Man Wrenches Arm Patting Self

Man Wrenches Arm Patting Self On Back - A few weeks ago, I posited a theory, which I called "Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary". It said:

No liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications for the war in Iraq [WMDs, defiance of UN resolutions, Human Rights, links to terror] into an argument at a time. To do so would introduce a context in which their thesis can not survive".

Looking back, I thought too narrowly. If you look at foreign policy in a broad sense, my theory still holds up.

The left often goes through intense gyrations to rationalize their history on foreign policy. They have to - their history for the last forty years has been atrocious:

• Kennedy turned Vietnam from a special forces operation into a full-scale conventional war, largely to draw attention away from the debacle at the Bay of Pigs
• At the same time, his response to the Cuban Missile Crisis was, in the long view, a bobble. He gave away too much to the Russians, for very little in return (although sympathetic commentators, enamoured with Camelot, didn't go into much of that at the time, or since).
• LBJ's handling of Vietnam was a disaster on every front: Militarily (drawing down forces in Europe rather than call out the Guard, incompetent micromanagement of operational, even tactical matters) as well as politically.
• The left's hypocritical assaults on "right wing" dictators, while simultaneously coddling and ignoring the sins of vastly more murderous tyrants of the left (which continues today)
• Carter's mangling of policy in Central America and the Middle East
• Carter's neglect of the military (although many useful reforms that helped lead to our current military strength started on Carter's watch)
• The left's complete collapse on dealing with the USSR during the Reagan administration
• Clinton's poll-prodded pusillanimity in dealing with terrorists, from Mogadishu to letting Bin Laden slip away twice, to gundecking the investigations of the first WTC bombing and the terrorist ties to the Oklahoma City bombing
• The Clinton Administration's zeal for military action where there were no apparent US interests.

If you leave all of that out, the Democrats are historically just fine on foreign policy.

I mention this because the left seems to have found a way to pat themselves on the back in reading (VERY carefully) the Kay Report. Jeff Fecke cites this entry on Gregg Easterbrook's blog on the New Republic Online.

Easterbrook begins:

Here's what everyone has missed about the David Kay report of Iraqi arms: Kay finds the Iraqi atomic weapons program, always by far the greatest threat posed by Saddam, stopped in 1998. (See his statement here; I am directing you to the CIA website!) But what happened in 1998? The "Desert Fox" joint United States-British strike on Iraq. If Desert Fox stopped the Iraqi atomic weapons program, this means the Clinton administration's Saddam containment policy was far more effective than anyone, even Bill Clinton, previously realized.

While this is a plausible explanation, Easterbrook sells it as a definite cause-effect result - which the Kay Report does not.

Easterbrook also lends evidence to my theory; his point can only stand if you ignore the rest of the Kay report.

Easterbrook continues:

Recall that in 1998, Saddam had thrown out U.N. inspectors. The United States and United Kingdom threatened airstrikes; most other Western nations waffled or counseled appeasement. In December 1998, U.S. and British aircraft bombed Iraq weapons facilities for several nights, while 400 cruise missiles were fired into Iraq. At the time, many conservatives and Republicans denounced the strikes as pinpricks and called for much more dramatic action. Clinton's decision to do everything from the air was derided as liberal fear of casualties.

Yet now it appears Desert Fox was a resounding success. Among the Iraq facilities pounded in 1998 was the Al Zaafaraniyah atomic weapons and missile complex. Al Zaafaraniyah was not bombed during the 1991 Gulf war, because the United States did not then know much about it. U.N. inspectors found the facility in the aftermath of the 1991 war; in 1993, Clinton ordered Al Zaafaraniyah hit with cruise missiles to stop Iraq atomic-weapons research; in 1998, Al Zaafaraniyah was reduced to rubble.

So far, so good. And in fact, as far as it goes, I'll say the unthinkable: Kudos, Clinton. You did good...as far as it went.

But then you have to read the rest of the Kay report.

1998 seemed to be a tipping point on another front: from that point on, the Iraqi program went from being a large, static, industrial program to a knowledge program - what people in the manufacturing industry would call a "Just In Time" operation, where rather than building large, vulnerable stockpiles of weapons in big, static factories, the Iraqis opted instead to switch to the ability to build WMDs in small, dispersed facilities, from stockpiles of nominally-innocent precursors. This was the Kay report's conclusion that has drawn the right's attention, and I think it's a valid one. Remember - while building an atomic (or radiological) bomb or a tank of Sarin or a batch of aerosolized Botulinum the first time is Nobel Prize material, the second time it is merely craftsmanship.

It would seem, if you follow the whole Kay report, that Hussein opted to give himself a plausible, large, capability to produce WMDs in a hurry, rather than giving himself bunkers full of weapons, with all their attendant political and military risks.

Of course, considering that part of the Kay report cuts Easterbrook's point off at the knees.

Easterbrook continues:

Set aside the question of whether the United States should have invaded Iraq in 2003; history may still judge this decision favorably, as a liberation of the oppressed. But if most of the Iraq atomic weapons program stopped in 1998, as Kay concludes, then Clinton administration policy on Iraq was far more effective than once assumed; then the WMD case for invasion this year was even weaker than now assumed;

Note the leaps in logic: Easterbrook artificially limits the discussion to "atomic" weapons, while chemical, biological and radiological weapons are equally important and were little effected by Desert Fox. And he assumes, in contravention to the Kay Report's findings, that the program "stopped" in 1998, rather than redirected itself into a more decentralized and tenable form.

The devil is in the details. And most liberal arguments in this area just don't get along with the details very well.

Posted by Mitch at October 6, 2003 09:33 AM