When Does Warfare Require A National Conversation?
I’m still trying to work out the moral calculus of the anti-war left so bear with me. But one oddity above all others stands out: when it was on the table to launch military strikes against the government of Iraq, we discussed it for months and months and months (and months). We had a National Conversation about it. Intellectuals and retired generals and university professors and screen play-actors – and, hell, even poets – all weighed in with their (highly important) thoughts. Hastily-written books that were first pitched when the Iraq idea was floated probably made it to Barnes & Noble shelves prior to the US actually launching the first strikes. And all the side debates it launched! Philosophers discussed the epistemology involved: what do we know about Iraq’s WMD, what can we know, what is knowledge anyway? Legal scholars: what is the burden of proof? Terrorism experts: what creates terrorists? Schoolchildren wrote essays. Large groups of people took out full-page ads in the New York Times. Punk rock bands wrote albums about it.
Seriously: I had to sit through a whole freaking YEAR of this stuff, from the time I first heard Iraq whisperings (in late ’01) to the invasion (March 2003). When you stop to consider and sum up all the participants (not just politicians and generals but local politicians and bloggers on down to soccer moms), the invasion of Iraq has to have been one of the most highly-scrutinized, hand-wrung, second-guessed and hotly-debated political decisions in human history. The point is, after Iraq, one could be forgiven for having come away with the impression that not only to the left, but to a broad swathe of the center of Western civilization, ‘attacking a country over there’ was such a grave decision, so momentous, so weighty, so serious, that (a) for it to happen at all without being preceded by a massive, society-spanning year-long debate was utterly unthinkable and off the table, and (b) it was so immoral and horrendous in the unintended consequences that any war has, that it would virtually tear society apart if the hawks’ stance were to gain the day. It would not have been unreasonable, then, to expect that all future war decisions would be met with such a debate, such an outcry, such hand-wringing.
But with Libya, we have seen none of that. Instead, we woke up, like, last Thursday, suddenly learned there was gonna be a UN vote to wage No-Fly-Zone on Libya, the UN had their vote that afternoon, and US bombs were flying within 24 hours. And as far as I can tell, the left – although they surely have mixed feelings – is basically like, ‘well, whatever. Let’s hope it works out’.
So what am I missing?
Some possibilities.
1) Calling it a “no-fly-zone” really does trick people into not fully considering the ramifications of bombing a country. In which case, stupid Bush, he should have just labeled his proposal a “no-fly-zone” around Baghdad, and we’d have been bombing away happily by January ’02.
2) There is some gigantic moral gulf between the two situations that I am missing. In which case, someone, anyone, feel free to chime in, answer my open letter below, and articulate that distinction (if you can).
3) The ‘antiwar’ left really doesn’t mind war so much as long as it occurs at a time when the U.S. President has a (D) after his name.
I guess it’s no secret that my null hypothesis is #3. Exhibit A: President Clinton’s action in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Exhibit B: nonstop five-year Iraq whining suddenly ceases with the election of Barack Obama. And now we have Exhibit C: The Great No-Fly-Zone On Libya of 2011. It’s difficult not to notice a pattern here.
But perhaps I am wrong. What does the defense have to say?
P.S. Shockingly, I notice that ‘lcasualties.org’ is still available as a URL. Presumably Western casualties are only interesting to count when the action is initiated by an (R). Or am I wrong?
One important difference is that there’s already a militarily active bunch of rebels that was already hogging the headlines, so it’s easier to pile in on their side. As I remember it, Iraq did have dissident groups like Kurds, but they weren’t conveniently in open revolt at the time.
Because they’d been nerve-gassed.
Thank you Tam. You took the words right out of my mouth.
Let’s wait and see whether we actually make it an invasion/occupation (which would violate the UN resolution btw). If that happens, I’ll eat my pride and admit you’re right on all of this. But I’m getting the feeling not just you but a lot of people were totally ignoring Libya up until the resolution, at which point you suddenly sat up and paid attention, but acted as if all the things you ignored never happened. Fact is, when the UN resolution was passed, *at that moment* Gaddafi forces were marching on Benghazi and were actively killing unarmed civilians in many other cities. And it had been going on for a month. You can’t point out anything similar in Iraq. As I said before, it’d've been entirely appropriate to invade Iraq when Saddam was gassing the kurds, but that’s not what we did. TL;DR: there WAS a national conversation re: Libya, it was understandably shorter than the one re: Iraq since there was tangible, watchable evidence of *ongoing genocide* (as opposed to artificial forced bullshit justification in the Iraq case).
What “ongoing genocide” is occurring in Libya? Or did “people who would prefer to be ruled by a different thug than Qaddafi” become an ethnic group while I wasn’t watching?
IMO the correct answer to Sonic’s question is Hansonian. Lots of people wanted/needed to demonstrate their tribal loyalties, so they flamboyantly found ways to signal opposition to Iraq 2003. Nobody’s asking that set of people to signal anything about Libya – contrast with, say, public sector unions – so they’re not particularly chuffed that Obama conducted his March To War sometime after lunch on Thursday between his NCAA picks.
In fairness, you should acknowledge that their are some principled pacifists (Henderson @ EconLog comes to mind) and principled isolationists (Ron Paul) who did oppose both and offered more or less identical reasons for doing so.
Yes, there are people who opposed both – but astonishingly, they are harder to find on the left than on the right (i.e. your two examples). Also, to be fair, I’m sure there are a lot on the left right now – more than I’m making it seem – who are squeamish, uncomfortable about, perhaps even openly against this Libya action. I have to speak in generalities obviously. But my impression is that even if there is dissent on the left at this point, it is relatively muted. There’s just a disconnect between reactions to the two situations, and I don’t know how to explain most of it if not via party affiliation.
To be fair, you can find some on the left. Both Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader have called for Obama’s impeachment. I absolutely agree with the point you are making in very entertaining fashion in these posts – that 90%+ of the opposition to the Iraq war had nothing to do with sincerely-held anti-war beliefs.
Agreed on Kucinich and Nader, and I fully expected consistency from them. They are sort of exceptions that prove the rule however; neither is in the mainstream of the left/(D) faction.
I guess one unifying explanation here is that genuine anti-war sentiment is truly a fringe position, on both left and right.
Thanks for the comment Xamuel.
In part, of course, you are answering my query by simply saying: “It’s #1″.
In other words, you’re saying this is a no-fly-zone not a war, so what am I talking about. I left it tacit but think it’s understood by all here that to ‘enforce a no-fly zone’ on a sovereign nation-state is the same thing as committing an act of war against them.
So then we’re left with ‘Yes it’s a war, but Obama has promised no ground troops’ as the supposed moral distinction between Libya and Iraq. The idea being, it’s ok to attack an Arab country by pressing buttons to drop bombs, just not by having actual soldiers on the ground there. I don’t understand what moral principle this is supposed to represent, but I suppose this could be operative to people. Especially considering the precedent of Yugoslavia, which was perhaps embraced by (most of) the left on similar grounds.
Also part of my critique is that it’s pretty naive to expect that you can just cleanly declare No-Fly-Zone on a country and then limit it there. (The No-Fly-Zone situation against Iraq was, of course, eventually followed by…drumroll…ground troops.) The point being in geopolitical disputes, events have a way of thwarting this sort of attempt to draw a nice neat box around what you’re doing.
Suppose, as seems to be a likely outcome, there is a sort of stalemate with the US & friends continually/semi-permanently patrolling a sort of rump protectorate within Libya. For five years. Ten. Twelve. Of course at some point we realize we need to enforce massive sanctions against the Qaddafis’ Libya, to prevent them from getting weapons/materiel…or even just getting the oil wealth that he could use to get them. Fast-forward that a year or three and you can easily imagine there’ll be museum photograph shows depicting the suffering we are causing to Libyans, we’ll be continually told “100,000 Libyan babies die every year due to us”, and so on. And we are paying through the nose for this expensive, essentially, long-distance police-with-bombs operation halfway around the world to “contain” Qaddafi/his son/whoever, i.e. simply to protect the rump state without the bother of ousting Qaddafi/successor. At some point it is inevitable that the contradictions and costs-benefits add up, to the point where the US says (precisely as they did with Iraq) Fuck it, what the hell are we doing there, it’ll be cheaper/better just to get rid of him. And so we will, at that point. It may not be during Obama’s Presidency, but that’s the point: Obama’s statements now can’t bind future Presidents for all time.
The point being, saying ‘we’ll enforce a No-Fly-Zone but I promise no ground troops’ is like a teenage girl saying she’ll go to a frat party but just to dance, she won’t drink, have sex, etc. It’s a nice intent in theory perhaps, but the one thing has a funny way of leading to the other.
As for me ‘ignoring’ Libya, well no, I was fully aware that there was an insurrection that blossomed into a civil war, and said so on my blog. But the mere knowledge that there’s a civil war somewhere does not and should not mentally prepare Americans for participating. Should it? Are we supposed to assume, anytime there’s a civil war anywhere in the world, that we may wake up tomorrow and find ourselves participating? This uprising, I am told by Wiki, started with protests 15 February 2011. That is barely five weeks ago, a very short time by itself compared to our leisurely, almost lackadaisical National (And International) Conversation about whether we should invade Iraq. And only very recently in these five weeks did anyone think it important to float the idea of the US participating in the first place – no public opinion polls were taken, no Congressional inquiries or testimonials, no Green Day double albums. It basically went straight from ‘wow, there’s an uprising in Libya’ to ‘we’re gonna bomb’ in a day or two, with no intervening opportunity for controversy let alone Dissent ™.
Don’t you find that strange? If not why not? If that’s okay, why exactly then did we have to have that gigantic debate about Iraq? What if President Bush had Just Done It on, like, December 29th 2002? Would I have been spared the agonizing spectacle of that stupid, counterproductive, polarizing debate? (It’s a sincere question because it’s such a depressing thought)
You do have a point that the hot-war action already taking place there represents an important difference between Libya and Iraq though. However, again, taken seriously I’m not sure what principle that is meant to embody: if a dictator slaughtered his people 8 years ago you can’t do anything, but if he slaughtered them a week ago you should take him out? Where is the cutoff? 1 week < X < 8 years? So the lesson for dictators is, if you're gonna put down rebellion ruthlessly, make sure you stave off Western intervention for time X, and then you're home-free? Because there's a statute of limitations on slaughter to put down rebellions?
That said, I doubt that such action against Hussein (under an (R) President) would have been greeted with as much assent as you imply. Actually, I know it wouldn't have, because I lived through (and was on a campus during) what we now call 'The Gulf War', and heard all the same criticisms from the usual suspects – old white men shedding blood for oil, etc. There was no 'but all that being said, let's still get Hussein. You know, because of the Kurds' footnote on the signs in those protests, not that I ever saw.
*For the record, I agree with SkepticalCynical that this is not ‘genocide’. Unless that term has been debauched just to denote any situation where people are being killed by other people. I think we might still need that term though, so let’s not inflate it beyond recognition. We can say that what Qaddafi is doing is bad without calling it ‘genocide’, and if your argument is solid it shouldn’t need that crutch. best
Saddam Huessein killed somewhere between 300,000 – 600,000 people, and his human rights violations were ongoing – that’s why those “no-fly” zones were there for so long. Ask a Kurd who lived in Iraq in the period 1991-2003 if the attempted genocide had stopped. That doesn’t strike me as “artificial, forced bullshit”. And would the Left really have supported Bush I going into Iraq in 1991 to take Saddam out, when he was going after the Kurds and Shia? As the Microsoft folks say, “Really?” I seem to recall some antiwar protests at that time – quite a few, in fact – and that was just over liberating Kuwait. The implication is also that, once the genocide is over, there’s no justification for taking a dictator out – as if the Allies should have folded their tents and gone home if Hitler had managed to gas the last Jew. In what moral universe does this make sense?
I’m sorry, if a guy with an (R) after his name was going after Libya, the left would be squealing bloody murder, and we all know it. Personally, I think that Obama is doing the right think, even though he’s not from my party – but then again, I’m not a leftist.
So what am I missing?
You’re onto something with number one. Generalizing is risky, but, in general, people on the left don’t understand how to wage war, what is effective, and what limitations exist.
Like … a no-fly zone. Which isn’t going to _stop_ the Libyan Army from running over the rebels. Soldiers are cunning bastards and if you don’t have air support, well you’ll just make do with machine guns, artillery, tanks and bayonets. Excluding a class of war machine just makes things more difficult, but not impossible.
Whether or not it stops the counterinsurgency, there’s a deeper issue with the ‘no-fly zone’ concept, which is that it seems to come with this tacit idea that we in the West can put a war in a little box labeled ‘no-fly zone’ and everyone else will cooperate. Suppose Qaddafi doesn’t cooperate, suppose he attacks targets in the West; what are we going to say? No fair? We called No-Fly-Zone?
This is part and parcel of why it’s silly/naive, in fact downright dangerous, not to grasp that such an act is an act of war, there is no huge gulf of difference, there is no keeping our hands clean, there is no containing the war in a neat little box with a label, there is no “no fair”.
The idea of a “No Fly Zone” commits the same mistake as the Libyan rebels made – it strikes at the ruler but does not remove him from power. Qaddafi has no reason to avoid any reprisals available to him, given that his opponents are conducting daily acts of war against his regime.
I’d have hoped that everyone, left or right, would have agreed that repeating Iraq 1991-2003 was not in anyone’s interest. It harmed the US. It harmed the Iraqi people. It handed a propaganda victory to Islamists and anti-Americans. The US forces in Arabia were OBL’s justification for 9/11. It ultimately required 8+ years of war and occupation to clean up the mess. The only people it benefited were Saddam Hussein (who strengthened his rule) and UN bureaucrats (who pocketed some of the “aid”).
Sadly, that seems to be the play we’ve called here.
Actually the Iraq no fly zone worked out great!
It pushed a president with an R after his name into invading the country which was then portrayed as a disaster. That then lead to lots of people with Ds after their names getting into congress which gave us:
HEALTH CARE!
We can only hope that Libya works out nearly as well.
“The idea of a “No Fly Zone” commits the same mistake as the Libyan rebels made – it strikes at the ruler but does not remove him from power.”
Well, that’s a lot like the Beatles in Help “not going to the Bahamas” and then going to the Bahamas.
The Left certainly knows how to wage war but usually it’s in the closet and against their own people (eg: Lenin/Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot) or with the agreement of one another (Stalin & Von Ribbentrop). When they do it unilaterally they like to do it Blitzkrieg style – except when they fail and need a do-over like Mussolini’s expedition in Ethiopia, or Che Guevara’s bumbling in the Congo.
They really can’t win a war against a determined opponent, so they pick on their own.
The Left certainly knows how to wage war but usually it’s in the closet and against their own people
Putting on my Mr. Pedantic Hat. If they only know how to make war in an arena of their choosing then, no, they do not know how to make war.
A society adept at war – I humbly submit the West is singularly good in this arena – is adept at all phases and forms of it.
Using America as an example over the we’ve been good at everything from what is now called nation building to total war and everything in between. We may not always like the kind of war we find ourselves in, but we get the job done.