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William F. Buckley is a smart guy
Buckley was the first person I ever read on politics. Now he is writing:
A geographical division of Iraq is inevitable. The major players are obvious. It isn't plain how America, as an outside party, could play an effective role, let alone one that was decisive, in that national redefinition.
I take it he means other than for the Kurds, whom we can continue to protect. Jane Galt offers her mea culpa on Iraq, and questions who was really the smarty-pants. I wrote in her comments:
While I too was "tricked" about WMDs, that was not my key mistake. My key mistake was to think that if we could lead a regime change in a country as messed-up as Haiti without touching off a civil war, that we could do the same in Iraq. These power transitions seemed to have worked OK numerous times in the past (though Haiti hasn't gotten better it would have gotten worse), but of course it didn't go very well this time.
Dan Drezner surveys his own mistakes. Matt Yglesias gives perhaps the best ongoing coverage of the U.S. political situation.
Regardless of what Victor Davis Hanson tells us we should do, it seems obvious what we will do, namely a near-complete pull-out with a buffer reserved for the Kurds and some bases and perhaps the selective use of air power. The next question is this: if the new Iraq really is a breeding ground for terrorists who will strike abroad, as many anti-war critics have suggested, under what conditions would we later re-up our military involvement, and for how long? I don't have a good answer, and perhaps I "don't deserve to be listened to" on this, but I would like to hear what the superior predictors have to say.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 19, 2007 at 12:10 PM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
Man, you are just too cool. And let me beat the crowd in wishing you a happy birthday, still two days away.
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Jan 19, 2007 2:14:43 PM
I find this blogger's analysis of the Iraq situation very persuasive - http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/ - and it is backed-up with linked data analysis at every step.
Posted by: Bruce G Charlton at Jan 19, 2007 2:20:54 PM
Another post demonstrating why this blog is so good. And happy birthday!
"I don't have a good answer, and perhaps I "don't deserve to be listened to" on this, but I would like to hear what the superior predictors have to say."
I was a "superior predictor", but right now, I don't feel any elation. Great, I was right, and a few hundred thousand people are dead, the middle east is breeding even more terrorist than before, our crediblity is shot, and we've spent tons of money.
As for what to do, I think the time for good answers is long over. We're looking at answers in the least catastrophic range. The Iraq war is one of the times where risk of ruin based analysis would have been very helpful.
So what are the REALISTIC options? We can stay or go.
IF we stay, there are several plans we could implement. We could partition the country - politically infeasible due to oil deposit locations. We could essentially control Bhagdad only - turns the rest of the country into a blood bath for our supporters. We could give up Bhagdad and control parts of the rest of the county - turns the biggest city in the country into a shooting gallery.
My prefered plan is to abandon Iraq except for small provinces easy to control with 1/4 of current forces, move 1/4 of forces to Afganastan, build infrastructure over the next decade and bring the rest home. The tactics for the forces in Iraq is to build AND protect infrastructure, like water plants, power plants and such.
What is the strategy behind this plan? Our long term strategy is for the hearts and minds of the 85-95% of the population who just wants to live in peace. There will always be many nuts who hate us. We can't win against them as the costs of killing them are too high, we can only make it socially unacceptable for them to express their anger in violence against us. Right now, it is acceptable for them to express their anger against us in violence. For this violence to be acceptable, a large portion of the population has to be sympathetic to this urge. We will never be able to stop them as long as it is socially acceptable.
So the logical thing to do is make small, but easily connectable islands of peace and prosperity and easy living in areas of the country that are already disposed to like us. Structure this so that the people that live between these islands have huge incentives to get with our program. Let them invite us into their lands. This will take at least 2-3 to be begin making the smallest progress and that we are going to be there for the next 40 years. On top of that, it probably won't work.
Note this plan turns most of the country into a bloodbath, and I am aware that I am dooming many 10s of thousands people, if not more, to their deaths. Its a horrible plan, but it is the least horrific option we have right now.
Posted by: mickslam at Jan 19, 2007 2:35:29 PM
namely a near-complete pull-out with a buffer reserved for the Kurds and some bases and perhaps the selective use of air power.
Bet that's wrong. There are (IIRC) 25 million Kurds (or roughly the population of Iraq) in contiguous areas in four nation states. I suspect that we're going to have to screw the Kurds, again. The question will be whether we screw them big or small. I'm sure the Kurds know this, and that there's a decent chance this gets v. ugly. But we'll see.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim at Jan 19, 2007 2:38:23 PM
I think when we eventually pull back or pull out, as the case may be, shockingly little will change. We will discover just how little our presence has meant and how ineffective it has been.
Posted by: Lord at Jan 19, 2007 3:06:54 PM
I don't see how a division of Iraq would work, myself. The idea that it's a convenient Shiite south, a Sunni middle, and a Kurdish north isn't realistic. What about having the only port in the south, or the Shia who live in and around Baghdad, or having most of the oil in the north? Most of the cities are a mix, anyway.
The example that comes to mind is the partition of India, which was a disaster at the time, and hasn't been that good-looking an idea since then, either.
Posted by: Derek Lowe at Jan 19, 2007 4:15:37 PM
I'll accept all of that except the conviction that William F. Buckley is a smart guy. Buckley is a perpetual sophomore who loves parading the arcanae that he picked up last night. He's cuter and more charming about it than George Will, but smart is something else.
Posted by: Buce at Jan 19, 2007 4:41:53 PM
I'm trying to decide whether you are being cute or sarcastic in the title of this post.
In any event, regardless of how smart WFB is (and I acknowledge he is plenty smart), that doesn't necessarily make him right, on this or any other issue.
Posted by: David Hecht at Jan 19, 2007 5:05:11 PM
Julian Sanchez has a characteristically excellent rejoinder to Megan's post - scroll to "In Defense of My Retroactive Smugness"
http://www.juliansanchez.com/notes/index.php
Posted by: SM at Jan 19, 2007 6:55:56 PM
You ask what do we do we if Iraq really is a breeding ground for terrorists. This assumes Iraq will *remain* a breeding ground for terrorists, or that terrorists will *remain* in Iraq (where we could hurt them with a later strike on Iraq.)
But the idea of the "breeding ground" argument is that US-occupied Iraq provides a meeting-place and training ground for would-be terrorists, much as Soviet-occupied Afghanistan did decades ago. Few people in the Middle East have the motivation to just leave their homes, travel to the States (or other Western countries), and commit a terrorist attack. Even if they did, they would lack the necessary connections and training to do so.
But it is much easier for a local to go to Iraq and help to fight the Americans (or Shi'a "collaborators".) And once there, he will be put into contact with like-minded folks. By providing a social network, "on-the-job" training, and an easy path to jihad, Iraq makes it much easier for prospective terrorists to become radicalized and capable of carrying out terrorist strikes on far-away targets. Or so the argument goes.
Nothing in this argument suggests that these folks would remain in Iraq (or remain active as terrorists in Iraq) after the end of the US military presence and/or Iraqi civil war. Indeed, wouldn't we expect most of them to disperse back to their local countries? So it's not clear how increased US military involvement in Iraq later on would be helpful / necessary in combatting the increased terrorist threat from our Iraq invasion.
Posted by: Ali Soleimani at Jan 19, 2007 9:38:53 PM
When we listen to the prognostications of superior predictors are we just assuming that past performance predicts future success?
What if they were right for the wrong reasons?
Do they have any good stock tips?
Posted by: sean at Jan 19, 2007 11:32:04 PM
Asking those who opposed the war from the outset to now come up with a solution to remedy this horrible mistake is absurd. There is quite apparently no "successful" outcome to our invasion of Iraq. Whether we stay or go, "surge" or scale back, it is done. How it turns out in the long run, history will tell. Iran will undoubtedly be the real winner as they have secured at the very least a weakened state on their border, and at the best a partial client state in Iraq. In accomplishing this for the Iranians, the US has squandered vast financial resources, personnel, and stored up international goodwill. We are in addition paying an increasingly significant opportunity cost in places like Afghanistan, North Korea and, with the latest news, China
Tyler, you ask the question only because you, like so many others who for the best of intentions, were suckered into supporting this mess and are now still reluctant to fully own up to that misjudgement. You are just throwing good money after bad. The game is over.
Posted by: Martin at Jan 20, 2007 12:08:23 AM
I hate the hand-wringing over Iraq. It's the worst feature of the blogosphere, bar none. When you hear the stories of most of the soldiers who are over there, they think/know they are making a difference. They are sober about the problems they face. It goes from the generals all the way down to the soldiers. Their re-up rates are too high to suggest they think they are being defeated or can't eventually carve out a decisive victory. They're pay is too low and the economy too good at home, and the support for soldiers too strong for a single one of them to voluntarily re-up. And yet they do. I think that's a very important piece of information to take into account, and reflects judgments of individuals closest to the situation.
I get the feeling that the commanders and the soldiers all know about Iran's and Syria's roles in the insurgencies, and see them more as a pain in the ass that they have to tolerate because of politics rather than a serious threat. So long as we're there, nobody is going to mess with us in any serious way. We might as well be there now for no other reason than to project power and keep the region stable.
My prediction is that we'll continue to stay the course. The surge is mostly a PR move. As the factions get tired of blowing each other up, greater order will be established. We'll continue to take historically low (but still sad) casualties. The Presidential election of 2008 will surprise everyone. The Dems will not nominate a candidate who will change course. Hillary, for example, will see an opportunity to execute the reconstruction "the right way" and won't cut and run. The Repubs will nominate Jeb Bush, John McCain, or Rudy Guilliani, all strong supporters of winning.
Pulling out would be to leave the region in turmoil, and the most important part of "turmoil" is the last three letters. So it won't happen. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Posted by: Brad Hutchings at Jan 20, 2007 2:03:32 AM
I tried to convince people that the WMD were a hoax during the runup to the war. I tried and tried and got nowhere. Reporting on supposed Iraqi WMD was the end of my trust in mainstream media. How could they have ignored such obvious signs? The aluminum tubes were basically unsuitable for use as centrifuges and suitable as conventional missile warhead housings. The "biological weapons trailer" was for hydrogen production for balloons. The inspectors found nothing and were kicked out by Bush. There was disagreement about the meaning of all the evidence presented and even strong internal disagreement in the CIA. Bush basically bought the support of countries in the UN. WE KNEW THIS AT THE TIME. ALL OF IT. YOU JUST HAD TO LOOK. I could find it all. Easily. So professional reporters could have too. You could have too. The only thorough economic analyses of the war estimated its cost at 1 to 3 trillion dollars, including externalities, figures which are now borne out, but what was reported was back of the envelope figures by neocons.
Why did you let yourselves be duped? Why?
Posted by: bhauth at Jan 20, 2007 2:22:38 AM
A couple years back, I actually went and thought up a plan to salvage Iraq. The Kurds got their own country in all but name, protected by US materiel useless in cities, in exchange for contribution of troops that speak the language, know the people, etc. Hardcore Shia and Shiites get their own regions. Arms flow to militias is intercepted and alternately destroyed, replaced with fakes, tagged with a tracking device, and rigged to explode when fired. I came up with ways to play the tribes fighting us against each other. I came up with ideas for realizing the opportunity in the chance to create a government from scratch knowing what we know and the technology we have now. I had a whole ton of things.
What we got is years of such incompetence as hiring interpreters that are double agents, having national guard recruits wait in line outside in open areas even as they're getting car bombed, and creating policy that leads to Abu Graib situations for no good reasons. And now, well, now it is too late. I don't think it can be salvaged.
Posted by: bhauth at Jan 20, 2007 2:47:55 AM
The panicky defeatism reflected in this thread is unwarranted. Just what terrible thing is going to happen to us or to the Iraqis if we stick it out for the duration? And, to be fair to the Dems, don't we have a number of exit options that, while probably inferior to pressing on, would leave us considerably ahead of the game? This is costing more money and taking longer than it could/should have, but it is only a defeat if we create it by panicky action and excessive self-flagellation.
Posted by: srp at Jan 20, 2007 2:49:45 AM
What's a worst case scenario, you ask, srp? Troop deaths climb rapidly. Islamic extremists with oil money decide to fund Iraqis who want to use Bush's strategy of "fighting them over there" leaving the US dealing with terrorists using mortars on stadiums and fourth of july celebrations, shooting up shopping malls on black friday, modifying drug dosage data in hospitals, and hijacking an oil tanker to run it into a NY or CA harbor. China converts its dollars to Euros, leading to rapid dollar devaluation as investors panic. OPEC and Chavez stop selling oil to the US. Use your imagination.
Not saying that would happen. But a continuation of Bush-level incompetence would make such events...not unlikely.
Posted by: bhauth at Jan 20, 2007 3:00:11 AM
As far as I can tell, William Odom at the Hudson Institute did as good a job as any in predicting the outcome, and still seems to have one of the few sensible views on where to go from here: http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=4410
Posted by: Bob Shackleton at Jan 20, 2007 11:53:19 AM
SRP brings up that favorite throwaway line of the neo-cons, to wit "panicky defeatism." If we re-examine what our goals in Iraq were stated to be, they were:
1) Overthrow Saddam - done
2) Destroy WMD stockpiles and programs - Oops, None there, so we created to take its place
3) Create a Democratic state with a stable government that is a beacon for the Middle East. Most people have concluded this is now wholly unrealistic, probably was from the get go.
So what exactly do SRP et al think our continued presence there actually accomplishes? The only logic in continuing to throw good money (and lives) after bad in this situation is political, and domestic politics at that. However, if ramping up the forces a little allows the Administration to create enough semblance of order to permit them to exit w/o having to admit defeat, then I say "bring it on." Worked in Vietnam after all.
Posted by: Martin at Jan 20, 2007 12:41:13 PM
Wilsonian utopian fantasies underlie our problems in Iraq. However, the left is equally utopian in its pacifist reliance on words--negotiation, conferences, the UN, etc. Despite the left's criticism of him as a brutal cowboy, Bush has actually been fighting a P.C. war and our troops know it. The generals sound like Georgetown or Kennedy school trained diplomats. They've forgotten that war is about killing. We have met the enemy and he is us. We truly are a nation of wimps.
Posted by: Stephen at Jan 20, 2007 3:32:21 PM
Smart man? I don't think so.
Here's part of what Buckley wrote:
Is it a strain to send more troops to Iraq?
No. A country of 300 million has resources insignificantly depleted by the proposed increase in troops.
Yes, there would be sacrifices. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to spend 10 seconds describing the anguish of the families of soldiers wounded or killed, which does not diminish that anguish. We are talking in clinical language. Hospitals don't pause to bemoan the deaths that occur on their premises. America has been at war in Iraq for nearly four years. No sacrifice of a corporate character has been asked of the American people. Taxes haven't been raised, gasoline hasn't been rationed, passports haven't been recalled.
Life in free countries produces victims in every field. In the past four years, 3,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq. In the same period, about 170,000 Americans have died in car accidents, and about 1.6 million have died from tobacco-related illnesses.
So we shouldn't worry about the casualties, because people die in the hospital every day. We shouldn't worry about the $10-15 billion a month in direct costs, because there have been no tax increases and we can just borrow it. Somehow, to him, this makes it costless.
This is your idea of a smart man? Look, Buckley is a talented and successful promoter of right-wing ideas. He is an engaging speaker. As a thinker he is not much.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Jan 21, 2007 3:21:49 PM
The unitalicized paragraph begining "Life in free countries" is Buckley's, not mine. The rest is mine. Sorry about the carelessness
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Jan 21, 2007 3:23:27 PM
Re: Martin
2) Destroy WMD stockpiles and programs - Oops, None there, so we created to take its place
Stockpiles of operational WMDs, no, but they did have stockpiles of low enriched uranium in their facility in Tuwaitha. We finished taking that away sometime in 2004, I think, though, and took all the documents from their nuclear weapons program too (leaving aside, for the moment, that Congress stupidly released them on the internet shortly after), so apart from our ongoing efforts to comb the desert for anything they might have hidden away, we were pretty much done with this goal by the end of 2004. Whatever new government arises in Iraq is going to have to start from zero as far as amassing and refining uranium goes (as far as nuclear know-how and engineering schematics, they can probably just import those from our friends in Pakistan). That's assuming we got almost everything, at least. There might be buried treasure, but hopefully it's just as hidden for future governments in Iraq as it is for us.
Posted by: Taeyoung at Jan 22, 2007 4:00:12 PM
Hi
Best wishes。
Allow me to offer my heartiest wishes.
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