New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | March 21, 2006

In a review of George Packer's The Assasins' Gate, Michael Young looks at how "America's grand endeavor" in Iraq got "cut down to an exercise in hoping."

Comments

|3.21.06 @ 3:36PM|#

I wish someone would ever consider the alternative to keeping the Bathist power structure in tact. If Bremer had kept the Army together and used it to run the country, the Shia would have revolted. Yet, the it sucks to have the Sunni minority supporting an insurgency but it would have been 100 times worse had there been a real Shia insurgency. Moreover, the entire Army was broke and utterly worthless. People just throw out the assertion that the Army should have been kept in tact and things would have been better like it is fact when it is not.

The last paragraph of Young's article is puzzling. She states "Now, with the Iraqis increasingly encouraged to go it alone, can we honestly say the liberals will come out on top?" Isn't the Iraqis going it alone supposed to be the endstate? I don't think even the most ardent supporter of the war wanted the U.S. to run Iraq forever. Of course they are being asked to go it alone. It is their country. At some point, they have to go it alone.

Ken Layne|3.21.06 @ 3:41PM|#

I think that's actually supposed to say "cut down to an exercise in horror."

|3.21.06 @ 3:45PM|#

Yes Ken "the horror, the horror". Thank heavens we live in a county and in a century where a bush war like Iraq can be an exercise in horror as opposed to the last two centuries where there were wars that were the equivilent of an Iraq a week for years on end.

|3.21.06 @ 4:06PM|#

How does a "libertarian" enterprise like Reason continue to publish Michael Young? This guy doesn't get it--fucking incompetence is what government does. Jesus, how fucking hard is that to understand already? THAT is why noble-minded but oblivious-to-reality schemes like the Iraq invasion fail.

Fukuyama's mea culpa at least managed to cover this point. Mike, it seems, is still in the weeds.

|3.21.06 @ 5:41PM|#

Reason demonstrates its hipness by not being too libertarian. Hence its affiliation/chumminess with Michael Young, Cathy Young, Jonathan Rauch, Christopher Hitchens, Ron Bailey, etc.

|3.21.06 @ 5:54PM|#

Most historians accept that what we call "foreign policy" is, more often than not, a pawn in a game of domestic policy. People don't know very much about what's going on abroad; their personal stake in the outcome is low; "doing something" makes them feel good. It's unfortunate that we only seem to accept the possibility of this in retrospect.

What's most disturbing about Iraq is not the fiasco we've gotten ourselves into, but the fact that we seem so determined to avoid learning anything interesting about the experience. "Hayek doesn't stop at the water's edge." You cannot logically believe that the same government that will fumble a domestic social program will magically become competent when it attempts social engineering in an alien culture. With a blank check. And no real supervision.

Foreign policy is simply ridiculously simple to hijack for domestic political ends and every politician knows it. Why do you think the European countries insist on maintaining their own armed forces and foreign ministries? Is the Norwegian Navy really such a force in world affairs? You would think the EU's agricultural policies or finance regulations would have much greater impact on the day-to-day life of the people of Belgium than the question of whether or not it has an independent air force. And yet, the Belgian government didn't hesitate to subordinate its policies to the European Parliament, even as it maintains its death grip on foreign affairs.

|3.21.06 @ 7:03PM|#

That's a pretty low hipness bar.

digamma|3.22.06 @ 7:51AM|#

Yet the moral of these authors� tales is very different from the idea embraced by longtime opponents of the war: Where the latter insisted the Iraq war was immoral and probably destined to fail, the authors believe the invasion was justifiable in principle and that its aftermath could have been different with the right policies.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - a right-winger talking about Iraq is indistinguishable from a left-winger talking about public schools.

This is not libertarian thought.