What I thought before the war in Iraq

[nancylebov]

I came down on the wimpy, "Well, it doesn't have to be a disaster" side. To be fair, it still doesn't have to be a disaster, but it sure doesn't look good.

I have an allergy to most right-wing writing. That "I'm going to tell you what you have to do and pretend that it's the universe imposing obligations" tone drives me up the wall. Logically, it's no worse than the left-wing "I'm going to tell you what you have to do to be a decent person and pretend that it's a universal obligation", but my emotional reaction is very different. There's plenty of evidence that many people have the opposite reactions, but I have to take what they say on faith--I can't imagine what it's like to be them.

In any case, I only notice flaws in things I can pay attention to, so I was reading left-wing anti-war stuff and noticing some flaws. In particular, they say "Iraq is a sovreign nation!" and I'd think, "But Germany and Japan were rebuilt successfully". It seemed to me that they were expressing something as a general principle which was only true some of the time.

They'd say, "WWII was different", but if anyone published a list of the ways that WWII was different (especially if it was published before the war in Iraq), I'd be quite interested in a link. At this point, I think of "WWII was different" as parent-speak--the state in which one may be saying something true, but where it seems so utterly obvious that one doesn't offer any convincing explanations. I try to avoid parent-speak, but even without children, it becomes more tempting as the years go by.

Also, people seemed to be saying both that Bush was a puppet and that he was insisting on a war in Iraq because of his own psychological motivations. No one seemed to notice that these can't both be true. This lack of attention to logic made the anti-war side seem less credible. In theory, the puppet masters could have been using/amplifying Bushes stuff about Iraq for their own nefarious purposes, but I don't remember anyone saying that.

There were some people saying, "It doesn't have to be a disaster, but the people running it are blithering idiots"--I wish I'd listened more carefully to that part.

Comments

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

To me, the main way in which WWII was different was that the source of the attack on U.S. soil and the nation we were fighting were the same! This is a point that has become obscured in many ways--people who believe the terrorists on the plane were Iraqi when none were, people who believe El Queda was somehow hiding in Iraq when they weren't/aren't, etc. The war on Afganistan made OK sense to me, though I thought it would be pointless and it was. But at least there were El Queda operatives there to find (or not). The only connections I see between 9/11/2001 and Iraq make me queasy--they're all towelheads who don't like us.

In a conversation the other day with womzilla, I said I make a distinction between being "at war" and being "in a war." The prepositions may be idiosyncratic, but I think the distinction is vital. "At war" is mutual, with enemies who each stand to lose. "In a war" is one-sided or a mutual conflict between others that we've poked our noses into. WWII we were "at war," Vietname we were "in a war." And now, it's like we're "in a war" in two ways at once--El Queda vs. us, us vs. Iraq--but not, to my mind, "at war" at all because the two don't match up. Oh no--I see I let the wolves out!

[holzman.livejournal.com]

http://www.nowarblog.org/archives/000515.html.

The ones that I recall pointing out before the war, but not putting together into a single list myself, are:

1) In World War II, the Axis hadn't been effectively contained before the invasion took place.

2) Germany already had a cultural principle of democratic government that was being restored.

3) Germany and Japan were countries with an actual national identity, rather than a collection of ethnic groups artificially lumped into a single nation by the UK -- partly because they'd always be at each others' throats.

Post invasion, I would add:

4) The Germans and Japanese viewed themselves as a defeated people. The Iraqis, having never surrendered to its invaders viewed the U.S. as people coming in to settle a score and leave; and have never had any intention of allowing us to reorder their country for them beyond removing Hussein from power.

To be fair, it still doesn't have to be a disaster, but it sure doesn't look good.

From where I'm sitting, it's too late for it not to be a disaster, even if it can be salvaged.

[avram]

Japan also had a democratic tradition to fall back on, having gained a weak elected parliament in 1889, and instituting democratic reforms in 1912 (the “Taisho democracy” period, ending in 1926 when the military grew stronger).

Well, I was mostly just listening to NPR then

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

and talking to people who read a lot about the Middle-east and Asia, and my awareness of things like Jane's and Aviation Week and all, so rather than a collection of current articles, it was my own having read massively in newspapers/magazines/popular fiction from the early and mid-20th century, and having talked (or rather, *listened*) extensively to people with all kinds of perspectives on WWII (and the Cold War) growing up, that made me shout at the zampolit talking heads saying "Japan! Germany!" --No, Saigon, you fools! The fact that people *in* Iraq, Iraqis and long-time dwellers, were saying things that contradicted the Chalabite narrative, and they didn't care, didn't even acknowledge, makes me totally unsurprised at the "reality-based community" revelation.

One thing that reading actual source materials, even conflicting ones, rather than the Approved Versions of history of "The Good War" generated from 1950 on yields, is that most of our assumptions about it, based on the Approved Versions, are wrong. There was infinitely more screw-up and CF and mendacity and evil stupidity on the part of the Allies than we're allowed to think or say. There was much more culpablity among the "Good Guys" in the decades of enabling abetting "peace" leading up to 1939, on both sides of both oceans.

But, beyond all that, there's the fact that we hadn't been involved in playing politics for most of a century on a deranged level in Germany and Japan to the extent we had been in Iraq. We hadn't been bombing, on a regular basis - and shooting for target-practice, if a soldier I once went out with is correct - from the air for a decade over Germany and Japan, prior to beginning the war. We didn't subsequently put people with no clue but ideological purity in charge, but rather people with some familiarity and respect for the local cultures, like MacArthur, in those countries. We didn't go in with no meaningful intelligence nor intelligence gathering capacity, trusting in our wondrous machines to do it all for us, in the forties, to countries where we had no one who spoke the local language and knew the territory. And the Marshall Plan was not conceived primarily as a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme for White House cronies, which is something that was obvious about this crew from their behaviour all through 2001.

And then there is the fooged-together-like-Yugoslavia aspect of Mesopotamia, and the history of dirty dealing and Oil Companies that goes right back to the days of El Aurens and Standard Oil and the fabrication of the House of Saud, who, like Hussein, may be monsters but are *our* monsters, and the fact that we have never dealt in good faith out there, so why should anyone think we were going to start now? and Democracy? yeah, just like with the Marcos family, don't make me laugh, we don't care, just look at Egypt and how "tough" we are on human rights with our satraps allies so long as they let us use their canals or their natural resources.

I mean, what about Katyn Forest? All that romantic talk about the Noble Poles through the War, and then 1945, Yalta, back of the hand from Churchill and Roosevelt -- What about Beria, and Hungary and all? Symbiotic relationships with our enemies to keep the war machines running are nothing new.

(Spending hours of each week buried in the crumbling periodicals archives and crackling microfilms as a teenager created a cynicism reserve deep as the Marianas Trench...)

For it to be ever anything but a Fiasco, with a capital F, it would require there to be a) intelligent people of b) good will and c) financial disinterest d) running things. Since this was not the case and remains improbable as long as the crew is in power, and since they have demonstrated themselves RWA to grab and spoil whatever they can, Kerry's remark that they will leave him a Lebanon is entirely apropos. All the talk about them putting off an offensive until after Nov 3, rumors leaked for days before confirmed, prove that they have no concern whatsoever for making it succeed.

This is like one of those industrial accidents where someone is halfway caught in heavy machinery. There is no good ending to this, even if we survive it.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Top Ten Ways in Which the Iraq Attack Is Not Much Like WWII. . . .

10. WWII was fought against an enemy that had attacked the U.S. and its allies. Iraq has not attacked the U.S., and Saddam was not allied with al-Qaeda. Somewhere on my LJ you can find a link to a map the State Department had prior to 9/11 showing "Countries where al-Qaeda is active;" only two countries in the Middle-east were not on the list: Israel and Iraq.

9. WWII was in addition fought to succor countries that had been invaded. This was also true of the Gulf War. Iraq was a nation whose territorial ambitions had been curbed by their failure against Iran and the world's response to their invasion of Kuwait in the Gulf War.

8. WWII was in addition fought against nations with armed forces that were a serious threat to the security of the United States. Intelligence prior to the Iraq Attack showed no plausible threat to the United States; intelligence since has shown that the intelligence estimates before the Attack significantly overestimated the threat.

7. WWII was fought against isolated nations. This is crucial: once we whupt Germany, Italy, and Japan, there weren't lots of other facist nation - unless, of course, you count Spain - lined up and waiting to hate us for doing it. Iraq, though not universally loved among its fellow Moslem states, is nonetheless one of many such, in most of which, perhaps not the governments, but the people, already saw us as Not Good Guys for our support of Israel, and now see us as aggressors who make war on Islam.

6. WWII was fought with an alliance that made the alliance in the Gulf War look piddlin'. The US, the Soviet Union, the Commonwealth of Great Britain, and China, plus any number of other nations, stood shoulder to shoulder against the Great Evil of the twentieth century, and more nations joined in as the war progressed. The Iraq Attack was a cowboy move with an alliance of "the willing" so small that 43 had to regard Poland as an important player - until they, like Spain, said, "Never mind, we're not playing anymore."

5. WWII was almost-universally supported by the people of the United States. No further comment needed.

4. In WWII, we had clear goals and a plan. The Iraq Attack was carried out by people who assumed that we could do what we wanted.

3. WWII was the sole focus of our military. Before the Iraq Attack, the military was already getting stretched pretty thin.

2. In WWII, we gave the soliders, sailors, gyrenes, and flyboys what they needed to fight. The families of Iraq Attack soldiers et cetera are having to buy their boys and girls vital equipment on eBay. (Which, Dick "The Great Satan" Cheney would point out, does constitute a significant part of our economic growth.)

And the number one reason WWII was not like the Iraq Attack?

1. In WWII, we were unambiguously the good guys.

[lightningb.livejournal.com]

The main difference between Germany and Iraq (I don't know about Japan. From what I've heard, Japan was pretty messy for a couple of years) was that in Germany, we had a *massive* military presence. Basically, the entire Allied military moved into Germany and settled down into occupation duty. In Iraq, we never had even a fraction of the troops necessary to do a real occupation -- we didn't even have the troops to protect critical infrastructure or Government ministries.

[lightningb.livejournal.com]

Lesee. Navel contemplation time. What was I saying about it? I took it as a given that the invasion was going to happen, rationale or no. (Aside -- has George Bush ever changed his mind on anything significant? There's courageous, and there's stubborn, and there's pigheaded.)

Marching Up the Hill (http://lightningbug.blogspot.com/2003_01_26_lightningbug_archive.html#88063053). Attempt to figure out a rationale for the invasion. None were very good. Still aren't.

Another Possible Rationale (http://lightningbug.blogspot.com/2003_02_23_lightningbug_archive.html#89616404). We may do this, but it's still a pretty feeble rationale.

You Know Bush is in Trouble ... (http://lightningbug.blogspot.com/2003_02_09_lightningbug_archive.html#88993207). Pointer to right- wing Hunter Thompson wanabee Fred Reed trying come up with a rationale (http://www.fredoneverything.net/Iraq.shtml) for the invasion. His is much funnier than any of mine.