant if you didn't buy the BS and lies Bush gave to invade Iraq, you should not be called 'unpatriotic', or in a nutshell, a patriot could think Bush was full of shit.

They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.

Ignatieff

No, they opposed the war because wars kill and terrorize people. Unjustified wars and conflicts based on lies, fear mongering, and greed are without a doubt crimes against humanity.

"War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity,"

Pope John Paul II Jan 13, 2003

Yes, I too think he meant just that.

I was tying to say tell it to those ascribing patriotic motives the Iraqi disaster not destor.

I guess I wasn't clear enough that I was amplifying his remark.

Wishful thinking can still be checked, in a thoughtful thinker, by "defensive pessimism": certain events should stick in one's mind like red flags or warning bells. For instance, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (how hard was it to imagine they would want to try again?), or the well-publicized fact that Iraqi soldiers dropped their guns and ran when confronted during the first Gulf War (these are the guys we're counting on now?). Or the fact that Ahmed Chalabi stood to gain from the invasion. Of course, the energy that goes into careful thinking usually gets displaced by the drive to enhance one's comfort zone - barely even a choice for those whose choices counted.

First of all, Ignatief's rambling, non-specific maybe-culpa was a very sorry excuse for an epiphany. This guy was a professor of political science? I guess today political science is essentially the science of saying nothing in as many words as possible. That part about intellectual life vs political life reminded me of Rumsfeld-speak: known-knowns and unknown-knowns and such. Drivel.

As an influential and supposedly intellectual person, Ignatieff participated in bringing to pass this nightmare of the Iraq War, with all its glaring immoralities and disastrous outcomes, and he bares responsibility for it. Yet he could barely bring himself to say he was sorry, much less articulate clearly how he came to make the mistakes. Perhaps in a moment of bad conscience (and why try to explain your mistakes if you don't feel bad about them?), he felt the need to talk about it, but when pen met paper he lost his courage and started kerfluffeling with intellectual mumbo jumbo having almost nothing to do with his ultimate realization that he'd been wrong and the result is horrific.

I think Ignatieff should rewrite his essay using a few expository writing rules, a little Strunk&White action, and see if he can make it clear and simple.

Maybe he could explain how he forgot how horrific war is, how unpredictable, how expensive, what a lousy instrument of policy, how completely antithetical war is to the principles of humane, democratic ideals, how stupid and cruel and unjust it is, how good intentions in war are inevitably vaporized by bombs and bullets no matter who sets them off.

Reed ticks off a long list of historical reasons why the war was ill-fated. I'd like to hear Mr. Ignatieff explain by what process he ignored all that, what blinded him in spite of his intellectual prowess and knowledge of history.

Ignatieff's article was bunk, like Tenet's autobiography, self-serving and utterly without remorse, gauze meant to cover the wound, not expose it. True remorse requires a full divestiture of one's errors, down to the bone. Sorry Mr. I., but "listening too much to Iraqi exiles" barely scratches the surface.

TB

Bronto: " 'They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.' No, they opposed the war because wars kill and terrorize people."

There's a lot to be said wrong about his article, and we've all said it, but I'm afraid you managed to find one bit of criticism that's misplaced. You're quoting selectively. The paragraph says that while, sure, some people had knee-jerk reactions (and I've hear the oil explanation assuredly from the blogosphere, too), it was unfair to associate critics with those because lots of the prewar criticism was good (in fact, better than just "wars kill"), and he just didn't listen to it.

It's a natural mistake. I read hastily, and the sentence got my dander up, too. But I took a deep breath and got over it.  

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

As to why great America made such a blunder, I reject the unpatriotic view that no one had good motives.
I reject the unpatriotic view that it is unpatriotic to be skeptical of the motives of any governmental entity. This goes doubled, vulnerable, in spades for the current Kleptocracy in the White House who were, if memory serves, the authors of the Mesopotamian cataclysm.

If the war ended in May 2003 after six weeks, who won?

There is no mistake. Ignatieff doesn't know why people opposed this 'war', he speculates and pontificates. He never once mentions war opponents objections to the inevitable products of war: death, killing and terrorizing people.

In fact, he never mentions the words 'kill' or 'death' in his entire piece.

Ignatieff further blathers on:

One thing is clear: The costs of staying will be borne by Americans, while the cost of leaving will be mostly borne by Iraqis.

It would appear the average Iraqi is paying the higher price whether the US stays or goes.

Afraid my dander's still up on that one.

"But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong."

Sure. And all twelve of 'em came out to protest our invasion of Afghanistan. The rest of us supported it, and in fact thought not blowing it in Afghanistan was one of the key reasons for rejecting a gratuitous, distracting and destabilizing war in Iraq. That's why millions came out against the latter, and very few against the former.

He does go on to describe quite accurately "The people who truly showed good judgment on Iraq predicted the consequences that actually ensued but also rightly evaluated the motives that led to the action..." and so on. But I note that whereas I'm still hearing lots from the war supporters, including ambiguous mea culpas like this one, I'm still not hearing so much from people who got it right and had to endure the opprobrium of the war supporters, including having their motives and reasoning impugned in exactly the terms Ignatieff uses in that first paragraph.

And one reason they're still not getting their due is because what's in that first paragraph about the people who were right but for the wrong reasons still dominates the received wisdom about them--and the overwhelming majority of us who stood out in the cold to witness to our objections. The Dirty F--ing Hippies, as Atrios names them.

I'd feel a lot more like Ignatieff got the point if he replaced the gratuitous smear against a small minority of anti-war voices with a great big abject apology to some named--and currently still marginalized--examples of people who "predicted the consequences" and/or "rightly evaluated the motives that led to the action." Scott Ritter, for instance.

Because it seems like an awful lot of the people who got it wrong are still enjoying the fruits of their erroneous but politically acceptable utterances and people on the other side... not so much. And a lot of us who came out in our millions to protest this thing are sick of having our judgment about things that seemed (and seem) perfectly OBVIOUS impugned by people like Ignatieff who couldn't see what was right in front of their faces.

ha, ha, ha! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-rees/cormac-ignatieffs-the-r_b_59363.html

Why, the good old U.S. of A., of course.

Indeed, all war aims had been achieved by May 1st. All WMD possessed by Iraq before March 20 had been destroyed* and Saddam and his henchmen had either been captured or put on the run.

* Although it must be granted it took Kay and Duelfer an ungodly amount of time and money to confirm this unparalled success.

The ease with which many in Government and many in private life champion going to war is a national disgrace. They all have one thing in common; it won't be them going off to fight.

Ignatieff and many others now realize their "mistake". I say; 'Tell that to those who died or were maimed for life.'

This wasn't a 'mistake' of being pro/con a tax cut, a social program, a trade deal; things that can be rectified, this was a mistake concerning a life or death issue.

I'd like to take Ignatieff's column and shove it down his throat, right after I kick Bill Kristol in the ass for his pushing a "robust foreign policy" on Meet the Press.