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Fiasco II
Henry at Crooked Timber challenges me to provide more background on why the fiasco in Iraq is another instance of government failure. I do so in the comments to his post and expand somewhat here.
Government founders on problems of incentives and information. On incentives: Should we be surprised that delays, errors and incompetence are more prevalent at the INS than at bureaucracies which must deal with citizens or which face competition from the private sector?
Of course not - but then what incentives does our government have to prevent abuse of foreign citizens? Democracy in this case provides no checks and balances because of anti-foreign bias, the ease with which the public can ignore the deaths of innocents abroad, and the fact that foreigners lack representation in our legislatures or the courts. Thus, Abu Ghraib and the routine shooting of innocents is no surprise - this is what happens when government is unconstrained.
What about the incentives to start wars? Government is bad enough when we all have access to information. What are we going to do when the major source of information is the government itself and they ask us to trust but not verify?
Is it a surprise that wars are much more likely to be started when the economy is doing badly and the President is low in the polls? Not to me but I am dismayed that people continue to be surprised when Presidents lie to make war, as if this had never happened before.
We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." Lyndon Baines Johnson, October 1964.)
It's naive to only blame particular people (Bush, Cheney et al.) and depressing when people at CT claim that if only "our guys" had been in power everything would have been ok. When you see the same behaviour again and again you ought to look to systematic factors. And even if you do believe that it is all due to Bush, Cheney et al. it's not as if these guys came to power randomly, they won twice. The worst get on top for a reason. As a result, government ought to be designed (on which see further below) so it works when the knaves are in power and not just when the angels govern.
One response in several comments at CT is that these are arguments against democracy and not against government. If only we had followed the experts at the Pentagon we would have been ok. Frankly this response, which is an argument for Fascism, sickens me. Factually the argument is incorrect, the Pentagon and not just the civilian leaders share much of the blame for our current fiasco. Moreover, had we listened to the experts in the past, Curtis LeMay and his type would probably have sent us to nuclear hell by now. I believe in democracy but I believe in it as a constraint on government.
Governments also founder on problems of information. Whereas the market makes use of highly dispersed information in the minds of millions of individuals thousands of miles apart the government bases its information on curveball and the musings of a cabal of neo-conservatives busy counting the chapters of The Prince for gnosis. Yes, this case is especially ridiculous but have people not heard of the Gulf of Tonkin? More generally, an economy cannot be centrally planned and neither can a society (let alone can a society be centrally planned from another country by people who don't even speak the language). The idea that our government, however competently run, can export democracy is simply the fatal conceit applied to foreign affairs.
Am I arguing that the market could have done it better? No, believe it or not, my goal is not to efficiently kick the shit out of foreigners. If something can't be done well that's an argument for not doing it - or at least not doing it often. I will take the unusual opportunity to agree with John Quiggan who writes at CT that in war "the likelihood of disaster is so great that the bar needs to be set very high." How high should the bar be set? Well we could begin by taking the Constitution seriously when it states that Congress alone has the power to declare war. (I know, the Constitution is a dead letter.) And, if we really get ambitious, how about making the Department of Defense live up to its name?
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on August 4, 2006 at 07:12 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
During the Abu Ghraib uproar someone pointed out that torture to obtaine information when lives were at stake was natural, and only training and discipline in the military kept it from happening as a common pratice. Likewise the urge to kill the outsider preceived as a threat does not need a government i.e. hezbolla is a private voluntary organization. I agree the that US government use our fear and lack of information to gain support for both the vietnam and iraq wars, but it is the imperfection in the human condition that makes it possible. At least in a democracy people eventually catch on and it is stopped. I would also note the economy was very good during the vietnam war and until the war blew up Johnson was very popular.
PS I like the post office.
Posted by: joan at Aug 4, 2006 8:23:49 AM
This is my favorite post in the history of Marginal Revolution. nicely done!
It annoys me to no end that so many people claim that if only their side had won the election (Katrina |Unemployment |Iraq |Vietnam |Bosnia |Somalia | Energy policy) would have been easily solved, but I don't have the words to state it as clearly as you have.
Douglas Adams also did a good job when he wrote "If you don't vote for a lizard then the wrong lizard might win."
Posted by: DK at Aug 4, 2006 8:31:07 AM
All the points about the inevitable failures and fiascos are well put, certainly. And still the polls of the Iraqis themselves find that extremely solid majorities approve of the overthrow of Saddam and state that they prefer the current situation to the former. (Not that foreign countries have the right to demand an invasion, but that certainly plays a part when judging if the casualties among foreigners are too great.) As far as observing a market goes, we can note that since the war there has been a great return of Iraqis to Iraqi, rather than the migration outwards that occurred all during Saddam's reign, which was quite a shock as many expected up to millions of war refugees. OTOH, there has been a recent upsurge intra-Iraq regional migration in response to the sectarian violence, which certainly bears watching.
It's no stretch at all to believe that the chance of disaster is very great and fiascos inevitable, but one still has to compare that option to the alternative reality, which may already be a disaster and a fiasco.
Posted by: John Thacker at Aug 4, 2006 8:31:31 AM
Alex,
You are correct that civilian deaths are an inevitable consequence of
war. You are correct that this is a reason that the bar should be set
high, before going to war. However, the reference you provided about
"routine" shootings of civilian is unsubstantive: for example it says
things like "there is plenty of evidence" of this on one hand, and then
says that no "body count" of such things is being kept by the US Military
(who, it says, is in a Vietnam-like "quagmire"). Isn't what makes the
civilian death and military blunders such "good" news stories the fact
that they are not routine? (Maybe not, it could just be the unthinking
hatred of Bush that many in the media seem to be driven by - Bush lied,
people died, blah, blah, blah, blah, oh no its a quagmire, blah, blah,
blah.) For sure we know that suicide bombing of civilians is not a
condoned tactic of our military (unlike our enemies). For sure we know
that kidnappings and televised decapitations of civilians are not tactics
of our military (unlike our enemies). For sure we know that military
courts punish wrong-doing by our troups (unlike our enemies). For sure
we know that Sadam and his Manson-like cult WAS routinely butchering,
raping, and torturing civilians in Iraq (that is why he is known as
the Butcher of Bagdad). For sure we know that Sadam used chemical
weapons on civilian Kurds (not in our military play-book). For sure
we know that Sadam was inciting terrorist to violence against Americans.
For sure we know that Sadam was making payments to the families of
suicide bombers who killed Jewish civilians in Israel. That is, for
sure we know that Sadam's Iraq was for Iraqi citizens more horrible
than the difficulties they currently confront because of the US
beneficent efforts to provide a chance for a brighter tomorrow. Say
what you want, but I am ON NET and IN TOTAL proud to be an American
(AT THE MARGIN, of course there are things to be both ashamed and
proud of).
Posted by: jim at Aug 4, 2006 8:47:35 AM
Of course not - but then what incentives does our government have to prevent abuse of foreign citizens? Democracy in this case provides no checks and balances because of anti-foreign bias, the ease with which the public can ignore the deaths of innocents abroad, and the fact that foreigners lack representation in our legislatures or the courts.
A paragraph which applies just as well to the policy of non-intervention. Except that the public can even more easily ignore the deaths and abuse of foreign innocents when they're caused by the foreign governments themselves.
Does democracy provide *no" checks and balances against war? Really? Anti-foreign bias would never contribute to desire for non-intervention, because it minimizes our own casualties while we can ignore the deaths of innocents abroad?
I'm sure we also don't want policy made by a "cabal of libertarians with rape fantasies reading The Fountainhead" who oppose intervention even when it would help foreigners because they're more concerned about how it would affect ourselves, both in casualties and in contributing to the worrying size of government. Vietnam is all very well; how did opposing Grenada and Panama turn out? What *does* the experience of Korea have to offer us? Curtis LeMay would have landed us in nuclear war; extreme pacifists would have had millions more suffering under Communism or Fascism.
The polls of the Iraqi people are a strong signal. As well, for all the anti-foreigner bias you cite, people seem to care a lot more about Iraqi casualties now that we're there than they ever did before. I think it's imprudent to suggest that it would only cut one way.
Posted by: John Thacker at Aug 4, 2006 8:52:05 AM
"Say
what you want, but I am ON NET and IN TOTAL proud to be an American
(AT THE MARGIN, of course there are things to be both ashamed and
proud of)."
Very well said, jim. Now I can easily explain the ambivalence I feel toward my country... to economists, anyway.
Posted by: Jason at Aug 4, 2006 9:22:31 AM
There are many issues in Alex's post, but I disagree on at least some of them. In particular, when it comes to foreign policy, we are usually comparing one set of government agents to another, rather than market vs. government. So a generally low opinion of government need not slant the case against a foreign policy intervention. For instance maybe the US botched the Korean War but North Korea is even worse. I will also note that Alex is a cosmopolitan when it comes to immigration, but an extreme nationalist when it comes to foreign policy...
Tyler
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Aug 4, 2006 9:56:20 AM
John Thacker:
Getting rid of Saddam and his regime was indeed a net benefit to mankind, assuming that what ultimately replaces his regime isn't worse. But Saddam's been out of power for quite some time. Perhaps we've done what we could efficiently do (a foreign army isn't really going to build a viable, respected government for Iraq, but it can sure blow stuff up and kill people).
This post seems to me to be connected to the earlier one about a government's obligation to its citizens vs. to everyone else. Because an invading, occupying army is a very blunt instrument for doing good in a foreign country, we should be deeply skeptical of claims that we can do X amount of good for Iraqis at the cost of Y to Americans.
Building a liberal democracy, or even a moderately stable, moderately well-run multi-ethnic country with some democratic trappings, is hard. If we could turn Iraq into something like Turkey, we'd all declare victory, and skeptics of the Iraq invasion (like me) would happily eat crow. What do you suppose the odds of that are? Because those odds look really long to me....
Posted by: albatross at Aug 4, 2006 9:57:21 AM
I like the U.S. constitutional democracy experiment--results have outperformed the rest of the world for a couple of centuries now. Lots of frustrating flaws, to be sure, and some fraying at the edges.
But let's not conveniently ignore the ugly things that helped birth the Constitution, nor nurse it through infancy. Specifically, I am thinking about the Calvinistic theology that passed through the Scottish Enlightenment to us. Also, the exogenous miltary aid of France and Spain during the Revolution.
Democratic capitalism does not reach the tipping point without these historic realities. And on what other system can libertarianism flourish?
Posted by: caveatBettor at Aug 4, 2006 10:25:35 AM
Jim said: Say what you want, but I am ON NET and IN TOTAL proud to be an American
What does this even have to do with anything?
Posted by: disaggregated at Aug 4, 2006 10:32:41 AM
Jason,
You wrote: "Very well said, jim. Now I can easily explain the ambivalence I feel toward my country... to economists, anyway."
Thanks; one of the most valuable insights offered by economics is the distinction between marginal and total (and also average). Probably the best single example of how useful these distinctions can be is in contrasting the difference between capitalism, communism and socialism: probably the best discussion of this for undergraduates can be found in the classic text of Alchian and Allen entitled "Exchange and Production" in the chapter entitled "Production by Firms". In that chapter, A&A present the example of a equalitarian paradise island where everyone who works has an income of 4 fish per day; then, a fishing boat (a technological advance) becomes available to the islanders. The chapter explains the very different ways in which the boat is used depending upon whether the insitutions on the island are capitalist, communist, or socialist. Great chapter!
Posted by: jim at Aug 4, 2006 10:37:04 AM
Tyler says "Alex is a cosmopolitan when it comes to immigration, but an extreme nationalist when it comes to foreign policy..."
Nonsense. I am an extreme individualist.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Aug 4, 2006 10:42:56 AM
Prof. AT,
Apart from low poll ratings and a slow economy, what else would motivate the military ventures that we have seen recently? Is there any ideological basis? If corporate interests are served by war and government is the conduit, then isn’t the market driving these operations?
Iraq is in civil war and on the brink of breaking up. Many analysts have long known how fragile the unity of this failed state is. The U.S. made a deliberate decision to let Iraq’s army dissolve completely, leaving a power vacuum. Did markets have any chance to develop within this void in a nation with no independent civil society?
We are now confronted with disturbing patterns of ‘ethnic homogenization’ and people relocating based on religious affiliation. None of Iraq’s neighbors favor this – the threat of a Kurdish state threatens at least three of them.
Should Iraq be forced to stay together? Do we need another strongman/dictator?
The whole thing appears to be a mess. However, this result was hardly a surprise to most experts. The long-term objectives are unknown to the public (promotion of democracy is a laughable excuse) and this war may be part of the government’s ‘big plan’ for the region. Let’s not forget that Iran remains a ‘threat’ and the oil sheikhdoms are hardly bastions of democracy and free enterprise.
The manipulation of the Middle East by the global powers is taking the region on a dizzying roller coaster ride.
Posted by: Chairman Mao at Aug 4, 2006 10:48:44 AM
Jim said he's proud to be an American ah la Jim Greenwood, but, so what? We are all Americans because of where our parents were when we were born. The English are proud to be English, the Japanese are proud to be Japanese...and so forth. That most of us are now appalled at what is taking place in the middle east doesn't mean were ashamed, but it does mean that we need to work our tails off to curb the excesses that this administration has wrought. I mean, they think the simple answer to this is to find the red heifer (thanks Molly) and start the rapture. Rush and his ilk are cheering on the war, actually advocating WW 4, or 5, or whatever the hell they want to call it.
Does that make Jim proud also?
Posted by: dickrylee at Aug 4, 2006 10:49:48 AM
Joan, I too like our Post Office
Posted by: dickeylee at Aug 4, 2006 10:55:05 AM
War is more or less 100% externalities, particularly in a democracy in which the invaded foreigners don't get votes (that "consent of the governed" bit in the Declaration of Independence is hardly practical, is it?). The only way for decisionmakers to make anything like efficient decisions about war is for them to somehow internalize the costs, but nobody has yet figured out how to do this.
Perhaps every time a civilian dies, a member of the executive branch should be shot at random as well; this would probably help somewhat.
Posted by: Grant Gould at Aug 4, 2006 10:57:59 AM
Joan: During the Abu Ghraib uproar someone pointed out that torture to obtaine information when lives were at stake was natural, and only training and discipline in the military kept it from happening as a common pratice.
I'm not sure what your standard for "common practice" is, but from my persective, institutionalized, routine torture in three (arguably 4, and that doesn't count the "black prisons") countries counts.
Likewise the urge to kill the outsider preceived as a threat does not need a government i.e. hezbolla is a private voluntary organization.
Hezbolla is now a government, in my view, and Israel is reinforcing that view daily.
I agree the that US government use our fear and lack of information to gain support for both the vietnam and iraq wars, but it is the imperfection in the human condition that makes it possible. At least in a democracy people eventually catch on and it is stopped. I would also note the economy was very good during the vietnam war and until the war blew up Johnson was very popular.
I feel like I want to pick nits with some of this, but I wasn't alive then, and lack enough study on the topic to comment.
PS I like the post office.
You must not live in a large city. In both San Francisco and NYC, interacting with the post office is like going to the DMV. Expect to spend at least half the day there, waiting to interact with rude, disinterested people. The only reason I go there is because my mother insists on shipping me gifts through them; otherwise, I use FedEx.
Posted by: fishbane at Aug 4, 2006 11:11:10 AM
dickrylee,
I'm not sure that you understand the marginal versus total distinction that I made.
My comments in no way were meant to suggest that I embrace "Rush and his ilk" or the way that you say they are "cheering on the war, actually advocating WW 4, or 5, or whatever the hell they want to call it."
It appears that you have had an emotional reaction to my comments; well that is fine, but I was hoping to elicit more of an intellectual response.
If you want to understand the marginal, total, average distinction please see the Alchian & Allen textbook that I discussed above (in a previous posting on this track).
Posted by: jim at Aug 4, 2006 11:25:58 AM
Alex,
The argument that war/exporting democracy is so likely to fail that we should be extremely careful before deciding to engage in it is valid. But: it is a very different argument than your original claim that we should consider this a case of GOVERNMENT failure, as you yourself provide no indication of believing that this job could be executed more competently through some other means. So, I don't see how your statements about competition are relevant in this particular case. If anything, your argument suggests that this is a failure in the decision-making process (a political failure), perhaps a failure of our particular set of democratic institutions to constrain politicians effectively.
Posted by: zaoem at Aug 4, 2006 11:53:45 AM
For those of you defending the U.S Postal Service, I once worked there, and you don't have a clue to its inefficiencies.
It only survives thanks to the Private Express Statutes which make it against the law to compete with it in the delivery of First Class Mail (letters). That legalized monopoly gives it the ability to leverage 'junk mail' advertising revenue.
Where it is not against the law to compete, as in small parcel delivery and overnight delivery, there are several competitors, and the Postal Service has very little of those markets. Evidence of its inherent inefficiency.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at Aug 4, 2006 12:31:59 PM
The claim that Iraq is a fiasco is a version of the 'Ted Williams was a bad baseball player' argument. I.e., he failed to hit, twice as often as he succeeded.
However, when we take a look at what other people accomplished in THE SAME GAME, we find that he was one of the greatest players ever. Judging against other human endeavors gives a much different picture than judging against perfection (impossible in human affairs).
And I wonder how many of you would have liked it if we'd taken a Harry Trumanesque approach to Iraq. Drop a couple of atomic bombs on Iraqi cities to discourage any resistance first, then sent in the occupation troops.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at Aug 4, 2006 12:39:02 PM
But let's not conveniently ignore the ugly things... Specifically, I am thinking about the Calvinistic theology that passed through the Scottish Enlightenment to us.
That's an...odd...statement. Care to explain this?
Also
Is it a surprise that wars are much more likely to be started when the economy is doing badly and the President is low in the polls?
When the US invaded Iraq (March 2003) Bush's poll numbers were pretty good, actually.
http://www.pollingreport.com/BushFav.htm
Posted by: bob montgomery at Aug 4, 2006 12:43:54 PM
When I order books online the dreaded letters are UPS and the good letters are USPS. There are inefficiencies in any large bureaucracy whether private or public. Perhaps by acknowledging them in the USPS they build in mechanisms to deal with them in ways private firms do not.
Posted by: am at Aug 4, 2006 1:01:03 PM
disaggregated,
The distinction between marginal and total (and average) is worth understanding; since you seem not to understand the distinction I was making try reading the Alchian and Allen textbook chapter I discussed above on this track.
Posted by: jim at Aug 4, 2006 1:24:55 PM
Much of the debate on Iraq reminds me of the debate on healthcare. Proponents of universal health care are fond of pointing to the numerous shortcomings of our health care system thinking that this makes their case for universal health care. Opponents of the Iraq war seem to think all that is needed to make their case is to point out the myriad of problems with the occupation. Both arguements neglect the basic question good economists ask: "Compared to what". The current situation in Iraq is a fiasco compared most countries but is it a fiasco compared to the alternatives? An example is that it was said the embargo lead to the death of 5,000 Iraqi children a month. In the past three years that would have added up to 180,000 dead children. However these deaths were not covered in the media to the same extent as the current violent deaths in Iraq, but shouldn't unseen costs factor in as well as the more obvious costs?
Posted by: sourcreamus at Aug 4, 2006 1:46:29 PM
If one was inclined to pray, he ought to pray that we always have the best leaders possible. Our government will always be unwieldly, Congress will always be playing political games against itself, and the media will nurture the drama of incompetence, no matter who is in power. The quality, or lack of quality, of leadership has been crucial at countless times in our history.
I think that the world is more dangerous and sinister than most of us realise, and that it is prudent to consider it that way until proven otherwise. The places in the world where these type of discussions cannot take place, and where economy is unfree, are the sources of manipulated hatred and violence. I think it is right for the USA to continue to push for the advancement of freedom, it's not a cliche, because it holds the best chance for improved stability and quality of life everywhere.
Posted by: auntulna at Aug 4, 2006 2:20:44 PM
Alex --
I am recommending that my fellow libertarians find a government whipping-boy other than the United States Postal Service. Although I liked your line about the Pentagon being USPS with nukes, there are at least three reasons why such illustrations no longer work: (1) Peoples' experiences with the post office are far from universally bad; they're mostly pretty good, because (2) the kinds of things the post offices deal with -- letters and packages -- depend on routine, not so much individual judgment, and the opportunity for grave error is small; and (3) the USPS now has competition from USPS, FedEx and others for much of what it does, and this competition has spurred it to improve.
Posted by: Peter K. at Aug 4, 2006 2:23:00 PM
Obviously, in my previous post I meant "the USPS now has competition from UPS, FedEx and others for much of what it does, and this competition has spurred it to improve."
Posted by: Peter K. at Aug 4, 2006 2:28:33 PM
Always remember that warfare is much less frequent in the world now than even 30 years ago, due to economic growth.
I disagree that the Iraq War is a fiasco. It only appears that way when fifth-columnists paint the picture to appear that a country the size of the US 'loses' a war after just 2100 hostile casualties, which is absurd. That many people are murdered in US cities every month. Is the US in a state of genocidal civil war by this measure?
We will comfortably win in Iraq by 2008. Here is why.
Posted by: Twok at Aug 4, 2006 2:41:54 PM
The idea that our government, however competently run, can export democracy is simply the fatal conceit applied to foreign affairs.
Germany and Japan beg to disagree.
Posted by: A.S. at Aug 4, 2006 2:45:10 PM
'...the USPS now has competition from UPS, FedEx and others for much of what it does...'
I repeat it is a legally protected monopoly for delivery of First Class Mail. Eliminate that protection and the USPS would quickly lose market share to competitors, just as it did with small parcels to UPS.
Fedex created the overnight delivery industry in response to the failure of the USPS to handle high priority items. The last time I checked the USPS had about 5% market share.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at Aug 4, 2006 2:45:19 PM
What *does* the experience of Korea have to offer us? Curtis LeMay would have landed us in nuclear war; extreme pacifists would have had millions more suffering under Communism or Fascism.
While in the "ill-planned" and "incompetently executed" stakes, Korea blows Iraq II and all other 20th century American wars out of the water, if Korea had been a patchwork Frankenstein country assembled by Britain and France the way Iraq is, it would probably have ended up abyssmally -- far worse than Afghanistan or Iraq today. The credit for the success of our intervention in Korea rests primarily, I think, with the Korean people, their ethnic uniformity, their long history of lawfulness and social cohesion (attested as early as Sima Qian's history, if I recall correctly), and their overflowing national pride. These qualities haven't turned out so well in North Korea, where, coupled with a fanatical devotion to communist theory, they have destroyed the economy. But in South Korea, they worked well in a semi-fascist/corporatist system (now a democracy) to bring South Korea up from one of the poorest countries in the entire world to one of the richest (number 13, as I recall).
On the other hand, the Korean War technically isn't over, and Seoul now has a couple thousand pieces of heavy artillery pointed at its downtown. So perhaps "success" isn't the best term for Korea. I think it turned out pretty well, though. We were awfully lucky, just as we were when we decided to step in and rework Japan and Germany.
Either way, though, I don't think Korea tells us a whole lot about Iraq, government failures or no, any more than Japan or Germany do. Indeed, our government's failures and successes don't strike me as particularly relevant to Korean success (or partial success), and I think that when we pull them out and examine them in the case of Iraq, they look significant, only because we focus on the things we can actually control. Which is not as much as we would like (somewhat like with the economy). As pointed out, government is an awfully blunt instrument, and all the more so when we meddle in foreign affairs. No matter how clever our planners think they are (or, in fact, are), human society is more complex than they are, and they can't control everything.
As it is, though, Iraq is an artificial country, with a history of perhaps 50 years, and no common historic identity (although Saddam Hussein seems occasionally to have tried to gin up some sense of common identity, via Babylonian history). If there is government failure now, there is government failure shot through the entire history of Iraq. Iraq only exists because of government failure (if such it be) in France and the British Empire. Their king was only king because outsiders made him so. Hussein was only dictator because outsiders (France, Russia, us) decided he'd do, and helped prop him up with weapons and money, rather than doing what we did in other cases (give the weapons and money to the opposition). And now Iraq is suffering a wave of terrorism while we try and figure out how to undo the mess the European powers made of things, when they parcelled up the Middle East into client kingdoms. And the further mess we made of it, when, in the interests of stability, we (and the Soviets) went propping up the dictators who overthrew them.
Not really like Korea at all.
Posted by: Taeyoung at Aug 4, 2006 2:50:57 PM
And, if we really get ambitious, how about making the Department of Defense live up to its name?
Also, I'm curious about what this means, because it is pretty vague. Does it mean that we should only use force in defense of our own territory - i.e., after we've been invaded? Would Alex ever permit us to "go on offense" - even against (e.g.) Japan after Pearl Harbor, or should we only have kept our forces on the US mainland to repel another Japanese attack? It's hard to get interested in Alex's ideas if he leaves us with so little practical information as to when and how he WOULD advocate using force.
Also, another question: if Alex is an extreme "individualist", why have a Department of Defense at all? If people want to defend themselves against an invader, why not let them do it privately?
Posted by: A.S. at Aug 4, 2006 2:53:00 PM
Bravo to those that have named the essential question: compared to what? Tabbarok's argument leads logically to the notion that no government should ever be involved in military action, except in direct self defense, perhaps even after the first blow has been struck by the aggressor. This is a recipe for the gradual reliquishing of our freedom to the fascists and dictators of the world, who, most certainly, do not subscribe to this theory.
Note that I do not advocate nation building or the "forward strategy of freedom". The role of the military should be to destroy our enemies' capacity to us harm, and to be ready to do it repeatedly if they continue to demonstrate their willingness to aggress against us. But, given the moral confusion of our times, I can understand the political calculations which led us down this unproductive path in Iraq.
Still, chaos in Iraq is better for freedom than were the Ba'ath in power. And, indeed, there is a valid argument that the stirring up of Iran to show their true colors to the world will be a long-term side benefit of this war. So, even with the pernicious political calculus that has contributed to this war to be waged poorly, the overall moral sense of the administration that something military had to be done about the Hussein regime has been vindicated.
Should the bar for military action be very high? Of course, but no so high as to let the "perfect" outcome drive out the possibility of improving things a little.
Posted by: RogerZ at Aug 4, 2006 2:56:50 PM
I think Iraq is going swimmingly. Shiites have been killing Sunni and vice versa since the 7th Century. That won't change. Nor should it, as it provides an outlet for them. Islam produces a large number of molested children, who seek redemption when they are grown. Jihad is their way to seek redemption. Violence between Shiite and Sunni is a path of Jihad that permits these poor tortured souls some path to redemption, but doesn't export the violence to the outside world. We should not hope for Shiite/Sunni violence to stop until Islam has addressed its continuing support for child molestors and rapists.
Hezbollah can be viewed as the Ardennes Offensive, a last gasp for terrorists, after having lost in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Gaza, in Judea/Samaria, to put together enough of a fight to get someone, anyone to negotiate with them. The terrorists are faced with a reality that most Lebanese Muslims, Lebanese Christians, and Lebanese Druse are opposed to them (recent election was 20% for Hezbollah). Lebanese Christians, Muslims, and Druse will eventually face up to their responsibility to disarm Hezbollah, and the terrorists will again lose a host.
Iran is about to find out a few complexities associated with nuclear chemistry. I expect to hear of a few work accidents, which will be blamed on the US and or Israel. Syria has already learned some of the complexities of working with chemical weapons. These weapons are touchy, and the average Syrian "scientist" is more used to adding red color to gasoline, rather than preventing the release of toxic chemicals in very small amounts from industrial quantities of material.
You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. Democracy can be messy, but is far superior to other forms of government that have, from time to time, been instituted amoung men.
We will not have perfection. We can have a good system that permits people in what ever country to continue to make progress.
Posted by: Don Meaker at Aug 4, 2006 3:01:33 PM
That many people are murdered in US cities every month. Is the US in a state of genocidal civil war by this measure?
I think the number of people getting killed leaves out some important information, though. Part of quality of life is feeling reasonably secure in your own home, or walking about your own neighbourhood. And American crime generally falls under the heading of something you can avoid, provided you are not one of the unfortunates unable to live anywhere but the high-crime zones in our cities. You know that if you don't enter such-and-such a neighbourhood at such-and-such an hour, you're highly unlikely to get in trouble.
Terrorism isn't like that. You can't avoid it just by staying out of certain neighbourhoods.
To draw the American parallel, suppose that our American violent crime rate, rather than being largely confined to urban high-crime areas like southeast DC or the like, were like the DC sniper. The DC sniper(s) didn't actually kill all that many people, but they did manage to terrorise the population quite effectively. People felt violated at the thought they could get killed just like that, while getting gas, or unloading a shopping cart at Target. If American violent crime were all like the DC sniper, I think we'd experience it as a much, much heavier degradation of our quality of life than we do now, where for most of the population, it's avoidable. We lock our cars, keep from insulting people, and avoid bad neighbourhoods.
I don't think Iraq is engaged in a genocidal civil war -- it seems more like a terrorist campaign in contested regions, and that doesn't amount to a civil war. We'd be seeing a lot more corpses if it were really a civil war. Like what was going on in the Congo a few years ago, for example. But it's also not at all comparable to American violent crime. For the average man on the street, I think it's much worse.
Posted by: Taeyoung at Aug 4, 2006 3:04:02 PM
Re: Also, another question: if Alex is an extreme "individualist", why have a Department of Defense at all? If people want to defend themselves against an invader, why not let them do it privately?
Because defense exhibits economies of scale. If we were to defend ourselves individually, most of us would be able to afford only M-16s. As a group, we can have B2s and Stratofortresses and nukes.
Posted by: disaggregated at Aug 4, 2006 3:05:43 PM
"Thus, Abu Ghraib and the routine shooting of innocents is no surprise - this is what happens when government is unconstrained."
In the time since the Iraq War began (2003-2006), there have been in excess of 30,000 murders in the United States. I'd be interested in how you blame those on an unconstrained government. Presuming you can't, how can you blame the existence of murders in Iraq on unconstrained government?
Just one of many sillinesses in the post.
Steve
Posted by: Steve at Aug 4, 2006 3:07:21 PM
This post represents a loss of rational analysis. The author cherry picks what to label as a failure. For instance the drive to overthrow Saddam (strangely unmentioned) was highly successful by any measure of warfare and it was entirely government run. Secondly democracy has been successfully exported in the past (to Japan) and no one second guesses it one bit as far as I can tell. So I guess the thought that our governement can export democrary must not be a fatal conceit ofter all. I suggest centering yourself and deep breathing first before writing more posts.
Posted by: Graham at Aug 4, 2006 3:12:36 PM
Excellent dialog. Reason (largely) in place of rhetoric.
If only our elected officials could demonstrate the same ability
Posted by: dadmanly at Aug 4, 2006 3:14:33 PM
Well damn Alex then get in there with your hyper-efficient free market army and correct the situation. Are you one of those libertarians who thinks we should have just sat back and let Japan rape China prior to WWII? I suppose you just didn't get involved when the class bully beat up some other kid in the class. Keep your mouth shut and hope he doesn't go after you isn't such a good strategy.
PS. I am nominally a libertarian except I understand the scope of it's abilities, none of which includes being able to convert around a billion intolerant muslims to it's way of thinking. Don't see how even if the US were fully libertarian we wouldn't be in a shooting war with Islam in some form or another. Look at places like the Neatherlands or Denmark. They are being targeted like everyone else despite their libertarian like stance, or perhaps because of it. Muslims don't exactly respect our boundaries, and like to blame us for all their ills. In fact libertian style places like the Neatherlands with the liberal laws on prostitution, booze, drugs, and dress are the first targets of moralistic religions like Islam.
There are reasons that are perfectly compatible with libertarianism for fighting against evil all across the globe. After all the planet is filled with governments that are intruding on their citizens. The only libertarian objection that I see making any sense whatsoever is on the issue of taxes. That is, you might have a valid claim that the war violating the rights of US taxpayers. I think however that warfare and the military really may not work the same way as normal markets despite Libertarian claims. I have no empircial evidence that anti-war libertarians are correct and plenty that they are not.
The way I see things is that pacifists can act as resources to be utilized by agressors in their attacks on non-pacifist non-agressors. The same can be said for those who under invest in defense. They end up being overrun and then used as human sandbags and cattle. This sort of thing does not come into play when dealing with normal market issues.
The fact that I decided not to buy a macintosh in no way endangers the mac owner. The fact that someone else decides not to properly defend themselves does endanger me. It endangers me in the same way as my neighbor leaving dry brush all over his property will increase both my chance and size of loss due to fire.
Now libertarians claim that they have a better solution than government to this problem. Something called protection organizations. All that is empirically apparent to me right now is that libertarians aren't very good at getting off their asses and forming all these protection organizations they drone on about. If they are so efficient they should easily be able to drive these governments right out of business. After all, their is nothing stopping them since their whole purpose is to protect against the initiation of force. You can't whine that you can't create them in the first place because of government intrusion since that would admit that your protection agencies are in fact ineffectual.
So if you are going to save us from initiation of force then it is going to have to be by force. So get your act together and do it already. Clearly by your reasoning you have every right to fight the US government right now.
Posted by: Brian Macker at Aug 4, 2006 3:15:09 PM
Re: Democracy in Japan
no one second guesses it one bit as far as I can tell.
Hmm. I do, kind of. I mean, when you've got a system where a single party has held power continuously at the national level, with only a single break of less than a year, doesn't it strike you that democracy . . . isn't really working the way we usually think it should? If it's democracy, it's a very different kind of democracy from what we know in the US or pretty much any other democracy around the world, where power actually changes hands between parties, rather than just factions within a single party (the LDP).
And within Japan, people occasionally criticise their system as lacking democracy. Most amusingly (largely in a case of super sore-loser-dom after being crushed, electorally, by Koizumi), the leader of Japan's Democratic Party complained that Japan had been transformed into a dictatorship under Koizumi.
Not to say that I think this is a problem in Japan at all. As a system, I prefer it to the system in France or Italy, or even Germany. But whether it's genuine democracy, as opposed to an awfully clever gerrymander into single-party domination, is not an empty question.
Posted by: Taeyoung at Aug 4, 2006 3:24:35 PM
"government ought to be designed...so it works when the knaves are in power and not just when the angels govern."
In other words, you want a government that will 'work' regardless of the rationality of its users. Sorry - no such thing. A government cannot - and will not - 'work' outside the intellectual context of its citizens. Cavemen - or their intellectual equivalents - cannot run a proper government, no matter how hard you wish otherwise. A proper government requires an enormous integration of rational concepts and rational actions in order to make it 'work'. In other words, a proper government requires the understanding and consistent application of a whole rational philosophy in order to make it 'work'. That cannot be wished away.
Of course, that is the problem with libertarianism: It does try to wish those facts away. It proceeds from the premise that politics - not ethics, not epistemology, and not metaphysics - is primary. That is why Libertarianism not only fails, but why it actually serves to destroy liberty.
Posted by: RadCap at Aug 4, 2006 3:29:01 PM
By the way, this has been the most outsourced war in American history. For example, sergeants have been resigning from the military and coming back to Iraq as Blackwater security men making five times as much. Has this made the war effort more cost-effective to the taxpayers? I doubt it.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Aug 4, 2006 3:33:30 PM
Alex:
Well said. Bravo. The near dominance of oxymoronic libertarian-militarists like Instapundit in the right blogosphere after the Afghan War is best explained by psychology, not logic.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Aug 4, 2006 3:37:15 PM
As Professor Lewis, the Princeton authority on the Middle East, has explained in "What Went Wrong" and "The Crisis in Islam," the actual battle is between fanatical Islamists, with their stated desire to return to the glory of the 7th Century, and modern Islam, which wishes to prosper in the 21st Century - that battle is going on in India [Kashmir], Russia, Somalia, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, and many other places, including parts of China. What the US and Israel are doing at present in Iraq and Lebanon is advancing their own interests, which means supporting the second group of Muslims in their battle with the first group of fanatics. Far too many are in denial about what is happening in many countires throughout the world and the effort required to respond to it. Both libertarians and nonlibertarians who believe in democratic institutions have an interest, perhaps a survival interest, in seeing to it that the fanatics are defeated. In economic terms, the price we are willing to pay, particularly in the lives of foreigners, increases as the threat to our freedom grows. What happens if Hezbollah nukes Hafia or, for that matter, Chicago? Morality in war is, at best, relative and driven by circumstances. We fire-bombed and targeted civilian populations in Japan near the end of WW 2 before we used nukes, intentionally killing tens of thousands of innocent women and children. It is hard to argue that was necessary, and it was cetainly immoral, but it was nevertheless a good thing for us, the Japanese and the rest of the world that we won. If you think free societies cannot be encourged/created by foreign intervention, I call your attention to Japan, Italy, Eastern Europe, Germany and South Korea, among others. Tou may advance libertarian views in a police state, but not for long.
Posted by: jimhanavan at Aug 4, 2006 4:09:58 PM
Yeah, should have gone with "DMV with Nukes" rather than the PO. The local PO is definetly more efficient than my freakin' bank, something I'm still a bit confused about.
Posted by: radek at Aug 4, 2006 4:17:03 PM
If you think free societies cannot be encourged/created by foreign intervention, I call your attention to Japan, Italy, Eastern Europe, Germany and South Korea, among others.
I don't think we were really on the side of "free societies" in Korea until Reagan or so. Actually, it came out a few years ago that in 1980, we (i.e. the Carter Administration) gave the go-ahead on the massacre of dissidents in Kwangju. Slaughtering protesters is kind of a signature technique of authoritarian governance. Also, in Eastern Europe, where did we intervene in favour of free societies? We gave moral and rhetorical support, to be sure, but I'm not aware that we actually intervened beyond that level. Did we?
Posted by: Taeyoung at Aug 4, 2006 4:35:59 PM
radek,
My DMV has gotten really efficient: it has both automated renewals and personal service that is FAST. This is not to say that it could not have been done privately for less. But my point is that the DMV may not be the best whipping boy either. Five years ago the DMV would have been a great whipping boy, but things have changed in my town.
Posted by: jim at Aug 4, 2006 4:52:47 PM
This is an absolutely excellent post!
Posted by: Brad at Aug 4, 2006 4:53:13 PM
Interesting essay, certainly thought provoking judging from the subsequent discussion. While it is all but axiomatic that presidents lie when it suits their, or presumably the nation's interests, the linked article is long on screed and short on substance. Actually it calls out for a full fisking but I do not wish to hijack such a productive discussion. Suffice to say that Mr. Higg's characterization that Roosevelt "eventually pushed the Japanese to the wall by a series of hostile economic-warfare measures" does, at the very least, tend to ignore the more provocative acts of the empire of Japan. More so it paints the US as the aggressor and Japan as the victim trapped in the corner. Make what you will of a clash between two expansionist empires but historical revisionism of this degree does tend to destroy any sense of credibility.
Posted by: ThomasD at Aug 4, 2006 4:55:23 PM
Wow. That was one of the worst, least intellectual posts I've ever read here at Marginal Revolution. It was like listening to a rant of a bright, but very angry, 16 year old. The kind who's convinced everyone in the world is an idiot but him.
Most blogs never rise above the level of innuendo, outrage, and slur when talking politics -- and this one didn't either. That was embarrassing.
Posted by: mike at Aug 4, 2006 5:01:53 PM
The entire "problem" of Iraq, and the larger Middle East, is demand-driven. That is, the population of the globe, from Chicago, to Shanghai, to Mumbai, to Madrid, and beyond, demands (vigorously) that the oil of the region be extracted, and, all heartfelt desires that your SUV run just as well on solar-charged Everyreadys as it does on Super aside, that is only going to change somewhat slowly. Now, yes, it probably would be a good idea to better internalize the cost to consumers of getting the damned stuff out of the Port of Basra, among other places in that vexed area of the world, but they still are gonna want the goop out of the ground. Thus, it is coming out, and the only open question, since getting the goop out inevitably involves us in the age-old conflict outlined by Mr. Hanavan above, is how high the corpses get stacked in the process.
Will the Iraq invasion eventually lead to more corpses being stacked in the process of oil extraction, or less? Got me; my crystal ball has been in the shop for as many decades as I've stumbled around in this Vale of Tears. For those who confidently assert that the toppling the Tikrit Mafia has made things worse, however, a bit less certitude might be in order. The old paradigm of slavery-by-proxy, in which the globe's oil burners paid off despots who shackled the region's population, in return for allowing the brisk transit of supertankers, did seem to be crumbling, in case you didn't notice. In other words, the whole system pretty much sucked prior to Saddam being driven into his hidy-hole, and it is far less than obvious that doing so, will prove to have, in the long run, resulted in more total suffering.
Posted by: Will Allen at Aug 4, 2006 5:15:59 PM
Taeyoung:
The question to ask about Japan is whether the major political factions in the Japanese populace find polical representation in their polical parties and that those parties chances of gaining power are roughly proportional to the popular support they enjoy. Equally important is whether minority and individual rights are protected. If these questions can be answered in the affirmative then Japan is a functioning democracy no matter how long a given party is in power.
I am no expert on Japan, but it seems to me that thou doth protest too much about the nature of democracy in Japan. I am assuming this is because their case proves irrefutably that democracy can be exported and that for some reason you don't like that idea.
Posted by: Graham at Aug 4, 2006 5:19:53 PM
disaggregated,
Your remark looks like a case of deliberate misunderstanding of individualism, conflating it with some view that favors personal autarky. That might imply that we should all rely on our own M16s, but individualism does not.
Posted by: James at Aug 4, 2006 5:21:06 PM
Correction:
"parties chances of gaining power are roughly proportional to the popular support they enjoy"
This is not so in a democracy. If the popular support your party enjoys is 10% its chances of gaining power may be nil, but it is still a democracy.
Posted by: Graham at Aug 4, 2006 5:22:59 PM
RadCap:
You can't build a government that will make better decisions than the people in the government are capable of making. But you can definitely build one that limits the scope of any one participant's corruption and/or incompetence. That's why separation of powers, rule of law, "a government of laws and not of men," and such ideas are important.
Posted by: albatross at Aug 4, 2006 5:28:51 PM
Yes, comparisons are good. Here are some comparisons about what we could have done towards various goals that have been brought up as reasons for the Iraq war, had we not dedicated so much of our money, effort, and military resources to Iraq. (And here are some comparisons on health care, sourcreamus, comparing the United States and all the industrialized countries with universal health care, and comparing the VA system with other health care providers within the United States.)
On the question of who or what is responsible for the Iraq fiasco, I think that it's important to separate two things: 1) the fact that there is a war and 2) the way that the war has gone. (Just War theory makes the same distinction). On the first issue, the decision to go to war, I agree that there are perverse incentives. War makes governing party more popular (especially if they're Republicans).
On the second issue, though, I think that the incentives do point in the right direction. Abu Ghraib is bad for Republicans, and the worse the war goes the worse that is for Bush and his party's political chances. Killing people is generally bad politics, even if they're foreigners, since even though the people who get killed can't vote (and, in the case of foreigners, most of their friends and family don't vote either), voters still care (to some extent, at the margins). A lack of transparency (plus the presence of propaganda) reduces the effectiveness of the incentive, though, and it can take awhile for a war that goes badly to overcome the initial wartime boost and be a net negative for the war party. Are we there yet on Iraq?
On the question of how the war goes, it seems like a stretch to say that the problem is government. The problem is war. There's no such thing as war by mutually consenting individuals, or war without enormous externalities. A few of the problems of war may be related to the fact that government beaurocracies are running the show, but most of them are inherent to war. The best that you can do is to try to avoid war except in relatively rare cases, and to try to put it in the hands of relatively responsible individuals and institutions. In Iraq, I'd say that the primary problem is that it was a foolish war to begin with, and on top of that it was run by people who didn't know what they were doing.
On the other half of the question, the decision of whether to go to war in the first place, it seems like there are more options, though not much that is purely market-based (maybe a tradesports-style market where people can bet on the consequences of war and non-war?). Public opinion matters a lot (it's more of a society-failure than a government-failure that wars make the war party popular). The media matters a lot. The structure of the government matters a lot. The people running the government matter a lot. And, in most cases, various people and institutions outside the country that is deciding whether to go to war a lot. For Iraq, here I'd place the blame primarily with the Bush administration and secondarily with everyone who let them get away with it.
Posted by: Blar at Aug 4, 2006 5:34:22 PM
I am no expert on Japan, but it seems to me that thou doth protest too much about the nature of democracy in Japan. I am assuming this is because their case proves irrefutably that democracy can be exported and that for some reason you don't like that idea.
Oh pish posh. I don't particularly care whether democracy can or cannot be exported. Indeed, if I wanted to argue against democracy having been "exported" to Japan, I wouldn't just argue that Japan isn't democratic now, I'd point to historical democratic developments from the period in which Japan modernised from the bakufu into a modern Empire. For example, the Meiji constitution's introduction of an elected national assembly (albeit with a restricted franchise, based on the amount of tax paid). Or that historical discussion of the Taisho era is even shot through with the concept of "Taisho Democracy," reflecting greater political engagement by the developing bourgeoisie and the populace in general. In short, I'd argue that democracy wasn't introduced or "exported" to Japan by the American occuption. Rather, it was re-introduced. Or "re-awakened" or somesuch. After a period in which the militarists frustrated Japanese democratic change.
Of course the same argument can be made about Germany (Meiji Japan modelled many institutions on Prussia), with equal or better force. But either way, I don't much care whether democracy was "exported" or arose indigenously (whatever we may take that to mean), because I don't think the question is really all that important. If we can get democracy to take root, then good for us, and lucky for them. If not, so long as we can at least establish a relatively liberal/non-genocidal oligarchy or dictatorship, then that's good enough for me. I'm fine either way.
The reason I am dubious about Japan is precisely because one party has won every election for the past 50 years. No matter how you look at it, that's rather different from any other free democracy in the world. Winning every election for fifty years also goes a long way towards reducing pressure to respond to the popular will, the way (in theory) a democracy ought.
The question to ask about Japan is whether the major political factions in the Japanese populace find polical representation in their polical parties and that those parties chances of gaining power are roughly proportional to the popular support they enjoy.
They're not. Not as far as I can see, at least. I specified "national level" and suggested "gerrymander" precisely because my understanding is that the LDP doesn't have anything near the same dominance at lower levels of political organisation, though I don't know whether a single party/family of parties captures a plurality at that level or it's just regional parties with largely regional concerns.
On the other hand, at the moment (unlike many moments in the past 50 years), Koizumi and the LDP do actually appear to have regained genuine broad-based popular support. Their last electoral victory was a landslide. So maybe I should say that for a lot of the period of LDP dominance, "they weren't." But they may be now.
Posted by: Taeyoung at Aug 4, 2006 5:54:11 PM
Some drive-by commenting:
John Thacker commented: "As well, for all the anti-foreigner bias you cite, people seem to care a lot more about Iraqi casualties now that we're there than they ever did before."
Probably because we weren't directly killing Iraqis before and weren't directly responsible for the chaos that is leading to Iraqis being killed. Now we are.
Albatross said: "Because an invading, occupying army is a very blunt instrument for doing good in a foreign country, we should be deeply skeptical of claims that we can do X amount of good for Iraqis at the cost of Y to Americans."
But that calculus was never presented to the US public for consideration in whether or not to go to war. What was presented was this: "Oh s*&^, we're all going to die!! Unless we attack Saddam *right now*!!"
Twok: "I disagree that the Iraq War is a fiasco. It only appears that way when fifth-columnists paint the picture to appear that a country the size of the US 'loses' a war after just 2100 hostile casualties, which is absurd. That many people are murdered in US cities every month. Is the US in a state of genocidal civil war by this measure?"
Twok, you have completely ignored one of Alex's central points, that in situations of war, our government has little incentive to prevent abuse of foreign citizens. By the government's own standard, the measure of success in this war is not number of US casualties, but establishment of a stable and fair society in Iraq. By most accounts, this is not now happening, therefore we are losing the war.
Posted by: yave begnet at Aug 4, 2006 5:59:58 PM
The only way we're likely to lose the war in Iraq is to decide it's too expensive. This seems likely to me, since fundamentally, most of us don't much care what goes on in Iraq. We don't want them selling nukes to Al Qaida, we'd really rather they didn't start a shooting war with Israel, and we would prefer if they managed all this without too much torture, ethnic cleansing, repression, etc. (But note that some of all these things is acceptable. We send gobs of money per year to Egypt, and we're on fine terms with Russia and China.)
This is one reason that nation building with the army is a bad idea--when soldiers get maimed or killed, many voters, like me, look at that and think "now, why does it make sense for Americans to die to build a good nation in Iraq, again?" And the first thought that comes to many of those voters, like me, is "it doesn't."
And then we look at other costs. Many knowledgeable people, mostly not what look to me like partisan hacks, are saying that this war is pounding the hell out of our army--that we've lowered standards considerably and played all kinds of games to meet our recruiting numbers, that morale is taking a beating, and that we're wearing out a lot of equipment for which we don't have available replacements. If we lose Iraq, morale will be worse, and it may be many years before any president can get the backing to send the military in somewhere else, good or bad. While we're bogged down in Iraq, we're limited in what we can do about Iran, Lebanon, Korea, etc.
Posted by: albatross at Aug 4, 2006 6:02:59 PM
jimhanavan said: "the actual battle is between fanatical Islamists, with their stated desire to return to the glory of the 7th Century, and modern Islam, which wishes to prosper in the 21st Century . . . What the US and Israel are doing at present in Iraq and Lebanon is advancing their own interests, which means supporting the second group of Muslims in their battle with the first group of fanatics."
I posit that U.S. policies have overwhelmingly alienated proponents of modern Islam throughout the Middle East and undermined them domestically vis-à-vis the militants and fundamentalists. Hence the U.S. is not currently supporting modern Muslims and is therefore, by your reasoning, not advancing its own interests.
I agree with Alex's point that the horrific externalities imposed because our democracy stops at water's edge mean we should be extremely cautious about entering wars. I do not think that it means we should never intervene. Non-intervention in the cases of Armenia, Germany WWII, Cambodia, Iraq 1988, Bosnia, and Rwanda meant that lots of foreigners died. Perhaps intervening in those cases would have led to greater bloodshed (hard to imagine in many cases), although non-military intervention was often not even considered. I think intervention on humanitarian grounds is valid, but is the kind of intervention least likely to be undertaken due to the same factors that make most wars a mess (here the benefits of intervention are not shared by the intervenors). If you give everyone involved a stake in the costs and benefits of armed intervention, you could avoid the bad wars and only enter into the good ones. I think you'd find the latter category to be vanishingly small. I'm afraid, however, that the way to this outcome leads through more government, not less.
Re: the post office—the branch nearest me now has machines you can use to send packages, which are invariably more pleasant and efficient than their human counterparts.
Posted by: yave begnet at Aug 4, 2006 6:10:06 PM
RedCap: "A government cannot - and will not - 'work' outside the intellectual context of its citizens. Cavemen - or their intellectual equivalents - cannot run a proper government, no matter how hard you wish otherwise. A proper government requires an enormous integration of rational concepts and rational actions..."
This leads to the need to enforce proper choices. It leads to a dictatorship just like communism, which is quite wonderful, leads to dictatorship because it's only wonderful if every single person behaves properly and provides the necessary "integration" of rational actions... doing things the way they must be done.
It's a brittle concept rather than a robust concept.
Government can, indeed, fuction as well as government can function when accomodation is made so that mistakes are not critical and the behavior of individuals has limited impact. It's not efficient, but it is robust.
A government should, as much as possible, be set up with the checks and balances that will let those cavemen who were elected by all the other cavemen serve without breaking anything much. Obviously we all want to vote for the best people and the best and most workable policies.
If it's a disaster for the cavemen to win... then it's not enough to let the people vote. What if they chose wrong? Can any responsible person even allow it? I mean... everyone gets to vote and most of them are idiots. If this was actually a *problem* I don't think I'd sleep. I'd probably develop BDS and insomnia.
(Sorry to go off topic.)
Posted by: Synova at Aug 4, 2006 6:28:27 PM
I was with you until you made the flippant remark about the Constitution. This war, Vietnam, Korea et alia have fit fully with the requirements that the Supreme Court has repeatedly elucidated for the exercise of Congress of its War Powers, and the executive of its power to make war.
Posted by: Fletcher at Aug 4, 2006 7:25:49 PM
Yeah, Fletcher, the insinuation that Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq took place without Congressional consent and/or authorization, and merely because the President willed them, is really tired. Mind you, I'd prefer it if Congress had the intellectual honesty to call a war a war, but the fact is those wars took place because Congress explicitly voted that they be fought.
Posted by: Will Allen at Aug 4, 2006 7:33:54 PM
Saddam's terror links detailed and updated at www.husseinandterror.com and www.regimeofterror.com
Posted by: Bobby at Aug 4, 2006 7:43:21 PM
Albatross: "But you can definitely build one that limits the scope of any one participant's corruption and/or incompetence."
This is a straw man, since the claim is that there is a systemic problem and not simply the problem of "one participant's corruption and/or incompetence". Put simply, you switched the context of the original quote and thus of my response to it. Therefore I will restate my point: there is no way to build a government that will "work" regardless of whether the country and its polticians are "angels or knaves". Yet THAT is the explicit wish which was made here (and is the implicit wish of libertarianism in general). That is what I pointed out as a fantastical and, as such, impossible goal. Your statements neither repudiate that wish, nor address the point that I made about that goal.
No system of government - whatever its "scope" (ie whatever its limitations) - stands outside the context of the rationality of its citizens (ie the people and their politicians). No system of government is or can be independent of its citizens's rationality.
In other words, contrary to the assertion in the original post, government is not the problem. It is the philosophy (or in the case of libertarianism, the lackthereof) of the people that is the problem. The government is simply a SYMPTOM of that problem - again because politics is NOT the primary. Politics is nothing but a reflection of the philosophic premises held and acted upon by the people. It is not the driving force nor prime mover.
--
Synova - "This leads to the need to enforce proper choices. It leads to a dictatorship just like communism....."
Thank you very much for proving my points completely - both my point about the rationality needed to understand as abstract a concept and application as government and, more specifically, my point about libertarianism.
Posted by: RadCap at Aug 4, 2006 8:20:50 PM
Fine post, with many great lines:
"If we remember previous wars more fondly this is only because those wars we won. "
The US Army can not win against religious based terror fighters if "enough" of the surrounding co-religious non-fighters give support -- and such half-civilians will give support as long as the US, or Israel, or any country with an army that is fighting accepts a requirement to presume innocence of the civilians who are, in fact, 'guilty of supporting terrorists'.
Excessively avoiding the "false guilty" error means far too many "false innocent" errors. There is too little discussion of these errors in the WoT.
Only locals know the guilty, only locals can beat them.
Iraq is not yet quite a fiasco; Bush gets a 'B' for implementation, so far. (Less then 2500 US soldiers killed would have been an 'A').
Darfur -- fiasco. Congo -- fiasco. Rwanda 94 -- fiasco.
The success in implementing democracy has been spectacular, actually -- with three quite fair elections. The real issue is with the Iraqis themselves -- are the Sunnis willing to live in peace with the Shia, when the Shia have majority power?
So far the answer is no; the Sunnis have not accepted peaceful toleration of the Shia.
That is only the fault of Bush if you fault him for not fire-bombing Tikrit (or Sunni Baghdad or Fallujah) into total destruction and forcing/ terrorizing the Sunnis into not resisting -- like Assad in Hama, Syria (30 000 killed, to quiet disapproval).
(More US troops would only have provided more targets and more outrage, with very little additional deterrence.)
Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at Aug 4, 2006 8:21:25 PM
Jim, I am unfortunately in a situation where it would be almost impossible for me to get my hands on Alchian & Allen's "Exchange and Production".
Would it be possible for you to give a quick summary of the differing ways the fishing boat would be used by the islanders depending on the orientation of their society (capitalist, socialist, or communist)? I must admit it has piqued my interest. If you don't care to post it yourself, are there any online sources of which you are aware which cover the matter? My Google search has come up empty.
Phred
Posted by: Phred at Aug 4, 2006 8:42:24 PM
It's certainly fashionable to declare our nation's Iraq effort a "fiasco", but I don't buy it. We won't know what our actions there have wrought for many years, possibly decades. To judge the situation based on this week's ethnic death toll is naive. Kind of like judging the worth of equities as an investment by what the Dow did today. For the most part, the Iraqis have achieved milestone after milestone and there is no indication this progress won't continue. Let's not focus on the cracked seashell we just stepped on. Instead, let us take in the whole beach.
It's obvious that democracy CAN be "exported". It's been done before. While Iraq may not compare perfectly with the examples of Germany and Japan, there are numerous other examples. The amount democracy enjoyed in any given county can usually be predicted by examining that nation's historical interaction with Western Europe. Call it exported, implanted or whatever.
Posted by: David Klug at Aug 4, 2006 9:11:47 PM
This post is blah blah gobbledy gook.
The "bar" for war should be set high? This statement is a farce. Imagine if Britain had fought Germany in the mid 30's, it would never have happened of course, but if the bar was set much lower, or if human's ability to descern ambitions to tyrannical power were more adequate to the task, we could fight often, but small, losing fewer net souls of our best and brightest, while keeping the world safe for peace protesters and over thought discourse such as this blog.
Posted by: Joel Mackey at Aug 4, 2006 9:37:44 PM
It seems to me you could compare Basra to the experience in American sectors. The British attitude seems to be one of, 'Don't mind me mate. Just hanging around a bit. Try not to blow up me tank.' Stephen Vincent criticized the Shia or Moqtada al Sadr intimidation this left and was apparently killed, along with his female translator, for it. Solomon Pax of Baghdad, a blogger before the war and into the early part of the Rorschach, said of the danger of American troops there that he 'hoped his car wouldn't backfire behind an American combat vehicle' implying he wasn't afraid of random violence. Nir Rosen says that the Coalition Provisional Authority called a meeting 2 months after our arrival in Baghdad of 300 tribal leaders of all religious and ethnic groups which dissolved into some chaos when, in response to a question, Ambasador Horan said we "were somewhere between occupier and liberator." It would have been more in the spirit of our American whigish forefathers to have told them that they were going to put together a government with democracy as a fail/default position.
Posted by: michael at Aug 4, 2006 9:47:43 PM
Phred,
Everyone on the island catches 4 fish per day per person on shore (no boat yet). The boat's production possibilities are:
Num of people Total fish Marginal catch Average catch
on boat caught on boat on boat(MP) on boat (AP)
0 0 -- --
1 8 8 fish 8 fish
2 18 10 9
3 24 6 8
4 28 4 7
5 30 2 6
6 30 0 5
7 28 -2 4
8 24 -4 fiah 3 fish
Under communism there are 2 rules: all who use the boat share equally and
no one is exclude from using the boat. In this case people continue to board
as long as: AP is greater than or equal to 4 fish. Thus we get 7 on the boat,
and it yields no social gain (the 7 on the boat catch 28 fish which is the
same as they would have caught from shore.
Under capitalism whoever finds the boat keeps it and hires workers. The owner
will pay workers 4 fish each (assuming neither risk nor pleasure from cruising).
To max profits people go on the boat as long as: MP greater than or equal to 4 fish.
The owner gets a profit of 28-16 or 12 fish.
Under socialism whoever finds it becomes the boat czar who may exclude whomever he
wants, who must pay each worker as himself, who must pay all workers equally.
In this case, there will be 2 people on the boat (whatever maximizes the AP).
The net social gain is 18-8 or 10 fish.
Capitalism generates the maximum wealth gain.
The A&A chapter is much more extensive and goes into some really interesting
extensions about interspecialized resources and transactions costs.
Posted by: jim at Aug 4, 2006 10:22:07 PM
Phred,
Sorry the spaces in the table disappeared when I posted; can you understand it?
Posted by: jim at Aug 4, 2006 10:26:30 PM
IMO Don Meaker is absolutely right about endemic muslim child molestation being the cause of much of our current problems.
If I was fighting this war I would drop tons of pot vs. tons of bombs. The first ameliorates the problem the second kills it. Unfortunately such a solution is too far outside the box to be implimented.
Posted by: M. Simon at Aug 4, 2006 10:28:14 PM
Yes, this is what you expect from a central government. The 5 roles of the US central government are: 1. System of interstate commerce. 2. System of national law. 3. Monetary policy 4. National defense. 5. International relations and diplomacy. All of the other roles are the states responsibilities.
Arguing that war is conducted incompetently is a silly argument. War is conducted by the only authority that is capable of doing so, the national government. By definition, they do it the best that they can and if it isn't up to the standards of other activities, then they shouldn't be held to those standards.
This is different than the argument that we shouldn't have been in the war at all. They are not the same. One can argue that it wasn't the right war or it shouldn't have been fought at all. But one cannot argue that it is a fiasco. All war is a fiasco.
Posted by: Glenzo at Aug 5, 2006 12:46:40 AM
The analysis of the current situation in terms of incentive in government falls into a common Libertarian trap: the assumption of action out of pure self interest. If all the decisions by democratic leaders were made purely for that motive, I don't think our system would have lasted very long at all. The hard left also falls into this trap in a more vicious way - imagining that conservative leaders (like Bush) are psychopaths willing to sacrifice many lives for their personal financial interests. Neither side seems to be ideologically equipped to understand the situation.
People are more complex than any model, and the Randian model is especially oversimplified. Today, economists recognize that even market decisions are frequently far from rational self interest.
Certainly self interest cannot be ignored - it is a very strong factor in government. But it isn't all.
I think the evidence is strong that Bush, whatever one thinks of the wisdom of his policies or is reasoning, is motivated by a desire to protect Americans in a global war.
Also, focusing on Iraq as "the war" is wrong. The Administration thinks (correctly IMHO) of the activities since 2001 as a global war against Islamist fascism (and, incidently, a "war" to prevent terrorists of any stripe from acquiring and using WMD's - primarily nukes). Iraq is one theater, Afghanistan is another, but there are many others in the geographical dimension, and many other dimensions and efforts (Proliferation Security Initiative, for example). Success or failure in any theatre is important but not decisive.
The much maligned neocons also have a motivation to spread democracy for the sake of the people of the world - an altruistic role for the nation as opposed to the realpolitk view held by other hawks (this is one difference between the Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations).
Personally, I think it's great to help other people in the world, but the primary reason we give up liberties to our government should be to protect ourselves, not to lose the lives of our soldiers for the benefit of other countries. Hence I supported the Iraq war as an action in the war, and consider benefits to the Iraqi people to be a secondary goal that must be sacrificed under some circumstances. I supported the war in Vietnam (of which I'm a veteran) with the same reasoning.
Government has its uses, even though the only way to have government is to give up some liberties to an entity that is likely to be pretty poor at decision making and worse at executing policy.
Posted by: John Moore at Aug 5, 2006 1:00:55 AM
M. Simon,
Restrictions on sexual expression exist in all three Abrahamic faiths and men are a privileged class in most interpretations of each. Child molestation and misogyny are hardly exclusive to Islam and are as prevalent in other faiths.
Such behavior patterns are human disorders and not attributable to any ideology.
Re: “If I was fighting this war I would drop tons of pot vs. tons of bombs. The first ameliorates the problem the second kills it. Unfortunately such a solution is too far outside the box to be implemented.”
This solution is not ‘outside the box’. It is immature. Grow up.
PS: I corrected the spelling of ‘implemented’ for you in your quote.
Posted by: Chairman Mao at Aug 5, 2006 1:31:07 AM
Chairman,
Whatever the original prescriptions and culture of the three faiths you mentioned two of them have had their reformation. The third not so much.
As to my prescription being simplistic - your ignorance is showing. Not unusual. Libertarians take a rights view of drug use while being as ignorant of the physiology as your average American or most Doctors.
PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System
a Doctor Speaks:
You might want to figure how you plan to peacefully coexist with folks with this governing philosophy:
Hizbollah and Hamas have constructed core ideologies based upon this Islamic theology of Jew hatred, which one can glean readily from their foundational documents, and subsequent pronouncements, made ad nauseum. Hamas further demonstrates openly its adherence to a central motif of Jew-hatred in Muslim eschatology—Article 7 of the Hamas Charter concludes with a verbatim reiteration of the apocalyptic hadith alluded to earlier:
“The Last Hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: `Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him’; but the tree Gharkad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985).
Posted by: M. Simon at Aug 5, 2006 2:27:30 AM
I guess bad spelling does weaken my argument.
Your excellent spelling must make your arguments especially strong.
BTW noted in numerous pronouncements around the net but not noted at the above link is the fact that all pagans (not an Abrahamic faith) will be killed and Christians will be subjugated. Also noted is that they do not believe in separation of Mosque and state.
If you should find any spelling errors in the above feel free to correct them at your discretion.
Posted by: M. Simon at Aug 5, 2006 2:41:25 AM
Here is a nice one about the connection of child abuse and drug use:
and another:
Posted by: M. Simon at Aug 5, 2006 2:45:45 AM
M. Simon,
The Arab-Israeli conflict is an open wound and extremely painful to both sides. There is bitterness and harsh words especially from the party that is at a military disadvantage. Any person with basic Internet experience can locate anti-Semitic statements online. War creates and exacerbates hatred.
Such statements ARE NOT mainstream Muslim thought. Nor is opposition to Israel equivalent to anti-Semitism; although it is often difficult to differentiate since Israel proclaims to be a ‘Jewish state’ and there is no other Jewish state. Islamic doctrine and law protects Jews and Christians.
I hope that you can find relief from your biases. Perhaps then, your political and economic analysis will be sound and rational and less focused on killing the ‘other’.
PS: I will not proofread your work. The one example was merely aimed at strengthening my argument.
Posted by: Chairman Mao at Aug 5, 2006 3:02:30 AM
Dear Reader,
Iraq is a symptom. the government we have today is based on partisanship. Our Founding Fathers, leery of religious strife, designed a system based on geography. We diabled that by taking away the states ability to choose senators. A key check to centralized power.
Posted by: Andrew Knutson at Aug 5, 2006 12:05:54 PM
I wish to thank all posters for this, very interesting, first visit via Instapundit. That
is particularly why I love the internet. I can stumble across reasonably sane sites that have civil discourse most of the time.
It was fun for me because I agree and disagree with alot of what's posted and I gained some points to ponder.
Keep up the good posts so my future visits will be as good as todays.
Posted by: Sue at Aug 5, 2006 2:52:12 PM
I don't think any comparison to Iraq from Germany and Japan is particularly valid. In West Germany there was almost no incentive for the German people to get rid of the Western occupation forces because of the presence of the Soviets on the other side of the border. While I doubt they were happy that they had to have foreign troops there, it was obviously worlds better than Soviet occupation. (Considering that there was some Soviet agression towards Japan at the very end of the war, I would assume that they had some of the same concerns.)
Also, most modern wars don't typically end with the type of total, decisive defeat that occured in World War II. In Germany and Japan, the Nazi and Imperial nationalist beliefs were proven completely false by defeat after defeat to the United States et. al and the wholesale destruction of cities. Also throw in official surrender from the old authorities. This is a scenario completely different from the old government in Iraq just sort of disappearing.
Posted by: TH at Aug 5, 2006 4:35:26 PM
I wouldn't call the situation a failure. Slow, messy, and uncertain for sure, but not lost.
And yes it's the nature of goverment and not really and particular decision or policy that has made so slow and messy. On the policy decisions that contribute to this, there is pretty much only the neglect of the PR side and improper framing. There is also the unconditional absolute commitment verbage that I think was mistaken. I think we allowed too much dependance. But the goverment is like the post office of 20 years ago. If you liked Jr Highschool, you'll love working for the government.