Iraq’d

Spencer Ackerman of The New Republic has begun a new blog on that magazine's Web site. It's called Iraq'd — in a nod to Ashton Kutcher's MTV show "Punk'd."

Ackerman, like TNR overall and most of the folks who write for it, was a staunch advocate of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. He's now rethinking that support, as he explains:

If you're a pro-war liberal, chances are you're probably feeling burned right now. The case for the Iraq war rested on three pillars: The danger of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, with the clock ticking on a nuclear capability; the danger of Saddam Hussein's connections to al-Qaida; and the human rights imperative of deposing one of the world's most despicable regimes and assisting newly-freed Iraqis in building a democracy. Well, it turns out that Saddam didn't have much in the way of WMD, or even ongoing WMD programs. And it also appears that his ties to al-Qaida were tenuous at best. So all that's left for the war rationale is the human-rights-and-democracy argument, which for liberals is intuitively appealing (or should be). But then along comes the Bush administration's November 15 Agreement to relinquish sovereignty by June 30, which tells the Iraqis that, owing to election-year considerations, the United States can't be bothered right now to midwife a democracy. You might say you've been Iraq'd.

The blog is worth a look, and a bookmark. Particularly noteworthy, in light of an ongoing dialogue in the comments section here, is this recent post, in which Ackerman shares an e-mail from another liberal having second thoughts about supporting the war:

Speaking as someone who believed the invasion was a chance to pursue an anti-dictator foreign policy that couldn't be passed up just because the other reasons given for it were bogus, I have a question your introduction failed to address. Was not Bush's lack of commitment to nation building predictable? How did you not factor that in to your support for the war? …

I was hoping for the best myself, and believing that, while Iraq was no danger to the U.S., toppling Saddam was the right thing to do, and I'm hoping some way could be found to shame or convince the president to leave something better behind in Iraq.

An "anti-dictator foreign policy" is an honorable thing. As Ackerman said, the "human-rights-and-democracy argument" is "intuitively appealing" for those of us who are committed to human rights and democracy. That's why I welcome the frequent posts here in comments from a friend who enthusiastically supports the war on just this basis. I have much more in common with someone who supported this war based on such a commitment than I do with someone who opposed it solely due to some amoral realpolitik, Kissinger/Kirkpatrick-style calculus (like, say, Donald Rumsfeld during the 1970s and '80s).

I do not believe, however, that support for human rights and democracy and an abhorrence of totalitarianism leads directly to the conclusion that armed invasion and occupation is either wise or practical. Far from it.

Ackerman's correspondent, unlike my friend here in the comments section, recognizes that it is possible to agree about "an anti-dictator foreign policy" in principle, while disagreeing over what prudent steps such a policy ought to entail. The failure to accept this distinction between principle and prudence inevitably leads to a failure to "achieve disagreement," in John Courtenay Murray's phrase, and therefore leads to a lot of pointless shouting. We can, I hope, try to avoid that here.

Imagine, as an illustration, someone like Ackerman's e-mailer. We'll call him "Bob." Bob is "anti-dictator," and therefore he supported the war. That "therefore," of course, contains dozens of implicit steps, but Bob may not realize this. To his way of thinking, "anti-dictator" entails "pro-war." Thus, when Bob meets someone like me and learns that I opposed the war, he thinks "anti-war" entails "pro-dictator." He then launches into a lecture about human rights and about how despicable I am for (he supposes) supporting all of the despicable things Saddam Hussein did and stood for — at which point I may find it very difficult indeed to say anything other than the "sod off, moron" that Bob's irrelevant tirade richly deserves. I need to get better at not saying that, but instead trying patiently to achieve disagreement with Bob — identifying the actual points on which we actually disagree instead of angrily shouting about the principles we share.

The real disagreement between Bob and I is not over the nature or degree of our commitment to human rights or of our abhorrence of the atrocities of Saddam Hussein. Our real disagreement lies amongst all those dozens of steps obscured and leap-frogged over by Bob's too-grandiose "therefore."

Anyway, back to Ackerman. His correspondent, unlike the semi-hypothetical Bob, appreciates the thorny prudential questions that demand addressing to get from "anti-dictator" to "pro-war." One of those questions is whether or not, to put it bluntly, the Bush administration could really be trusted not to screw this up.

Ackerman says that, before the war, he was hopeful that President Bush could oversee such an operation with wisdom and resolve. Now he's kicking himself, wondering whatever he could have been thinking:

… it seemed to me in late 2002 that all of this intellectual exercise would yield a workable and pragmatic strategy for postwar Iraq, even if we weren't going to be greeted with sweets and flowers by the Iraqi people.

Yes, that was Panglossian. I also made another faulty assumption: that the Bush administration would retain the political will necessary to see the task through. Given that Bush has structured his presidency so as to almost never be on the unpopular side of an argument, I shouldn't have figured Iraq would be an exception.

(Note: "Bob" section slightly refined about 10 minutes after original post.)